Eyes Wide Shut: 2

	In my dreams, I do things. Sometimes I’ll be playing with my dancers in a lush meadow, or I’ll be following a guard as he runs down a hallway that stretches on and on. At the end, I’ll find a little wooden doll in a white mask, buried underneath an empty uniform. I like those dreams; I’m always doing things I enjoy or would like to do in those dreams.

In my nightmares, things are being done to me. Things I don’t like. In this one, I was standing on top of a stage in an empty restaurant. I think it was at Circus Baby’s Pizza World, because the stage was too small for me and the long corridor leading to it was always felt too narrow. The short apron and the low ceiling made it an uncomfortable, confining space. All I could really do was spin in place, and all I really knew to do was dance. So I spun, continuously. I went on spinning, balanced on the tip of my toes, to distract myself from the strange environment.

I saw Mr. Afton enter the room, but I did not care. I was dancing! I lost myself in my momentum, as I turned and turned, feeling the wind on my face. I was more focused on my movements than his, which is why it took a few seconds for me to realize that each time I spun around to face the empty hallway, he was closer to the stage. I stopped when he was on stage, in front of me. Mr. Afton’s hand was on my right thigh, and his finger pushed something there. A button. I wanted to attack him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t blink, or move. He pulled his hand away from my thigh, and stared up at me, with a knowing smile. And then he winked.

I woke up, and dropped from the ceiling, into my crawling position. Unbending my legs, I stood up as all that was on my mind was Mr. Afton. I remembered very well how he would lock my movements, and what he would do to me. He took my sight away, once. He unspooled some of my silk, wrapping it around his fingertips like floss and pulling. Among other things.

To shake my head of such thoughts, I decided to start the day right. I moved towards the nearest wall, on my right, and began counting my dancers. Running a finger down each of my dancer’s pods, I was pressing on the cocoons just enough to assure myself that that they were still there, but not so hard as to wake them up. I moved from wall to wall, counting each dancer one by one. I saved the bystanders for last. Standing in front of their wall, I wondered if they dreamed while they slept, and if they were good dreams. I wanted to wake one up and ask. But I didn’t.

Instead, I danced. I danced away the bad thoughts, and tried to focus on the good things. The here and now. The momentum carried me through the room, as I spun into a jump, landing near the exit.

I could feel the cool air coming in from the vent.

Did I close it last night?

With hesitance, I moved my foot towards the derelicts that had accumulated over the past year. The dancers who failed me, were reborn wrong, or were otherwise improper. They dwelled in their own pile; in their own corner of the room, and were willing to take in any newcomers I tossed aside. As well as anyone who wandered too close to their part of the room. They were flotsam, and nothing more.

I could feel a few spindly, toothpick-like limbs underneath my feet. When I bent down to examine them, they were completely hollow. Nothing was inside them. None of the dark, viscous liquid which ran through the bodies of my dancers was left. They were empty. Gone. I picked up an arm, and rolled it over in the palm of my hand with my thumb. I squeezed it, hoping to instigate movement. Then I closed it, shook my hand, and uncurled it. I waited for some semblance of life to come back to the arm; for some twitching and a miraculous jolt of life.

There was nothing. I tilted my hand, and let the dead arm fall to the ground with a small clatter.

There was something else on the ground. A slick coating of that precious substance was on the floor. I rubbed it between my fingers, and could feel the stickiness, sniffing it just to assure myself that it was in fact the sweet, sugary stuffing I knew my dancers by.

I realized that this lump of dancers, however maligned and flawed and pointless they were, were gone. With no hesitation, I crawled into the vent, and pushed myself down its metal walls. The clatter. When I emerged into the security office, a sweet fragrance lingered in the air. I stood up, and listened for any strange noises. Anything out of the ordinary, like shuffling or low whispering. And after a few seconds, I heard them.

They were at the elevator vent. They were scratching, and bleating in their tiny, quiet voices. I could hear the vent being lifted up and dropped immediately after it was lifted. It was apparently too intricate for their battered bodies. Quietly, I walked to the side of the vent and crossed my arms. I angled my head down towards the source of the noise, and waited for the scratching and bleating to stop.

I leaned down, and lifted up the vent. The writhing mass of former dancers did not move forward. They remained where they were. Unmoving. I toed the derelict heap, nudging it towards the vent’s inner walls. Still, they did not yield. They must be unwilling as well.

