The sunlight was what woke me up. Light glints, sliced, fractals, I saw through the thick glass of my display case that The Inventor had been bent over his work desk all night. Somehow aware that I was looking at him, he turned to me. The Inventor was donned in his usual, an old but pristine burgundy velvet three-piece suit. His tufted black hair of puffy waves was more disheveled than the night before, as though he had run his hands through his hair many times. His olive skin, usually luminous, had gathered dust like a piece of parchment left alone for too long. His bright green eyes shone with expectation.
“This is for you, you know.” He held up a small, me-sized outfit, complete with a tailed black tuxedo jacket and curved toe box dress shoes.
The streak of the morning sun made his lapel pin, a small white rose, transform into a blinding point of light.
Standing up, he paused as if affected by a pain that traveled throughout his body. As he crossed the workshop, I more clearly saw his face which appeared more aged, not with wrinkles but with bitterness.
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Yet I saw redoubtable tenderness in his eyes as he lifted my box off of the high shelf. My box. My home. I was glad to have a home as small and cozy as that for I had nowhere else to go. I was made, you see, not born. I was made to dance, to perform. I never minded it. Having a purpose suited me just fine, thank you, and I rather liked each weekend when the Inventor took me in my display case down the spiral staircase to the little theatre where the children giggled, smiled and pointed with wonder. Returning to the workshop up those same steps at the end of the day, I could see the Inventor’s face bolstered with gratification.
It was that face, and those eyes, that I saw fill with trepidation, then pain, and then realization, when the world stopped for a heartbeat. His last one.
My box and I fell, we fell with his hand still holding on, when he looked directly into my eyes for the last time. At first I fell like a thick object, motionless and blank. Then, a wave of deep and airy sound filled my chest and throat. It felt like many parts of me at once, the compact weave of my linen fabric and the flax threads started filling with light and warmth as my arms naturally flailed in an attempt to catch myself. But I didn’t crash onto the ground. It was as if my fall turn into a float. By the time I landed, the box had shattered into pieces; I could feel a rhythm inside my own chest. Whether it was a proper heart, I still don’t know, but I found I could move on my own when I put my hands up to the Inventor’s cheek and kissed him goodbye. As he closed his eyes, he whispered, “It’s your turn.”
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There would be nobody coming to check on him for a while and I knew it wouldn’t matter. He was gone. I was there. He had given me a gift I couldn’t return.
I looked down, and noticed for the first time that between small shards of glass from the broken box, my strings were in a puddle on the floor beside me. The fall must have caused them to snap. My strings. I will have to fend for myself.
I was there, and I was broken, in such a delightful way. But I was standing on my own.
Whatever would I do? Whatever would you do, having been just born into a world you knew everything about, everything you needed to know, but had never touched?
I looked at my untethered legs and I concentrated on my left leg. I willed it to lift. It did and I was surprised by how easy it was. One step, and then another. Left, right, left, right. I moved forward with a graceful lurch.
I walked down the Inventor’s body for a short distance to his upper chest - where the lapel pin was! - I took it and put it on myself. It didn’t hurt. I was still made out of clay, fabric, and paper, after all. The white rose. The symbol of my first companion.
My whole life I’ve been adorned in a well-worn, mustard-colored dress embellished with red and white shoulder accents, cuffs, and hand-sewn skirt hemming. The hickory buttons down the front that never actually opened and closed. And, now, the Rose pin matched my outfit quite well. I hooked it in and it dropped a bit from its metallic weight, settling right in front of my - well, I don’t have a stomach, I don’t think,
Frohna 3
but that general area. It had the appearance of a decorative shield one might wear, or a rather large accessory on ones belt.
Left, right, left, right, left right, quicker now, I made to the foot of the Inventor’s work desk. After a short but thoroughly exhausting climb, I picked up his last creation. My new suit. A real, impressive suit. It feels like how I imagined silk to feel. With a lightweight sword, like a fencer’s saber, inside the suit’s jacket’s pocket. Its handle was red and white to match the accents on my dress. The sword was much longer than the pocket itself and yet it appeared to fit in quite snuggly. How curious. I couldn’t take off the dress myself because it was a part of me and there was nobody else in the house to carefully, surgically remove it from my body, so I simply pulled the suit jacket with the long tail on over the dress, and pulled on the shoes. My fingers were working independently. I stood and watched each finger as I caused them to move up and down, working through each joint.
The pants would have to wait.
I might never put on those pants.
I spotted myself in the small round magnifying mirror on the desk. I looked
dashing. Having completed my outfit for now, and finding myself several feet above the ground, I sat down with my legs dangling over the edge, looked around, and waited for something to catch my eye.
Suffice it to say, I did not have to wait long.
