Even after eleven years Duo hadn’t grown accustomed to being treated like the object he now was.

After being cursed by his best friend Trowa Barton, Duo Maxwell lived as a plastic doll from 1923 to 2010. Here is one story from each decade he spent in that form.

Unique to these stories: This is a difficult collection to tag. There are insensitive terms from some of these decades, and the sexism that might be expected of them as well. Trowa is significantly mentioned but does not appear. A transgender character is misunderstood and misgendered throughout that story’s narration. There’s some disparaging language regarding Catholics. The possibility of rape is referred to but does not take place in any story. There’s a picture of a scorpion. Just a bunch of little things that still bear mentioning.

His Own Humanity: Nine Decades

Tune In Next Week (1927)

These days you never knew if you would hear ‘nursery,’ ‘playroom,’ or something pretentious such as ‘children’s lounge’ in reference to the young people’s retreat in a wealthy household, but since Duo had never lived in such a house as a child, it made very little difference to him.

He shouldn’t have been forced to spend so much time in such rooms as an adult, either. Thanks, Trowa.

Clarence had been directed by the housekeeper to the playroom, so called here, to wait while she located young Raymond and sent him in to get to know the visitor while their mothers — old school chums reunited after one family’s recent move to Ann Arbor — chatted over coffee and cake in the parlor. Duo had never lived in a house with a parlor, and, due to his current form, didn’t know much of them now. Thanks, Trowa.

Examining the amenities in the small chamber that had more window than floorspace, Clarence waved Duo through the air in a vague flying motion as he often did, and ambled toward a large toy-chest and the much-abused rocking horse beside it. Instead of opening the former to see what interesting playthings Raymond, whose family seemed slightly richer than Clarence’s, had stashed within, he sat on the latter, setting it rocking, and looked down at Duo.

Duo wasn’t so much a participant in Clarence’s games as he was a focus for the dialogues the child came up with. Clarence would stare down at him intently, much as he did now, seem to take an endless amount of inspiration from the sight (Duo had always wanted to be inspiring simply because he was portable; thanks, Trowa), and talk his way, under his breath, through whatever adventure had popped into his head as a result. Sometimes the stories went on for days, though without much recognizable continuity. Judging by the look in the kid’s eye, increasingly familiar in this the fourth week of Duo’s time with him, Clarence aimed to start a new one, despite here and now perhaps not being the best place and time to do so.

But before Clarence could draw breath to speak, the playroom door opened and another boy appeared. This must be Raymond, though he didn’t introduce himself. Maybe he’d intended to, and maybe not — ten-year-old boys could be little monsters sometimes, no matter how hard their mothers worked to hammer manners into them — but in any case the sight of Clarence holding Duo completely distracted him.

“Is that a doll?” With the confidence of the master of the house and someone that has never considered himself wrong in his entire life, Raymond closed the door and came inside, swaggering toward Clarence as he continued with rising skepticism, “As if you were a girl?”

Clarence shrank a little and said nothing. Duo had seen it before: this child almost always chose to withdraw rather than engage. For this reason his father erroneously accused him of being sullen.

Raymond, on the other hand, proved the opposite of sullen or withdrawn. He hopped around like a flea, examining Duo from all angles, poking at both him and Clarence, trying to rock the horse beneath the other boy, spouting further witticisms. “I’ll bet you have tea parties with it, eh? Do you get it all dressed up and comb its hair? Catch me doing that! Does it sleep with you at night? Can you sleep without your dolly? I’ll be a man someday, but I bet you won’t!”

A deep crease had appeared between Clarence’s fine, pale eyebrows, and Duo thought this might be one of the few instances he’d witnessed thus far when the kid would actually stand up for himself. Clarence hadn’t wanted to come, after all, and to keep the experience from being completely miserable he needed to say something sooner rather than later. But Duo couldn’t have anticipated what he came up with.

Technically the words were merely, “Go away,” which made for the most basic of beginnings to his attempt at rebuffing Raymond and his taunts… except that they emerged in the magical language. They had little power behind them, and in any case only the most skilled of magicians could enact a spell without specifying the object at which it was directed, but the fact remained that Clarence had spoken in the tongue shared by all magicians, clearly enough for Duo to understand him easily.

Duo understood, but Raymond didn’t. Now he exhibited what Duo, from his human years practicing magic, recognized as the typical reaction of anyone hearing the magical language for the first time: he started and jerked back, disconcerted. And, given that the gist of Clarence’s command had been understandable despite the words’ incomprehensibility, and that it had been a sort of spell regardless of its overall effectiveness, no surprise Raymond then took two more steps, his features writhing with fear, confusion, and defiance, and left the room.

Clarence had allowed Duo to swivel into a position from which he could watch all of this, and now the doll remained pointed toward the newly closed playroom door and couldn’t see the boy’s face. He was conscious, however, of Clarence stretching his short legs out into the air in front of him before bracing himself on the floor again in order to rock the horse beneath in what seemed like a contemplative gesture.

He was also conscious of an urgent necessity that either hadn’t existed or that he simply hadn’t been aware of before.

Though Duo had only been with him a few weeks, so technically he might have missed something (though he doubted he had), he believed Clarence hadn’t shown any signs of magical ability prior to this — and indeed, children seldom did, seldom had their skill awaken at so early an age. Which probably meant both that Clarence was unusually powerful and that Duo’s presence in his vicinity had caused this awakening. And the temporary privacy in this playroom, before Raymond returned with further tauntings or it became time to go submit to the mother’s selfish demands, made for a very narrow window Duo had no choice but to take advantage of. There was a good reason, after all — a self-preservation reason, you might say; a security reason — nature didn’t allow magic into the hands of most children until after puberty.

“Clarence,” Duo said.

The child went utterly still.

“You hear me, Clarence?”

“Yes,” Clarence whispered, slowly rotating Duo to face him. Nearly his entire extent of eyeball showed in his pale face.

“Don’t be afraid of me, kid,” Duo said patiently. “You know I’m your friend, right?”

“But you heard all my stories.” Clarence’s voice remained choked and almost inaudible; lucky Duo was so close.

“I liked all your stories,” was all Duo could offer to assuage him on this point. Trust such a private child to worry about his personal mutterings having been overheard before wondering about the magical talking doll in his hands.

Shy and uncertain, Clarence asked, “Did you?”

“Yes,” Duo insisted. “But listen, Clarence. We need to talk about magic.”

Now Clarence’s reluctance began to shed from him. “Is that what you are?” With even more energy he added, “Is that what I did just now to make Raymond go away?”

“Yes and yes. And you need to understand how much danger you’re in.”

“Am I?” Clarence made this far-too-interested-sounding query before Duo could continue.

“Yes!” Duo’s tone turned severe. “Magic can be very dangerous if you’re careless about it! How do you think I ended up like this?”

Clarence’s eyes went wide again. “Are you under an enchantment?”

“If you want to call it that,” the doll grumbled. It was as good a description as any; he didn’t really know the nature of the spell Trowa had cast to leave him like this.

“Do you need the blood of a beheaded faithful servant smeared all over you to break it?” Exactly how serious Clarence was with this gruesome suggestion couldn’t be guessed, but evidently he’d come out of his shell somewhat. “Did someone turn you into a doll? Could I turn Raymond into a doll?”

Duo didn’t like the expression on the boy’s face — something much harder than those rounded, juvenile features were fitted for — nor the eager bite to his tone. Why did he so immediately envision perpetuating magical harm upon Raymond, whom he did not at all know? There was something lurking beneath Clarence’s shyness, it appeared, but sullenness was off the mark.

And why must Duo be the one to deal with this unexpected mean streak? Because his mere presence had caused Clarence’s awakening and he happened to have a sense of responsibility? Thanks, Trowa.

“No,” he said firmly, “you can’t. And you need to be careful about what magic you do try. What you did to make Raymond go away just now wasn’t a proper spell — I think he was only startled, so he may be back — but you did speak in the magical language, and–”

“And I can do it again!” crowed Clarence — in the magical language.

Duo winced internally (the only way he could wince). “You see, that’s exactly what you need to be careful of. The magical language is used to cast spells, and if you don’t take care what you say when you speak it, you could end up casting a spell by mistake and hurting someone with it. You could hurt a friend without meaning to, or your mother…” Realizing Clarence might want to hurt his mother, contingent upon circumstances and mood, Duo hastened on. “Or yourself. People can hurt themselves very badly when they cast spells by accident.”

“Hurt themselves how?” Clarence still sounded more interested than concerned; Duo obviously wasn’t getting through to him.

The doll pondered quickly. He didn’t know how much time he had left, but doubted it was enough to make any kind of roundabout point. He would have to resort to something less than perfect honesty. “I’m supposed to be a human man, Clarence. You wouldn’t want to be like this, would you? A doll who can’t go anywhere on his own, can’t feel anything, can’t taste anything?”

The tone of Clarence’s negative made Duo fear he still might be contemplating how this could possibly apply to Raymond.

Duo pressed on. “Well, the magic spell that turned me into a doll was an accident; my best friend did it, but he didn’t mean to.” In fact Duo had no idea this had been the case; he hoped so, but couldn’t and probably never would be certain. “You sure wouldn’t want to do that to one of your friends, but you could just as easily do it to yourself — turn yourself into a doll because you were being careless with the magical language, and get trapped like me for who knows how long.” And in fact Duo disbelieved a spell like this could be cast easily by just anyone. He didn’t know how Trowa had done it, but doubted Clarence would reach that level any time soon — at least not without a powerful artifact or two, something Duo himself didn’t seem to be.

If Clarence’s somber expression meant anything, he took at least some of Duo’s words into consideration now. He sat silently for several moments, swaying the horse again with one foot and kicking against its rockers with the other. The resultant motion probably jarred him repeatedly, but Duo merely knew it was taking place; he couldn’t begin to discern what it actually felt like. And finally Clarence spoke again. This time his tone sounded faintly wheedling, as if he’d gotten the incorrect impression of Duo as some kind of guardian of magic that could, if talked around, grant Clarence permission to do what he wanted with his newfound ability. “So as long as I’m very careful… and know what I’m trying to do so I don’t do things by accident… and take care not to speak the magical language except if I want to do a magical spell… what kind of magic can I do?”

Again Duo pondered. It might be wisest to downplay the desirability of magic at this point, try to dampen Clarence’s interest in it… but how? He’d already indicated magic could do unpleasant things to other people; he couldn’t backtrack and pretend that was untrue after all — not in his current shape! He feared, however, Clarence might be even more interested in that unpleasant side of magic than in the more pleasant and convenient results it could accomplish that would have engrossed most other people far more. How to present magic in such a way that it would seem relatively uninteresting to a child of ten with a secret vindictive side?

This wasn’t fair. A friend — and that term already exaggerated what Duo was to Clarence — shouldn’t be forced into this position; a relative or a magical mentor or anyone else that had voluntarily entered into a position of authority in this kid’s life should be the one to lecture Clarence on magic and try to set him on a correct path rather than a destructive or a cruel one in his use of it. Duo didn’t want to see Clarence harm or even kill himself or someone else with his early-blossoming abilities, but felt underqualified and very reluctant to deal with the problem. He was, however, the only one around that could do it. Thanks, Trowa.

“You can do all sorts of things with magic,” he began slowly, “if you don’t accidentally kill yourself with it. You can…” He still scrambled for examples that would suit his purposes. “…black your shoes so they stay blacked… and…” He tried to remember what he and Trowa had used magic for before the disaster; for some reason he was drawing a blank. “…get your shirts extremely clean without having to pay someone to wash them…”

Clarence’s nose wrinkled. “That’s different from turning someone into a doll, though.”

“Yes, well…”

He didn’t know whether he should consider it a rescue or a dangerous interruption that the playroom door opened before he could say anything more. Raymond reappeared, and, though he didn’t hang on the handle or hesitate in the doorway, the swagger had disappeared from his step, and his expression instead displayed a healthy portion of both curiosity and respect.

Clarence lowered Duo and looked at Raymond suspiciously without a word; the closed-off lines Duo already knew so well had returned to his face.

Though obviously not the type to beg pardon, Raymond was also evidently ready to do anything necessary for the fun of the moment. He came forward a few steps, looking once again at the doll in the hands of his guest — though this time, Duo believed, with far less disdain and far more readiness to admit there might be experiences in the world he hadn’t had — and finally, raising his eyes to Clarence’s face at last, asked, “What was that you said before?”

Clarence gave him a steady stare in return, and replied quietly, “It was magic words. I told you to go away because you were making fun of my doll.”

“Aww, I won’t make fun of your old doll anymore.” Duo guessed this was as close to an apology as Raymond would ever come. “Will you teach me how to say magic words like that?”

“No,” said Clarence sharply. “It’s a secret.”

If anything, Raymond seemed more impressed than before, and probably not entirely convinced he couldn’t winkle the secret out of Clarence, given time. “Well, shall we go outside and play? I’ve got a new ball and bat, but we can’t use them in here.”

Clarence threw a half hesitant look down at Duo, who stifled a sigh. He’d had a narrow window, and it had closed. Hopefully he would have another opportunity; hopefully Clarence wouldn’t become angry again with Raymond this afternoon and do something everyone would regret before Duo had a chance to impress upon him the dangers of careless magic further than he’d already managed.

“Go play outside,” Duo urged him. “We can talk again later.”

Clarence started, raising his eyes abruptly to Raymond, whom Duo hadn’t allowed to hear. What expression might be on Raymond’s face Duo couldn’t tell, but after a moment Clarence relaxed. “All right,” he said, and stood from the rocking horse. He gazed at Duo again, this time contemplatively, and after a moment turned, swiveling Duo’s legs up into a sitting position, and set the doll down on the leather saddle he had previously occupied. He made no comment, but Duo, assuming Clarence planned on leaving him here in order not to have his behavior criticized until it was time to go home, felt his heart sink. He watched the two boys vacate the playroom, closing the door behind them more carelessly than conscientiously, with a sense of indistinct foreboding.

He had no reliable method of marking the passage of time, which had already proven miserable in the four sleepless years he’d spent as a doll, but his eyes worked well enough, even if they were only painted on. Though he faced away from the window and felt no need to lever himself around, he could easily mark the change in the color of the light and the gradual dimming of the playroom while he sat, bored and agitated, on the rocking horse. Evidently far more time passed than he’d expected, far too much time to allow him to believe Clarence was coming back for him. And how had things gone outside with the ball and bat? Quite possibly Duo would never know.

The shadows continued to lengthen, and details in this room, where no electric light shone, grew difficult to make out. If he’d had to guess — and he sometimes did, though at other times too unhappy to make the attempt — he would have said it was past seven in the evening before any sound of human habitation met his ears beyond the occasional distant voice or muffled footstep.

Here came the housekeeper poking her head into the playroom, probably to be sure Clarence and Raymond hadn’t made a mess she would need to attend to before seeing to other evening duties. Since they hadn’t, she moved to withdraw, when it seemed her gaze fell on the figure seated on the rocking horse’s saddle. With an air of curiosity she stepped more fully into the room and pressed the switch to turn on the light. Seeing with greater certainty what had caught her eye, a funny little smile took her face, and she strode forward to pick Duo up.

After studying him for a few moments, she shook her head. “Well, they’re not likely to be back for you… Left in a hurry, they did… I don’t think the ladies got along too well, the snobbish cats.” The world was veiled in dimming white cotton as the housekeeper tucked Duo into a deep pocket of her apron, and then complete darkness fell as she switched off the playroom light. “My little girl will appreciate you more anyway.”

