The Dollhouse

Editor’s Note: The text presented below is an archived post from a film review blog. It is currently the sole piece of evidence in an unsolved missing person case regarding the disappearance of a twenty-three year old male from Australia. The name of the author, the date he went missing, and the title of his blog have all been withheld out of respect for the author’s family and to avoid potential litigation. However, there are a few important details that can be publicly revealed. All available sources claim that this post was the last post made on the author’s blog, which was deleted from the internet an unspecified amount of time after their disappearance. Some believe that the blog was eventually deleted from the internet at the request of the author’s family due to subsequent internet rumours surrounding the disappearance. Others attribute more conspiratorial motives to the deletion, believing it to be an elaborate hoax or a possible attempt to bury evidence of a murder. Regardless, it is still unknown exactly when or why the blog was deleted.

The fact that this final blog post still exists at all is something of a miracle, as it was randomly shared to 4chan’s /x/ board shortly after the author’s disappearance. The relevant 4chan thread itself was never archived, but copies of the blog post were downloaded and sporadically shared on various other obscure internet forums for at least a few years. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the relevant post has been properly republished outside of these forums. At the time of writing, no conclusive leads have currently been made regarding the relevant missing person case. Although this post is mostly devoid of personal details, anyone who recognises the events presented here and has relevant information is highly encouraged to contact their local police department. Please refrain from trying to directly contact the author’s family or friends. Thank you.

Hello readers! Yes, I know I did promise that my next post would finally be my much-delayed Tank Girl review, but that is unfortunately not what this post is about. Actually, this is going to be an extremely personal post for once. If you’re disappointed by this and don’t want to continue reading, that is perfectly understandable. As I have said on multiple occasions, I do try to keep my personal matters separate from my online hobbies, but I am making an exception here because I don’t know what else to do about my current situation. More than anything else, I want there to at least be a record of my recent experiences in case anything happens to me. And if my writing style here is more disjointed or distracted than usual, you’ll understand the reason for this by the end of this post.

Let’s start at the beginning. Against my better judgement, I had agreed to let my friends drag me along to an antiques show at a local mansion. This mansion had once belonged to a wealthy philanthropist family that funded the majority of my town’s construction several generations ago, but it had since been gifted to the local council once the family decided to take their business elsewhere. Shanghai’s business district had apparently been calling out to them for a while. Regardless, the mansion was now used for monthly council meetings and the occasional public event. Interested groups could rent out the building’s space for their own purposes, and so a local network of antique collectors and sellers held a market in the mansion’s main hall on the third Sunday of every month. I know that some people in our town have very strong opinions about the current usage of this historical site, but I personally have no strong feelings either way. I mean, I guess it is nice that an otherwise outdated relic of the past can still be of some function today. So many old buildings are just abandoned and left to rot, locked away from the public… sorry, I’m rambling now. I’ll get back on topic.

Some of my friends – I won’t use their actual names, for the sake of privacy – have an interest in antiques, and so this monthly market was something of a regular highlight in their social lives. I don’t really have any interest in antiques, but my social life had recently been pretty quiet, and the promise of getting a round of drinks together at a nearby pub afterwards was too enticing. I was even foolish enough to think that maybe I would find something that did genuinely interest me! I should have known better, of course. The market was extremely boring. I tried to keep myself entertained by making small talk with my friends, but they were distracted by the antiques on display. I don’t really remember exactly what had them so intrigued – I think a couple of rare clocks caught the interest of at least one person. I honestly wasn’t paying that much attention to what was on sale. But none of those details are particularly important right now.

At one point, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I had seen a couple of signs indicating there were public bathrooms somewhere in the building, and I thought they would be fairly easy to find. So I wandered away from the market in the main hall of the mansion, through the adjacent hallways. At first, I did not notice anything unusual. Rather, my thoughts were primarily occupied by the building I was in. The hallways were long and empty, plastered with old wallpaper of faded yellows and greens. Occasionally, I’d pass by some doors that opened up into large rooms with dusty chandeliers and sparse furniture. These rooms were derelict, with an ambient musty smell. Everything felt so lifeless and sterile to an almost unnerving degree. It was apparent this building was a mere shadow of its former self, gutted of its its charm over the years by increasingly utilitarian renovation.

