I want to preface this by saying that I am not some sort of creep. I’m not an incel spending all my spare time lamenting that women won’t have sex with me because of my jaw structure, and I’m not some sick pervert with such elaborate and bizarre fantasies that real women can’t satisfy me. I bought a sex doll because I am, quite frankly, anxious to the point of near-disability.
It gives me no pleasure to reveal that during my 25 years of life on this planet, I have never been so much as kissed. The very idea of being intimate with another human being, allowing myself to open up and express my feelings to another person, deeply terrifies me. I am so utterly horrified of doing something wrong, of making someone angry, of being an inconvenience, that I simply avoid as much contact as possible with other people.
I was extremely lucky to inherit my house from my parents after they passed away when I had freshly entered adulthood. I don’t think I could have ever gone through the process of trying to find an apartment, much less find a roommate to split rent with. A cousin of mine at a local insurance company managed to land me an interview for a night shift janitorial position, and even though I vomited twice from stress before the interview itself, I did manage to get the job.
With a modest inheritance, a low cost of living, and no hobbies, I slowly began to acquire a decent bit of savings. Not a lot, mind you, I was still only a janitor, but enough to put some money away for the future. As the years passed, I started to become more and more lonely, with no way to alleviate the feeling.
Did you know that isolation can actually cause brain damage in humans? Long term effects of solitary confinement in prisoners can cause intense psychological and physiological issues, including chronic pain and psychosis. With my parents dead, the closest thing to social interaction I had anymore was passing by the night security guard on my way into the office building where I worked, and he had long since given up on trying to make small talk with me.
I was trapped between a rock and a hard place. I either let myself be driven to madness from loneliness, or attempt to somehow make friends when the very thought of trying to talk to another person made me feel physically nauseous. I won’t lie, I did consider suicide as an alternative to both these options at times.
Some will say that the purchasing of the doll was a bit of a drastic measure, and that it would have been better to me to seek therapy or some other, more conventional, way to work through my anxiety. They’re probably right, but what you have to understand is that the idea of “just” getting therapy to me felt about as easy as “just” scaling Mount Everest. Besides, the doll itself was never meant to be a complete solution in the first place.
My goal was to practice having some sort of relationship, to inoculate myself to the idea of interacting with a fellow human being until I could eventually discard the object and socialize properly with real people. I didn’t even initially want to get a sex doll, at first I was considering just getting a clothing store dummy, but something about their facelessness and obvious artificial nature made me uncomfortable. Besides, I figured I would eventually need some sort of practice with the more intimate side of human interaction.
After a few weeks of scouring the internet, I found the model I was interested in. It cost me about 3,000 dollars, and was equipped with simulated body heat and the ability to realistically breathe and moan. I was most excited at the notion of the simulated body heat and breathing. Just the idea of the illusion of sleeping next to another person made me feel almost giddy, though it was a giddiness mixed with nausea. I vomited once before I managed to click the “add to cart” button.
It sounds embarrassing, I know, but I actually cleaned my house in expectation of my “guest”. It was the closest thing I’ve ever had to inviting someone over, so I felt self-conscious about having the place I live in being a mess. I wanted to make a good impression.
When it finally arrived I hid in my living room for nearly 20 minutes until I was sure that the delivery driver had gone away. I double checked they were gone by peeking through the peephole, before finally dragging the box inside. Using a kitchen knife I clumsily cut open the cardboard to reveal its contents, and after removing the bubble wrap I immediately had to run to the kitchen sink to retch.
The reason for my nausea-inducing anxiety was the following; the doll was not shipped with any clothes. In retrospect it seems like it should have been obvious that this would be the case, but in the moment I felt betrayed and scared. Cutting open the box to reveal a naked human form was far too much for me in that moment, and I had to spend a few hours recovering. I had taken a week off from my work using my generous supply of built up vacation days (thank God for online time-off requests), so I wasn’t too concerned about the delay this recovery caused. I had plenty of time.
I grabbed some pajamas from my dresser and set about the task of clothing the doll. It took a while, I had to take breaks to avoid stressing myself out too much, but I did eventually manage to cover it up. With that issue settled, I felt significantly more comfortable.