So Duo was to change hands again. The housekeeper’s daughter would be his fourteenth owner so far, and how long that arrangement would last he couldn’t begin to guess.

And what would become of Clarence, from whom Duo would undoubtedly never hear again? With no one around to give the child further information, to try to combat his unexpected desire to hurt others with his power, would he even survive his early magical awakening? Would he hurt some friend, or curse his parents, or burn down his own house, or turn himself into a teapot? This too Duo couldn’t begin to guess.

He hadn’t wanted to be involved in the first place in Clarence’s magical journey, but to be forced to begin and then debarred from seeing it through to the end was in some ways even worse. (Thanks, Trowa.) It reminded him of listening to an adventure serial on the radio, hearing every lurid detail of the catastrophic situation into which the heroine had been hurled by today’s events, being told to make extra sure not to miss next Saturday’s exciting episode in order to find out how she could possibly be extricated from this problem and escape certain death… and then never hearing one more minute of that particular program. Never finding out whether that heroine lived or died, whether justice was served, whether the tale had a happy ending. Even in a story Duo hadn’t been particularly enjoying, that lack of closure both galled and disheartened him.

But it was nothing new. Though he hadn’t previously encountered the precise problem presented by the precocious Clarence, nor any other with such a potentially disastrous outcome, every caretaker he’d had so far as a doll had been a story in progress, a dramatic serial whose second or even third episodes he’d been able to listen to but whose resolution he would never witness. Given the way he lived now, it seemed likely the only narrative whose ending he would be allowed to observe was his own. And his own tale — his erratic, largely immobile, sensationless, bitter, meaningless life — had it been a book, would have been the last Duo would ever have chosen to read through to the end. Thanks, Trowa.

Even Trowa was a story whose setup Duo had been forced to witness as if to make his subsequent lack of knowledge of where things went from there, where they ended up, all the more wretched and unfair.

As he bounced along in the housekeeper’s apron heading toward yet another person he might end up calling a friend of sorts or in some aspects of whose life he might, at least, develop some interest, then eventually, inevitably be separated from just when he learned enough about her to feel the beginnings of curiosity and concern, he supposed it would be best to work to accustom himself to these unfinished stories. As a helpless doll, he saw no real alternative. He saw no likelihood of escape, of justice being served, of a happy ending.

He saw no likelihood of an ending, and he supposed he’d better get used to the idea.

2>>

The Gift of Friendship (1934)

“Why are you only using parts that have no pictures?” Duo wondered as he looked on, prompted by a late-arriving realization.

Antonella paused, ceased her humming, and glanced critically over the newspaper page she’d already finished. Both it and the one she worked on now — at least on the sides that faced up — were solid walls of text broken only by slightly larger headlines. And while Duo supposed no gift would be much enhanced by photographs of murder victims or satirical cartoons of Adolf Hitler, there was usually a baseball image somewhere in front that might have made a pretty cheerful decoration with color added to it.

But Antonella said, “I didn’t want any pictures.” With one small hand she gestured in imprecise elaboration. “They make it look different from when it’s just words.”

“All right,” Duo allowed, watching her return to her task with great care so as not to tear the thin paper with the green drawing crayon she held.

Of course the Flores family could not afford actual gift wrap; honestly Duo wasn’t sure who could (or at least would be willing to spend money on something so impractical and extravagant). Even the drawing crayons, which had been a special treat to celebrate Antonella’s seventh birthday, were a bit of a luxury, and that she now used them so extensively to stripe the two sheets of newspaper with bright colors to create this faux gift wrap demonstrated how much she was putting her heart into the endeavor.

Presently, “I like red next to green,” Antonella commented.

“Yes, they look good,” Duo agreed.

“Maybe I put too many reds next to greens.” She paused again to examine her work.

The doll assured her, “I think it’s all right.”

“I’ll make some dots next.”

“That sounds good.”

Watching a little girl draw stripes across a newspaper perpendicular to the text, and now an uneven row of circles whose disparate size seemed to annoy her but proved difficult to fix, bored him, but not as severely as some of what Duo had suffered over the last eleven years. More than the boredom, in fact, he felt annoyance at this circumstance. Because he couldn’t figure out why the Flores family was doing this at all — why Antonella industriously prepared to wrap up one of the two toys she owned; why elsewhere in the tiny flat her mother had tied a festive ribbon around her more functional pair of shoes; why her father had rolled up, in preparation for taking it to the church, a scarf his late mother had knitted for him that he’d worn every day of chilly December up until this one — when they were struggling just as much as, and perhaps more than, anyone else. If anything, they should be on the receiving end of this gift drive, not scraping to find offerings for other people that might, for all they knew, actually be better off than they were.

Antonella made a frustrated sound, and a gesture as if she might throw her crayon, though she didn’t quite. “It’s going to be ruined!”

Nothing new to have annoyed her this much showed from where Duo sat nearby, so he assumed she must be referring to the varying sizes of the ‘dots’ she’d drawn. “Why?” He hastened to add, “I think it looks fine!”

“I wanted it to be neat,” she protested. “Like a real…” She evidently couldn’t think of the word for what she meant, for she finished in frustration, “Like a real thing.”

“It doesn’t have to be neat to look good, though.” When this didn’t seem to have any effect on the girl’s mood, Duo tried, “And I think true artists prefer to make things different sizes so it isn’t all the same across the whole thing. They do it purposely.”

“I’m not a true artist,” Antonella grumbled. But she seemed simultaneously somewhat cheered, and the look she gave the half-colored paper now assessed more than despaired.

Such attempts to boost Antonella’s sense of worth during her not infrequent moments of uncertainty were the most Duo could do for her — offerings of friendship whose value he often doubted just as much as Antonella doubted herself. Unfortunately, even had he been human, he couldn’t have done significantly better. Because everyone was badly off these days. Duo had never been rich even during his normal life, had never managed to do more than scrape a living — and had never wanted more. He might be coming to miss the ability to earn it, but money had never meant much to him. But even if he had it now — even if he weren’t a doll, and had somehow gotten his hands on a fortune — would he be allowed to assist a little girl totally unrelated to him whose race and religion he didn’t share? Would he be able to tell her how remarkable he found her generosity, and offer generosity of his own? Probably not. So his friendship and support, under the current odd circumstances, were all he could present her with.

The look Antonella gave her finished project held only incomplete satisfaction, but Duo knew no way to encourage her more than he already had. Her perfectionism must make many of her life endeavors superb, but it often did her a disservice at the same time — especially when combined with her pessimism. He worried a little about her, actually; that these traits exhibited so strongly in someone so young might actually bode badly for the future. But he would do what he could for her.

She was analyzing both papers now, and after a moment began to touch up spots she felt needed some extra attention. Once, forgetting which color she held, she started drawing with the wrong one, and when she saw what she’d done she nearly threw her crayon across the room again. But in the end she did manage the final touches without too much frustration or self-loathing, and was now the successful possessor of two sheets of lovingly decorated gift wrap for this unfortunate project. Duo thought they would just fit, with space at each end for a small twist, around the wooden pick-up truck in whose bed he often rode during playtime.

A large cigar box, its exterior decoration fading by this the second generation of its use, held all of Antonella’s small treasures — a few stones she’d liked enough to bring inside, numerous bottle caps, a snail shell, and so on — and from this she’d already pulled all the string she owned in preparation for using it in the gift-packaging process. Now Duo was a bit surprised to see her turn the box slowly upside-down and tip its remaining contents into a careful pile on the floor nearby. Though her young, heartwarming sense of selflessness showed even further in this, and though there was some appropriateness to the idea of a full truck-bed, he doubted these items would contribute much.

“Are you going to put those in the truck?” he asked cautiously, not sure he could convey adequately to her that the gift’s recipient — or at least their parents — might not appreciate being handed another child’s random collection that meant something only to her.

Antonella looked around in some evident surprise at the truck, which stood beside her opposite Duo. “Oh, that’s a good idea,” she said, and began scooping up her things and loading them into its bed.

Duo’s brows would have drawn together if they weren’t, in fact, drawn on in the first place. If she hadn’t already been planning to put the things into the truck… “What will you do with the cigar box?” he asked, even more cautiously than before.

Still working on transferring items from the floor to the truck-bed, she replied placidly, “Put you in it. The newspaper will work better on a box instead of on a doll.”

For several moments Duo was dumbstruck. He couldn’t gape — his lips moved, but he didn’t really have a jaw — but that would have been the proper expression of his feelings as it occurred to him that Antonella never had stated her intention of using her pick-up truck for this; Duo had merely assumed that was the toy in view, and therefore never asked.

“I thought…” he said at last, weakly, “the pick-up truck was the gift.”

Antonella paused in her loading efforts and looked the truck over studiously. “This wouldn’t be as good of a gift.”

“Why?”

She gave the specific frown that usually heralded an imperfect attempt at explaining herself. “Father Herrera said the gifts don’t need to cost a lot of money.”

“All right…” That was rather a given in this economy.

“And he said we should look for a gift that would make someone happy.”

“And you think I’ll make someone more happy than the truck would?”

“Yes, because you’re my friend.” Though she still seemed unsure of her ability to express the concept she had in mind, this statement was decisive. “I’m happy to have a friend, so someone else will be happy to have a friend too.”

“I… I understand.” Once again his words came out very weakly, and after this he could say nothing more for another long moment. She might be right: a secret, constant companion and the support that companion could provide might well be the best present she could possibly give someone, far better than anything money could buy. But even after eleven years Duo hadn’t grown accustomed to being treated like the object he now was, or his friendship like a tradable commodity. Antonella undoubtedly had no idea how dehumanizing her actions were, and in some ways that made it even worse.

Knowing he must speak now before he lost his chance, Duo forced himself to ask, “But won’t you miss me if you give me away?” It seemed so ironically sad to think of her giving up something she valued and drew strength from specifically because she valued and drew strength from it.

She finished relocating the last of the box’s former contents as she replied, “Yes, but Father Herrera said we need to use our hearts. Somebody might be very poor and need a friend more than me.”

Duo remembered the sensation of a constricting throat and prickling eyes even if he couldn’t feel them, and his internal state represented several helpless emotions. He was angry because, with everyone poor, why should one person get the preference over another in terms of commodities? Especially when it meant displacing Duo again and removing what he believed with no false modesty to be a useful and supportive influence from Antonella’s life? He was weary at the thought of starting all over with a new child and a new set of circumstances. He was touched more than ever by Antonella’s pure charity and unselfishness, even if it actively wounded him. And though not in any real position to claim such a feeling, he was proud of her. He couldn’t bring himself to protest her legitimate generous impulse even if he hated every moment of it.

She’d placed the cigar box just in front of her and opened it, and now took Duo in her hands. She gave him a critical look, and for a moment he hoped she might be rethinking — but then she wedged him into the box without comment. He wore makeshift clothing that had been cleverly put together by Mrs. Flores from scraps, and he reflected irrelevantly and glumly that, had he been wearing proper shoes — made of anything thicker than cloth — he wouldn’t have fit in this space barely longer than he was tall. But he’d never had a pair of real shoes in this form, so that difficulty was nothing more than a distant daydream.

He looked up at the little girl that had been his guardian for the past six months or so and said forlornly, wishing things could be otherwise, “Well, goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” she replied, and swung the box’s lid down atop him.

In the resultant darkness he could hear the rustle and crinkle of newspaper being wrapped around his latest prison; he could hear Antonella beginning to hum once more as she worked. But he never saw her again.

<<1

3>>

General Dissent (1942)

While the grandmother had been busy making him an outfit — a princely outfit in bits of velvet and lace, with canvas shoes that looked less like drawstring bags than usual, and even a little hat with a tiny plume — Duo had, of course, spent some time with her. He hadn’t spoken to her, but had overheard a lot of the remarks she’d made. Funnily enough, this hadn’t prepared him for the granddaughter whose gift he was to be.

“Every birthday for as long as I can remember…” She’d shut herself into her bedroom at last, seeming relieved to have done so, and now looked down at Duo with a wry, weary expression. “One of these years they’ll have to realize I’m too old for this.”

And she was. Sixteen as of today, a tall, gangly girl in a lumpy dress with unkempt hair, she’d quite surprised Duo when he’d first seen her and realized she would be his new caretaker.

“I guess you can sit here with the rest of them,” she told Duo, swiveling his legs outward and reaching up to place him on a lace-draped shelf alongside an extensive row of other dolls, presumably birthday presents from previous years. Then she turned away from him in an almost eye-rolling movement.

This behavior fit with the attitude she’d exhibited downstairs during her grandparents’ visit. Duo speculated it had been getting harder and harder for her, year after year, to respond with any degree of graciousness to these gifts she didn’t want (and evidently hadn’t even played with much as a younger child, if the state of the dolls down at the end of the line was any indication). She’d tried to behave herself — the struggle had been visible even to newcomer Duo — though her efforts might perhaps have been more for the sake of her depressed-looking mother than the grandparents that beamed obliviously at her as she politely examined her new doll and his clothing. They might not have noticed a more open show of disinclination, but the mother was clearly anxious for the visit with her in-laws to be as smooth and pleasant as possible.

Now the young woman, Ethel, abruptly unhooked the frock she wore, yanked it over her head, and threw it carelessly to the floor. That explained its wrinkled state, and the underlying cause of its lumpiness was also revealed: a pair of overalls, the legs rolled up to hide beneath her skirt, atop a short-sleeved shirt (plain-cut; no girl’s blouse, this) that had also been invisible under the frillier bodice she’d previously worn. Next she roughly unrolled her trouser legs, then threw herself onto the bed with the air of one returning to something after an annoying interruption, and took up a book that had been lying there open on its face.

While Ethel made her way determinedly through The Red Badge of Courage, Duo studied his new home, which seemed destined to be a very static one. This family evidently had plenty of money, based on what he’d seen both of the grandparents’ home before this and the rooms downstairs, and Ethel’s bedroom appeared comfortable, if a trifle over-decorated. Everything here was fluffy and lacy and milky (except where little embroidered flowers in pastel colors peeked out from various surfaces), giving the decor a soft, almost dreamlike quality that Duo found he didn’t like very much.

And neither, it seemed, did the room’s inhabitant. Nearly everything in here — from the long row of dolls on the white shelf to the various cosmetic products atop the lace-covered dresser to the framed picture of a sweet pastoral scene on one of the walls — appeared disused and unregarded. The only parts of her bedroom Ethel seemed to derive any benefit from were the bookshelf beside the bed, the bed itself, and the large mirror near the bureau.

This last Duo looked at longest. For Ethel had decorated it, to the point of partially obscuring the glass, with papers of various shapes and sizes, ruthlessly driving pins into its beveled white frame in a destructive manner Duo wondered whether her mother knew about. The papers seemed to be mostly letters, some long and some short, all much-folded prior to their being smoothed out and tacked up around a girl’s mirror, many of them stained and probably difficult to read even if you happened to be close enough to try.

Interspersed among the letters were a few photographs, mostly of a man in uniform but a few of groups of soldiers presumably containing that same man. None of the personal pictures could Duo see in enough detail from here to detect any family resemblance between the man and Ethel, but he thought he knew now the reason Mrs. Roanridge appeared so haggard and sad. Many people already looked like that less than six months after the U.S. had jumped into this new war. They’d looked like that during the last one too, the one that had been supposed to end all wars. It seemed a perfectly understandable bitterness.