It was only after a few minutes of wandering that I noticed I had not found any bathrooms. In fact, I was completely lost in the hallways of the mansion. This felt like it should not have been possible. The mansion’s layout was not exactly sprawling, but I felt as if I had been lured deep into some kind of maze. I turned back and tried to retrace my steps, and only found myself even more lost. As panic began to rise in my chest, I took a deep breath and told myself to remain calm. Although this situation was somewhat confusing, there was nothing actually unusual about it. People do get lost in large buildings when they don’t pay attention to where they’re going. And anyway, this was my first time in this mansion. I didn’t know the interior layout, so of course I could easily lose track of where I was while absentmindedly wandering around.

I ultimately decided that I had no choice but to keep wandering, believing that I would eventually find my way to either the bathrooms or the main hall. But this was just wishful thinking, as things only got even worse. First, the twisted maze split into multiple floors, separated by staircases. I knew the mansion was supposed to have two floors, but I discovered at least five or six floors during my exploration. Then, the layout of mansion seemed to defy logic and became architecturally impossible. The hallways and rooms that I travelled through should have cut through each other at multiple points, but they never did. If my cynical readers will excuse the comparison, I felt as if I was lost in the halls of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. I am ashamed to admit that, eventually, my natural urges got the better of me, and I resorted to pissing against the wall of some long empty hallway.

Obviously, it is impossible to tell exactly how long I wandered for. There was nothing to measure the passing of time, and my own senses felt like they were slowly unravelling. I am surprised that I did not go insane during that time – or maybe I did actually go insane without realising it. Regardless, I estimate that approximately an hour passed by the time I saw the first mannequin. At least, that is how I would describe it. Located at the end of yet another anonymous hallway, rendered in smooth blank plastic that was as white as porcelain. I was a little surprised by this, but I told myself not to think about it too much. The appearance of a random mannequin was the least of my concerns. After several minutes, I saw another mannequin, identical to the first one. After a few more minutes, yet another mannequin. Now I was beginning to get suspicious.

Then the mannequins began to appear dressed in garish colourful outfits – neon, androgynous, and trashy – as if they had just stumbled off the fashion show set of Liquid Sky. They also now had hair, coloured and styled in equally bizarre ways. As I passed by them, I realised upon close inspection that they also wore excessive makeup, often with bright floral patterns. The skin-tones of these mannequins had also changed to a range of varying shades that were somewhat life-like yet still fell into the uncanny valley. They also seemed to be always staring at me, regardless of where I was in position to them and despite the fact that they never actually moved. At this point, I was properly disturbed by these things. The changes in their appearances made it seem as if I was being haunted by some conscious presence. I tried to ignore that possibility, as I feared that acknowledging it would only drive me into complete insanity. But it continued to linger in the back of my mind.

I wondered what else would change about the mannequins as I continued onwards. As it turns out, nothing about the mannequins themselves changed, but they started appearing in numbers. First as couples, then groups of three, then groups of four, and so on. Always staring at me, as if expecting something from me that was beyond my actual knowledge or ability. I became increasingly anxious about their near-constant presence – well, more than I already had been. Yet something kept me from being completely paralysed by fear. Despite nearing physical exhaustion, I somehow felt that staying in one place would be more dangerous than to keep moving. There was no logical basis for this belief, but I chose to stick with it anyway. Besides, staying still would obviously not get me anywhere I wanted to be.

Eventually, I reached a hallway that was entirely blocked off by a row of several mannequins. I walked up to them, seeing if there was a gap I could squeeze through. For some inexplicable reason, I really didn’t want to touch or move them. There was no way for me to fit through the blockade, so I sighed and turned around, ready to head back the way I came. But, to my horror, the hallway I had just come down was blocked from other direction by a new group of mannequins. I turned back to the row in front of me, and out of desperation, I tried to move some out of my way. But they remained stuck to the ground like concrete statues. Panicking, I glanced back behind me. There were more mannequins, and they were several metres closer to me. I turned back to the other group, and their numbers had increased too. I stumbled back in shock, stuck between these two groups of mannequins that grew closer and closer when I wasn’t looking directly at them.

In less than a single minute, I was completely surrounded. I felt cornered, like a scared animal in a cage. I could see the details of the mannequins faces up close, and they had changed once again. Still stuck in the uncanny valley, but scarily close to resembling human flesh. Whatever these things were, I could no longer deny that they were somehow alive. And then, finally, I saw them move fluidly, like real human beings. The crowd parted, letting one particular mannequin walk towards me. They had a strange aura of superiority that the others lacked, as if they were some kind of charismatic political leader. Their hair was neon orange, and they wore a PVC dress coat embellished with clashing zigzag patterns of golden yellow and bright magenta.

“What do we have here?” they asked. Their voice was soft and androgynous, and their face bore a calm expression. “A new visitor to our Dollhouse? Please, tell us about yourself.”

