The world inside a toy box is cold and black, and when filled to the fullest by stuffed toys, completely soft. I wanted to jump out of this soft Hell, break free of the cotton skin that wrapped around my plush and take back the body that should be mine. But I couldn't move, and could only wait for someone to rescue me.

It took almost half an hour after I had been left in the toy box before I heard a commotion outside, including the clodding steps of multiple giants. Each step made my little cloth body quake and shudder. Then I heard muffled voices and the box lid flew open, light flooded inside, and I looked up three faces: Yvonne's, my aunt's, and my own. The Imposter, the doll who took my face, looked right at me, smiled, and tootled her fingers. My aunt's mouth dropped open as she saw me and her other old toys.

"I can't believe mom kept all of these," she said, reaching down and picking me out of the box. My arms, legs, and head lolled back in her hand. She looked at me with caring blue eyes and she cooed a little. "She looks brand new." My aunt said.

"What's her name?" The Imposter asked, knowing full well what my -- or her name was.

"Buttercup." My aunt replied, touching my round pink nose. "I used to drag her around by her antennas."

"I don't think she liked that very much." The Imposter said. My aunt shrugged, then her eyes looked past me and her hand suddenly opened up, letting gravity take me to the ground, where I fell in an awkward pile of cloth.

"Oh my God! Terry Bear!" My aunt took a careful hand and slowly pulled a ratty brown bear from the toy box. The poor bear was well worn and missing several patches of fur to reveal a mesh and hints of stuffing. One of his paws limped along his side. Despite this, my aunt pulled the bear to her chest lovingly. "Terry Bear was always my favorite."

"Really?" The Imposter asked. "Not Buttercup?"

"I never much cared for Buttercup." I quickly turned my gaze to the Imposter, and for the first time since my transformation, my smile felt genuine as she looked away with downcast eyes and a bitter frown. It would have made my day if she cried, but she looked at my happy face and immediately rebounded.

My lame aunt shed a tear or two for Terry Bear, which she wiped away while she carefully put the bear back in the box. I was completely forgotten about as she stood up. That suited me just fine. I hated the way everyone was treating me like a doll at the time. "Thank you so much for this, girls." My aunt hugged both Yvonne and the Imposter. "How about we go get some lunch. My treat."

"That would be great." Yvonne said. My double nodded in agreement and the trio left the attic, their plodding making me jump at each step and shuffle, until I fell over on my side, then onto my face, so I could only glare at wood grain and dust. Then I heard quick running steps coming back to me and a hand clench my waist. It was the Imposter again.

"Don't worry, Buttercup, I still love you." She set me back in the box, waved her fingers at me, "Tootles." She said, and closed the box once again.

Being a doll in a toy box, with a little plush body pushed between the lid and dozens of other toys is, well, enjoyable. Did you ever make a big pile of toys and pillows and blankets as a child, and then jump into that pile? If you have, it's exactly like that. If you haven't, let me mourn for your childhood.

While it is very soft, the world is also very dark. Your hearing takes a more important place among your senses, and it's not silent in a toy box, as you might expect. You can hear cloth shuffling and moving, as if there are mice or a roaches peeking and crawling around beneath you. That doesn't take into account the creaking of floorboards, the spinning of vents, and other attic sounds.

But the most terrifying experience of my doll life came when my family came to move the toy box. Of course, I heard their thundering human feet that sent waves through my body. I heard their hands grab the edges of the blue box wood, then felt a retching vertigo as they lifted the box. I and all the other toys rocked back and forth as we were moved, and gravity pulled all of us toward the end of the box closest to my feet. This bobbing and moving continued on for minutes before the box was lowered and dropped to the floor with a quaking thud.

In the dark, with every moment the same as the last, time looses meaning entirely. My life for the next half day was broken only once, when the toy box lid was opened. My dad looked down at me, and I choked on my little plush heart. He didn't recognize me. He couldn't see his own daughter in front of his face. All because the Imposter had stolen mine. For the first time since I was ten, I wanted to run to him and call him Daddy. But I had to settle for staring at him as if her were a million miles away while he wrote on a sticker and slapped it onto the underside of the toy box lid. I had just enough time to see that it read "Dolls: $1.00 Each" before he closed the box lid once again.

