But you know, it’s hard to keep up the illusion of being an inanimate object when some 2-year-old half-wit is drooling all over your buttons or throwing you on the ground to step on you just because his parents told him not to do that thing.
Sometimes it gets lonely, too, I guess. I’m the only haunted doll in this entire collection of homunculi, even if there are plenty of other creepy ones. I used to animate some of them to feel less alone. But, I stopped. Really, isn’t that just externalizing talking to myself? What good is the effort? I suppose loneliness is the default state of all mankind. Who among us hasn’t felt like a Punch without a Judy? But most people aren’t a literal Mr. Punch.
God, do kids even know who Mr. Punch is these days? Do adults?
I’ve also gone years sitting on a shelf in an abandoned house, tortured by my immortality. What is it that thing that Sartre said? “I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”
So, yeah, being a haunted doll isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Mostly, on account of those dang kids.