Ethel had been reading for barely fifteen minutes, kicking her legs and changing her position routinely and giving every indication of disinterest in her book except for lack of progress through its pages, when she dropped it, jumped up again, and came to stand in front of the mirror. There she waited, completely still and staring, for such a long time that at first Duo thought she must be perusing one of the letters tacked to the frame. But the eyes of her reflection roved too far up and down, seeking some mysterious object too restlessly, for her to be reading anything quite so small, and Duo decided eventually she must be examining herself. That was, after all, a mirror’s purpose. What he couldn’t quite determine, at least at first, was what she saw there.

And then, in a gesture so abrupt it startled the watching doll, she snapped her right hand upward on a stiff arm in not a half bad imitation of a military salute. And he realized that her prolonged stiffness as she faced the mirror had not been merely the stillness of concentration; she’d been standing at attention.

“Private Ethel Roanridge reporting for duty, sir,” she declared, putting into her voice all the firmness Duo suspected she longed to use with her grandparents on her disinclination for childish birthday gifts. Then she began practicing her salute, which had appeared acceptable to Duo but probably not up to snuff to its performer or the imaginary superior officer receiving it.

So Ethel didn’t merely miss her father in his country-serving absence; she wanted to join him, to serve alongside him. There had certainly been people like that last time; Duo couldn’t say he was surprised, though he’d never been one of them. During the previous war, despite the rampant patriotism and calls to support the effort going on around them, he and Trowa had considered themselves nothing like soldier material, and had avoided even the suggestion that they might enlist in what was proving an unpleasant experience for everyone; and Duo had come out of it with a dismal concept of war and some relief that he hadn’t been more closely involved.

This new conflict… He didn’t entirely know how he felt about it. Here was, he had grudgingly to admit, one of very few benefits to his current form: he didn’t have to decide how he felt. At forty-four years old, he might be too old to serve, and might not… but in any case wouldn’t be forced to make that decision.

Now Ethel had stopped her repetitive process of saluting, and frowned into the mirror. She took a step closer to it, and this time when she lifted her hand it didn’t snap off a gesture of respect and obedience from her forehead. Rather, she grasped at her clearly uncombed hair and pulled it roughly away from her face toward the nape of her neck. At first Duo thought she intended to tie it back, but he realized after watching her wrestle with it for several moments that she was trying to get an impression of her face without the long brown locks in the way. She appeared dissatisfied with her success, and threw more than one look of frustrated longing at something off to her right. Only after she’d done this several times could Duo hazard a guess as to what she contemplated over there: a pair of sewing shears lying atop her bureau.

Finally, obviously resisting with a greater or lesser level of difficulty the urge to hack all her hair off, she did tie it into a low tail, though this still left her scowling into the mirror at the insufficiently militaristic effect she’d created. She stood once more at attention, however, smoothing the discontentment from her face with some effort. And she saluted again, perhaps even more forcefully this time than before, as if she’d been reprimanded.

“Private… Ethan… Roanridge… reporting for duty, sir.” She held her pose for a long, silent moment, then said as if in response to an unspoken question, “No, sir.” Then, “Yes, sir.” And finally, “Eighteen, sir.”

Duo experienced the mental equivalent of a shiver of discomfort and concern.

For a few minutes Ethel continued to answer questions from nobody, though none of her answers were as telling as the first few. She continued practicing her salute as she did so, and the resulting impression was not so much ‘accurate military personnel behavior’ as ‘desperate windup toy,’ but Duo supposed that to be part of the reason she wanted practice. Then at last, after another disparaging glance at her hair, she turned away from the mirror and went back to her book. And it was her manner of doing so that really clinched it for Duo, that solidified in him the concern her words of a minute before had raised.

For she didn’t sigh, or turn forlornly aside as if from an impossible dream. She didn’t untie her hair and let it fall messily back around her shoulders as a symbol of defeat. She narrowed her eyes slightly, gave her figure in the mirror a calculating once-over, then nodded once, sharply and decisively. It was as if a choice had been made, or even as if an agreement had been reached — perhaps with some other self Ethel could see clearly in the mirror but Duo couldn’t. In any case, Ethel obviously had a plan. Duo didn’t know her well enough yet to assess just how serious she might be in pursuing it, but he definitely already worried.

The tale of the brave young woman disguising herself as a man in order to enter military service — usually in order to chase after some boy to whom she had a mulish attachment — was as old as the hills, and as familiar to Duo as to anyone else. But it occurred to him now to wonder exactly how romanticized those stories were. Had women actually successfully done that in the past? And with what degree of difficulty and personal suffering had it been accomplished? And surely, even if it had been feasible once, modern military procedure must make it next to impossible now.

He remembered when they’d opened up the draft to include men ages eighteen to forty-five just at the end of the last war because they’d needed the manpower; he hadn’t heard how the current system worked, but, knowing the U.S. had only recently become involved, doubted they were likely to be that desperate yet… desperate enough, maybe, to overlook the presence of disguised women in their ranks. A woman attempting to enter the U.S. Army simply didn’t seem practicable to Duo at this point.

What seemed a lot more likely was that Ethel would, sooner or later, attempt futilely to carry out her plan, and would either be the cause of hurt and scandal in her family and their society, or get herself raped by some unscrupulous Army recruiter and then be the cause of hurt and scandal in her family and their society. And in the unlikely event that her attempt proved fruitful, then she would have the dangers of war to face. No outcome of this venture seemed desirable, and apparently Ethel couldn’t see that.

Could Duo make her see it? He didn’t know. Based on his reflections of just moments before, he had no idea what to say to someone in a situation like this. Because if she or anyone else made the decision to go to war — admittedly a more difficult prospect, in her situation, than in many another — shouldn’t that choice, and the possibility of gruesome injury or death that went with it, be respected? Who was he to condemn someone for joining the army just because he personally believed war was detrimental to society and probably not worth giving up one’s life for? With his own attitude on the business as a whole so uncertain, how could he think to persuade someone else to stay out of it?

That particular aspect of the question didn’t matter, though, since he still believed Ethel couldn’t possibly con her way into the army without getting caught. What he would really need to convince her of was the futility of her scheme, the potential dangers of putting herself into a vulnerable position for the sake of something that wouldn’t work out in any case. And fortunately, this seemed a much easier argument to make than any larger-scale social or moral rumination on the nature of war.

In any case he would have to talk to her, and this in its turn brought up a whole new set of problems. Because, though he knew her not at all yet, what he’d seen of her so far seemed to paint her as not the type of person to take a talking doll very seriously. Her quiet frustration with a girlish present at the age of sixteen, her preference for overalls instead of a dress and a book about war instead of fairy tales — even her daydream that, though unfeasible, was far more down-to-earth than what Duo believed sixteen-year-old girls typically fantasized about — all this pointed toward an abundance of the practical and lack of the fanciful in her personality. Such people were often difficult to convince that magic really existed; regardless of what other explanation they came up with for Duo’s ability to speak, they often lent very little credence to anything he had to say.

If only he could write! He’d often felt that yearning, since in far more situations than this one penmanship would have been extremely useful. The ability to communicate with people in a manner that wouldn’t disclose his status as an enchanted doll would put him two steps up the long ladder back to humanity. And in this case, he could write to Ethel’s father, whom he guessed to be the strongest influence in her life, and explain the situation. Thus it should be, after all; it wasn’t fair that Duo found himself in a position — and not for the first time! — where, with his extremely limited resources, he had to attempt to mend a situation that should more properly have been tackled by friends and relatives of his human caretaker.

Silently he sighed (more of a mental gesture, since without sound or breath the action had no substance). He would do his best. Though his life experience had been, by now, more doll than human, more acted-upon than actor, still he was in years lived more than twice Ethel’s age… and arguably wiser. He wouldn’t abandon her to her fate simply because he felt awkward about it, passively look the other way while she destroyed herself. He just had to figure out what to say and how best to say it.

And when best. It seemed unwise to alert her to his sentience today, when she’d only barely taken possession of him, and if he kept an eye on her for a while he was likelier to get a more complete impression of her specific attitudes and intentions. Sooner or later he would have to introduce himself, but later might turn out to be the best option, and that relieved his mind somewhat.

And possibly he wouldn’t have to talk to her at all, at least about this issue. Unless she was considerably less intelligent than she’d seemed so far, she must be fully aware that, though she might be able to pass for a young man, she wouldn’t be able to pass for a young man old enough to fight in a war for a while yet. She would have to wait until some time had passed — probably until she was eighteen, as her earlier apostrophic dialogue had hinted. That was exactly two years away, so perhaps Duo had nothing to worry about. The war had already been on since 1939; with the U.S. involved now, surely it couldn’t continue for another two years, could it?

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Missing (1955)

Duo lay on his face, not at all an unusual attitude for him. Unless someone had kindly left him in a sitting position or propped him up standing, on his back or on his face remained his only options when people unfamiliar with his ability to move were around. He’d grown accustomed to it. He did rather wish the carpet were thicker, as it might have provided some muffling effect for the incredibly boring conversation that was all he could hear at the moment. This Saturday apparently blazed enticingly, but not too oppressively, as many weekends had all autumn, drawing his kid outside without him to play, leaving him to listen to the father and the uncle talking dullness as usual. Duo had grown accustomed to that too, but on this particular day he longed for something more interesting, or at least that they would turn on the radio. He doubted he would be in any luck with either wish.

Today was Trowa’s birthday, and Duo had — rather unwillingly — developed a tradition over the last couple of decades of dwelling pretty obsessively on his old friend throughout this day (whenever he happened to be aware of the date), and sometimes on the days surrounding it. It couldn’t be healthy, and certainly wasn’t cheerful, but he had no choice. Unless something massive arose to distract him — and that conversation in the armchairs over there definitely didn’t qualify — no thought he could come up with, no memories even from such an unusual life as he’d lived, could engross him the way these thoughts of Trowa did on this day every year.

“If only we could count on someone other than that silly gal over at Hopkins’ for the flyers,” the uncle was complaining. Women weren’t the only targets of his rudeness, but they were the most common.

What, Duo wondered, did Trowa look like nowadays? Thirty to forty years ago, Trowa had embraced the aggressively slicked-back style that had been so popular in men’s hair at that time, using first petroleum and then (when he’d been better able to afford it) that disgusting Brilliantine stuff to create a shiny, plastered-down impression… but that trend had, thankfully, evolved into something slightly less awful, so Trowa must be sporting a different look.

“Well,” said the father, his voice thick with the same disapproval his brother-in-law had expressed, “she seems to be the only one around here who knows the trick of getting magical text onto a mundane printing.”

For his part, Duo had always resisted any style that threatened his braid, regardless of how fashionable or unfashionable he subsequently appeared, and had especially resisted the trend of putting slimy stuff into his luxurious hair. It was vanity, of course, every bit as much as Trowa’s careful parting and fad-conforming oiliness… but he knew Trowa had loved his braid too. That, he thought, had been a secret part of why he’d been so unwilling to relinquish it. He’d made the occasional joke that he wore it to give the ladies some alternative to the helmet-hair, but in reality it had been to some extent to please Trowa. And he also believed it had been Trowa’s strong preference for his braid that had allowed it to remain the same even in doll form — just another cruel little trick of the spell, really.

“If there were anyone else… If only one of us could do it… You can’t trust a woman to understand how important this is, or anything having to do with politics.” This sort of talk consistently prevented Duo from revealing himself to these guys.

Of course these days — today, in fact — Trowa would be 57 years old. How much hair would he have left? It must be all grey by now in any case. It distressed Duo, to an extent that surprised him and struck him as more than a little absurd, that he didn’t know what pattern Trowa might have gone bald in. And what kind of wrinkles did he have? Had his eyesight deteriorated — did he need glasses? How about his teeth? These were all ridiculously mundane considerations, but every once in a while Duo wondered about them with a fervor to match his own desire to be human again.

“She’ll just have to have very specific instructions on how we want them to look. If everything is laid out for her in simple language, she should be able to manage it. And Hopkins himself will take care of the physical printing, so we won’t have to worry about that part.”

And what was Trowa likely to be up to now? Had he stayed at that same factory, perhaps been promoted even higher, and made more and more money over the years? Duo could picture him as the overseer of multiple facilities, raking in the dough, respected and sought after by everyone.

“Do you think we should be concentrating more on the mundane voters?” In this the uncle didn’t truly ask his in-law for advice or even opinion; he merely sought agreement with what he already believed and intended.

But perhaps Trowa had moved on, left Raberba Manufacturing behind, and gotten into something new. He’d been so good at so many things, there seemed endless possibilities as to what profession he might have entered. He’d always been quietly, admirably dedicated to helping others — especially homeless waifs such as he’d once been — but, interestingly enough, it had always seemed to come from a sense of responsibility rather than kindness: where he had the capacity to help, he felt it his duty to do so. Maybe he’d gotten involved in something like that. There would probably be far less money in it than in the by-now-booming plastics industry, but it might fit better with his ideas of rightness.

“No, let his staff handle that side of things. That’s what they’re paid for. And his platform is solid enough.”

Had Trowa, Duo wondered with a faint mental sense somewhat similar to the old one of bodily illness, ever married? He could easily have grandchildren by now if he had. He’d always seemed to like women well enough… maybe, with Duo out of the way, he’d married the one — what had her name been? — that had come between them so long ago. Maybe he’d bought her all sorts of nice things, wooed her properly, and made a home for them both with his vast amounts of money. Or maybe he’d left that city, left her behind, and eventually met someone else. Duo couldn’t imagine someone as clever and right-thinking and handsome (even with the slicked-down hair) as Trowa remaining single for long.

“‘Solid?'” the uncle echoed. Pompously he declared, “Elmo R. Beard is gonna accomplish more than any mayor we’ve ever had.”

Or had Trowa, perhaps, turned out to be attracted to men just as Duo had? That was almost more painful to think about than the idea of his making a happy domestic life with some woman Duo had never met, because it would mean there might have been a chance for them if things had been different. It had taken Duo twenty years to realize he loved Trowa, but he would probably never know whether Trowa, for all he’d loved Duo’s braid, had ever loved Duo. Even if he had, he’d surely recovered, moved on to something else Duo didn’t want to think about. Duo hadn’t recovered yet, but that was hardly a surprise in his unchanging life. By now, however, all such old feelings that partook of his previous frame of reference were more or less mummified, and he supposed he would recover eventually.

“Absolutely,” the father agreed. “And if we can just get the magical community on our side, though it may not be enough to tip the vote, we’ll have a strong grassroots campaign.”

So what, if Trowa either had never loved him like that or had long since recovered from that love, did Trowa think of him these days? Duo couldn’t guess, especially as it depended largely on what had been going through Trowa’s head at the time of the spell’s casting. Duo had long ago convinced himself that, whatever Trowa had intended to happen when he’d muttered those words, this — this long, miserable, helpless existence as a piece of plastic without most human sensation and with no human opportunity — hadn’t been it. Trowa might have been annoyed — even truly angry — but a wide gulf stood between that emotional state and the willingness to commit an atrocity like this. Even a temporary transformation used as a sort of threat or punishment was something Duo considered beyond Trowa’s willingness and moral pale. And if this whole doll thing, this ruination of Duo’s life, had been in part or in whole an accident, Trowa’s feelings about what he’d done must have been every bit as wretched as Duo’s feelings about having it done to him. And what would those feelings have turned into after three decades?