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In one corner of the workshop, there was a box that I felt was itching to be opened. I had never seen it before. I found myself hopping down from the table, that much was easy, and walking purposefully toward it before the reasonable parts of myself could tell the rest of me not to. Walking purposefully toward it, I was indeed, when - Boing! The box sprung open with a crackly hissssss.
And out came something that I could tell was made like me and yet was not like me at all. A giant oil-painted papier-mâché centipede-esque creature with too many legs and too many eyes, glowing and brackish, smoking and darting left and right, it clicked and shuttered like a sick bug. But most abhorrently, it was visually buzzing around the edges, hurting my eyes as I tried to focus.
I jumped back and stood there blinking. The creature skittered over to a low shelf next to the desk, upon which was an indigo glass bottle filled with a dark brown liquid. I had seen the Inventor drinking from that very bottle and afterward he had appeared as if someone had struck him over the head with a policeman’s baton. I would always look down at my own feet when this happened. But now I’m holding my gaze as the creature circled around the bottle like a snake, as though it was protecting something precious within its coils. A wave of black light emanated from it, for an instance, as its papier- mâché body, inch by inch, turned into a tarnished and rusty steel shell. It’s bug-like clicks resonated through the room.
Ah, the sword.
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I wonder if he knew that moment was coming; the Inventor, that is. I think he did indeed. I think he gave me more than one gift that fateful morning. I was made to dance, to perform.
So dance.
I gripped the sword with both hands, lunging forward...
So perform.
And swung. I felt a forceful reverberation as I cut off an arm. But it had ninety- nine more. I felt a rush of nervous energy, like a stampede of wild horses coursing through all the tiny knots that held my body together. But I didn’t give up.
Half the creature’s eyes seemed to blink in unison, confusedly, with an expression of hurt rather than physical pain, while the other half of its eyes narrowed and looked at me askance. It was sizing me up as if I was something unexpected. It reared back, the smoke billowing off of it went from a grayish color to a strong reddish tint. Flakes of rust spewed off its back and legs. The whole body seemed to expand like metal being forged in a blacksmith’s kiln.
This thing I was trying to defeat, its eyes numerous and somehow even darker than its skin, this supposed personal demon of my creator's that was now my business. Was it a personal demon? It was in one of his many boxes of unfinished projects. For surely I felt drawn to finish it just as strongly as I’d felt to walk towards it in the first place. The pull
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felt natural and unnatural all at once, and I was having trouble figuring out if I was doing this because I wanted to or if I had to.
One arm, then many arms, reached out with a potential grip that could’ve torn my fabric, my flesh. I leapt back. It came looping around me, encircling me on all sides. Instinctively, I turned to my left — why my left? Instincts are new to me — and then I kept spinning until I spotted its head. I hit it, once, hard, on the top of, well, where its brain would be if it had one. Crack. The sound of metal on metal was almost worse than the creature’s maw. That satisfied my newly instinctual self, I think, so I kept going at it. Stabbing and slashing, I moved down its body, feeling my way toward potential vulnerability. Right there. Right there, there was a spot with a crack in it already. It might’ve been birthed into this world with that crack, that blemish. Hit it again. Hit it. I hacked at it until shavings of metal sheared off its back. Suddenly I was flung backward. I flailed and then froze as it dragged me closer to its giant tendrils. I was a doll under a master’s control again. It had me by my strings! No more masters. No more strings. I felt my weapon grasped in my left hand.
I swung around and slashed the cord clean off me.
Freed once more, in the same move, I hit it again for good measure, as if to say, without words, Don’t you dare do that again! The loop opened. I ran out of its ring, for a moment, and resettled into a stance that wasn’t entirely different from when I used to pause between dances. I felt quite literally light-headed, and as I glanced down, I noticed
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that the creature had cut my hair. It’s just hair, but, that meant, It had touched me. “Aaaaaaargh!!!” I lunged toward it. To the Inventor’s ears I might’ve sounded like
a small, ridiculously angry mouse, but to the creature I sounded like a worthy opponent. It made a mechanical screeching noise in reply, a war cry, and its front end moved forward until the black, scaly, dripping head was an inch from mine.
“Ssssjjkjkkkkdjdjkddkdjdk!!” It chittered.
I blocked it off from snatching at me again, with my sword, and without a thought, I struck out again and again. My weapon glinted.
Was this abuse? For the Inventor to predict my doing this? To make me, to make me love him? To make me fight for him without question? Didn’t he love me? Didn’t he try to suppress the creature for my sake? I’m certainly not without question. This was a thought for another day.
Right now, I am fighting for myself.
Free, and in charge. After so many years being an employee, I am now a master. My own curiosity led me to this moment. My own two hands and feet are being used, by my own direction.
I am here. I can feel my heart pounding.
