Arriving at home was unexciting. Brushed the mud off my shoes, shook the rain out of my jacket. Nothing special.

Having lunch was the same. Sandwich ended up a bit damp, but that was it.

The loud knocking on the door afterward, though, was new and different.

Checking the peephole at the door revealed nothing, so I did nothing.

But then, after a minute, three loud knocks emanated from it again.

This time, I paused for a minute before checking. Still, there was nothing out there.

And while I examined that nothing, the nothing tapped out three more knocks, weaker this time.

I swallowed again, and stood away from the peephole.

My left hand, somehow containing more courage than the whole rest of my body held cowardice, found the doorknob, twisted it, and pulled.

And a familiar figure of dark hair and plastic fell into my home.

She must have been leaning against the door while someone was knocking on my door, but looking outside, there was noone even remotely close to my home to have knocked.

The only one that could have been knocking was her.

Thoughts started bubbling over in my head. Those stories about people mistaking a body for a mannequin and throwing it in a dumpster. I imagined being alive, and being mistaken for such.

I shivered.

I then forced myself to shake off the feeling. There's a person in my home right now that needs help, I thought.

I pulled her all the way inside, shut the door, then carried her to the living room couch, tracking mud the whole way. She felt surprisingly light, though it may have been the adrenaline distorting her weight.

She was also ice cold.

Laying her on her side, I then fetched some large beach towels I had in the closet, wiping her down with one and wrapping the now dry areas of her plastic body with the rest.

Her plastic body.

I couldn't help but notice how plastic her skin was. Not hard plastic, like an actual mannequin, but still plastic.

It was at this moment that I realized that I hadn't even checked if she was breathing, or had a pulse. It was possible I was trying to save a corpse, or worse, trying to save a doll with no life in it to begin with.

I touched the fingers of my right hand to her neck, and concentrated.

It was slight, and slow, but it was definitely there. A heartbeat. As well, the expansion and contraction of her chest revealed her breathing.

She was definitely alive.

But she was still cold.

Thinking back, I seemed to remember that sharing body heat was a good way to warm someone up.

But if I remembered correctly, it required skin to skin contact.