“If only we could count on those flyers looking any damn good,” the uncle grumbled.

Trowa might have been horrified at first, and possibly even downright frantic to rescind what he’d done to Duo, determined to fix things. But as the years passed and they never met again, how would his feelings have transformed? Would he have come to accept the futility of seeking a twelve-inch child’s plaything in a huge country, come to terms with what he’d done, and moved on? Would he now think of Duo only occasionally, and with regret, yes, but only as a forlorn memory of a mistake he’d once made and couldn’t take back? Or would he have held onto the guilt and horror and allowed it to make him miserable in the long-term, warping his entire future, twisting his attitudes and outlook until no happiness remained for him? In that case, he probably thought of Duo as little as possible, and felt only bitterness and despair when he did.

“Even if they don’t look any good,” said the father reassuringly, “if they’ve only got the things he’s promised on them, they’ll be convincing enough.”

Of course, there was always the possibility Trowa had remained angry at him. Trowa had never been the type to blame someone else for his own actions, to dodge responsibility, but it had been Duo’s bad behavior that had led to the situation in which he’d cast whatever that spell had been. Duo had betrayed their friendship by horning in on that woman — what was her name? — and then goaded Trowa into a frame of mind so angry he’d gotten careless with his magic. It wasn’t actually Duo’s fault, of course — Trowa had made his choice, even if it had been a bad one — but Trowa might still bear a grudge against the friend whose aggravating actions had brought them to a point where that choice could ruin one or perhaps both of their lives. Trowa wouldn’t know just how much Duo had suffered, and might look back with some ire in his heart.

“Folks’ll have to see how important it is to elect Beard when they realize he’s got a complete magical overhaul of the railroad infrastructure lined up for once he’s in office. That’s gonna make Beaumont the most successful freight point in the state. If they’re not all the damn fools I think they are most of the time, they’ll have to vote right.”

And maybe… just maybe… Trowa not only had loved Duo, but still loved him to this day. He’d always been reserved about certain things, and it didn’t seem impossible for him to have been incubating the same affection Duo had, maybe even with the same level of obliviousness to his own feelings. Had he recognized them decades later, just as Duo had? Was he out there somewhere now, lonely and heartbroken, unable to move on, just as Duo was? This possibility topped all others in the anguish it produced — worse than Trowa avoiding thoughts of him, worse than Trowa’s anger, perhaps even worse than the idea of Trowa being dead. If he’d had tear ducts, Duo would have wept. Why did he have to go through this year after year? Why must he always be wondering and never satisfied on this point?

“They are damn fools. But we’ll bring ’em ’round. You’ll see.”

There were ways he could have attempted to seek answers. Sometimes, he knew, he let his own helplessness engulf him, and took less action than perhaps he should have. Those two men whose terminally dull conversation he couldn’t help overhearing, for instance, were magically gifted, and might believe him if he told them his story. But what good would that do? Even if they accepted every word, would they be willing to offer him any assistance? He had no good impression of their level of kindness in the first place, and even a much nicer person might hesitate to get involved in a situation like this. Then, supposing they were willing, what could they actually do? Drop everything, drive him to a place twenty hours north of here, and start a dubious search for some fellow that had lived there thirty years before?

Even if Trowa remained in the same city — hell, in the same state — what were the chances of finding him? How would Duo go about looking — just ask around? Trowa had meant the world to him, but never all that much to the world. Who was likely to remember him? No, no, it was pointless even thinking about it. Might as well give up the idea forever, and simply keep lying here on his face.

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Peace and Long Life (1966)

For all he complained, there were times he preferred not being able to feel anything. The mere awareness that Trudy’s mouth was significantly more slobbery than Bibble’s (though Bibble was no slacker in that area herself) disgusted him at least mentally… if he’d had to feel his entire body getting gradually coated with dog slime, it might have been too much for his sanity. He liked canines — he really did — and didn’t much like felines, but in such instances thought he would prefer a cat’s paw batting at him, the way they sometimes did, for all it tangled his hair and damaged his clothing, to a dog’s teeth and tongue and overactive salivary glands.

And now the two dachshunds had started a tug-of-war with Duo’s body as the rope, and he sighed loudly. He could call for help, but Anne probably wouldn’t hear his quiet voice from the kitchen over the snarling and the living room cuckoo clock striking eight. He would need to wait until the dogs got bored and put him down — which in some instances took an anomalously long time. What he would most like was for Janice, if she must abandon him at her grandmother’s house when she went home for the evening, at least to leave him on one of the doilied end tables or somewhere else higher up out of the dogs’ reach… but what were little girls made of if not carelessness?

And he honestly didn’t mind being left at Anne’s house. Though Trudy and Bibble ran amok time after time, fighting over him, carrying him around, and chewing and slobbering on him for hours on end if not checked, this place wasn’t nearly the menagerie some homes he’d lived in had been. At least there were only two fat dogs, and no cats, rodents, or — he shuddered mentally — horses to put up with.

“Trudy! Bibble!” Even Anne’s stern voice was exceptionally grandmotherly, and her pets often disregarded it. They couldn’t disregard her hand — quicker and stronger than her tone, and all pruny with soapy water — reaching in to break up their private little war and seize Duo with no concerns about how much saliva he might be wearing. “Bad girls! Leave the poor doll alone!” The dogs made small circles at her feet, sometimes rising up onto hind legs to protest the removal of their toy, but Anne had none of it. She turned smartly and headed back into the kitchen, saying to Duo, “Let’s get you cleaned up, my friend.”

“It isn’t every day the beautiful maiden rescues the handsome prince,” Duo replied in an overdone tone of grateful appreciation.

Anne chuckled. “It isn’t every day someone calls me a beautiful maiden!”

“Anne by any other name would still be a beautiful maiden,” was Duo’s gallant answer.

Again she laughed. “I’m afraid that makes no sense.”

Duo thought through his words and admitted, “I’m afraid you’re right.” He clicked the tongue he didn’t have. “Beautiful and intelligent!”

As she set aside the dishes she’d evidently been working on when she’d heard growling in the other room and come to investigate, she rolled her eyes… but Duo knew she enjoyed the flirtation. She’d lost her husband, he understood, some years back — before he’d met her — and appreciated the attentions even of a toy whose reality as a person she rather doubted. And of course Duo appreciated the opportunity to connect with another adult, even one whose belief in his reality as a person left something to be desired.

For the first time in his plastic life, Duo had professionally tailored clothing, thanks to the recent release onto the market of a doll approximately his size whose fashions he could appropriate. Of course the striped sweater and white pants he currently wore were more or less hideous, even without the dog slobber, but it was a delightful novelty to have store-bought clothing at all. And now Anne finished up her errand of mercy by stripping him down and putting both doll and clothing into the kitchen sink where an endeavor of cleanliness had already been going on. He wished he could discern the apple scent of the dishwashing liquid she used to bathe him, but was relieved at the improvement of his circumstances in any case.

“You do love to get me naked, don’t you?” he couldn’t help remarking, his voice more muffled than usual by the water running over him.

“And you do love to make terribly inappropriate comments at an old woman,” Anne replied, again in that would-be-stern tone that fooled nobody.

The naked time wasn’t destined to end particularly soon, since, though Duo’s plastic form (if not his hair) could be dried off pretty easily, his outfit needed longer; so, nude and relatively happy, he sat on the counter beside the little shirt and trousers laid out on the towel beside him and watched Anne return to the dishes that had been interrupted by Duo and the dogs.

Anne was a bit of an enigma in her mundane domesticity. Her years of life numbered slightly fewer than Duo’s — by eighteen or so — but she seemed, somehow, to have a far greater amount of placidity in her later decades than Duo did. And perhaps that was merely because she’d actually been able to live for all that time, to have a happy marriage and children and all the feelings and experiences of a normal person rather than being trapped in sensationless and unchanging plastic. But perhaps it was something else as well.

For Duo, sometimes the deadly years crawled tortuously along so he thought he must go crazy before he met many more of them; while at other times, tomorrow was yesterday so quickly it left him reeling and breathless — purely in a psychological sense, of course. He didn’t know which he preferred. Swift chronological progress meant nothing to someone that didn’t change and couldn’t change anything, but there were definitely some unpleasant happenings he would prefer to get through quickly rather than slowly. And outside, independent of how rapidly Duo’s life was or wasn’t moving, the world underwent its own metamorphosis such as he had never seen before — and, indeed, only imperfectly saw now through the media of television and gossip.

Instead of struggling valiantly to support the war effort with every last beat of their patriotic hearts as he’d watched them do thirty years before, people avidly protested that there was a war on at all. Popular music, apparently, was becoming increasingly sexualized and raucous, and was enjoyed in shameless defiance of a disapproving older generation. The oppressed and ignored were rising up and demanding rights and recognition that had long been denied them, willing to flout authority in pursuit of this end. And in many cases, it seemed, the children were leading these undertakings as adolescents and young adults gained a greater voice as discrete peoples.

Even Christine, Anne’s daughter, though she’d been adolescent herself in the 40’s and might have been expected to exhibit the habits of that era, never wore dresses these days and single-handedly supported little Janice, who subsequently stayed at her grandmother’s house in the afternoons and evenings until her mother came to pick her up after work. Sometimes Janice even stayed until morning, and was then driven to school by or else enjoyed a leisurely Saturday with Anne, in order to give Christine freedom to have overnight guests in that man trap of an apartment of hers.

Duo wasn’t certain how he felt about all these new ideas. Sure, he’d engaged in extramarital sex himself back when he’d been capable of it, but only ever with one person at a time — and he certainly hadn’t needed to temporarily relocate a naive eight-year-old in order to do it! He also wasn’t sure how Anne could be so tranquil, could give hardly the wink of an eye to a way of life so very different from what she’d grown up with — nor why he seemed to be experiencing such dissonance in observing it. Were those eighteen years between them really enough to make him so much less accepting than she was? Or else why couldn’t he feel the same peace she did?

He decided, as he watched his latest child’s grandmother placidly finishing up the dishes and then moving on to a barely-necessary more generalized kitchen cleanup, that what he truly wanted was a piece of the action. He wanted to be out there in the midst of the change instead of just faintly hearing about it from afar. He didn’t know how he felt about these new ideas of sexual freedom, but he would like to try them. He had lived through three wars and seen what they did to individuals and society, and would like to protest this latest. He was probably a gay man, and would like to say it proudly to anyone and everyone once he got that sorted. And others fighting for liberation — women and colored folk and so on — surely deserved a chance too! He would march in anyone’s parade that sought better conditions for honest, worthy people. He might even like to hear some of that ‘rock and roll’ music that had been gaining so much traction over the last ten or fifteen years.

But he couldn’t have sex. He couldn’t protest; he couldn’t fight; he couldn’t march. And he had no choice about what he did or didn’t listen to. In the end, his discontentment — and his discontentment with Anne’s contentment — found its basis not in disapproval, nor some supposed moral high ground, nor trepidation about where this new era would lead society… in fact it boiled down to the exact same thing it always did: he hated being a doll. Yes, in some ways he and Anne were similar — both aging products of a previous era watching the world evolve in front of them but taking very little part in it — but in one fundamental way they were very, very different.

She could, if she wished, get involved, but was satisfied not to. He could not, even if he wished, get involved, and was beyond dissatisfied. She was comfortable, after having lived a fulfilling life, to retire to her own happy private world of spoiling her pets and her granddaughter and obsessively scrubbing everything. He would prefer, after having his life put on hold for so long, to dive right off the side of paradise into the uncertain waters of societal progress and see where they took him.

But instead he was played with by children, stored away like the object he was, dropped, forgotten, and fought over by dogs. And what, for him, could possibly be the alternative? Factor in his near-complete immobility, his diminutive frame, and the quietness of his voice, and the chances of his ever being involved in the world, having what could be called an adult life, seemed depressingly minuscule.

Of course there was the dim possibility of his condition being reversed, of whatever spell Trowa had laid on him being broken… but by the time such a distant and unlikely event took place, would that which survived his long years as a doll be worth anything? All his yesterdays were slowly adding up to a tomorrow he didn’t necessarily want to return to. What would he be when no longer a doll? Could he make a new life in this new civilization he was watching grow up around him?

“Finished!” Anne gave the kitchen a long, critical look. Despite her owning two dogs, dirt remained above all things the enemy within this house, and she spent more time cleaning than anyone Duo had ever met. Now, however, the spotless kitchen (which to the doll appeared very little different than when he’d been in here earlier with Janice) evidently met her satisfaction, and she was able to hang up her apron for the nonce. Then she returned to where Duo sat on the counter and smiled down at him. “Fancy some television?”

“Yes, please!” The thought actually significantly cheered him, as television, ever since its invention, had proven an excellent distraction and a window into a wider world he wasn’t otherwise allowed to see much of — the best stand-in for actual involvement he was likely to get. He winked at Anne as he added, “If you don’t mind me sitting beside you in my elegant birthday suit, that is.”

“You’re a rogue,” she replied, picking him up. “But, yes, I think we’ll leave your clothes drying a little longer.” And she turned each piece over so as to air their opposite sides.

Since Friday’s child-care would probably run overnight — Duo had heard Christine making arrangements with a couple of her lovers, and therefore assumed Janice would begin the weekend here at Anne’s — he needed to take advantage of this Thursday evening to make all the borderline-risqué comments he could. “I think you just want an excuse to keep my manly figure uncovered as long as possible.”

“Shameless!” Anne laughed. “You may not say anything more like that during the program. It’s a new science fiction series my friend recommended to me, and I want to pay attention.”

“Fine, fine,” Duo allowed. “I’ll just pine in silence.”

Still chuckling, complacent as usual, Anne carried him into the darkness of the next room and lit it up by switching on the television set. And Duo supposed that, whatever changes the future held — in the world and in his own long life — and whatever frustrating inability he had to endure before he reached the unknown, he could probably face it all well enough with a peaceful example like this in mind.

<<4

6>>

Annunciation (1976)

In good news, the jar, though smeared with little fingerprints and dusted with dirt, remained clear glass and had had its label removed, and was therefore more or less transparent. In bad news, it had rolled such that Duo, inside it down to his thighs, faced the ground and still couldn’t see anything around him. He could probably heft himself over so as at least to be able to look at the sky for some minimal entertainment while alone, but only if he could be sure he was alone — and of course, lying on his face like this, he couldn’t be.

How much he actually needed that surety, however, he didn’t know; he’d been wondering lately whether it wasn’t about time to start talking to Rosa. If that time had come, manipulating himself onto his back with a stiff arm and leg wouldn’t be any worse a preface to their first conversation than anything else. But revealing that he could (to a certain extent) move under his own power would force the first conversation whether or not the time had come if Rosa happened to be around. Besides, Maria might be nearby as well — this was the exact problem with lying on his face — and Duo knew very well he didn’t want to speak to the superstitious Maria today or possibly any day.

Rosa, though, was a smart kid. Much smarter than her eight years might suggest, and too smart, if what Duo overheard on a regular basis inside the house was any indication, for her teachers to have any idea what to do with. But what baffled the public school system might win Duo a friend and ally. It would be so nice to have someone to talk to, someone to understand his situation again.

What he referred to in his head as ‘first contact’ had a certain ritual about it — a pattern of events that played out with a significant amount of similarity every time and thus that he’d come to regard almost as something he chose to have happen rather than something that merely naturally did. He would start by trying not to be a smart aleck, by saying something reasonable and not too dramatic to announce himself and his abilities. And then the response tended to fall into one of a few predictable categories.

