Chapter Text
Gracie had kicked and screamed.
She had cried and shouted for help, shrieked at the top of her lungs for Todd, for people that would never hear her pleas.
They heard her pleas though.
They heard her begging for mercy, begging for an end of the suffering.
She had felt them, tearing at her flesh, tugging at her limbs, their teeth snagging on her clothes. They had seen the tears streaming down her face, had seen her blood splattering everywhere.
For a long time, all that she could hear was her own voice, her shouts reverberating through the storage room she had taken refuge in when the… whatever it was started.
But the pain ebbed away after a while.
She became numb.
A heavy metal clanging interrupted the critters purge of her body, and for the first time in what felt like eternity, her body was allowed to rest without those little monsters eating away at her.
The room was silent. At least she thought it was.
Some part of her acknowledged the heavy iron cast leg slamming down right in her peripheral vision, the sound unable to make it to her ears making her feel disorientated even more than she was before this metal thing arrived.
It looked almost like a spider leg, something an insect would have and it was obviously attached to something.
The sounds of voices echoing through the room reach her brain, that feels like it's moving in slow motion, the words muffled as though her head were underwater.
Why couldn’t she hear what they were saying?
Is she really that broken?
A tear trickles down out of the corner of her eye, the pain roaring back up around her, as violent as the ocean.
She had followed orders and this is what she got?
They have no idea how much she had to lean on her acting skills; how many times she had gotten no sleep thinking about the things she’s done.
And she’s sorry.
She’s so sorry for everything she’s done to these toys, to these children.
Death is far too good to be true, she deserves so much worse.
Gracie can only hope that these... children don't agree.
There’s more movement around her and a flash of needle thin metal resembling fingers grasping around her head.
There’s no air left for her to scream her mouth as dry as a desert so, she stays limp allows herself to be dragged, a trail of red following her as they go deeper and deeper into what Gracie knows is the labs.
She had only ever seen a few select rooms through the live feed while she talked to the toys, for something the scientists told her was ‘conditioning’.
She hadn’t questioned it at first but by the time she did her moral compass was irreparably damaged and there was no way out of the horrible predicament she found herself in.
She had started collapsing under the stress, the toys all starting to look like monsters with sharp teeth and an inescapable rage for her.
They had every right to be mad at her.
They still do.
She’s glad that she’ll die. She deserves so much worse.
The burning flames of pain drain into the background as everything slowly fades to black.
Maybe she won’t wake up again.
Unfortunately, Gracie has never been that lucky.
When she next awakes it’s to the feeling of her skin being slowly, agonizingly peeled off her body, like petals of a flower.
Lava burns through her veins, liquid pain flooding her body.
She swears that she can see her arteries pulsing in time to her rapid heartbeat, her blood smeared everywhere.
The long needle fingers are back, wielding a scalpel, cutting her abdomen open in one clean calculated swipe, her flesh separating and parting at the command of his sharp tools, like Moses and the red sea; but the ocean of crimson refuses to obey his orders.
He doesn’t seem to care though, the scalpel is gone and those long slender fingers delve into the space created, his fingers grasping at her insides.
Gracie opens her mouth in a silent scream, unable to thrash away from his cold touch, from the torrents of agony clasping her nerves and squeezing tight refusing to let go.
The torment doesn’t seem to end, even as she slips back into the darkness.
It seems to go on for hours, pulling out of her unconsciousness as every organ is pulled out, tugged out without her permission as she is repeatedly moved to be submerged in the red-orange gel that only aggravated her wounds more.
Then… darkness.
She couldn’t feel anything anymore.
The pain was over.
Has she finally died?
Can she be free again?
A piercing white light flicks on in the centre of the room; the source embedded into the ceiling, looking suspiciously like the ones that lit the labs.
With the new light enabling her to see, she observes the room, for any indication she isn’t still alive, that she isn’t where she thinks she is.
Her eyes glide across the walls that she sickeningly recognizes, the familiar floors and the smiling toy box in the corner of the room, the one where all the bad toys went, the one where hundreds had undoubtedly died.
Even the screen on the wall is one she recognizes despite only having ever been on the other side of it, never looking in from this angle.
But… surely not… they can’t have done, they… they won’t have done!
With a sinking feeling in her stomach her eyes trail down to her hands… her hands that have been replaced by smooth plastic, reflecting the shine of the flickering light.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Gracie cries, reaching her hands, watching them follow her orders, to her face and trying to grip at it, the plastic surfaces simply bouncing off of each other, the sounds of them clashing filling the room as she desperately paws at her face, desperately tries to wake herself up from whatever bad dream this is.
Looking to her left, at the glass that she knew would not look like glass but instead display a grassy green field with red poppies, at her last hope she instead feels her heart sink and shatter.
Reflected on the glass is a face that’s not her own. Big oval eyes with black circles as eyes, a singular spiral eyelash branching off the lid, the absence of a nose so obviously wrong, and a head of purple hair resting atop her head in a bun.
She's a toy.
They had turned her into onto one of them.
“No, no, no, NO, NO! She shrieks, the reflection mimicking her as her mouth opens, her teeth nothing more than white strips of plastic, her pupils getting smaller as her eyes go red, the purple hair somehow unravelling from the bun at an offhand command from her brain.
She can control it.
Her despair and anger getting the better of her, she raises a fist, a fist made of plastic and punches the glass with all her might.
Again, and again.
The pain resounding through the hand, solidifies her worst fear.
The projector suspended from the ceiling sparks to life and her own face appears on the screen, the face that had been torn away from her, turning her into… this thing.
Ms. Gracie on the recording says something, but the real Gracie can’t hear her anymore.
Her eyes are blurring up with a sudden wetness, a tear teetering on the precipice of falling.
With a singular blink the tear runs smoothly down her plastic face, leaving no sign of it’s presence behind.
She’s nothing more than a doll now.
Nothing more than one of the monsters she helped create.
She can’t let them win.
Whoever they’re tyring to turn her into she’ll resist them for as long as she can.