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My name is Frederick Nealsen. And I am a slave.

For over ten years, I have served Her will. I have heard Her called many things in that time. The Puppet Queen. The Harlequin. The Wooden Girl. None of them can really be called her name. To give something a name is to know some aspect of it. But She defies understanding. She is all the chaos and power of a hurricane, striking with destructive fury and then fading away into the air. She speaks words of love with malice, and coats Her threats with affection. The same hand She uses to gently stroke your face will also be used to crush your throat, and you never know which of the two She will do when She reaches for you. She has forced me to love Her with more adoration than I believed the human heart could carry. And She has permitted me to hate Her with a loathing that burns brighter inside me than any star.

The sun was shining the day I met Her. I’d just finished my shift, making sandwiches inside a chain grocery store, and had gotten into my car. There’d been nothing particularly unusual about the day. Had it not been for my meeting with Her, it would have passed into the blur of forgettable days in a forgettable life.

After starting my car’s engine, I glanced at my rear view mirror and saw, to my surprise, a girl sitting in my back seat. There was nothing too visually remarkable about her. You could have picked almost any high school girl off the street, and ended up with someone similar. She wore a gray shirt with her blue jeans, and long dark hair that obscured her eyes from my sight.  I had just started to ask the inevitable questions about her presence when She lunged at me and wrapped a tiny string around my neck, trapping me against the seat’s headrest and squeezing the air out of me.

“Your name is Fred Nealsen.” She said in a disinterested voice. “26 years old. Eldest son of Patrick Nealsen, deceased, and Samantha Nealsen. You have a younger brother, Richard Nealsen. You work in the deli at the grocer. You live in apartment 203 of the Riveria Apartments.” She let go of the string, and I could feel glorious air coming back into my lungs. “Now drive me home.”

When She gave that order, m hands grabbed the steering wheel, and my foot pushed down on the accelerator without any conscious will from me. We pulled into the street, and my foot pushed even further down, accelerating us well beyond the speed limit. I thought about stopping the car, but my hands and feet wouldn’t follow my commands anymore. We swerved through traffic, nearly hitting other cars dozens of times. When we sped through a red light, I heard the crash of cars behind us that had tried dodging out of the way. At another intersection we turned right so sharply we nearly fishtailed into a stop sign. Traffic was stopped ahead, due to congestion from an elementary school having just let out. I was sure we would crash right into the back of one of those stopped cars, but at the last second my hands yanked the wheel right, pulling us onto the sidewalk. I didn’t see what happened next. I kept my eyes closed the whole time. But I heard the screams of parents and children jumping out of the way, and the thumps of those who didn’t move fast enough.

When I opened my eyes, we were back on the street. I glanced at the mirror, and saw the girl was still sitting in the back seat, looking out the window with a bored expression. I continued driving, taking seemingly random turns, until we came to an older part of town that I wasn’t familiar with. There were significantly fewer people outside, and most of the buildings looked abandoned. The car finally screeched to a stop in front of an old theater. Some traces of the building’s old paint and the remnants of a few show posters remained clinging to the walls, but most of the building had decayed into a shanty mess of rotting wood and haphazard repairs, with a crude broadcasting tower built of scrap metal atop it.

My hands let go of the wheel, but they still weren’t acting on my will. I stepped out, and opened up one of the back seat doors. The girl was now wearing a long black dress, although there had been no time for her to change clothes. She stepped out of the car, and looked at me with a smile. That was the first time I saw her eyes. Both glass, with blue irises painted on. They looked as perfectly normal as glass eyes could, but when I looked at them, it felt as if I was looking into the depths of Hell.

“We’re in time for the show!” She said with an enthusiasm that strongly contrasted with Her previous boredom. She wrapped an arm around mine, and pressed Her body against me. “Let’s hurry inside.”

My legs continued to act on their own, walking with Her through the rotting doors and into the theater. A spotlight shone one us as we came through the door, temporarily blinding me. I heard a loud applause, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw all the seats in the theater were filled. It was a varied collection of people, with no consistency of age, race, or gender. The only common theme amongst them was that they all had some kind of injury. Several had limbs in a cast, or bruises on their faces. In spite of that, they all smiled at the girl and me, continuing their applause without break.

The spotlight moved onto the stage, highlighting an extremely disfigured man in the center. He was hunchbacked, and his face looked like it had been smashed with a hammer and then pieced back together by someone with only a passing knowledge of the human body. He cringed and tried to shuffle away from the light, but it followed him as he moved across the stage.

A knife had appeared in the girl’s hand while I was looking away, which She offered me. “Now’s the time for your starring role! Time to slay the monster and save the damsel!” When I took the knife, She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then vanished.

I heard a scream coming from the stage. The girl had appeared there, with a spotlight on Her as well. She was cowering from the hunchbacked man, who limped toward Her saying, “My lady, why? Please… please don’t….”

His words were smothered by Her shouts of “Save me!” My body obeyed that command on its own, running down the aisles and onto the stage. When the man saw me, he tried to run, but his malformed legs prevented him from moving quickly. I tackled him, and stabbed the knife into his spine. His screams of pain made me want to stop, want to give anything to stop, but my arm kept bringing the knife down. Once he wasn’t struggling as much, I flipped him onto his back and stabbed through his stomach. Moved the knife upward with a sawing motion, tearing aside the ribs as they were revealed, cracked apart the sternum with my fist, until I could see the heart. I cut apart the arteries and blood vessels until I could pull it out.

It was revolting. Had I been able to, I would have thrown up. Instead, I offered it to the girl. She took it from me, and held it up to better catch the spotlight. The blood from it ran off Her clothes without leaving a stain. Then She threw the heart off the stage and embraced me. “I accept your tribute, slave.” She pulled back a little, holding me at arms’ length. “You have offered me a heart, and so I will give you mine. My love will grant you your every wish and desire. And I only ask for one thing in return.” She let go of me, and my legs tried to kneel so fast they collapsed and my face slammed into the floor. The girl grabbed my hair and yanked my head up, so I was looking at Her. With a finger She wiped away the blood from my nose and said, “You must give every ounce of your love to me.” Then She kissed me on the lips, and my whole body felt like it had been dunked in ice. After that, my memory is blank.