I love roses.
Mostly because they hurt when I squeeze the stem. It reminds me of Emma, not because the pain is similar, but because of the way something so delicate and beautiful can cause such intense sensation.
I also like them because they're the color of my hair, but that's more of a secondary reason.
I've known Emma all my life. She found me when my mother died and took me here. I was young at the time, and so was Emma. I was a skinny, little thing walking around covered in blood. Mostly from dead things. After Mama died, I had to feed myself. Not that I killed anything—after all, I was just a child, I mostly scavenged food from corpses.
I still sometimes walk around covered in blood, but nowadays it's usually my own.
Today I'm in a clean white dress. No blood. Sitting in my chair beside the window. Outside the window lay a vast area of barren wasteland. No trees, no grass, no birds or bugs, just nothingness complemented by blackish soil and a red sky.
Before Emma took me here. I was in a place with much more life to it. Not that it mattered, as long as I had Emma, nothing else truly did matter.
I hummed lightly to myself as I stood from my chair and looked around the wooden cabin that served as my home. The cabin was simple, small, and interconnected. No rooms, just a small open space with a small fireplace, a table and chair in the middle, and a bed pushed into the corner of the room.
"I wonder when Emma will return", I said to myself, moving to my bedside, and looking under it to retrieve a brown suitcase. I laid the suitcase on the bed and opened it. The contents were a display of gifts Emma had given me over the year. A stuffed bear, a variety of shiny gems, and other small things not worth mentioning.
Among the neatly organized pile lay a single photo. My most prized possession. The photo showed Emma and me together sitting at a small table in the middle of the room.
Slowly, I removed the photo, holding it carefully, and I gazed into its contents, two adult women smiling at the contraption that took the photo. I, with my red and wavy hair, sit across from a smiling beauty. Her scarlet eyes, her cloudlike white hair cut short, and her blue dress coming together to make a sight so radiant that for a moment you forget to think.
I kiss the photo softly before returning it to its proper place among my pile of treasures. Then I slide the suitcase under my bed.
When I first came here, to this cabin, I was always trying to do something out of boredom. Like trying to catch dust or stacking the chairs. Emma would scold me for the latter, though, in all honesty, it was Emma's fault for leaving me to my own devices back then. Nowadays, I just sit and wait like a good girl.
I love Emma.
Yet she leaves me so lonely sometimes. How do I explain it? It's a dull ache, a hunger, maybe something more. I think that's why she gave me you. But I have to admit, you'll never be a replacement, and never could be one.
Even with your fluffy little body that snuggles with me at night, and your two button eyes that gaze into my very soul. You'll never give me true warmth, and no matter how much you see, you'll never truly see me.
I pick you up from my bed.
"Mr. Snuggles"
That's your name. It's kind of embarrassing saying it out loud, but it's only you and me.
I sit at the table and fidget with my eyes. I always wondered if that hurt on your end? You've never complained, so probably not. I wonder if it would hurt if I pulled your eyes out. After all, you never complain, no matter what, and neither do you cry.
My fidgeting turns into something more, something full of malice, not full of purpose.
"Scream for me."
I want to hear from you. I pull on your button eyes roughly. The string is coming loose as I pull and pull, yet you don't scream.
"Disappointing"
I stop abruptly; your eyes now dangle, but I didn't go so far as to rip them out—probably because you didn't react at all.
I kiss your soft forehead.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Snuggles."
I slowly brush a hand through my hair. Emma washes it for me. I remember her gentle hands as they were laced in my hair.
Emma hates dirty things, but she has a habit of making such a mess.
She twists me, pulls me, reshapes me into something new every single time she touches me.
It really is a shame she's not here often.
"Mr. Snuggles?"
You don't respond.
Rude.
Still, I pick you up.
"Dance with me, will you?"
I hold your arm as I pretend you're something you're not. Dancing around the table, swirling and twirling, all the world blurring as we dance away, is loneliness.
"Just me and you."
I find myself singing.
"A lovely little world for just me and you."
It's relaxing and calming to do this.
"Together forever and ever and ever."
Ah, this is fun.
I wonder if this is fun for you? I hope so, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. Emma says that things that are yours should do what you like.
And. You. Are. Mine.
After a few minutes of a little dance, I finally feel tired. So I move to the bed and lie down. Closing my eyes. The darkness consumes me whole.