There were the scared kids, of whom the subcategories were the ones Duo had to work on over multiple sessions before their fear would fade, and the ones that gave in to the cool factor much quicker. There were the canny kids that thought at first some friend or family member must be playing a trick on them; and their subcategories were the ones that maintained a dubious demeanor for a while in order to deny plausibly that they’d ever believed in him just in case they turned out to be right, and the ones that secretly wanted to believe and therefore dropped the pretense of skepticism fairly soon. And there were the kids that simply accepted from the beginning with little to no persuasion, whose subcategories were calmness, enthusiasm, and weirder enthusiasm. Perhaps this made for a decently large number of reaction possibilities, but Duo had seen them all multiple times, and he could usually guess, after getting to know a kid for a while, how that kid would behave when the revelation came.

Rosa, he thought, would be either the calmly accepting or the enthusiastic type. She would ask intelligent questions to comprehend the situation, and, once she understood, would assimilate the information into her life and get on with things. Then she and Duo could have conversations on a regular basis that would make existence a little less tedious, and future games could be enriched by two-sided dialogue.

That was all assuming Maria didn’t find out. Duo believed he could predict her reaction too, and it wouldn’t be nearly so measured and rational as Rosa’s: she would gasp and go as pale as her complexion allowed and cross herself and whisper something about the devil and pull Rosa away and probably call a priest to come confiscate the possessed toy. She might even insist the family pack up and move. He couldn’t be sure just how far she would take it, but he knew what, in general, she would do. Nope, definitely not planning to talk to Maria.

So he lay on his face continuing to consider whether it was time or not and listening for sounds of Rosa’s return from inside the house. Rosa and her mother often ate lunch outside, but today Duo had gotten the feeling — from their conversation as they went in, of course, not from any ability to detect the fact on his own — that it was a little cool out. Of course, in Arizona, ‘a little cool out’ probably still meant ‘warmer than anything but summer where Duo had lived back when he’d had the ability to discern temperatures.’ Be that as it might, Rosa and Maria were inside eating lunch, and Duo abandoned outside alone (he thought) in his spaceship.

Rosa had been learning about astronomy lately, and had developed a sudden burning passion for exploration of the cosmos. Thus Duo had transitioned abruptly from the previous, somewhat nebulous occupation of ‘hero’ that had kept him busy for the last few months to that of astronaut. The empty pickle jar was the latest in a series of experimental spaceships, and not, he thought, the most successful: though Maria had promised Rosa she could use construction paper to decorate it up like a real shuttle, it remained too short for Duo’s entire body and therefore faulty for the purpose.

Motion caught Duo’s eye, and he honestly didn’t want to know what it was. The only things he could possibly see from his current position were likely to fall under at least one of the headings ‘creepy’ or ‘crawly,’ and, despite being unable to feel the pitter-patter of tiny feet across his plastic body, he nevertheless deplored the awareness of its presence. Curiosity, however, got the better of distaste and compelled him to look down as best he could. His head didn’t swivel far in that direction, but it was far enough to disclose the blackish-brown figure of a small scorpion squeezing its way between Duo and the concave glass on which he lay.

With a severe mental shudder, Duo wondered why on earth the little creature wanted to be there, of all places. Had the sun through the bottle glass created a warm haven against the cool day? In any case, lying here spooning a scorpion ranked quite low on his list of favorite activities. He weighed the value of waving all his limbs (in an attempt to get the thing to flee) against the possibility that Rosa or her mother could come out of the house at any time without making enough noise to herald their approach.

This had been a fortunate consideration, for, before he’d come to any actual decision, he picked up footsteps and voices — Rosa’s and Maria’s — closer than he would have thought they could get without his noticing them. But he was on a space mission, and, as Rosa had carefully informed her parents just the other day, sound didn’t carry through space. Revealing himself at the moment was out of the question.

Or was it? The entire situation shifted as Duo realized what his two caretakers had come to do. Maria remarked, evidently upon catching sight of Duo’s bottle, “I think it will work great. We’ll tape the pot onto it, and it’ll be a perfect space shuttle.” And then smaller running steps, excited, hurried toward where Duo lay.

The doll had barely a second to plan his actions. He hadn’t considered the scorpion in the jar anything beyond an annoyance and discomfort he would have to deal with for a little while. But now it threatened to be far more than that to more than only him.

He’d been sure all along that Maria’s fear of the devil (which encompassed fear of anything she deemed supernatural, though Duo didn’t think she’d ever encountered anything truly magical besides himself) would make her the type of parent that would throw him away or take him to Goodwill the moment she became aware he could talk. No matter how rationally her daughter might explain that the doll was a friend and not evil, her daughter was, after all, only eight years old. Duo could in no way talk to Maria and hope to retain his place in this home. And he liked this home.

But a scorpion sting could kill a kid that small.

Without hesitation, at what, for lack of a better term, he must call the top of his lungs, Duo shouted, “Don’t touch the bottle! There’s a scorpion inside!”

All noise ceased, and Duo could not make out what happened next. No hand seemed to be reaching in for him; had he succeeded in delivering the message? He couldn’t take any chances. So again he cried, as loudly as possible, “Don’t touch the bottle! Scorpion!”

He thought he heard Maria gasp a broken prayer, and shuffling footsteps that might have been scrambling backward. Underneath him, Duo believed the scorpion stirred a bit, though certainty eluded him when he couldn’t feel the creature and wasn’t looking that direction. Then Maria’s voice sounded more surely: “No, you stay back there. Don’t go close to it. Let me…” And something clinked loudly against the side of the jar, which rocked a bit into a ponderous roll.

The sluggish movement couldn’t flip Duo over, only slid him along the bottom, but it was enough to vex the scorpion and send it outside; Duo knew this mostly by the little shrieks both Maria and Rosa gave. Then there were more quick footsteps and a crunching thud that probably heralded the end of the arachnid that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Duo couldn’t help thinking, Good riddance.

Continual crunching (somewhat disturbing to listen to no matter what Duo thought about scorpions) signified, he guessed, a large stone being shifted back and forth on top of the creature. Just as Duo had felt a minute before, Maria obviously didn’t want to take any chances. Then silence fell once again, nearly — this time marred by Maria’s heavy but unsteady breaths as if she were on the verge of sobbing. But she managed with relative evenness to ask, “Is it safe now?”

“Yeah…” Duo replied resignedly. If he’d already destroyed his future here by talking in front of Maria, he might as well finish the job. “There was only the one.”

Maria snatched up the jar and drew Duo out of it, her eyes moving manically back and forth between the two objects. Behind her stood Rosa, looking not so much afraid as curious. It really was time.

Except then Maria closed her eyes and whispered, “Dear Lord, thank you for saving my girl. Thank you for your voice of warning. Thank you.” Tears began to run down her face, at first in little rivulets but soon in torrents, as she repeated the grateful prayer a few times more. The third time, she referred to the preceding events as a miracle.

So now Duo definitely didn’t know what to say.

Maria calmed somewhat at last, stopped praying, and crossed herself (more or less) with the hand holding the jar. It probably would have looked absurd even to someone that was religiously inclined. “Rosa,” she said, turning to face her daughter, “I want you to remember that you’ve heard the voice of God. He saved you from the scorpion, so I know He must have something great planned for you.”

There were about a hundred things Duo could have said at this point. Obviously Rosa was headed for something great, but because she was a genius, not because of the will of God. Unless, of course, she got accidentally turned into a doll at some point, in which case she was headed for something completely awful. That was the thing about God: if he existed, he sure as hell didn’t care whether or not innocent people suffered for fifty-three years. And when an innocent, suffering person that had just risked his comfort and future and possibly even safety for the sake of someone whose mother then attributed the gesture to that same unfeeling and probably nonexistent God, it represented yet another blow against everything fair and rational in the universe. But Duo, dumbstruck, couldn’t utter a word of this.

“That was God’s voice?” Rosa wondered, sounding impressed. “I thought God would talk Latin like at church.”

Maria’s religion had made Duo wary of introducing himself to her, because he’d believed she would assume he was some devil-possessed object — not practically the opposite! He’d never been mistaken for a divine channel before, and not only did it annoy him, it discomforted and dismayed him.

“God can speak every language,” Maria told her child. “And see how He can say exactly what you need to hear at just the right time?”

Whether Maria believed the Voice Of God had come from Duo or merely out of the jar, the doll had no real way to be sure, unless he happened to be in the room later when Maria recounted these events to her husband — and possibly not even then… but it made very little difference. Whichever she believed at the moment, the very instant Duo spoke aloud again in her hearing, she would be confirmed in the doll side of the theory. She would think God still talked through him, and would be disturbingly grateful to hear whatever he had to say.

Rosa was peering at the dead scorpion now, intrigued. “Can I take it to school?”

But Duo wouldn’t have anything to say. The thought of impersonating a messenger from God would have been enough, even more than the scorpion, to make his skin crawl if he’d had skin. It didn’t matter much that he didn’t believe in God and, in fact, felt rather bitter anyone else still could. It would fill him with an entirely different bitterness to stage such a deception. And what would he say, anyway? “Be nice to all talking dolls from now on; thus saith the Lord!”

“No, love,” Maria replied. She’d barely looked away from the doll in her hand to see what Rosa was referring to. “We’ll get daddy to throw it away when he gets home. Don’t get too close to it.”

Of course there might be a backtracking option: to explain to Rosa privately that her mother had been mistaken, that he was merely an enchanted human rather than a divine vessel (he would avoid using the term ‘curse’ that he’d been revolving in his head for a number of years now)… but aside from doubting he could count on Rosa not to share whatever he said with Maria even if he requested silence, he didn’t think he could face doling out that kind of disillusionment.

“Can we go fix the spaceship now?” Rosa asked.

Maria hesitated. She was still staring in awe at Duo, and the degree to which she ignored the jar in her other hand seemed to indicate her belief that the holiness did not lie there. Duo guessed that, in spite of this, she worried about the potential sacrilege of fashioning a play spaceship out of it after the events of the day. Perhaps she hoped the godly mouthpiece would put in an opinion on the matter. Too bad the godly mouth was defiantly, disgustedly, permanently shut.

“Let’s… let’s go inside,” she said at last. “We’ll see.”

And so Duo was carried reverently into the house and an uncertain future with the depressing knowledge that he’d saved a brilliant little kid from a lot of trouble and possibly death by sacrificing any chance he had to make a friend of her… that by choosing to talk to Rosa and Maria once, he’d made it impossible ever to talk to them again. That he’d doomed himself to an even worse time in this home he hadn’t wanted to lose by valuing human life… something he didn’t even have.

<<5

7>>

The Irony of Not Actually Being a Liar (1984)

It had begun with Todd asking Duo several times if he was sure he couldn’t be damaged, to the point where Duo had felt it necessary to relate some of the experiences he’d had during the long years that would otherwise have meant some degree of destruction to a helpless plastic doll — including being run over on multiple occasions by motor vehicles, left on the floor of a Jacuzzi for half a week, and an encounter with an InSinkErator that the kid responsible had always (Duo believed falsely) claimed was an accident. Then Todd had gotten that conniving look and left the room, and Duo hadn’t had any idea what was in store until several days later.

Now Todd, three friends, and his younger sister Stacey, in whose six-year-old hands Duo currently rotated, had gathered in the Kelly family garage. Devoid of car while Lt. Kelly was at work, it left them plenty of free space, but Duo still had no idea what was in store. For one thing, the only light in the room came from the small windows across the top of the closed garage door, so he had an imperfect view of the setup to begin with; for another, Stacey rarely held him still so he could actually look at things — she constantly shifted him around into different positions, so at any given moment he might equally well be staring at the ruffles on the bottom of her shirt or the kitchen door behind her as what everyone had gathered for.

“Why don’t you turn on the light,” Ned complained.

“You’ll see!” Observing his friends weren’t buying this cryptic reply, Todd added, “It’ll look cooler in the dark when I get the fire lit.”

“You’re lighting a fire?” No surprise Sumit hadn’t been able to figure out what Todd was fumbling with.

“You’re going to get in so much trouble,” said Rhonda gleefully.

Todd declared, “No, I’m not. Look, it’s in a can — a metal can’s not going to catch on fire — and I put it way out here in the middle where there’s nothing around it. It’s totally safe.”

They all crowded in, and Stacey’s hands remained stationary enough for several seconds that Duo could see the large coffee can, presumably filled with combustibles of some type, on top of a cinder block in the center of the otherwise empty expanse of concrete garage floor.

“Don’t stand so close, you guys!” Todd complained. “You’re making shadows and I can’t see the matches.” He still fumbled, and had yet to produce even a single spark.

“There’s going to be smoke, though,” Sumit protested, “even if nothing else catches on fire!”

Frustrated tone testament to his continual lack of luck with the matches, Todd said, “Oh, don’t be such a baby. There’s no smoke detector out here.”

“You’re going to get in so much trouble,” Rhonda repeated.

Ned wondered, “How’d you hang this thing up?” He referred to, and poked at, the unidentifiable object — some type of roughly rectangular framework — that dangled mysteriously several inches above the coffee can and swung in response to his prodding finger.

“I climbed up on the rafters and tied it up there.” Todd sounded extremely proud of himself.

Stacey contributed to the conversation for the first time with, “Mom says you’re not supposed to climb up there.”

“I know, but don’t tell her, OK?”

Stacey remained silent. Her nervousness about the proceedings showed in her tight and now relatively unmoving grip on Duo. The doll didn’t blame her; he still hadn’t figured out what was going on, but doubted the ingenious Todd, in dragging his friends into a dark garage and breaking so many rules, could possibly have anything particularly edifying planned.

“Can’t the strings catch on fire?” Sumit was a bit of a worrier, which in this situation was probably for the best.

“They’re fishing line,” said Todd dismissively. “Even if the fire got that high, they’d just melt, not burn and catch anything else on fire.”

Scornfully Rhonda said, “You don’t know how to use those matches. Let me do it.”

“I can use them just fine!” Todd jerked away from her. “I just can’t see anything!”

“Let’s turn the light on for a minute,” Ned suggested. “Just ’til you get the matches lit.” And when Todd reluctantly agreed, he fumbled his own way to the nearby dangling string, with its attached ping-pong ball that tapped against the windshield when the car had pulled in far enough to avoid having the garage door close on its rear bumper, and clicked the space around them into visibility.

“All right,” Todd said, and set to work again. It soon became clear, though, that Rhonda’s suggestion had been pretty near the truth — either he didn’t know how to use matches or just hadn’t had enough experience with them to do so smoothly or practically. He kept bending them out of shape without successfully striking them across the back of the book.

Duo rather hoped Todd would continue to fail until he’d mangled all the matches beyond any usefulness. The doll believed this had something to do with him and his indestructibility; he’d recalled, by now, their conversation of last week, and linked it with this scene with a fair degree of certainty. That framework hanging from the rafters, which in the light he now identified as having been formed out of wire coat-hangers, looked very much like some sort of torture rack as it dangled above the proposed fire-pit.

Todd’s creativity and handiness usually didn’t take so malicious a bent, but Duo couldn’t think of anything else the device could be intended for. And though Todd’s friends would certainly be impressed by a doll that resisted melting or blackening while dangling over a fire — undoubtedly one of the reasons he’d put this little demonstration together — Stacey was just as certain to be agitated and frightened by the scene. And Duo was Stacey’s doll, not Todd’s, even if his revelation of intelligence had brought him closer to the ten-year-old than to the younger sibling that technically owned him.