The doll was a little unnerving to look at, I’ll admit that. People often talk about the “uncanny valley”, the conceptual zone in which an object looks human enough to be disturbing, but not human enough to quite seem real. Sex dolls generally fall within this valley. They are designed, of course, for the sort of people who would buy a sex doll, and thus cater to this demographic’s standards of beauty. Gone are any traces of imperfection, any of those so-called flaws that make one truly beautiful. Instead they are perfectly symmetrical, expressionless, and beautiful only by the standards of one so porn-addicted as to have no standard for proper comparison.
In some ways this unsettling appearance was helpful for my peace of mind. It helped to remind me that, as human as it looked like from a distance, in the end it was only a hunk of rubber and plastic, and that I didn’t need to fear it. I decided to name the doll Elsie.
My first week spent with Elsie was less interesting than you might guess. It was about a day or two before I became fully comfortable talking “with” it. Before purchasing Elsie, my major outlet for my inner thoughts was a digital journal I kept on a cheap laptop, and so I wasn’t especially used to saying much aloud. Before this, there would often go by weeks without me saying anything at all, there just wasn’t any reason to do so.
However, when I finally did get into the habit of talking to Elsie, it rapidly became addictive. When you haven’t had a chance to talk to anyone in literal years, even a life-sized silicone facsimile becomes appealing.
I talked about my job, about every detail of my workweek, from cleaning the toilets to vacuuming the carpets. I talked about my favorite movie (The Last Man on Earth), my favorite book (The Night Land), and what I liked to do in my free time (not much). I talked about my hopes and fears, my dreams and my ambitions. I must have spent hours at a time monologuing at Elsie. By this point I had started to see the doll as a “she” rather than an “it”. As the days went on, I began to wish that Elsie could talk back, that her motionless rubber lips would part to laugh, or say something about herself.
It was on the last day of the first week when I finally slept with the doll. I don’t mean that as a euphemism for anything sexual, I just mean literally sleeping next to her in the same bed. I’d never shared a bed with anyone before, and I suppose I still haven’t, but it was nevertheless a novel experience for me. I pressed the carefully hidden buttons that activated her simulated breathing and body heat, tucked her into bed next to me, and lay there listening, feeling the faint warmth next to me. I slept more soundly than I had in years.
At first, my plan did seem to actually work. Getting a chance for even simulated social interaction did help to inoculate me against my anxiety, just a little bit. I managed to squeak out a “hello” to the night security guard on my way into work, and though he seemed a bit surprised, he didn’t seem uncomfortable or creeped out, he just smiled and nodded at me.
I began to feel, genuinely, a little happier, a little more confident. It wasn’t anything extreme though. When I went shopping I still had to go to the 24 hour supermarket right after my shift, when hardly anybody was around, and I still had to use the self checkout exclusively. I was far too scared to interact with a cashier. Once, a few years back, the self checkout lanes were closed for maintenance one night, and I didn’t go grocery shopping for a week because I was too scared to call and check if they were up and running again. But now, I felt like maybe I would be able to make that phone call if it ever happened again.
The first sign that something might be wrong happened a month after I bought Elsie. I had left for work that evening with Elsie’s hands placed in her lap, sitting on a chair in my bedroom. When I returned, her hands dangled at her sides. At the time, I fully assumed that I had either misremembered how I placed her, or perhaps the position in which I had placed her hands wasn’t very stable, and they had slowly fallen down to her sides over time. I was a little scared, a bit nervous, but I was able to rationalize it.
This was just the first of Elsie’s slight changes of position. When I came back from work, there would sometimes be slight differences from how I had left her, but at first there was never anything that seemed too unreasonable. If I had left her with legs crossed, they would be uncrossed when I got back. Hands folded on the table would be unfolded. An upright sitting position would become slightly slumped. Nothing that couldn’t be explained by the force of gravity and slightly unstable positioning.