Time passed and I found it more and more difficult to keep a single thought in my mind. They just kind of wafted into my consciousness, and then wafted out again. Something needed to happen desperately, or I might just lose my mind. I'm an active person, and I always need to be doing something, be it writing songs, or practicing, or hanging out. Of course, dolls can't do anything and my whole body itched to jump up and shake off this horrible pink and yellow costume. At this point, I would settle for just jumping and shaking. Hell, if someone came and played with me, I might not hate them forever.

I realized that, with little else to do, I had only my stunted imagination to keep me occupied, so I rolled my consciousness back into my fantasies. I dreamed myself on stage in the center of an arena, my black bass guitar strapped around my neck. Yvonne was behind me, screaming and pounding on her drums. Audrey belted into her microphone, and Tad ripped off a wicked chord. The crowd screamed and cheered. Taudry Lane was the top bill.

The song kept rockin' and everyone sounded great, but then it came time for my solo. I stepped up and began into my part. But the notes started coming out wrong. I couldn't hold my fingers down on the frets, and the strings started to push back into my fingers.

Audrey looked over to see what the matter was, and I looked down at my fingerless ball hands, strumming uselessly against the chords. She stopped singing. Tad and Yvonne stopped playing. The crowd dissolved into blackness. Audrey sighed, "What the hell, Buttercup? I thought you said you could play like this."

"No, I can play." I protested, trying to strum a few notes. But the sounds came out horribly wrong.

"God, and you're all pink and shit. Earth to Buttercup, we're a metal band. We can't even use you as a mascot or something."

"I say we burn her." Yvonne said.

Tad lit up a cigarette. "No problem, babe." He started to walk toward me. I knew that he would do it, and so I ran off stage as far as my doll legs could take me. I ran through a backstage maze until I came to the attic room. The Imposter was there. She had my face, my body, and my clothes, and she was sitting on the blue toy box. She smiled sweetly and held up her hands, "Thanks for these," she wiggled her fingers and laughed. "I love having real fingers; you can do so many neat things with them.

"You." I growled, "You stole my life!" I stalked to the Imposter and pulled back my already balled fist. But the Imposter jumped up and forestalled my punch with a great big hug, squeezing me around the midsection. I couldn't move at all against her human strength, but I still struggled to break free.  She pulled back and tickled my pink nose. "Here, let me brush your hair so you can look your best for tomorrow."

"Shove it!" I said, pushing her hand away, "I'm tired of being a little toy locked up in a box." I wanted to look angry and frightening. But that's hard to do when you can't stop smiling.

Of course, the Imposter smiled sweetly as she replied, which made me hate her all the more: "And soon you won't be locked in a box. Someone will come tomorrow and buy you and you'll become her favorite toy forever."

I snorted at the Imposter, "Why would I be someone's favorite? You weren't my aunt's favorite toy. She didn't like you much at all." The Imposter stumbled away at my cutting words.

"That wasn't . . . your aunt loved me very much. We had . . ."

"By the way, I bet you'll make a bad person. Do you even know how to read or write? Do math? God, and you can't even play an instrument. You're going to be a really shitty version of me." I raged at her, and maybe the edges of my happy face went away just a little. I never thought about how dumb I was being; my Imposter was, after all, the ONLY person who could free me from my plush prison.

Her face began to pout and the world began to grow dark. I quickly realized that for as much as I hated my Imposter, I wanted her around, just so she could keep me company. But she starting fading into a hazy image, and I started falling back into the darkness.

"No, no, no." I shouted, reaching out for her, "Don't go; I didn't mean it." But the Imposter left completely, and took the dream attic with her, leaving me standing alone in a world of black. My knees wobbled and I fell to the ground. I was a damn toy. I was a little yellow and pink butterfly doll with a happy smile painted on my face. But I had never felt so sad before. I was a doll, and I had just pissed away my only chance at being human again.

When I felt like this as a child, I would find one of my soft toys and bury my face in her. The soft fabric and stuffing felt like it would absorb all my sadness. But I didn't have any dolls with me now, apart from myself. So I wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my face in my own soft fabric.