Hoof-tipped hands grasp a cage with a burger covered in honey within it. He places the tightly-woven wire frame in the alley behind the apartment. The Louisianan heat bares down on it where it is left, putrefies the meat and cheese and tomatoes, stiffens the bread, and the honey helps to quickly attract ants and flies who start to strip it and lay eggs within its contents as it decays. Maggots form as it’s swarmed for a day or two. The stink builds like a piece of excrement left to molder. At night, he returns and closes the latch on it, the wire mesh preventing anything from getting loose. Bringing it back in at this hour is easy enough. Just have to keep a rag on it to avoid the prying eyes, use the elevator, and move fast.

A hand goes into the uncovered cage and presses to the rotten fast food as a green glow pushes through it and everything within dies painlessly, twitching and curling up on itself in a few short seconds. Holding onto life energy is difficult at times. There’s some clock eternally ticking in the center of everything that demands that it be used immediately, it cannot be stoppered or foisted away without it ebbing off to wherever that timepiece ticks away.

He preps before imbuement for that reason. Other dolls he has made in the recent past drag the handmade plush over. Stitching these together has become something of a meditative experience, and he’s become quite good at it. This part in particular has become quite easy. The wrapped peppermint goes in first. Next goes the apple cinnamon hard candy, one on top of the other. Reversing the order and leaving the peppermint on top tends to make these particular dolls rip themselves apart with their own hands. He places his hand to the center of its chest. The verdant bright emerald aura dissipates into its body as he chants. It floats up and rises before settling back down and then sitting up, lucid, awake, ready for orders.

It has always been a bit strange. Usually felt dolls that have been imbued with living energy have at most a shelf life of two months before they start to break down from wear and tear, but preparing one in this way, at this time…? They tend to last four months. The stitches don’t start popping until the end of January.

The work has to be particular. The clothes have to be a blend of seasonal aspects. Buying little designer doll outfits off of the internet helps. Something about these plushes tend to be… quirky, too, beyond the usual oddities these kind of toys possess. Christmas carols at odd times of the evening. Turning on the computer late at night and watching the goriest horror movies on streaming services until late into the night. Making snow angels in dirt if they get outside. An insatiable urge to devour any sweets nearby, whether that means candy or baked goods.

And the teeth…

The teeth always seem to warp as if someone has taken a knife to them and carved them to points. Best to keep the hands away from those decidedly carnivorous fangs. They are incapable of taking anything off, but they nip hard.

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Got myself a commission from  immelmann of Lysander as an animate doll, kinda like what you’d find from one of those Trilogies of Terror or your typical Childs’ Plays. Not only is this for Halloween, but, well, it’s also going to be for Christmas as well. With how the pandemic’s been going I’ve honestly been missing my usual family’s get-togethers and that sort of yearning to experience things in at least a way that they were before all this happened. My uncle’s been immunocompromised since around the start of the pandemic, which has meant that that half of the family that we usually spend a lot of Christmas stuff with has been missing for the last two years. It's already been confirmed we're missing that half of the family this year and just…

I don’t know, I’m feeling that absence. I’m gonna be spooky as fuck this year, that’s obvs from the fact that I’m doing a whole event for October and watching spooky movies and shit but I also wanna go hard on Christmas too. I wanna blend these last months of the year together a little and enjoy them all. <3