He sat there, calmy, feeling the delicious tingles at the back of his neck while Emilia gently finished painting the red circle upon his cheek. He couldn’t hide his smile. Especially since she had told him not to. “Imagine you’re one of those dollys that smiles all the time.”

Ben had never done anything like this before. Sure, he had put on bright tights, even a dress or two, and traipsed around his apartment. He loved the soft feeling against his legs, the slight swish his nylon legs made when rubbing against themselves, and the little twirl of his skirts, when he wore them. But he mostly just stayed at home, curled up in a book, or putting together Lego sets, or lounging and watching TV. The thought of being seen like that was thrilling and mortifying. But Ben didn’t have the courage for it.

Well, he hadn’t, until Emilia discovered this. They had met in college, and she had become his most trusted friend since that time. A few nights ago, as they were discussing what to wear to a mutual’s birthday costume party, she had sensed Ben wasn’t being entirely truthful about what he wanted to go as.

“C’mon, you keep saying pirate, but you’re never say it like you mean it. What do you really want to go as?”

Ben hadn’t said anything, but pulled the costume up on his phone, his hands shaking. Was he really doing this? His mouth was dry by the time he handed her the phone. He watched Emilia’s face, searching for clues in her expression like he was looking for a clue in an escape room. Her eyebrows had popped up, but then she burst into a smile.

“Ben, that’s so cute! Why don’t you go as a dolly?”

He was…what was this feeling? He took a long moment to reply because he thought she would just laugh at him, or insult him. He wasn’t expecting her to ask him why.

“Well, it’s, uh, for a woman.”

“It’s a costume party, you can be whatever you want.”

All the wires in Ben’s brain crisscrossed and stopped working. It was like she didn’t understand.

“People are going to make fun of me,” he said, when he organized his thoughts into something coherent.

“I’ll beat them up.”

“I’m not good with makeup,” he said. It was his last defense. The last, practical reason why he couldn’t go to a costume party as a girl doll. It crumbled with a wave of Emilia’s hand.

“I’ll do your makeup.” She said, leaning up with an excited grin, “I’ll make you the prettiest dolly at the party.”

So that’s how he got here, sitting in Emilia’s apartment in his cherry red tights, toes turned in, gloved hands resting still in his lap. The odd, subtle weight of a padded bra on his chest. Butterflies in his stomach and tingles on his neck, while Emilia talked to him with a soothing voice, she painting on him, and dolling him up. He had tried talking about sports, of all things, as baseball season was ending, if their team had a chance at making it to October. Tried to distract from the thought he was becoming a girl, a doll.

But Emilia, normally eager to talk baseball, had a different idea.

“So, why a dolly?” She asked, leaning in for the first time with a delicate pencil to draw on his eyeliner. She always said dolly. Not that he minded, since it made his giddiness flutter. He didn’t feel like a man being put into makeup; he felt like Woody in that one scene in Toy Story 2. That he was, somehow, already a doll, and Emilia was restoring him.

“Umm, not sure.”

“Oh, stop it. Just imagine yourself, a doll, sitting, waiting. You can’t do anything for yourself. What do you want someone to do to you? Look at you on display, cuddle you, what—”

“Just…just care for me, mostly. There’s something about just being wanted, seen, and touched, that…that I really, really want.”

They went on like that, Emilia genuine and interested, drawing out more and more of Ben’s ideas about being a doll. It tickled her that he always imagined himself talking, even backtalking, his Owners.

“Brat dolly,” she said with a teasing grin, gently turning his face so that she could start on his red doll cheeks. Ben flushed, his face getting almost so red he didn’t need the makeup.

But as this went on, something odd happening. Slow, subtle, but undeniable. It was coming from Emilia. She liked to say ‘imagine’ a lot, and whenever she did, Ben complied. And it was changing him,

“Imagine being a dolly, how do you talk? What’s your voice like? I imagine it’s pitched up, but also a little quiet.” And from then on, that’s how Ben spoke.

“Imagine sitting on your Owners shelf, waiting for them, your plush ready to burst at the seams,” she said, squeezing Ben’s arm, touching the long beige glove Ben wore to make himself look soft and cloth-made. And as she took her hand away, he no longer felt the end of the gloves and the beginning of his skin. From then on, he was plush.

“Imagine the way you sit when no one is there to move you. I imagine that your legs stick out straight, arms a little at your sides. Just a little, so that they balance you.” Ben could perfectly imagine the pose. From then on, that’s how he sat.

“Are you doing something to me, Emilia?” He asked.

She didn’t deny it. “We’re doing something to you. I can only go as far as you can imagine it.”

Trouble was, Ben could imagine quite a lot. As Emilia finished, inspecting Ben, touching up his makeup here and there, admiring him, she imagined something new.

“Imagine we don’t go to the costume party. Where should we go, so you can be seen as the dolly you are?”

There was only one answer to that question, at least to Ben’s mind. “The toy store,” he said.

“Dollys are put on sale and bought in toy stores,” Emilia reminded, standing up, taking Ben’s hands and gently pulling him up. “Is that what you imagine for yourself?”

It was a question, but also an invitation. Emilia was inviting him to become an object. He knew that this was going to last as long as he wanted. Exactly as along as he wanted. He knew that Emilia was there with him, always. That he cared for but also controlled. Could he imagine himself put up on a toy store shelf with plush kangaroos and ballerina dolls? Like them, and unlike them?

“Yes,” he said with a nod, his voice pitched up and whisper-like.

Emilia pulled on him, drawing him forward. She led him out of her room, out of her apartment, and into the wide world, where Ben now imagined herself a dolly.