Charlie groggily began to wake up. Her head was pounding and her entire body ached; it felt like her skeleton had grown too large for her skin. She couldn't move her legs. Worst of all was the tightness in her chest. No matter how hard she tried to breathe, she never could get enough air.
It was like drowning. Charlie squirmed and twisted, feeling something like her bones bending backwards and sideways and every nasty way that bones should never bend. She was trapped inside of something, a dark box, enclosed on all sides. She felt too large, too heavy. She couldn't breathe.
She tried to get out, pushing herself against the top of her box. She could feel the lid budging, but she just wasn't strong enough. She felt so weak, but she had to get out. Desperately, she screamed. Charlie screamed with all the air she had in her little lungs. To her dismay, there was no sound. Just the sounds of what appeared to be fabric, sliding and slithering against itself as she writhed around in her terrible prison. She was having a nightmare, a horrible nightmare.
She could not stop the panic now. She flailed wildly, throwing her heavy limbs all around her, silently, tearlessly crying. Eventually, she managed to knock the lid of her box open, and she felt herself being quickly lifted out of the box as though she were on strings.
She was now suspended in the air, and with what dim light there was in the room Charlie was able to assess her situation.
She looked around the room she was in. Animatronic parts and old show props were scattered on shelves, tables, and cardboards boxes throughout. A single tungsten lightbulb cast a dim, warm light across the storage room. She glanced down towards the box she was trapped inside.
She was no longer herself. She looked down at her slender body, tall and black, made of fabric. Her arms, long and thin, hanging lifelessley by wires that hung down from the ceiling. She slowly brought a spindly hand to her face, touching the smooth porcelain mask of the Marionette.