As expected. My hands found that the walls and floor of the entrance were hooked onto by multiple arms and legs. I scraped them off with my fingernails, and picked up the quivering ball with my hands. The arms and legs flailed, while the things’ moaning grew more distinctive. I lowered myself to the ground, and sat down on the office floor.

I held the ball of failures in my arms, and I rocked it back and forth, hushing most of the cries. I could feel the things become more relaxed as their movements slowed, and their limbs stopped poking out. The shivering remained, however. I continued rocking, as I thought about what would soothe their desperation. One of their heads poked out of the tangled yarn, and I cooed to it, as I wrapped my hand around the grinning mask.

It would only take a little pressure to crush it’s head, and to squeeze out the goop that flowed through their veins. Only a little pressure, for me to send this fragile creature beyond the veil. This fragile, pained creature.

This thing was one of my own at some point, though I forgot it’s name. I pulled part of the figure out of the murmuring, dripping pile, and beneath a finger-sized hole in it’s abdomen, I felt a skirt. I had forgotten her name. I touched her face with a finger, and cooed to her, as I pulled the ball closer, and held it tightly. I opened my jaws and released a cavalcade of stringy, sticky web onto the ball and myself while I turned it around in my hands, making a harness of sorts. The ball having been secured to my chest, I stood up, and began walking to the vent. The death they so yearned for would not come today. Or maybe it would. Inside the web, they would slumber for as long as I wished.

I had no intention on letting them go.

After a few seconds, I heard a bug, skittering on the floor of the office. My foot darted out, and stomped. I felt a loud crunch beneath. The resulting sweet stench, and the squirming underneath my foot’s sole when I lifted it up told me that the source of the noise was not a cockroach.

Supporting the cradle in the crook of my arm, I bent down and and prodded the broken, bleeding form. A small puddle was forming around it, and it's tank top was stained with liquid. The legs twitched, one having been bent into an awkward, insectoid angle and the other being broken off at the knee. I wondered briefly if it was the one who Foxy had adopted, before I noticed that it had only one arm, which undulated sporadically. The stump on the other side of it’s body had dried up a long time ago.

I lowered my foot over the figure, and brought it down again, with more force. The dancer heaved, but when prodded began to move again. I considered returning to my gallery for a few seconds, and leaving this resilient thing to its own devices. I took a step towards the vent, and then stopped when I heard small, pained gasps. I walked back towards the wreck, and picked up the doll in my free hand.

What was left of the dancer’s body was limp and unresponsive, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. But it flinched when I touched the sensitive, cracked mask, and it flinched again when I wiped some of the liquid away. It moved for the final time when I began to drive my thumb through it’s face. It’s remaining arm slapped my hand for a few seconds, before relaxing and falling still as the black fluid oozed out of the hole, and dripped down my fingers.

I shook the shattered thing for a few seconds, and smelled the lingering aroma. It was dead.

He. It was a he.

I scooped up the doll’s other parts, and at last returned to the vent. I held the doll’s remains in one hand, while pushing myself forward with my legs and free hand. I emerged on the other side in about fifteen seconds.

Dropping the dancer’s carcass onto the ground, I moved to the corner the defectives were usually stationed in. I climbed up the corner, pushing up off the two walls that surrounded me. At the top, I pulled the sack from my chest, and stuck it onto the corner of the ceiling. This spot would be safest for them, and for my other dancers. They could never leave, and nobody could ever disturb them.

When I returned to the ground, I didn’t feel like dancing anymore, and I didn’t feel like waking up my dancers. Instead of moving to their pods, I sat in the corner the forgotten once inhabited, and idly toyed with the doll’s corpse.

 He should have known better than to leave his flock. Maybe he could’ve lifted up the vent. He shouldn’t have tried crossing the room at the same time I moved towards the vent. He should’ve found a good spot to hide in, and maybe I wouldn’t have hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt him, but his condition reached a point where I had no other choice. Besides, crawling towards me at a time like that was foolish.

Perhaps even suicidal.

I ran my thumb around the rim of the face’s hole one last time before putting the doll down. I stood up, and decided to do some stretching. After that, maybe I’ll do some pirouettes.