Hannah did her best to hold the wooden dollhouse walls still with one plush hand, while readying to hammer the nail into place with the other. She sat among the broken pieces of the pink house, some of which had already been patched, though badly. The whole situation incensed her; it wasn’t her fault!

She had just come to the toy store to pick up a toy for her nephew when she heard the shouts and the laughs from an aisle over. Turning the corner, three teen boys of monstrous proportions bounded down the—

“Hey! Were you daydreaming again!?” Mr. Foreman said, his little arm waving in front of her eyes.

“What? No!” She shook her head and refocused. The little foreman, a plush doll she could punt across the store, and wanted to, tsked at her.

“The job’s not going to get done if you keep getting distracted like that.”

“I know.” Hannah said in frustration.

“And you won’t get back to being a person if—”

“I know!” She said, driving her hammer down too hard, and breaking what she was supposed to be fixing. Hannah threw her head back in a sigh.

The whole thing was rotten. She hadn’t been the cause of the commotion. She hadn’t just tripped and fallen into the dollhouses, breaking them. But she had been the one left in the aisle when the store owner-slash-witch found her. And she had been the one punished for it.

“If you just listened and did what I told you, you’d be much more on your way to leaving the store.” Mr. Foreman said matter-of-factly.

The store owner appeared at that moment, all cheer and curiosity, but made a little pouty frown when she saw the progress – or lack thereof. “Brooke, you’ve been working on this for hours now and this is all you have to show for it?”

“First, my name’s not Brooke. Second, I have plush hands and plastic tools! Third, like I told you, I don’t know how to build dollhouses!”

“Well, that’s why I enlivened Mr. Foreman, so he could advise and direct you.” She turned to the small plush, “Are you not helping her?” She asked.

“I am, ma’am! She just finds it hard to listen.”

“I am not taking orders from a doll.” Hannah exclaimed, feeling like the only sane one in the store.

The store owner, the witch, thought about the situation for a moment. “I simply must have these dollhouses repaired in decent time, and I can’t have communication issues getting in the way.” She whisked her hand and Hannah recoiled some, before the strange tingling magic roiled over her. Something…changed, though as Hannah looked at her plush hands, her plush body, she wondered what it could be. “Now, Brooke, I am putting you under Mr. Foreman’s control. You’ll do what he says, when he says, for as long as he says.”

Hannah sputtered in disbelief while Mr. Foreman nodded approvingly.

“This is for your own good, as it should get you back to normal more quickly. The less time you spend as a doll, the less chances someone will have to buy you.”

It wasn’t the first time she had dangled the threat of being purchased, and Hannah felt the tickling of butterflies inside her once again while she imagined that fate.

“Mr. Foreman, I direct you to keep Builder Brooke on task and productive. I trust you can do that?”

The little doll gave a salute with his pudgy doll mitten before turning to Hannah. She gulped, already fearing the way that she was going to obey him. This whole situation went from bad to worse.

“Now, first thing’s first: let me teach you how to swing a hammer…” Mr. Foreman began, with Hannah preparing to do everything he said.