A triumphant noise issued from Todd’s throat as the latest match burst into flame and, not dropped in startlement like the previous, stayed there. Then his movements were perhaps a little jerky with haste as he hurried to light whatever filled the coffee can before the match could go out. Quickly he withdrew his hand, and there followed abruptly an up-springing of fire that seemed to give him a great deal of satisfaction.

“OK, Stace,” he said, turning to his sister and holding out his hand, “gimme Duo.”

Duo doubted Stacey had seen this coming, but that didn’t make her emphatic negative response less immediate. She took a step back, clutching at her doll now with both hands and vigorously shaking her head.

“Come on,” Todd wheedled. “You said you wanted to see the movie… I’m going to show you the best part!”

“He’ll get hurt!” Stacey looked back and forth from her brother to the fire in the coffee can with wide eyes.

“No, he won’t, I promise.”

Here Sumit put in with some concern, “But his clothes and hair–”

“He won’t get burned!” Todd interrupted impatiently. “Besides, your parents won’t let you see it either.”

Reluctantly Sumit had to admit the truth in this.

Rhonda had caught the interest of the scene — either that or she wanted the pleasure of tattling on Todd once he’d destroyed his sister’s toy — and now brought her own influence to bear. “Come on, Stacey, it’ll be fun!”

“I know what part he wants to do,” was Ned’s contribution, “and it really is the best part. Maybe this is the only way you’ll ever get to see it!”

Todd held out his hand again. “Come on, Stacey!”

The combination of legitimate curiosity with peer pressure (which she probably knew would become browbeating after not too long) forced the six-year-old to give in, and, though her motion in handing Duo over remained reluctant, she finally complied with the wishes of the group. Duo, as he so often did, restrained a sigh when he found himself looking up at Todd’s eager face; this couldn’t end well. In better news, the process of convincing Stacey and the subsequent preparation was taking so long that the fire might well have completely died out by the time the main event got started.

Todd began stripping off Duo’s clothing — which, having originally been designed for 1970’s Ken, Duo did not regret, but didn’t envisage being replaced by anything nicer anytime soon — while the other kids crowded around to see what he was doing. Of course as soon as the pants were removed, Rhonda started giggling uncontrollably, which made the boys laugh as well, but Todd stuck to his purpose: he’d withdrawn from his pocket what appeared to be the excised toe-end of a sock punctured twice so as to accommodate the legs of an unsuspecting doll. This makeshift undergarment, upon application, proved too big, but Todd had anticipated this, and fastened it in place with a rubber band cinching it close around Duo’s waist.

“He looks like he’s wearing a diaper,” said Rhonda, still giggling despite the hilarious penis having been covered up. Ned, also with a bit of residual laughter, agreed with her.

“You guys have anything to make a real loincloth for a doll out of?” Todd retorted. “I couldn’t leave him in that stuff, could I?” And he pointed disdainfully at the imitation-corduroy pants and striped red shirt he’d thrown to the floor, which, at his gesture, Stacey now snatched protectively up. Then, turning toward the coffee can and hanging wires, he said, “Now I just have to get him into the thing.”

This turned out easier said than done, as Todd planned to tie Duo’s arms and legs down with more fishing line, which proved absolutely impossible (without an additional hand or four) while holding the framework away from the fire and Duo motionless at the same time. Eventually he had to accept assistance from Ned and Rhonda, and the task went on far longer (and with a lot more arguing) than probably any of them had anticipated. Sumit stood on tiptoe trying to watch in evident agitation, Stacey was obviously bored despite her equal concern, and Duo might have been increasingly sanguine about the diminution of the fire if he hadn’t been directly facing it the entire time. Whatever Todd had put into that coffee can, it hadn’t yet stopped its steady burn even after all this nonsense. It looked like this torture ceremony really must happen, then. Duo could only hope Stacey wouldn’t be too traumatized; perhaps the boredom and impatience would act as a sort of buffer.

“OK, OK,” said Todd at last as Duo fell into place above the crackling flames and swung slightly before the boy steadied him. “Now you guys stand over here–” he gestured– “and I’ll do the ceremony.”

“There should only be three of us,” protested Ned.

“I don’t want to be the girl,” Rhonda complained at the same time. “I don’t like her!”

Also simultaneously Stacey, all fear for Duo’s safety abruptly renewed, squeaked, “What are you going to do to him?”

Todd addressed multiple concerns at once. “Stacey, you stand next to me — you’re one of the coltists, and I’m the high priest — and the rest of you guys stand over there. It doesn’t matter who’s who, because you just have to watch and pretend like you’re hiding.”

“But the girl didn’t watch.” Rhonda stood her ground. “She was too scared, remember? So we have to decide who’s the girl, because that person can’t watch, and I don’t want it to be me.”

Ned rolled his eyes. “But you have to be her. One of us can’t be her!”

At the same moment Sumit asked, “What’s happening? What are we doing?”

“We can just pretend the girl did watch,” Todd said in a loud and dictatorial tone, “and then it doesn’t matter who’s the girl because you can all watch. Sumit…” Though clearly impatient to get on with his big scene, he also took pity on those in the dark as to plotline, for he next gave a summary (which would have been brief if not for the helpful interjections of Rhonda and Ned) of the events that had brought the characters represented here to the scenario about to take place.

To this Duo, who hadn’t been to the movie and probably never would, paid little attention (though admittedly he was starting to understand why the Kelly parents weren’t allowing their younger child to see it). He watched Stacey’s pinched-up, worried little face with growing concern — not that he could do anything to help — and hoped she wouldn’t cry herself to sleep tonight and then wake screaming from bad dreams her parents would be at a loss to comprehend.

Finally — and, as far as Duo could tell, the fire had actually only gotten higher in its metal container — it was time. Stacey could not be convinced to chant or drum on anything or even stamp her feet, so Todd gave up on her participation entirely and turned toward Duo in his framework with a portentous expression; actually he looked somewhat constipated. As Todd began mumbling nonsense words (under his breath so as to hide the fact that they were random and unscripted) and stroking the doll’s face on both sides with one finger, Duo noticed they’d neglected to turn the light back off.

Todd’s incoherence rose in pitch and comprehensibility as he shouted, so abruptly it made most of the others jump, “Kali maa!” He lifted one hand toward the ceiling and repeated the phrase several times, his volume increasing with each instance.

The effect was entirely spoiled, however, when Ned cried out accusingly, in response to some movement of Todd’s other hand, “He didn’t use a knife!”

Todd turned an annoyed face toward Ned. “I can’t really stick my hand inside him, can I?”

“You can’t cut Duo!” Stacey shrieked, and now Duo could see the Swiss army knife Todd had pulled from his pocket.

“It won’t really hurt him,” Todd told her in a low, firm tone, seemingly far more concerned with being allowed to continue his act as high priest than actually comforting Stacey.

Sumit, confused and unhelpful, put in at this point, “I don’t think Kali would really–”

“Kali maa!” Todd roared by way of override, jerking the knife’s biggest blade out and raising the weapon threateningly.

“He didn’t say it that loud,” Ned muttered.

Abruptly Todd stabbed at Duo’s chest, repeating the dramatic phrase yet again at top volume. And once more the effect was ruined, since the gesture only set the framework swinging wildly, the contact between sharp metal and imperturbable plastic far too brief to amaze Todd’s friends and reassure his sister as to Duo’s indestructibility. With a frustrated sound Todd caught and stilled the wire with his left hand, holding it solidly in place as he took aim with his right, again made his meaningless declaration that seemed to have Sumit so perplexed, and gave Duo’s chest another, more solid jab.

This time the effect was not so much spoiled as augmented, since the knife glanced off plastic pectorals, slid to the side, and, as far as Duo could tell without turning his head, drove right into the hand holding the framework still. Todd’s latest “Kali maa!” broke off in a sort of surprised croak, and he dropped the knife with a clatter and drew back a suddenly bleeding hand to stare at in bewilderment and shock. The garage was overtaken, but for the crackling of the fire, by complete silence.

Then Stacey started to scream.

Pandemonium, complete with stomping feet, shrieking from some voices and ever-louder suggestions and comments from others, rapidly ensued. With everyone crowding so tightly, Duo was surprised he wasn’t torn down or the coffee can knocked over. He supposed the heat of the fire kept them at a safe distance.

Though weak-voiced and in some evident shock, Todd regained his presence of mind quicker than Duo would have expected. He held his wounded hand high, trying to prevent the others from touching it — which didn’t help at all to stop blood getting everywhere — and urged them to quiet down. He’d lost his audience, however, and found himself quickly overridden by a general insistence that they needed to go inside, wash the cut, put alcohol on the cut, bandage the cut, stitch the cut, cotch-rize the cut, and probably get Mrs. Kelly involved. While this latter was obviously the last thing Todd wanted under the circumstances, he no longer had any say in the matter.

Stacey had stopped actually screaming, but still made a string of distressed noises and gripped her brother by the arm not flailing in the air, and nobody could get her to shut up or let go. Rhonda looked inordinately gleeful about this bloody fate of someone for whom she supposedly had feelings of friendship, while it appeared all of Sumit’s worst nightmares were coming true. Ned was the loudest in insisting on seeking out medical attention (of the home-brew variety) for Todd, and the latter struggled just to make his voice heard. None of them seemed to remember, as they stampeded their agitation and din across the garage, the fire they left burning behind them. There was no reason they should remember, under the circumstances, the doll hanging above it. And presently, to the sound of the kitchen door slamming so hard it must seize Mrs. Kelly’s attention wherever she might be in the house, Duo found himself alone.

He’d known this would happen. Well, he hadn’t known exactly this would happen — that Todd would stab himself in the hand and the kids would all run off in a panic, leaving Duo hanging above an unexpectedly tenacious fire that now rose high enough now to lick at his legs — but he’d known this would end badly. And there had been absolutely nothing he could do about it.

Oh, sure, he could have talked to them, could have tried to convince Todd not to go through with it. But even aside from his desire not to expose himself at once to three extra people from divergent situations, would it have done any good? He had no authority and barely any influence; even the weight of his long experience might not have convinced these kids that their play was likely to be harmful in more than one way. In all probability they simply wouldn’t have believed a word he had to say; some of them might not even have believed a real person said it.

Duo let out a protracted sigh. He didn’t bother trying to stifle it this time. Even had someone been around, he wouldn’t have worried about the sound giving him away — the fire crackled too loudly.

And he couldn’t feel it. No matter how his situation changed, no matter how many years passed, this remained the same: even flames hot and high enough to have set his clumsy loincloth ablaze made no impression whatsoever on his nerves. Well, better to say he didn’t have nerves, just some kind of magical awareness that informed him coldly — ever so coldly, in situations like this — of something touching him. And even that was limited, apparently, to when he legitimately needed to know; at the moment he barely recognized the flames licking at him, more clearly the disintegration of his single garment, and only either of these because he concentrated on them.

Well, he wouldn’t be able to say ‘I told you so’ to Todd, since he hadn’t actually told him anything except the unfortunate information that had facilitated all of this — but he did hope Todd had learned his lesson about trying to impress his friends with fire and knives, and that his hand wasn’t so badly damaged he must spend the rest of his life regretting the tuition.

And what lesson had Duo taken from all of this? That sock toes burned slowly? That movies were becoming increasingly violent? Or perhaps that even the kindest-hearted of children were capable at times of a ridiculous level of insensitivity, even cruelty, against which Duo in his current state was utterly powerless?

But perhaps having a talk with Todd after the fact would work better than the hypothetical during. If Duo could only draw from this experience the moral that rules were in place for a reason (and if Todd’s wound proved mendable), they could survive and grow, and hopefully remain on good terms. Duo’s latest sigh turned unexpectedly into a laugh. For as little as the precise circumstances in which he now found himself were characteristic, he really felt like a dad sometimes.

<<6

8>>

It Hasn’t All Been Kids (1997)

Duo didn’t think he liked the expression on the face of the man that had done a double-take, retraced his steps to the dingy shelf full of worn old toys, and picked Duo out of the clutter to lift him up and look more closely at him. He’d come to associate that expression, on an adult, with being boxed up and wrapped, generally still naked but occasionally more creatively clothed, and given to other adults as the funniest birthday or bachelor(ette) party present they’d ever received. Usually when he saw that look on someone’s face in the Arc, he was back on that same Arc shelf within a few weeks after an experience he found far less hilarious than did the other people involved.

“Two fifty?” wondered the man under his breath, turning Duo over and finding the price tag Duo was absolutely positive would have itched like crazy if he’d been able to itch. “That’s not bad.”

Yeah, when they commented on his relative dollar value after staring at his penis, the stars had not aligned well. With an internal sigh, Duo began the process of bracing himself, though he’d started to consider it not worth much anymore.

Against the conversation at the checkstand he couldn’t exactly stop his ears — they weren’t even physical ears; even the world’s tiniest cotton balls wouldn’t have done him any good — but he didn’t exactly pay close attention either. It had been surreal and somewhat fascinating, once upon a time, to be the object of a sales transaction — to hear the polite exchange between cashier and customer that involved a dollar amount pertaining to the ownership of Duo himself, sometimes with commentary on his attributes but more often ignoring him completely as if, though at least part of the purchase, he remained unworthy of mention — but by now the process had become just as discouragingly real as any other mundane aspect of his dreary life. A mixture of bitterness and indifference fluctuated within him as the scene progressed; one moment he actively didn’t want to know what they were saying or what percentage sales tax had risen to these days, and the next he simply didn’t care.

He wouldn’t bother talking to this one. No point, when he’d obviously been acquired merely as a present — undoubtedly not a very serious present at that — and wouldn’t be spending any real time with the guy. But as Duo lay in the Arc bag in what he believed to be the man’s car heading he could only guess where, he was pretty sorely tempted. It had been months since he’d spoken to literally anyone, and ‘bored and lonely’ didn’t begin to cover how he’d been feeling lately. Still, reminding himself he would surely change hands very soon, after which he would probably be passed around amidst much laughter and then returned all too quickly to the Arc, whence he could hope to be rescued by someone more age-appropriate for appreciating him as a potential conversational companion, he restrained himself.

His guess as to where they were going had been ‘home,’ and he’d evidently been correct. Of course Duo could only assume the guy lived here, but he’d reached the point where a momentary glance was often all it took to recognize the homes of various types of people, and if he assessed this man correctly — single, straight, mid-to-late-20’s, decent but not huge income — then, yeah, this was definitely his apartment. The remains of his breakfast on the table where Duo now sat were eloquent about his way of life.

And now the guy examined him more closely than before, seated at the table staring hard at Duo with a hand worrying away thoughtfully at his chin and upper lip. Duo might have taken the opportunity to absorb details of his own about his new, short-term owner — the dark curly hair, the lingering acne, the pleasant features — but he didn’t bother looking particularly hard. This wasn’t a kid he would be playing with or even a friend he would be talking to; and the manner in which the man seemed to be considering something peripheral to Duo rather than any details of Duo himself made the doll feel free to do the same.

He supposed it would be equally evident in any situation where someone didn’t know you were observing them, but being a supposedly unresponsive doll really served to indicate how much adults talked to themselves or narrated their lives to nobody in particular. In fact they often talked directly to Duo — not the way children did, in an imaginative way as if he might talk back (regardless of whether or not they knew he could), but merely using Duo as a focus for the aforementioned narration because he happened to have a human-like shape complete with ears.

