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The house was set on a small property in the middle of nowhere. You could have missed that anybody was there if not for the smell.

We followed our noses and the faint, so faint, beat of a heart and it led us to a large wall to ceiling wardrobe. I pushed the sliding door open with trembling fingers.

My son won’t survive without me, echoed in my mind as I looked at the doll in front of me.

A sheet of plastic separated me from the man we searched for. A man who was kept in the standard position of a Barbie doll, standing with his arms at his sides, kept still by rings of cuffs bolted to the cheerful yellow wall. Theodore’s ankles, wrists, neck... he was pinned. And around him clothes and accessories were presented as if it was the trendiest new set for a doll, all neatly packaged in a box.

Matthias tore the plastic partition down with a furious shout and cupped Theodore’s face. I let the frantic babble of assurance fly over me as I assessed the damage.

At some point Theodore realized no one was coming for him and started struggling. The blood around the cuffs and his bruised neck could attest to that. After over three, or maybe four, days without food and water, forced into the same position he looked...

He looked like he was dying.

I found a way to free Theodore. It was as simple as pushing a button on the outside of the wardrobe. The cuffs retreated into the wall and Matthias supported the fragile body as we took him down and laid him on the bed. Theodore was unconscious. A quick assessment proved my worst fears: organ failure has started. When a seizure wrecked the young body I wasn’t even surprised.

“He’s not going to survive this,” Matthias said through tears. “I have failed him. I have failed. He’s going to die.”

“Yes,” I confirmed softly. We both could hear his heart missing beats, slowing down. “He’s going to die. But maybe it doesn’t have to be the end.”

Hope bloomed on Matthias’ tear-streaked face.

“Please, please, Tristan, please,” he begged me. Silly man. He didn’t have to. No matter how much I protested I had a feeling Theodore was going to join us, one way or the other, from the start.

“I want you to have a future. To have a choice if you want to truly live or die for good,” I said to the unresponsive blond man as I took a knife to my own wrist and watched as my blood dripped into Theodore’s mouth as his heart stopped. “Please, don’t hate me for this,” I murmured as red eyes snapped open and a cry of agony ripped from Theodore’s throat.

Matthias cradled the emaciated body as it contorted under the change, familiar with the gruesome process from his own willing shift into a vampire. It wasn’t pretty or pleasant but after several hours of this torture Theodore went unconscious once more, and this time I knew he was going to survive.

Theo

I liked talking to people.

You would think that would be something I knew before I died but no, I had learned that about myself only after I became a vampire at the age of twenty-one.

Only then could I talk to others because I wanted to and not because it was an elaborate performance that was going to be harshly judged. Only then did I stop being a doll.

It all started with my mother. She adored dressing me up and I loved spending time with her. We had little fashion shows and I left my hair to grow long just so that she could play with my hair. Sitting together and creating increasingly silly stories about wizards, robots, and dragons while she brushed or braided my hair was one of my fondest memories. My father looked at us playing dress-up fondly and even brought miniature traditional costumes for me to wear from every country he visited for business. He loved my mother with all his heart.

My mother died when I was eight and my father’s heart broke.

“Take care of our beautiful doll,” she said with a trembling smile before she breathed her last.

Those last words broke my father’s mind.

After that, he didn’t have the heart to care for a son but he could care for a doll.

At first he did what mother did: dressed me up and tried to help me with my hair, even if he didn’t know how to style it he was willing to learn. But, one day, I came back from a playdate with local kids, which was overseen by my nanny, with dirty clothes and scraped knees.

Father freaked out.

“You are a doll, Theodore. You have to stay pristine,” he said, patting my hair.

I wasn’t permitted to play with other kids since that day.

When the school year finished I didn’t go back to school. Instead, I got homeschooling and private tutors. Father systematically isolated me from anyone I knew and prevented me from creating new friendships. At least I could speak to the house staff and my tutors. Some of them were nice. Sometimes too nice.

Miss Angela, who was responsible for teaching me French, fretted over how I was treated.

“What your father is doing is wrong,” she said. “I’m going to help you.”