You don’t care where the doll could be tonight

"You don't know who the doll could be, that one, over there," D looks toward the doll.

"I don't care," M follows his gaze anyway.

"You don't care where the doll could be tonight," D laughs.

M thinks the mannequin—D insists on calling all of them dolls—is watching the store with a satisfied smile. The blue eyes know too much, though. D wanted M to notice that about it. That's how it goes, over and over again.

D points something out and M falls into the time-spending trap of considering it. But those eyes hold questions.

"Those people over there," D glances toward a group of shoppers, "the grown up ones, the children, they don't get being a doll. They think it's all fun and games. They think it's all the same thing over and over again. But that doll waits for them."

The ones over there think we don't have autonomy, M thinks. They think they have it where they live. Those blue eyes, that knowing mouth, they say, "Nope, it's not true there." Where the mannequin with the blue eyes is, that there.

"Remember the Twilight Zone?" he asks D.

"Ever see Doctor Who?" D asks him.

"The mannequins come alive, take over. They are aliens or something," M answers.

You don’t care where the doll could be tonight

"We used to watch," D replies. "When they put us by electronics and left the TVs on."

The dolls move in the world. D and M move in the world. At night.

Mannequins run the people. The people buy clothes off their racks, off their backs. D and M bought clothes off the racks.

All those closets are full of puppet-master clothes that run the people's worlds. D's clothes and M's clothes brought them to this store, where they joined the mannequins.

"You've wasted more time," M says to D.

"What else is there to do?" D sighs.

"Find where whoever took our bodies took them to."

"That was forever ago. They are long gone."