I was afraid the rest of that night. I couldn't help it. I was alone in a dark box in a dark garage; a $1.00 doll who would probably be sold off tomorrow to someone who didn't know me and didn't care that I was human. I kept reminding myself that I was human; that I was supposed to be human. But it seemed like every second that passed, I lost a little bit more of myself to my plush and cotton body. I couldn't imagine myself with fingers, let alone my wicked nose. I was a doll.

Sleep, or what passed for sleep in the toy box, came sparingly. I was afraid I would dream of being on stage again, of my friends laughing at me. Or playing with me. I was afraid of Tad's lighter. I tried to dream of mom or dad, but they never recognized me. And so I always returned to the dark toy box.

Eventually, I sought out someone different. I went to dreams again and thought of the doll that I was now; of the girl I had been. She appeared in the dark world of my dream with a frown. She looked like me. But different all the same. I was a tough bitch and made a point never to wear anything cute. She was in a long black shirt and pink tights. Her eyes were puffy and red.

"Yes, Buttercup?" She asked meekly.

"Don't do that." I stuck one of my round hands toward her. "Don't call m. . ." She backed away, and I realized my voice had been a little loud. I looked down at my new body. My colorful bug costume and balled hands. My antennae bobbed down to the top of my vision, and I could just see my round pink nose between my eyes.

I simply couldn't take it anymore. I felt like I was wasting too much of what I had left to deny that I was a doll. The realization hit me like a wave and I collapsed to the ground. I fell Just like a rag doll if she had been dropped by her owner. "I'm sorry." I said, "I'm just . . . I'm just so scared. And, I'm sorry for making you cry."

The doll with my . . . my Imposter . . . my . . . Mac crossed her brows, "Buttercup, you didn't make me cry." She stepped forward by one half step. "And what are you afraid of? You're a happy little doll."

"I'm scared of the dark." I croaked. And then I chuckled, "Of all the things I'm scared of right now, I'm most scared of the dark. I can't even imagine my way out of it."

Mac quirked a smile. "I never liked the dark much, either." She took a step forward. I looked her up again and was shocked by the realness of her. I saw her perfectly in my dream, as if it wasn't a dream. I looked down at her legs wrapped in neon pink tights.

"You'll never pull off being me with those pixie stockings." Mac put one embarrassed foot over the other.

"I don't need to be you, exactly. I can be you, but a bit brighter." She frowned, "at least I hope so."

I snorted. "You know you're in a metal band, right. And that you play bass?"

"That's what scares me. I thought about the lights and the noise and the crowd and it all terrifies me." She walked to me across the black void of my dreamscape, and sat down across from me, her own legs scissoring out like mine.

"That goes away." I said, sighing. And then, she reached her arm out and held my ball hand. When I did nothing, she pulled me up to her. I didn't help, but I didn't hinder. I let this impossible girl pull me into her arms and squeeze my stuffing body. She was actually warm in my dream.

"Do you think your fear of the dark will go away?" She asked me, her head nestled in the crook of my neck. The girl's warm breath tickled as it danced across my chest.God, it was incredible. That first, amazing hug I felt as a doll, and it was only in my dream.

She took everything away. Every doubt and fear I had was dumped into her body, and all was right with my world. I was a doll, and I would no longer hate it or fear it, but instead I would love it. I sat in that moment of tranquility for seconds or minutes. And then with no warning at all I pulled myself from Mac's grasp and sprawled out on the black floor of my black dream. I couldn't let myself become too comfortable. I couldn't want to be a doll.

I saw Mac resting on her pink legs with her hands in her lap. She had her short black hair pulled back from her face, and I could see the utter confusion in her blue eyes. She held out her hands, silently asking why.

"You liked it. The hug, I mean, you liked it, didn't you?"

"Yes." I didn't mean for it, but I still heard bitterness in my voice.

Mac looked to me with eyes that used to be mine. They didn't so much look at me, but through me. Really, she was concentrating on something in her own thoughts. "Then why did you pull away? If you enjoyed being cuddled, why not be cuddled all the time?"

"Because if I like it. If I like this --" I motioned to my plush body, "too much, I'll forget that I want to be human again. There are a lot of things that are good about humans."

Mac smirked in a way I had never done; with happiness instead of scorn. She raised her hands and twiddled her fingers. "Like hands."

"Exactly." I paused a moment, then added, "I keep expecting the devil me to appear."

"What?" Mac asked.

I sat up and faced her, "Well, aren't you my good angel who is trying to convince me to stay a doll?"

Mac's eyes narrowed and she calculated my words, then she opened them with a creased forehead. "I'm not your inner Angel; I'm really Mac. Well, I am now. You know."

"What?" I asked.

Mac smiled. "Wait right here, and don't worry about anything. I'll be back real soon."

Her body began to vanish back into the formless dark, as if she was just a mirage. I suppose the was, but I still shouted to her.

"Mac, wait!" I said. Then the void of my dream disappeared as well, and I was once again in the cramped toy box, my plush body pressed against the lid. The terror of the dark started to overtake me once again, and I tried desperately to get back to my dreams.

I didn't hear the door open, nor did I hear slippers pad across the garage, but I did hear the box lid creak open, and I did feel my plush body breathe once again, and I did see Mac's smiling face, illuminated by a flashlight. "Hi." She said quietly. Her large hand reached into the box and picked me up, barely squeezing my stuffing.

She wore a long black shirt and pink tights. "I think you might like being a doll a little more if you stayed with me." She pressed me up against her body and pulled me away from the $1 box.

It was the best thing to happen to me since I became a doll. A part of me hated Mac for that, but I told that part of myself to shut the fuck up. I began to feel, as I was pressed up against Mac's body, feelings that were not my own. I felt her joy and happiness at her hands and moving body, her worry about fitting in with the human world. I felt all of these things as if they were my own.

We came back to the guest room, and to the queen sized bed I had shared with Yvonne. Space in my grandma's house came at a bit of a premium, and neither Yvonne nor I were prudish about sharing a bed. She was sleeping as she always did, half covered and spread out like she . . . well, as if she was just as much a rag doll as me.

Mac slipped back into the covers and she snuggled me tightly against her warm human body.  She curled up into a ball, with me right at the middle of it all. Her feelings began to overpower my own. Her simple, naive joy got the better of my fear of being a doll. Her excitement of exploring her new human world got the better of my boredom of not doing anything.

And so, wrapped in warmth, I closed my mind's eye. I dozed off into real dreams that a real doll might have. For the first time since getting dolled, I felt happy.