Now the guy said, in the half-under-his-breath tone people often used when they didn’t need to be saying this aloud at all, “Should I put you in a box? Or maybe a gift bag? But that makes it seem so formal…”

So Duo would be a surprise out of context this time, would he? That was less common than the bachelor party gag or birthday present, but not unheard of.

“But just handing you over like this–” Duo believed the guy’s eyes flicked specifically to his penis for a moment– “seems really weird.” He paused, considering, pointer finger still running pensively up and down his philtrum. “But wrapping paper would make it seem like a serious present, and I don’t want her to think I want something in return…”

‘Her?’ Now Duo perked up a bit. That was an unusual arrangement.

“Not like I’d complain if she said, ‘Oh, Eli, he’s so great; you wanna get some coffee or something?'” He chuckled at this clearly absurd idea.

Some light began to shine on this situation, though the nature of the present in hand still puzzled Duo. Who gave their crush an anatomically correct doll with no clothing?

Eli’s one-sided conversation obviously hadn’t helped him reach a decision as to how Duo should be packaged, so he discontinued it and got up abruptly from the table. Evidently the matter remained on his mind, though, as he started clearing his breakfast dishes from beside the doll — and not secondarily on his mind, either, if the half-hearted manner in which he ‘cleaned up’ was any indication. And partway through scraping the remaining eggs and cheese into the sink, without yet having rinsed it down or run the disposer, he apparently reached his decision. Abruptly he dropped everything he was doing, wiped his hands on his jeans, and returned to the table.

Duo, watching him approach, hoped in some amusement that the crush, whatever else she might be, was the type of person that could effectively insist on some better basic cleanliness. Of course it made little difference to a plastic doll that never seemed to stain despite his realistic hair and in no danger whatsoever of contamination, but he knew a lot of humans wouldn’t tolerate that food sitting there in the sink.

“I’ll just put you back in the Arc bag,” Eli said decisively as he looked down at Duo. “Then she’ll know I didn’t spend a lot of money or anything, and it’ll look like a casual, I-just-happened-to-find-this present.”

Though Duo still didn’t understand the specifics of the situation, he had to agree — not least because he was an I-just-happened-to-find-this present. He wondered, though, whether Eli realized exactly how much a naked doll with a big ol’ penis would make him look like a total creep when he gave it to some woman.

Duo couldn’t name the day of the week — he did tend to lose track when the thrift store stay lasted more than a fortnight or so — but Eli apparently had no work shift to get to. He’d wandered leisurely down several more Arc aisles even after finding Duo, had never hurried to get out and come home; did that imply a weekend? Duo supposed it was possible. In any case, Eli obviously had no problem with re-bagging Duo immediately in preparation for taking him to his next destination.

Despite this, they didn’t leave immediately. Though the bag Duo again found himself wrapped in crackled a bit, he could still hear pretty well what went on outside it, and from the echo (and other sounds), they evidently occupied a bathroom for at least fifteen minutes before doing anything else. Since only about three of those minutes involved actual use of the toilet and a very thorough handwash thereafter, it had to be assumed Eli was concerning himself with his appearance in a mirror, and that the opening and closing of drawers and what sounded like a magnetic medicine cabinet played into that endeavor as well. Duo found this kinda cute, as it seemed to indicate how infatuated Eli was, but feared it would all be for nothing the very moment the woman opened this Arc bag and saw the would-be-casual but in reality quite suggestive present he’d brought her.

Because of situations just like this, Duo had learned to deduce a fair amount from only what he could hear going on around him. And he speculated with some certainty that Eli was nervous as he drove wherever. Further monologue took place at first — about whether or not she would be there and how she was always there and should take more time off than she did because it wasn’t like the other employees didn’t do a good job but he supposed when you owned a place you got more paranoid about how it ran — but after a while he turned on the radio.

His pitch off for every single note, he sang along, first about flying like an eagle to the sea and then something fast and largely incomprehensible that seemed to involve cherry cola, and when he resumed talking to himself afterward — this time incomprehensibly as the subsequent noisy advertisements drowned him out — he seemed to be doing a tiny bit better. The deep breath he took once he’d stopped the car, however, before Duo was seized and lifted inside his crinkly plastic prison, indicated how nervous he still felt.

Eli’s determined footsteps across what sounded like a parking lot were followed by the entry chime inside their destination and the cars on the street outside fading. “Hi, there!” someone some distance away greeted. “Come on in — oh, hi, Eli.”

“Hey,” Eli returned the greeting, and Duo thought he struggled to sound natural. “Is Becca around?”

“Bex!” the other voice, now nearer, called. “Come out here!” The tone suggested Becca would want to do so and that the speaker had no need to detail why. Duo smiled again; evidently Eli hung around this place enough not to need specific announcing.

They’d stopped moving, having evidently reached their destination, and the volume of the other voice no longer changed as it asked how Eli had been. He answered only absently, and the amused edge to her reply made it clear she knew perfectly well where his real interest lay. And then Duo was conscious of Eli’s grip tightening on the bag as a new voice from farther away said, “Oh, hey, Eli.”

“Hi!” Eli’s reply was perhaps a little too enthusiastic, which he appeared to notice, if the far more subdued sound of his follow-up was any indication. “How’s it going?”

“Good, good,” she replied jovially. “What about you?”

“I’m great,” said Eli. “I had to come by and — I found this — I thought this would be…”

Duo was aware of his conveyance transferring from one grasp to another. If he’d been able to do either, he would have been biting his lip and holding his breath in agitated anticipation of the moment Becca pulled him out of the bag and saw exactly what Eli had brought her and all it implied. The bag unrolled, and a hand reached in for him, and Duo counted down to the moment when all of Eli’s chances with its owner died an embarrassing death.

Able to see something other than translucent white plastic at last, Duo looked up into Becca’s face, both studying her features and watching for her reaction to the gift. The first struck him as not particularly attractive — not that his opinion of her level of attractiveness mattered one whit to anyone — and the second as not exactly what he’d expected.

“Where did–” She glanced at the bag Duo had come out of. “Which Arc did you find this at?”

Eli reminded her, “There’s only one left, remember?” And it was a sad day when charitable secondhand stores started going out of business, no matter how much Duo loathed them.

“Well, he’s…” Becca looked down again, her gaze traversing Duo’s entire figure and sticking, as predicted, on the penis, and as she hesitated before finishing her sentence, her jaw opened somewhat slackly for a moment. Duo waited, braced, for her to crush all of Eli’s hopes and dreams.

“He’s perfect,” Becca finished. Her astonished face rose again toward Eli, still gaping slightly. “How did — you just came across this at the Arc?”

“Yep.” Eli seemed not only ridiculously pleased at her positive reaction (doubtless, in part, because she’d said one of the things he’d seemed so certain she wouldn’t), but relieved as well. “Just laying there on the shelf with all these other toys.”

“Other toys without dicks, I bet!” Becca grinned.

“Yeah,” Eli laughed.

She moved suddenly. “Oh, he’s going to be just perfect in here! I think I even have…” She’d stepped into what seemed like a central island of sorts — Duo couldn’t turn his head to get a good look around without Eli and Becca, who’d both held him, seeing the movement, so he wasn’t sure — and pulled open a drawer. While she made rattling sounds digging through it, Duo stared up at the enthusiasm on her face and puzzled over this totally unexpected reaction and behavior. Though when after not too long she said excitedly, “Yes!” and extracted one of Duo’s least favorite things in the world, he was distracted for a moment.

“I can’t believe you found something like that,” the other woman — the clerk that had already inhabited the central island — remarked. “I didn’t know they even made Ken dolls with penises like that.”

“I’ve never seen one before,” Becca agreed as she adjusted the doll stand and then inserted Duo. “And look at his hair!” The latter, at least from the back of Duo’s head down, had been wrapped in a taped roll of plastic for protection, and this Becca now removed, causing a faint crackle of static electricity Duo couldn’t feel.

“I thought you’d like it,” Eli put in, still sounding very pleased.

“I love it,” Becca enthused. “I’ll get him an outfit made, and he’ll go perfect in this display.” She bent to make some brief rearrangement inside the referenced space before placing Duo, in his new hated doll stand, within. “For now he can just stand here naked.”

From inside the glass case beneath the counter where Duo found himself, he had been planning on scrutinizing the room around him and figuring out exactly where he now lived, to the extent he could do so without turning his head. However, something much closer at hand and directly in his line of sight seized his attention and held it for quite some time.

“Yeah, he looks good,” said Eli. The two women, who had both hastened out of the island and around to where he stood to look at the display from the outside, voiced their agreement.

Duo’s compelling focus was his new roommate, a Barbie perhaps six inches away from him in a similar doll stand. She had, if Duo was any judge, had some red and black stripes added to her hair for variety, and her makeup redone with a fairly deft hand and a very small paintbrush, but other than that appeared to be a bog-standard blonde Caucasian Barbie — except that she wore a shiny leather leotard that zipped up the front all the way to her chin, with a couple of perfectly round holes baring plastic breasts that had been modified with little nipples of some sort. Were they modeling clay? Duo couldn’t tell. When was the last time he’d stared so hard at anyone’s breasts? He didn’t know.

“He’s just…” As far as Duo could tell out of the corner of his eye, Becca was shaking her head in wonder. “Perfect. Eli, thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome,” Eli smiled.

“But seriously,” the sales clerk put in, “when did they start making Ken dolls with penises?”

From this angle it wasn’t a certainty, but Duo thought the back of Barbie’s outfit narrowed into a thong that would not, of course, fit between her buttocks since there would be no real groove there, but would at least suggest. In the last few years Mattel had started adding texturing to Barbie’s crotch area to suggest panties, but this model, fortunately for the current aesthetic, was one of the older ones without that embellishment.

Becca shook half-clenched fists in the air in excitement. “I need to go get some stuff for him. I need to go to the fabric store.”

“I can hold the fort,” the clerk assured her readily, obviously having expected this, “if you want to go right away.”

Barbie’s studded leather armbands were interesting — more in the question of why she wore them than for their own merits — but Duo couldn’t look at them for long. Because her boots — where had those boots come from? It wasn’t that Duo interested himself excessively in Barbie fashion, just that by necessity he happened to know a lot more about it than many people did… and he’d never seen boots like that on a Barbie doll before. If they were homemade, they were the most professional-looking homemade Barbie footwear he’d ever seen. Could you get stuff like that at a fabric store? They were the same shiny black leather (or imitation thereof) as her leotard thing, and they came all the way up past her knees. The buckles in front were almost confusing to the eye, and he could tell by the bows peeking out from behind her thighs that they laced up in back.

“Can I come with?” Eli said this with the air of one taking the first big, scary step down a path long eyed but never until now embarked upon. “Buy you lunch on the way?”

“Eli, you just got me, like, the best present ever,” Becca protested with a grin.

“Yeah, but I’m hungry,” Eli shrugged, doing a really good job on the nonchalance — better than Duo had expected, actually; he must have practiced.

“OK, fine,” said Becca, turning a complete three-sixty and patting her pockets as if trying to determine what she had on her right this moment. “Just let’s go now. I want to make something like that for him.”

Duo couldn’t see where she pointed, what kind of outfit she had in mind, but he also couldn’t help joining in the laugh of everyone else besides Becca at her adorable excitement and enthusiasm. His laugh was quiet enough; even those that had held him wouldn’t hear it through the glass.

The land definitely lay differently than he’d realized. Obviously to Becca, who must have created the outfit the Barbie across from him wore, a penis doll wasn’t nearly so creepy as it might be to many others, and in fact was something she specifically wanted. And clearly Eli had known that. Eli had anticipated, in fact, every little nuance of how this would come across. Knowing she would appreciate the offer but at the same time fully aware of exactly how creepy it still might seem; knowing also that it would be a professionally welcome item but wanting it to come across as a personal gift — yet, again, not wanting to seem like a weirdo trying to send an inappropriate message, Eli had been in an interestingly awkward position. Of course Duo could only guess at all of this, but he could also easily spot the potential dilemma, and thought he assessed the situation correctly.

It made him a little sad, now, that he hadn’t initiated a conversation while he’d had the chance, as he came to the realization that Eli was truly a decent guy. Maybe decent enough to have accepted the humanity of the doll he’d bought at the Arc… though counting on that often proved unwise. And the opportunity had passed, since this display case made no good venue to try to start a friendship from, especially with someone that didn’t even work here.

“So what– I’m just curious,” Becca was remarking as she and Eli walked away from the counter toward the door– “what were you actually looking for at the Arc when you found that doll?”

“No, I was actually there looking for a doll with a penis,” Eli said in a tone that barely maintained its seriousness all the way through the statement. “I go check every month or so in case they have one.”

Becca’s laugh, half drowned out by the entry chime, was the last Duo heard of them.

Deeming it finally safe to turn his head and look around, he dragged his gaze from the nearby leather-clad doll and surveyed the rest of the room, as far as he could through the single transparent surface facing out from the island. And gradually he realized exactly why he’d been such a welcome offering here.

Two mannequins of shiny black plastic, which would be visible from outside through the windows that flanked the doors, wore outfits similar to the one Barbie did — one leather like hers, the other of a lacier and more ruffled variety but just as revealing. Behind one of them stood a rack of more clothing, apparently available for both male and female bodies and tailored for optimum exposure or at least suggestion of primary and secondary sexual organs. Duo wondered if Becca made it all herself. In the other direction, a rack of tubes and plastic bottles in a number of colors bore a sign that read, All lubricants / Buy one get one half off. In between that and some shelves full of whips, gags, masks, and various unidentifiable items of restraint, visible only with difficulty from his angle, Duo could make out a more distant set of shelves that seemed to be full of videos whose covers featured a lot of flesh colors.

That was about all he could see of his new home, and all he was likely ever to see if he retained this spot — though Becca would presumably have to pull him back out of the display when she had the outfit made and needed to get him into it — but he anticipated that listening to customers and staff discuss items in stock and purchases being made would shed light on what lay beyond his field of vision.

And all he could think, with a bemused sort of gaping he couldn’t physically affect but that was mentally just as slack-jawed as Becca had been at the sight of his penis, was, Well, this should be educational.

<<7

9>>

Season Finale (2008)

Felishawna was never silent, never even quiet. She chattered nonstop to anyone nearby, or to Duo in the absence of properly human companions, or to animals she happened to encounter, or to herself or the walls if necessary. When not talking, she sang songs of her own invention, or made strange noises with a perseverance that eventually grated even on a doll with 85 years of practice dealing with repetitive tedium.

He would have thought a child so relentlessly noisy would be impossible to lose track of, but it seemed the very constancy of her sound rendered it transparent so she blended into the background. She made no attempts at sneaking anywhere, yet somehow did it remarkably successfully; the fading of her childish vocalizations evidently struck those around her only on a subconscious level, very much like, say, the discontinuance of distant construction noises outside at lunchtime: it might be a while before anyone actively recognized their absence and asked, “Where’s Feli?”

Thus Duo felt little surprise when Felishawna’s relatives failed to notice she’d wandered out of the living room and into her uncle Leon’s bedroom. The doll was uniquely positioned to observe both that she’d done so and the lack of notice on their part, since she’d dropped him in the hall on her way at a near midpoint between the two.

