Demon's Hide

The Living Dolls

Female Main Character x Male Monster

Pain and grief caused my soul to wander after I had died. I had slipped on ice, stumbling home drunk one evening, and when I hit my head, the snow buried me. I can sometimes still feel that cold. I feel it down to my fingertips, I feel it my chest. I am no longer alive, but I am also not dead. I hovered in a void between life and afterlife. I could see flashes of the world around me, familiar faces, growing cities. Sometimes, I felt as if they could see me. I would try to reach out to them, but all too soon, it was gone.

One day, I noticed a man standing before me. He was alive, and he was calling me. He offered me his hand and a chance to fix my pain. He told me he would help me find peace. I wasn't sure if I should believe him, but I took his hand anyway. He pulled from the rift between life and death and gave me a chance to heal.

The Maker, as so many call him, created for me a physical form I could inhabit. It wasn't a body of flesh and bone, but it was a body. I was a porcelain doll of my former self if I stayed still I looked like something a little girl might play with. I looked like me, or well, the old me before the grief took hold. I was young with blushing cheeks and wearing my old clothes. It was strange though when I looked in a mirror. I looked lifeless and yet I lived.

The Maker gave me this form, promising me that if I were patient, the pain and misery that kept me from moving on would be healed. I'm not sure how he plans on doing such a feat, hell, I barely believe him. What can he do to help me? What can being a doll do to move me on? Sometimes I wish I had just stayed in that void.

The Maker provides me with a decent life. He's given me a piano, so I can practice my art again. Although, much like before I died, I do not feel the call towards music anymore. I had once been celebrated as one of the finest composers of my time. I was called a genius, the Wild Stag of Concertos. But I soon grew to hate music. I lost my muse to my own hand, and therefore I gave up my passion.

I met the love of my life when we were both still young. I was working as an assistant to a composer, and she was a member of the ballet. She became my muse, my divine inspiration. Every note of music I wrote was for her. Every song and concerto was my love letter to her. Elise Dieudonné, the Lioness of Ballet.

We kept our love affair secret for years. It was against the rules for her to take a lover and getting married meant she would have to forgo her career as a dancer. I never wanted her to stop dancing, I wanted her to dance to my music. So we hid our passion. With each passing year, it grew and grew. My talented soared, and I was hailed as the best composer of the century. She danced and rose to become the Prima Ballerina.

But happiness is all too fleeting.

I am not the only creation of the Maker, there are others like me within his shop. There are others, like me, who were trapped between this life and next, all struggling with something painful that kept them chained to this world. There is a doll house with a lone, young woman inside it. She lights candles in the evening and plays the violin. There's a mask on the wall that is both hideous and beautiful, depending on the light that falls on it. Somewhere between beast and man, he often talks about the ocean. There's a lamp, whose base is a young woman in a pink ball gown with a dog at her feet. She doesn't move much, and her light doesn't work.

There is also another figure like me, Yannik. He's my confidant here and one of the few who even wishes to talk. He has the head of an Owl, and it can twist all the way around. His body is human though, it is only his head that is odd. Back in life, he was a psychologist who taught at a prestigious academy. He doesn't say which though, but I don't feel much like pushing the issue. He doesn't question me about my pain, I return the favor and don't question his.