“I-I’m just lost,” I managed to stammer out. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here…”

“Of course you are!” the mannequin interrupted. “You would not have ended up in the Dollhouse if you did not belong here. It is the Dollhouse itself that decides who belongs here, not its visitors. And you are one of its many visitors.” Saying that, they gestured to the mannequins around them. A sudden shiver ran up my spine like an electric shock.

“Look, I really want to leave,” I said, trying to excuse myself. “I have some friends who are probably waiting for me.”

“You’re scared of us?” the mannequin titled their head. An amused smile spread across their face. “How precious!”

They reached out an arm, placing it down on my shoulder while I silently trembled. As soon as their hand touched me, I felt a paralysing coldness spread throughout my body, a freezing numbness overtaking my mind…

And then I woke up in bed. Certainly an anti-climactic conclusion to the dream, but I still felt anxious and bewildered. I don’t think I’ve ever really spoken about this on my blog before, but I never remember any of my dreams. Perhaps I will occasionally remember the vague details of a dream, but only once a year. I don’t know why my brain works like that, but it has been that way since I was a young child. Despite that, I somehow remembered this dream in vivid detail, every single minute of it, as if it was actually something I had recently lived through. But I quickly brushed it off as nothing more than an extraordinarily rare event, with no deeper meaning. I simply got up and went through the regular routines of my day.

Eventually, it was bedtime once again. As I settled down into my bed and pulled the warm covers up over my body, I thought about the dream from the night before. In retrospect, it was almost amusing how bizarre the dream was! Getting lost at an antiques market and then stalked by living mannequins? It sounded like the plot of some absurd surreal movie I might have seen at a film festival several years ago, probably mixed with some sick subconscious Freudian shit or something, I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it that much. Drifting to sleep, I wondered if I would have a similar dream that night.

Of course, I found myself back in that Dollhouse dimension again. Things were different though. I found myself in one of the mansion’s large rooms, but the lighting had been heavily dimmed, giving the room a moody atmosphere. The faded wallpaper patterns of yellows and greens had been replaced by dark pastel shades of purples and greens. A soft layer of blue velvet pillows and bedspreads had been set out across the entire floor space. Various mannequins were strewn about around me, resting across the flooring. Most of them were cuddling and kissing, but some were gently fucking, keeping their moans as quiet as possible. Until then, I hadn’t even realised that they had any genitalia.

Meanwhile, I was laid out on on the floor, completely naked. My head was resting in the lap of the mannequin who had greeted me before. They sat over me, applying makeup onto my face. As I tried to look around and take in my surroundings properly, I noticed how incredibly stiff my body movements felt. My brain told me that I should have been panicking, but I was so incredibly happy and comfortable, even though I didn’t quite know why.

“You know, you should consider yourself lucky,” the mannequin was saying. “The Dollhouse only picks a new visitor every several years. Out of billions of people, it chose you!”

“Do you have a name I can call you?” I asked. My voice sounded fuzzy, as if I had been sedated.

“Names aren’t that important here,” the mannequin replied. “I have an honorary name, since I have been chosen to speak for the Dollhouse. But it’s not a name that can be pronounced by your tongue. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“Oh, okay,” I woozily mumbled.

As I write this, I find it difficult to describe how calm I felt in that moment. The panic in my brain was slowly dying down. It felt so nice to relax and simply exist while this mannequin fawned over me. The sensations of their makeup brush on my face and their fingers running through my hair was almost hypnotic. I almost started purring from how good it felt. I heard the mannequin softly chuckle, sensing my happiness.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” they asked. I nodded in response. Words seemed a little too difficult for me in my relaxed stupor. Besides, I didn’t really need to talk. I could just lay back and keep feeling good without needing to worry about anything. It was at this point I realised how… excited, for lack of a better word, I had slowly become, whether because of the attention I was receiving or if there was maybe something strange in the air. I let out an embarrassed groan, hoping that the mannequin wouldn’t notice my arousal. Since I had no clothes on, they were obviously very quick to notice. I heard them gasp cheekily after glancing at my crotch then staring directly into my eyes, before they reached down and gently prodded at me, wetting their finger with a thin layer of my precum. Without breaking eye contact, they reached back up and licked it off their finger, grinning the whole time. I was absolutely mortified by the sudden turn of events.

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” they chuckled. “That’s perfectly normal here. However… I can feel the Dollhouse telling me that this is not the kind of sexual expression that feels authentic to you. There is a desire for something else. Am I correct?”