The more disturbing development happened when I was in bed one morning with Elsie (my shift was from 7 PM to 3 AM, so I usually went to bed around 4 AM, unless I had been going grocery shopping). I had, as usual, activated her simulated breathing and body heat, as I found it drastically aided in my falling asleep. I was just about to drift off into unconsciousness, listening to the slightly mechanical whirring sound of her breathing, when the comfortable white noise was interrupted with tinny, recorded moans. They were sexual, crass, and wholly unwanted. You must understand that I never actually used Elsie for her intended purpose, I thought about it a couple times, but could never work up the guts to actually do the deed, so this sound was completely alien to me. For a moment I didn’t even process that Elsie was the source of the noise, as I had never actually pressed the button which activated the moans before. I leapt out of bed, horrified, and crouched in the corner for a few minutes while I calmed myself down, trying to ignore the lewd sounds emanating from the humanoid figure lying in my bed.
Eventually I pulled myself together and pressed the hidden button that toggled her moaning, causing the noises to cease. I looked to see what could have accidentally pressed it to result in my scare, but I was at a loss. The button was located near the small of her back, and took a fair amount of effort to press. It didn’t seem possible that I could have somehow pressed it by accident. I didn’t manage to get any more sleep that night.
This was to be only the beginning of the unwanted sounds. More and more frequently when I came home from work I would find that Elsie had somehow managed to turn herself on, and in addition to this the changes in position had become increasingly less easy to ignore. On one occasion her face was turned towards the door as if she had been waiting for me, her chest heaving up and down mechanically as her artificial exclamations of simulated pleasure echoed from her unmoving lips. She had been left facing the wall.
It became difficult to fall asleep. As soon as I would begin to drift off, the pleasant white noise of her breathing would be interrupted with those incessant, unwanted moans. I eventually gave up on sleeping with the doll entirely, wearing ear plugs and moving Elsie into the living room when I wanted to get some rest, despite the lonely sensation of the empty bed making it harder to drift off. In some ways, it almost felt as if I were undergoing an argument with a romantic partner, though I had no basis for comparison.
Even after I ceased sleeping in the same bed as Elsie, the moans didn’t stop tormenting me. In my dreams I would be confronted by the doll, the pajamas I covered her with removed, exposing the silicone skin beneath. I dreamed that she chased me through an endless labyrinth of writhing, moaning rubber bodies, melted together to form walls and corridors. I sometimes woke up screaming, the bed soaked through with sweat.
It seems obvious now that I should have gotten rid of the doll as soon as the dreams began, but you must understand that during that period of time before the changes of position and the moaning, it was the happiest I had ever been. I was chasing that high, desperate to believe that I could return to that state of relative contentment again. I knew deep down it wasn’t healthy, I knew that whatever improvement to my mental health that I had gained was rapidly being overwritten by this new obsession, but I didn’t care.
Once I considered cutting the noise box out of her, or at least permanently disconnecting the button, I was convinced that an error with the button itself was causing the sounds to activate. I flipped Elsie over and pulled up the pajama shirt, exposing the rubber flesh of her back. I held a paring knife in my right hand, as it was the most delicate sharp instrument that I owned. A scalpel would have been better, but I didn’t own one and couldn’t bear to wait for an online delivery.
I moved the knife slowly towards the small of her back, where the button that controlled the moans was located, but as I did so, the doll’s body began to move up and down, the mechanical breathing filling the air with a soft white noise. I dropped the knife and began to sob. I couldn’t do it. I knew deep down that she- it, was not human. It wasn’t real. But I still couldn’t do it. I pulled back down the pajama shirt and placed her back in her chair.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it”, I told her, looking down at my feet, ashamed.
The doll just stared at me, face blank, unmoving. As it always was. As it always would be.
The final horror occurred only a week ago. I had slept fitfully and woke up late, extremely late. My alarm didn’t go off. I scrambled to get ready for work, unable to find my security badge anywhere. I usually left it right on my nightstand when I went to bed, but it wasn’t there. Grumbling, I grabbed the backup badge I kept in a drawer and drove off to work.
