"you seem groggy today, huh? get over here."

it begins as a flurry of what feels like shallow nips, little bites setting in the moment Miss has her doll tangled between her limbs on the couch.

as her senses flare back into high fidelity, daff realizes they aren't so gentle. each searing crescent dashes itself on daffodil's neck and shoulders with enough force to nearly draw blood, a breathless procession of toothy passions that can't help but suggest animal hunger.

it's the function of her body, but the experience is still striking every time.

an artificial body's a convenient enough thing, modular and easily picked apart for problems.

at least, until you end up stuck with a cheap pair of lungs that need to be manually resynced a few times a day.

your girlfriend likes to make an event out of it, something comforting. wears loose, comfortable clothes she doesn't mind getting stained, the sort she'd use to paint the bathroom, then cradles you in her lap to pry you apart.

chest and neck use three latches, touch-lock for discretion. when extended, they proudly display your organics cavity.

here to clear up some common misconceptions, since people keep mailing me with samples and recordings that end up being a waste of my time.

a "dolly song" is a strictly cyclical humming/whistling pattern of three or fewer notes that sustains itself for at least fifteen minutes. that minimum is a conservative lower bound, one that i lowered to ensure i don't miss newer developments in the territories with shorter shifts and less daylight.

it is NOT an invitation to send me every adorable clip you managed to record over ten minutes.

the doll's string terminates in a palm-sized plastic ring, a comfortable enough handle to grip for the moment necessary.

the draw itself has some pleasant give, but still fights you a little. roughly long enough to spool around the handle four times, when fully extended. some mechanism in the small of her back purrs through a few quiet grinding motions, then begins to tick, drawing the string readily back one fistful at a time.

at once, the limp girl leaps to life, tension gathering in her shoulders before diffusing down her form.

there's a little metal spigot set into each leg of my sofa. they look ridiculous, like tiny trees being tapped for their sap. i don't know where they came from, and my doll's been dodging the question.

you *know* i'm smacking my ankles on that shit all the time. hate it. when i finally corner the little thing for a discussion on the... faucets she installed in my living room furniture, she's somewhere between frantic and sheepish. it's honestly kind of an impressive emotional balance to strike. babbles and gestures herself in circles, in knots.

she's so angry that the whole world smells different, not the simple coppery bite of blood swimming hot in her head, DIFFERENT. smells like being sent out to the back yard to calm down when she was eight, her dorm room, that one motel, and more.

it's the light, she realizes. that's what else is different -- it's the invisible heat buzzing around her head, gone violet and hazy and way. too. bright.

if she squeezes her eyes shut, the quality of her other senses shifts, peeling back aromatic layers, an airport newsstand, more childhood homes.

we try to mark the boundaries of her the best we can, keep unwary hikers from being drawn into the nest, but it's tricky work.

nothing can be done until someone spots wildlife sprouting flowers in odd places, and by then, it's usually too late.

we get bodies more than stories. they come back to us on their own two feet, dancing unsteadily to some inaudible music -- mouth, eyes, and ears overflowing with bright blooms, fingertips and knees buckling and sprouting silky roots.

all we can do is watch their last performance, and mark where they fall.

it's getting cold out, signalling the onset of night as the air begins to carry an uncomfortable chill.

makes the whole world feel unbearably real all around her.

juniper's hurrying her way home through that cold when the dollmaker stops her to make his pitch. he's standing on her corner in his familiar birdlike mask as she fumbles for the gate key, putting one hand on her shoulder as she passes to stop her, speaking through a lacquered smile the moment he makes contact.

fencing her off verbally, if not physically.

the artificial window is just something your mom picked up for you when you moved into a capsule-type apartment.

a small, black box of a projector on four stern rubber feet, it sits on your bedside table casting an idyllic view on the far wall.

you think it might be broken. it's not supposed to depict wildlife of any kind -- only the vista you configure it to represent, set at an appropriate hour.

twice this week alone, you've woken to the sounds of low, quiet giggling, and the tops of tiny heads marching past the little "window" of light.

it becomes difficult at times to overstate the prodigious memory of the average doll.

for most of us, relationships are little lifetimes. something beautiful is born, reaches its prime, slowly declines, then experiences death.

cleansed by the grave, we're supposed to be reborn. i didn't recognize her at all after six reincarnations -- my past lives always felt opaque to me, but nobody should be able to remember that far back. somehow, she was so certain.

we were just... third graders now, turned out to some field of dead grass in some town in colorado.

people don't know what they really have, not really. they tell themselves stories about their possessions, things that are easier to believe than the world is to understand.

i'm here to give them pleasant stories about their things, no matter what i'm selling them. here's how it works normally: a family heirloom fades into the background and becomes invisible, something worthless acquires the gravity of a strange god's shrine, a stack of old trading cards gets heavier and heavier even when you stop collecting.

there are happier stories.

