“Bianca,” he murmured, flexing his fingers—real fingers, now, the skin still gleaming faintly, as if dusted with porcelain powder. “Look what you’ve given me.”
He cupped my cheek, his thumb smearing a streak of blood across my lips like rouge.
“My doorway into the world. My masterpiece.”
The egg was never a child. It was his gateway into my world.
His lips pressed against mine. Not cold. Warm. His tongue snaked between my lips. I lay in shock before passing out. The darkness was a welcome reprieve. Reality was no longer an option.
???
I woke to silence.
Not the quiet of an empty room but the absolute, suffocating silence of a body that no longer needed air. My chest didn’t rise. Didn’t fall. It didn’t move at all.
I tried to scream, but there was nothing. My lips didn’t move, and there was only silence. I tried to thrash, but my limbs wouldn’t obey. Only my eyes could move, darting in their sockets, straining against the edges of my peripheral vision.
The door creaked open.
William strolled in with a glass of red wine swirling in his hand, the rich aroma curling through the air—my favourite vintage. He took a slow sip, savouring it, his lips staining the same crimson as the streaks he’d painted on mine.
“There she is,” he murmured, his voice smooth.
Then he grew.
Taller. Larger.
The ceiling stretched away. The walls yawned wide, and suddenly, his hand, now massive, fingers like thick pillars, closed around my throat, effortlessly lifting me.
My dangling legs didn’t kick. My arms didn’t flail.
“That’s right, Bianca,” he purred, tilting me so our faces were level. His icy blue eyes gleamed, reflecting my own—glass now, not flesh. “You sit on my shelf and worship me day and night. You wait for me until I want to use your quim like a common harlot.”
NO!I screamed, but no sound came.
Only the echo inside my hollow skull, bouncing endlessly, a prisoner in my own mind.
William smiled, took another sip of my wine, and set me on the dresser beside the bed—my new altar.
“Don’t fret, darling,” he whispered, stroking a finger down my frozen cheek. “You’ll learn to love the silence and crave my voice.”
And as he walked away, I realised that the worst part wasn’t being a doll, but it was knowing I could still cry.
But the tears wouldn’t fall.
Epilogue
Bianca
Iwatched him. My eyes were always on him, craving the times he would change me back until I could breathe the air again, touch him, and worship him. I hated him when he left me in the darkness, cold and alone. It suffocated me, but I always forgave him when he held me.
The bell tinkled. The door opened, but I barely glanced at the elderly woman who entered the antique shop.
William was sitting back in his chair, smoking his pipe. I didn’t know how many years had passed, but he never aged. He promised me immortality but never explained the cost.
The old woman came close to me. She looked familiar. It couldn’t be the woman who almost bought Melissa at the car boot sale—the day that was my beginning and my end. She lifted her hand towards me, but William was there, gripping it.
“She is not for sale,” he said, his voice icy and persistent.