I arrived to the office building in the pouring rain and scanned my badge at the door, managing to squeak out a few pleasantries to the security guard before getting down to business. I was scheduled to deep clean the carpets that day, so I grabbed the steam cleaner and began work on my assigned task.
I spent the first half of my shift in relative peace, listening to classical music through my wireless earbuds. After the first four hours, I enjoyed a brief lunch consisting of a sandwich and some tea, before heading back to work. As always, the building was calm, still, and silent, aside from the faint music that only I could hear. After the clock struck 11, however, I heard a faint sound. I paused my music and took out an earbud to listen. It was indistinct, but there was some noise that I couldn’t quite make out. I turned off the steam cleaner and listened closer. All the blood left my face and my heart began beating hard in my chest when I recognized the sound.
Somewhere in the building, I could hear grotesque, exaggerated moaning.
I abandoned my steam cleaner and began running towards where I thought the source of the noise was located. I was reminded of my dreams, of fleeing through that writhing maze of silicone flesh. I rounded a corner, and caught a glimpse of a vague humanoid shape going down a corridor, its gait awkward and clumsy, like that of a marionette operated by an inexperienced puppeteer. The moaning began to grow fainter, as if whatever was making the sound was moving very quickly away.
I sprinted as fast as I could, desperate to see the source of those awful sounds, desperate to be proved wrong. By the time I reached the corridor, there was nobody there. I listened for the moans, seeking out some clue as to which direction to go next, but all was silent once again. Questioning my sanity, I returned to the steam cleaner and finished my shift, passing by the snoring form of the night security guard as I made my way back to my car.
When I arrived back at the house, I was greeted with further horror. Elsie was nowhere to be found. I searched every room, the closets, even in the attic which I was usually far too afraid to climb up into, even in broad daylight. I found nothing.
I eventually checked to make sure every door in the house was firmly locked, and settled down in bed, locking my bedroom door as well. All the excitement had made me quite tired, and despite my terror I quickly fell into a deep sleep.
I dreamed again of the moaning labyrinth of writhing false flesh, of being chased by the doll. It kept gaining on me, its puppet-like herky jerky motions becoming faster and faster until I felt its unnaturally smooth hand grip my shoulder. The half-living walls moaned in terrible pleasure. I jolted awake, terrified, my heart pounding.
I nearly passed out again when I realized the moaning hadn’t stopped when I woke up.
It was coming from under the bed. I grabbed the flashlight I kept on my nightstand in case of emergencies and jumped out of bed, flicking the flashlight on and pointing it under the bed as though the light would ward off what lay there. I unlocked the bedroom door while keeping myself facing the bed, one hand on the doorknob in case I had to run. I started to crouch down, so I could look underneath the bed, the trembling of my hand causing the flashlight’s beam to wobble slightly.
It was staring at me. Expressionless, unseeing eyes gazing out from the shadows. The doll’s pajamas were drenched with rain, and in one stiff, rubber-coated hand it held my security badge. The chest heaved up and down with a mechanical rhythm as the moaning continued, before finally all sound ceased and the doll’s chest lay still once more.
I must have crouched there for hours, waiting to see if it would move, but it just lay there, staring like a decapitated fish head. Eventually I dragged it out from under the bed and on to a blue plastic tarp. I rolled it up around the doll and tied it up with nylon rope, duct tape, and zip ties. When all was said and done, the end result looked disturbingly like the sort of thing a serial killer would use to dispose of a corpse.
I drove out to the edge of town and tossed the package into a dumpster behind a grocery store. I was worried that someone would see me and I’d have to explain myself, but nobody noticed me. I half expected the bag to emit some muffled moans, but it remained silent. I drove home and triple checked that my doors were locked and my windows were closed before calling out sick to work and laying in bed, crying.
I sometimes feel guilty about what I did, especially when I lie in bed those lonely mornings after I’ve just finished with work. I still see it in dreams, chasing me like some damnable puppet which cut its own strings as I run down endless corridors of undulating plastic flesh, my ears assaulted by the disgusting, horrible moans of simulated false pleasure. Sometimes when I wake up, I swear I can still hear those moans, emanating faintly from just outside my window.