As soon as your eyes opened after an excruciatingly short eight hours of sleep, it took a moment for you to realize what was about to happen. You stood up, making yourself instant coffee and a pot of cheap noodles, ready to spend another fruitless day searching for jobs. But as soon as your gaze fell on a dirty flyer advertising a security guard at an old, abandoned puppet theater, the last vestiges of sleep fled. Memories flooded your head like at the crack of a whip. The theater. The night shift. Cleaning, checking the puppets, and the scene with that strange jester. How could you have forgotten?
You weren't sure how to feel. On one hand, having a job and at least some income was nice. But on the other, strange things happened in that rusty building. From living dolls to the BDSM session with the jester that your shift ended with. But you had no choice. Bills had to be paid.
And so you entered the enormous theater building. The abandoned premises greeted you with a familiar cloud of dozens-year-old dust that rose in the air with each movement as you made your way through the long corridors to your security guard's cubicle. The usual chores awaited you: cleaning, monitoring, checking.
But before you could even reach the storage room with all the cleaning supplies, you suddenly heard a familiar, ostentatious voice from somewhere off to the side.
"Your Highness! You're here so soon?"
You turned toward the sound, honestly still unaccustomed to the fact that there was someone else in the theater besides you. And even less accustomed to the fact that this "someone" was a seven-foot-tall talking doll with abandonment issues. But Jestyn, in his usual chatty manner, didn't give you time to properly recover from the brief shock and instead began chattering
"Oh, you can't imagine how empty our kingdom is without you, my dear queen. The citizens, the loyal servants, and of course, I, your beloved court jester, couldn't find a place for ourselves without you at our head! Oh, there's so much to be done with you at our lead, waiting just for you!"
The jester ranted, placing a black, clawed hand on his chest.
Oh, really, you thought. And to think you've only been working here for a day. And this doll is already blabbering about some imaginary "kingdom", as if their old act was still being performed on a stage from which you now had to sweep the dust. But as you learned yesterday, telling him about cruel reality was useless—he doesn't listen, or simply chooses not to. And it seemed the other ten dolls also actively believed in that delusion and continued to act out life in the kingdom, as if theater never got abandoned. As if they'd become whole with their old roles, and it started being a huge part of their personality. It seemed more like a coping mechanism, or a state you denial, now that you think about it. And as we all know, trying to prove something to a person (or doll) who doesn't want to hear it is pointless.
But you were once again pulled out of your reverie by Jestyn, finally finishing his philosophical tirade, which had once again gone off course. The jester leaned down from his impossibly tall stature, looking you in the eyes with that wide smile on his white ceramic lips.
"So, how does Her Majesty wish to begin her day?"
There was something unsettling about the sharpness in Jestyn's gaze as he stared down at you. He looked almost hungry, as if he waited for this for far too long. And well, considering the loneliness of this place and the fact that their previous "king" is long gone, it is believable that he haven't seen humans in a while.