It’s pitch dark. I can’t see or hear anything, and it terrifies me. I can’t even see or hear myself in any way. It’s complete silence and trepidation compounded. Suddenly and shockingly, it’s as if a big light switch has been flipped on, and it’s blinding white now. This isn’t a room! There are no closing walls, but it feels as though I am suffocating. I can’t move; I can’t talk. I feel a scream curdling in my throat, but not escaping. There is no floor, although it’s as if I am strapped to the hardest of one. I feel as if I am out of my own body, seeing all of this happening to someone else. I am drenched in sweat that rolls down my body. I open my mouth fruitlessly in pathetic attempts to scream or mutter any cry for help.
Wait. I hear footsteps, soft footsteps that can’t be any bigger than those of an innocent baby. Babies aren’t scary, so why am I so terrified that goosebumps and sweat are mingling on top of me and covering me in a cold shock? Then, the reality hits me like a train that this could never be a baby, for the feet hit too hard against the non-existent ground. I try to move, to get up and make a victorious escape. I want to scream as loudly as a boiling teapot on a hot stove, and run into the seemingly endless white space beyond. I can’t move though, and my vocal cords seem broken, for I can’t mutter even a whimper to release my fear, so I dart my eyes around.
I see feet encased in white stockings, feet with no toes. I look up further to see an old-fashioned forest green and white laced dress. The dress is puffy, like you see in princess movies, but this is nowhere near a princess movie. Instead, I’d rate it horror film, and the white is laced around the bottom intricately like a spider web on a bush. I’m scared to look any higher, but when I force myself to do so, I see two dead eyes encased in a white, procelain face. I glance around and am terrified to see more such creatures garbed in different colored dresses: reds, blues, yellows, yet all the same. I try so hard to scream, to close my eyes, but it’s all in vain. I strain my vocal cords as much as I can to let out something, anything, but all of my attempts are useless. I am the prey, and they are the predators, ready to pounce.
What are they going to do? There are endless possibilities flowing through my mind like a never-ending river of fear. Are they going to suck out my soul with their hollow eyes? Cut me open and climb inside my dead body to become an actual girl? Accomplish the same thing by taking my skin and eyes? Tear me apart with their little hands, some mittened, some painted? Do a satanic chant and sacrifice me?
Then they grab each other’s hands and form a circle around me. They look as though they are young children, ready to play ring around the rosy and all fall down simultaneously with an eruption of laughter as they plummet to the ground, clasped to each other. They don’t fall though. One of them grabs out a hammer, from God knows where, and hits another on the head, who then attacks another in the same manner. This goes on in a vicious cycle, until all of them are broken into pieces. As it happens I hear their delicate, porcelain bodies shatter into pieces, sounding like a vase dropped on the floor as a woman cries and picks up the dying flowers. There is no woman crying though, nobody is picking up flowers or shattered pieces.
When the last one is destroyed, something even more bizarre happens. The pieces are being pulled, by some invisible, foreign force, towards my unprotected body. They start to envelop me and caress my skin, as I become encased in them. The worst thing imaginable is happening: I am becoming one of them. I am now a porcelain doll. I become unlatched from the nothing, and I can finally stand up. I touch every part of my body, gingerly, wondering if this is real. Horrified, I still want to cry and scream, but I can’t do anything in this body, besides stand there, and look pretty.