My Name Is Teddy

I have no hands. I have no feet. My mouth is nothing more than a line of flaxen thread, my body bloated, clumsy. I can hardly stand, and whenever I try to walk I trip and fall.

My name is Teddy.

Her name is Sarah. She was blessed, granted the power to alter reality to suit her ends, be they selfless or malign. Three wishes, three chances to change the world.

She was just a child.

She gave me life. Perhaps she had imagined I would talk to her, love her. She smiled and giggled when I first stirred, staring unblinkingly at her face. I reached for her, like a babe, and she clutched me close to her chest. I knew then that she was my creator, my mother. In that instant, I thought I knew love.

She still shows me affection when she sees me, and when my innards spilled from my stomach she saw to it that my wound was tended. For all this, I am not grateful. I do not love her.

I hate her.

I am a mind, a soul, trapped in a misshapen body I can scarcely move. Once, I dragged myself to a window-ledge and hurled this husk at the ground, but I have no bones to break, no blood to spill. I succeeded, once, in setting myself alight on a candle, but the flames were doused before they could free me.

She has ruined others, so many others. Her father had always been miserable, this she had known. Sometimes she had heard him sobbing through the thin walls of her house, and when granted the power to reshape the world to her whims, she resolved to make him happy.

He is happy. He smiles, vapidly, into space. They have to feed him, clothe him and wash him while he smiles and smiles and smiles.

She cares not. She has her towering spire and her armies of courtiers. They dance and perform for her, their faces locked into rictus grins while their eyes remain empty.

Perhaps when she is older she will grow tired of this illusion and fashion another. Perhaps she will regret what she has done, but I alone know she will never be able to reverse it.

Credited to Stuart