“I-I, uh…” I blushed bright red. Despite the lack of clear explanation, I knew exactly what they meant. I’m still too embarrassed to put the desire into words here, but you will see what I mean. “Y-yeah, I mean, um…”

“It’s okay, I understand,” the mannequin said, putting a finger to my lips to shush me. They let out a sharp whistle and beckoned for the nearest mannequin to come over. I glanced over at this new mannequin as she scurried over. I can’t say for sure if these mannequins actually have gendered identities, but the new mannequin presented in a stereotypically feminine manner, so I will refer to her in such terms to distinguish her from the other mannequin looking after me. I apologise for using such a crude method of distinction, but the internal logic of the Dollhouse is still completely alien to me, and I am doing my best to explain it in a way that will make sense to my readers.

Anyway, this new mannequin came over and sat down beside me. With a touch like that of an angel, she reached out and grasped my erection, causing me to involuntarily whimper. Then, to my surprise, she began to push down. Rather than offering any physical resistance, my body simply submitted to the pressure. A completely alien sensation overtook my lower half as my genitals effectively turned inside-out (or perhaps outside-in might be a more accurate description). My dick retreated up into my body and shrunk away into nothing, forming a moist slit that I soon registered as my own vagina. While this was all happening, the mannequin above me reached down and started massaging my chest. This massaging soon turned into a more violent squeezing and pulling, and I felt the flesh on my chest start to shift, being shaped like clay into feminine breasts. I tried to tolerate the strange pain by biting down on my lip, but my nervous sysem was completely overwhelmed with these strange transformations happening at once.

By the end of it all, my mind felt like it had disintegrated into a million pieces. The sensations were like nothing else I had ever felt in my entire life, and I was still processing what had just happened to me. Without even thinking, I had started breathlessly panting like a dog while I tried to recollect myself. I slowly sat up, gazing down at my altered state. I don't quite recall what my immediate reaction was, due to the immense brain fuzz I was still reeling from in the moment, but it must have been good because the mannequin behind me seemed pleased with my response.

“You like it?” they asked, their voice brimming with excitement. I silently nodded, and turned back to look at them. It felt like their bright starry eyes were staring directly into my soul. “Wonderful, wonderful! Let’s get you fitted for your new clothes then, shall we?”

The mannequin wrapped their arms around my body and lifted me up onto my feet. Once I was steady, they grasped my hand and led me out into the hallway. As we exited the room, I noticed a few things. Firstly, the wallpaper of the hallways had changed to chequered patterns of black and crimson. Secondly, in the somewhat brighter light of the hall, I could see myself better. I realised that my skin had become smooth and featureless, like the plastic shell of an average store mannequin. This sight finally shocked me back into hesitancy about the situation that I was in.

“S-so like, uh, what exactly is going on here?” I asked timidly. As I spoke, I noticed that my voice was distinctly more soft and feminine than it was before. “Am I dreaming or something?”

“Many mortal creatures have tried to understand the Dollhouse, and all have failed,” replied the mannequin. “As I said, I am just a conduit. The Dollhouse can speak through me, but I do not claim to understand it. But to answer your question-”

They suddenly stopped in their tracks and turned to face me. I almost walked right into them! I looked into their eyes and saw that they had become dark and empty.

“The Dollhouse is a waking dream,” the mannequin said. Their voice was cold and stiff, and their face was blank and expressionless. “You are dreaming, but your body is here. Anything that happens to your body here will not happen to your body when it appears in your reality again.” Then their eyes changed back to normal and they smiled warmly. “I hope that answers your question!”

The answer made no sense, but it made me realise something important.

“Wait, so I can speak to the Dollhouse through you? I can ask it questions?”

“You may try, but I cannot promise that it will answer you.”

“Okay, well, um…” I paused, thinking about what I would want to ask. “Is the Dollhouse listening right now?”

“The Dollhouse is always listening,” the mannequin replied.

“Ah, well, hello Dollhouse,” I said out loud, awkwardly glancing around the hallway. “I hope you’re doing well. Um, I guess I just wanted to maybe ask a few questions, if that’s okay with you?”

The mannequin just watched me silently. No response.

“So, uh, I mostly want to ask…” I paused again. “What exactly are you?”

“The Dollhouse is nothing and nowhere,” the mannequin answered, their voice once again turning cold and their eyes becoming dark. “It exists outside of being and time. It does not exist in a way that matters. It is will. It is spirit. It is place. It is a bridge between worlds, but a bridge that only leads back to itself.”