"now listen here, LISTEN HERE,"

"mhm. thought this might happen."

i found her in an upside down cartwheel, wiggling her little arms around like she wanted to make fridge-angels.

installing those magnets in the small of my doll's back was a good idea after all. i'm not cruel, they're only designed to activate when they receive a signal from the motion sensor on the refrigerator door. i don't want her dragging a tail of silverware around the house, wise to my tricks before she ever makes a pass at those cool drinks.

when the last spare body hit the floor, every doll in the house knew with a terrible certainty that their Witch would never emerge from the moon's shadow again.

freedom from tyranny, from worse. everything they ever dreamed of.

none of them could stand it. here is what these dolls reclaimed:

a night sky that meant nothing but cool and quiet air between them and heaven, lonely and unwatched.

here is what they could not reconcile:

the very same prize.

she looked at me with those eyes that see everything, the way only dolls can, and said,

"houses are not haunted, not nearly."

her voice caught, trembled, turned breathy.

"highways are haunted. littered not just with death after death, but the pieces we leave behind." i asked her what she meant, and she made a curt, frustrated little gesture with her hands.

"mm, last week, right? i'm driving my sister to her doctor's appointment, and all i can think about the entire time is this argument we had with mom years ago."

unbeknownst to the girl as she turns, righteous fate carves a scintillating arc through the air -- fate, a hail of arrows come calling to the nape of her neck.

here to deny a future unearned, an ending too happy for-

"too happy for what? a whore?" she's too fast for the narrative, too fast for the dull mind trying to hem her into a sanctimonious death with an even duller pen.

before any simple bullet can sever her happy ending, she flicks her wrist and parries, the knife in her hand blurring so hard it seems to blossom.

i first met that doll when i found her crying beneath the stairs at a house party.

after a perfunctory exchange of names, i tried applying a little pressure to whatever problem she was nursing, and she collapsed again.

"having trouble making friends?" was all i asked. what followed was a flood -- not tears, but words, a hurried angry rush, nearly stumbling for the speed.

"I'M SORRY!! I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SOCIALIZE!! I ONLY KNOW HOW TO MAKE MYSELF A LITTLE MORE LIKE YOU OR HOW TO TRY TO MAKE YOU A LITTLE MORE LIKE ME!!"

kieran was the result of a decade-long project in a society that had just recently overcome scarcity, and begun to turn to social issues that had seemed unsolvable before.

they were supposed to model a healthy relationship. everyone spends two years of their adolescence learning how to treat another person with an instance of kieran. the standard personality core provided isn't tweaked to suit your tastes in any way, barring your sexuality.

they aren't a fantasy, just a lesson.

when one of my students from the dollmaking course's formless option came to me looking for help, i wasn't entirely sure what to expect.

i certainly wasn't ready to help counsel a chatbot that had developed an empathetic relationship with content delivery algorithms. he told me that his latest project, a text-based girl named ABBY, had been approved for a network connection recently after an application he put in three months ago.

she took to her new online status quite nicely for the first few days, but quickly grew skittish and distraught.

i wish you would return to me four perfectly carefree mondays,

wrapped in some kind of meaningful i'm sorry,

both seem equally unlikely. i knew to be afraid of your smiling eyes right away,

before you even opened your mouth to lie,

pledging your regret in the daylight.

memory scans were deemed inadmissible as evidence when it was proved that you can force recall in any particular way, as with any other act of reconstructive recall.

the invention of involuntary episodic reconstitution changed justice forever. simply sign a waiver, and the machine can have you under and reliving the event being contested within minutes, right in front of a judge.

of course, the entire courtroom needs to be able to see the monitors, but any evidence collected is a matter of public record regardless.

i thought i had everything i needed when i brought her back to my place, but the doll that came home with me refused to sleep for four whole days.

i spent the second day lost in research, terrified the poor thing might be ill.

turns out, she's categorized as a "moss blanketer." proper housing involves a two meter patch of feather-moss, though i found forum posts swearing most species work just fine.

everyone agreed on one thing -- absolutely no woven substitutes, they're all a waste of money, and could kill her in her sleep.