She hadn’t turned the light on in her new venue of play, whether because she couldn’t find the switch, or couldn’t reach it, or for some mysterious reason reserved for herself, Duo didn’t know. In any case, she made scant noise in there — just quiet shufflings, as if she were pulling the linens off the bed (something she loved to do), and, for the moment, a sort of chant that was her childish version of a rap: “I gotta tell you a story about the princess and the time she was going out, fighting the bad guys of evil ray, being a pirate on Saturday, swim in the pool and the ocean lake, eating the hamburgers and the cake.”

Meanwhile, in the living room, most of the conversation between Felishawna’s mother and uncle could be heard even over the sounds of football from the television.

“I wish you would’ve stayed later last night,” Tonya lamented. “Mom got going about Feli again, and I bet she wouldn’t have if you were there.”

“Sorry.” This apology Duo could barely make out; he hadn’t seen much of Leon thus far, but already got the impression of a very calm and quiet person.

“You better look out if you ever get married and have kids; then she’ll be on your case too. But maybe,” Tonya added with a sigh, “only if she doesn’t like your wife.”

In the dark bedroom to Duo’s left, the shuffling sounds continued. He couldn’t see what Felishawna was up to — he lay on his face — but he could hear her latest song clearly, even more easily than the TV-obscured sounds of her relatives. “I’ve been deeming of a true-love’s spike, and a Pokémon who comes with Mike. So to meeve a mife of emless this…”

“Mom likes Estevan,” Leon was assuring his sister.

“Sure,” Tonya allowed grudgingly. “She likes him personally, but she doesn’t like us living so far away even though we both got great jobs out there and I love New York.”

“That’s probably a grandma thing.” Leon undoubtedly shrugged as he said this. “She doesn’t get to see Feli as often as she wants.”

Tonya gave a frustrated sigh.

In the bedroom, the child in question chanted, “Beetle butt, bootle butt, bitle butt, butt. Butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt.”

“It’s not just that. She thinks Feli’s problems came from her dad, or his side of the family. She blames Es for all the trouble Feli keeps getting in.”

Leon sounded surprised as he asked, “She said that?”

“No.” Tonya sighed again. “But I can tell.” She continued in a grumbling tone as if it were a direct follow-up, “There’s no way we can come back after that.” It took Duo a moment to realize, with some relief, that she referred to the football game and not her relationship with her mom.

Leon agreed regretfully, and that he didn’t question Tonya’s stated awareness of their mother’s opinion seemed to indicate he found the assessment undeniable.

“And the worst part of it is she might be right.”

“See, I’ma pold you, like you pold me, trash rules everything around me. See-ya la la la la lee-ya, la la la la bee-ya.” Duo vaguely recognized the song this was a take on, and, believing it to be about a prostitute, wondered if Tonya knew Feli had listened to it often enough to imitate it even this much. The child went on with more of her chanting version of rap: “She use to be the sweetest girl ever. Ever ever bevver. Now she’s the princess of all the world, all the burld. She’s gonna get you and make you do what she wants. Ride all the horses and do the dahnce. Do the dahnce, do the dahnce, do the dahnce.” She saw fit to end this repetition with a drawn-out hiss on the last sibilant before resuming, “See, I’ma fell you…”

“Estevan always had behavior issues as a kid, he told me, and a lot of it’s just like what Feli’s dealing with.” Tonya sounded downright angry as she protested, “But the answer to that isn’t to take her away from her dad and send her to live with her grandma across the country! It’s not like being around him is making it worse somehow; if she did inherit something from him, that’s, like, a genetic or chemical thing, not like he’s a bad influence or something!”

“So what is the answer?” Leon sounded truly concerned with his niece’s welfare.

Said niece had mostly ceased her shuffling, but was busy with another rousing chorus of Beetle butt, bootle butt, only slightly more adjectival this time: “Beetly butt, bootly butt, bitelly butt, beetly butt, buttelly, buttelly, buttelly, buttelly…” She seemed to be stuck on that word and enjoying it very much; she kept saying it for the next minute or so. She started tripping over the syllables eventually, adding extra t’s where she didn’t necessarily want them, and after a while shifted to blowing harshly through her teeth in mingled amusement and frustration.

“God, Lee, I wish I knew. The counselor at her school wants us to see an actual child psychiatrist, but Es doesn’t want to. He’s afraid they’re going to want to put her on drugs, and he doesn’t like that. He got through his childhood OK without drugs, and she’s so young…”

“And what do you think?”

“I don’t know. She’s such a good kid; she’s smart and nice and creative; she just…” It seemed a significant relief to Tonya to be able to discuss this with her sympathetic listener of a brother, and Duo was glad this vacation had given her the chance to do so. He agreed with her, too: Felishawna was a good kid, at least at heart if not always in practice.

And she’d come out of the bedroom now, as indicated by the random noises a few feet above the doll’s head. She picked Duo up and added him to whatever she carried, obviously acquired within, then turned toward the far end of the hall and the bathroom.

Here Duo could no longer hear the adults’ conversation — the TV with which their voices had always been in competition now conspired with Feli’s echoing speech nearer to Duo’s ears to drown them out — but he regretted this very little. The discussion might make Tonya feel a bit better, but seemed likely to have no other useful outcome. Even Duo, creeping up on a century of experience with children, didn’t know what to do for Felishawna; what chance did Tonya and Leon have to figure it out?

Feli couldn’t reach the medicine cabinet, which relieved Duo since he didn’t doubt she would eat something inside it believing (or pretending to believe) it was candy, but the items beside the sink and on the bathtub ledges were easily added to her collection of stolen goods. These included hand soap, aftershave, toothpaste, and body wash.

Duo had met children with the same prolificacy of oral noise as Feli, the same endless energy toward talking and singing and making strange sounds either for their own amusement or in interaction with others. They, like Feli, had gotten in trouble at school for never being able to keep quiet or for responding to statements made or questions asked with silly irrelevant chatter. The only cure for this behavior Duo had ever observed had been dogged repetition of commands to be quiet or to answer properly, and he felt this had only repressed the noise, not rechanneled it in the right direction or taught the kids how to manage and control it. He didn’t want to see Feli come to believe that expressing herself was shameful and become a sullen, speechless victim of a constant, “Shut up.”

A cheer from both adults in the other room overcame the television, and Feli joined in with an incredibly squeaky “Wooooo!” that sounded more like a ghostly whine than a cry of joy. She didn’t look up, though, from where she’d seated herself, legs akimbo, on the bathroom floor and started organizing the objects in front of her.

Other traits Feli demonstrated had been shared by other children in Duo’s past as well. She had a tendency to resent authority, and to do over-the-top silly things in response to direct commands, and Duo had definitely encountered that before on playgrounds and in schools and even in homes. Of course that led to trouble too, and Duo had never seen an adequate correctional process for it. The problem, he thought, lay more with the authority figures anyway, a problem that existed on too large a scale to hope much for.

The largest item Feli had purloined was a replica NFL jersey in pristine silver and black, and this she now arranged in a rough rectangle on the linoleum before her, crumpling its edges to create a sort of container. She sang nonsense words as she did so, but under her breath so Duo only caught the occasional ‘zoodles’ or ‘poopermooper.’

Where she got the energy for the ongoing activities and excitement that filled her life, Duo, like Tonya and her teachers at school, could not begin to guess. Well, no, that wasn’t quite true: the constant movement and noise and the thoughtlessness or even clumsiness that often came with them reminded him very much of the girl’s father, Estevan — a nice guy whose possession of these traits didn’t seem to have damaged his childhood beyond repair… but that didn’t help with the current issues.

Into the jersey Feli had now placed all the other objects she’d gathered except Duo. She began bouncing him from one to the next and the next, and doing his dialogue in a weird falsetto as usual. “Oh, I gotta get across… I gotta jump on the… stepping-rocks, and not fall into the swamp!” She paused, expression thoughtful. “I need a Real Swamp,” she announced.

Duo groaned internally as she then, clumsily with her small hands, popped open the bottle of body wash and began pouring it out onto the jersey. Since she’d left him lying in the swamp, he received a healthy dose of the gooey substance on his own body. He probably needed a wash anyway (well, he certainly did now). The bottle plopped down beside him, and next she unscrewed the cap on the aftershave. A much runnier liquid, it came out faster than she’d intended, and she giggled as she added its entirety to the bog. It made her cough, though, and Duo wished he knew what it smelled like.

Construction of the Real Swamp finished and the aftershave bottle taking its position as a stepping-rock, more satisfying play could commence. Once again Duo hopped from item to item, ‘narrating’ his journey in an absurd voice. Feli, almost immediately covered in body wash and aftershave, squirmed at the sensation of the latter’s ‘icy cold’ as well as the combination beginning to soak into her pants. Of course the jersey’s edges presented no significant barrier — they hadn’t even crumpled effectively in the first place — and soon the bathroom floor swam in a slowly expanding tide of personal care products.

Feli tried to sing a swamp song, tried to pretend she was foundering in muddy water from which Duo would have to rescue her, but signs of real discomfort from the aftershave marred her ability to perform or even to enjoy herself. Eventually she set Duo down again and started pushing the muck off her hands as best she could; her face threatened tears.

Perhaps because the little girl had gone silent, perhaps drawn by what must be an overpowering smell, Tonya entered at this moment. There was a prolonged lack of respiration as widened eyes twitched from one aspect of the disaster to another, and then the bathroom exploded into chaos. Tonya always tried her best not to react too harshly to Felishawna’s escapades, but this child would push any parent’s patience to its limits — and Duo thought embarrassment at today’s mayhem having been wreaked upon her brother’s possessions exacerbated her response.

Demanding to know what Feli had been thinking, declaring that she knew better than to do something like this, and with multiple interjections not quite profane expressing her various emotions, Tonya hauled Feli to her feet and pushed her toward the sink. Feli had begun outright crying, and every word from her mother’s mouth raised the volume until she was bawling and sobbing roughly. Not much more gently did Tonya ‘help’ her daughter wash her hands and forearms, demand of Leon in the doorway whether he had any washcloths, and begin scrubbing Feli’s legs and shoes. Feli complained incoherently through her misery that it hurt, that it felt like when she wet her pants (something Duo had known her to do at least three times since he’d been with her), and this did not improve Tonya’s mood.

From his bed in the swamp, the doll had a decent view of Leon at the bathroom entrance. His soothing words and mild suggestions of assistance had been totally ignored and overridden by his sister’s more forceful activities and tirade, and now he stood silently looking on. Whenever his gaze strayed to the possibly ruined jersey on the floor, he winced, but otherwise he showed no sign of being upset, and certainly none of being angry. In fact, though he’d schooled his handsome face into a somber expression appropriate to his niece’s misdeed, hints of amusement showed now and then, especially when Feli referred in anguish to her Real Swamp.

Eventually Tonya whirlwinded her daughter out of the bathroom. Duo heard her requesting a trash bag Feli could sit on so she didn’t dirty the rental car, and then there were hasty goodbyes. Out of Feli’s continued roaring Duo managed to hear the protesting cry, “Peanuts! Peanuts Hair!” She called him Peanuts Hair X. Correa whenever she hadn’t invented some context-dependent temporary name, so at least he wasn’t entirely forgotten. But that didn’t mean anyone extracted him from his slippery bath and allowed him to go with her, and soon her noises were muffled by the apartment door closing.

So there went that relationship. It had happened so fast, it was as if a guillotine had sliced down into his life and neatly severed him from his companion. Again. And he hadn’t even talked to this one yet. He hadn’t known what to make of her, what angle to approach her from, what reaction to expect. At that very moment, he began to consider it rather tiring and pointless to be so cautious about talking to people.

Whether he’d struck up a conversational friendship with her or not, Felishawna now numbered among those whose stories he’d become invested in but would never see the end of. Would her parents figure out what her deal was and how best to respond to it? Would she improve in her school performance and her behavior? Could she find some way, perhaps through her artistic propensities, to become a productive member of society in the future? Or would she die sometime from falling out of a tree not meant for climbing or playing with paper clips and power outlets? Once again, for the nth time, Duo would probably never know.

Yet this situation differed in several little ways from many in his past. Tonya and Feli had plane tickets back to New York tomorrow, but might they not swing by here and pick Duo up once Tonya’s desperate annoyance faded? Duo doubted it, but it wasn’t impossible. If they didn’t, might not Leon mail the doll to his niece? Sending packages no longer cost an arm and a leg; it could happen. And if he didn’t, Duo had already decided to talk to him. He seemed kind-hearted and not given to extravagant reactions; he might prove a better friend even than Felishawna — on whose progress he could keep Duo updated. In any of these cases, Duo would be able to continue following Feli’s story after all. Communication had become so much easier, faster, better these days. Maybe these days were just better.

That prospects had evidently improved so much gave him a feeling not precisely of hope, but of relative sanguinity. If distance travel and package shipping were more affordable and communication was easier… if times were better… if being separated from his caretaker no longer automatically meant the severance of all interaction with and knowledge of them… his life, such as it was, must become better as well. Surely this improvement must herald greater improvements to come!

After all, he hadn’t been left lying on his face this time. He wasn’t in a trash can or a doghouse or a forgotten toy-box. Sure, his hair and clothes were saturated with gunk he couldn’t smell or feel, his hearing a little muffled by the same, and he had no idea what Tonya or Leon planned. But he truly believed (perhaps only because he chose to, perhaps compelled by outside circumstances) that things were, just as he was, looking up.

<<8

I’m incredibly pleased with this collection of stories, and will probably have more notes about them by and by. For now, check out lebzpel on Tumblr, because their art is always, always worth looking at.

After being cursed by his best friend Trowa Barton, Duo Maxwell lived as a plastic doll from 1923 to 2010. Here is one story from each decade he spent in that form.

His Own Humanity: Nine Decades

Stories:
Tune In Next Week (1927)
The Gift of Friendship (1934)
General Dissent (1942)
Missing (1955)
Peace and Long Life (1966)
Annunciation (1976)
The Irony of Not Actually Being a Liar (1984)
It Hasn’t All Been Kids (1997)
Season Finale (2008)

Tune In Next Week (1927)

2>>

The Gift of Friendship (1934)

<<1

3>>

General Dissent (1942)

<<2

4>>

Missing (1955)

<<3

5>>

Peace and Long Life (1966)

<<4

6>>

Annunciation (1976)

<<5

7>>

The Irony of Not Actually Being a Liar (1984)

<<6

8>>

It Hasn’t All Been Kids (1997)

<<7

9>>

Season Finale (2008)

<<8

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After being cursed by his best friend Trowa Barton, Duo Maxwell lived as a plastic doll from 1923 to 2010. Here is one story from each decade he spent in that form.

His Own Humanity: Nine Decades

Stories:Tune In Next Week (1927)The Gift of Friendship (1934)General Dissent (1942)Missing (1955)Peace and Long Life (1966)Annunciation (1976)The Irony of Not Actually Being a Liar (1984)It Hasn’t All Been Kids (1997)Season Finale (2008)

Tune In Next Week (1927)

The Gift of Friendship (1934)

General Dissent (1942)

Missing (1955)

Peace and Long Life (1966)

Annunciation (1976)

The Irony of Not Actually Being a Liar (1984)

It Hasn’t All Been Kids (1997)

Season Finale (2008)

0 Comments

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Stories:
Tune In Next Week (1927)
The Gift of Friendship (1934)
General Dissent (1942)
Missing (1955)
Peace and Long Life (1966)
Annunciation (1976)
The Irony of Not Actually Being a Liar (1984)
It Hasn’t All Been Kids (1997)
Season Finale (2008)