“But once you enter, you can leave again, right?” I asked, confused. Once again, I didn't understand the answer. “I mean, you already let me go home once.”

“Chosen visitors to the Dollhouse receive temporary orientation sessions before they become full visitors,” the mannequin replied. “To become a full visitor requires willing submission to the Dollhouse.”

“And what if I don’t want to do that?”

There was no response.

“Look, just let me go home, okay?” I said, getting frustrated. The Dollhouse was apparently operating on a logic that couldn't be explained to me in a way that I would be able to understand. These questions were just a waste of time. “I don’t want this.”

“You do not know what you want,” the mannequin said. “But the Dollhouse has chosen to grant your request anyway. Besides, you will return to us again when you are ready.”

“Wait, wh-”

And then I woke up again. This time, I was not so quick to dismiss what I had experienced. Like before, all the vivid details were stuck in my mind. Clearly, these had not just been dreams. I don’t know how to explain it, but I somehow knew that I had experienced something truly supernatural. And I also knew that if I fell asleep again, I would be stuck in the Dollhouse forever, unable to leave. I was absolutely terrified. I told myself that I had to stay awake at any cost. And so, I have been doing exactly that.

At the time of writing this, it has been over eighty hours since I last slept. I have kept myself awake through a steady diet of caffeinated energy drinks. Over the last few days, I have already spent nearly two hundred dollars on Red Bull and Monster Energy. The sleep deprivation is catching up with me. Everything in my body aches. I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this. Each movement causes me deeply visceral pain. Standing up sends jolts of pain throughout my entire nervous system. It constantly feels like there are thousands of ants crawling under my skin. At the same time, my sense of touch has become so dulled that if I try to relieve these itchy sensations, I worry that I will draw blood from how hard I have to scratch just to actually feel anything.

My current mental state is just as bad, if not worse. Everything feels like fighting through a thick wave of fuzzy static. Even the most basic thoughts feel difficult to formulate. Writing this post and recalling the events that led to it have left me mentally exhausted. In the last dozen hours or so, I have started developing severe mood swings. Without warning, I often feel myself rapidly shifting from suicidal depression to ecstatic mania and then back again. I have no control over my feelings or behaviours. Occasionally, I feel myself beginning to slip as my brain and body scream at me for sleep. Every time this happens, I can feel something tugging at the edges of my consciousness. It is obviously the Dollhouse, trying to drag me back to its realm. Feeling that gentle tug snaps me back to reality, and I quickly chug down another energy drink in response.

I don’t want to live like this any longer. I know I can't fight it forever. Minute by minute, I have slowly accepted my inevitable fate. Whatever awaits me on the other side of sleep is preferable to this pathetic excuse of a life. Of course, there is another way out, but I can’t bring myself to commit suicide. I would rather disappear from reality than leave behind a dead body for my friends and family to mourn over. If I am simply gone, they can imagine I am still happily living somewhere. Perhaps they will even imagine that they could eventually see me again. Letting myself disappear, to be taken by that strange Dollhouse dimension, is the only thing I can do at this point. It doesn’t feel like a choice I can even make for myself. This is just fate taking its course.

Before I finally let my fatigued body rest, I have to get this entire story out of my system. Nobody I know in real life would believe me if I told them this. They would think that I’m crazy. Well, maybe I am crazy now! None of this makes any sense, even as someone who actually experienced it. But my truth has to be told, even if that means posting it on my film blog that only a few dozen people read. Maybe it will reach someone who understands what happened to me. Maybe it will help someone who is having similar experiences. I honestly don’t know. It doesn’t really matter that much. Nothing matters to me that much anymore. I just want there to be a record of these events somewhere.

And what if this has all been entirely irrational? The more I think about the Dollhouse, the more I think about how safe and comfortable I felt there, being pampered and dressed up. If I had to describe that feeling in just a few words, I would say that everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. Would it really be such a nightmare to live like that forever? To give up my name and humanity to be just another nameless happy object in the Dollhouse? My brain is telling me to be scared, but I don’t know what I’m actually supposed to be scared of anymore. I don’t even remember what I was scared of before. And what if the Dollhouse is the true reality, and I am simply dreaming of myself as a human being? Besides, what would I be leaving behind in this dream of a life - a world dominated by political turmoil, global warming, and military conflict? This is no dream. It must be a nightmare. It is time for me to finally wake up and enjoy the real world.

This will almost certainly be the last post I ever make. To my readers, I wish you a bright future. I hope that you can all be lucky enough to join me in the Dollhouse one day. Until then, please take care of yourselves.