“Does master want Suiseiseki to give him a footrub-desu?” she purred.
“No thank you,” I said. “I’m rather tired. You should retire to your box.”
“But master-sama, Suiseiseki doesn’t like her box-desu! I want to sleep in master-sama’s bed-desu!”
“Not tonight. You’ll do as you’re told.”
“Why doesn’t master-sama have real girls in his bed?”
“What?!”
“Is master-sama’s penis too small for real girls?”
“Why aren’t you saying desu?”
“Does he have to use dolls instead?”
“SAY DESU! SUISEISEKI FINISHES HER SENTENCES WITH DESU!”
“Master-sama showed Suiseiseki his penis once.”
“DESU! MASTER-SAMA SHOWED SUISEISEKI HIS PENIS ONCE DESU!”
“It was too small even for dolls.”
“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU’RE NOT SUISEISEKI!”
With my right hand I snatched a pair of scissors from my desk and mashed them continually into her face. Her little body was smashed into kindling but I did not stop. Until her screams began to sound a bit like my voice, and I remembered that dolls did not scream, and they did not bleed. Suddenly there was feeling in my left hand for the first time in weeks. I lifted it out of the doll’s wreckage, covered in splinters and dripping from scissored wounds. How long had my hand been inside there? How long had I been inside here, alone in my one-room apartment, talking to myself, going mad?

The bolt scraped rust from the latch as I stepped outside. My eyes hurt, god the horizon … it was a deal larger than 19 inches diagonally. But after five steps my breath quickened and my chest tightened and I turned back. Enough for today. Tomorrow I would try for six. A distant memory told me that when I reached two hundred and eighty, I would make it to the bus stop. And then I’d be free of this apartment, of this prison. And then there’d be nowhere in the world I couldn’t go.

Least of all the refunds counter at Moemart in Akihabara. For fuck’s sake. Suiseiseki finishes her sentences with desu.