Hello friends! This story is a rambling, meandering mess loosely based on a fun scene that I got to play in recently. It is absolutely a work of fiction and the characters are not a representation of any real person. It's a very, very dark vision of a lighthearted scene that just tickled my brain in a very twisted way.

None of it's real, please don't think it is ;)

I’m releasing it to celebrate the new comment functionality here on LegitFic! Now you can select some text and comment on that particular bit of the story!

Chapter One

The old building loomed and the small woman shivered in its shadow. Brick pillars bookended the porch with its sagging roof, a sandy brown shingle hanging down and swaying in the breeze. A mess of letters poked out of the old iron mailbox mounted to the siding to the left of the door. Yellow electric light spilled from the smattering of broken blinds in the front window, accompanied by blue flashes and the sounds of a video game.

Sabrina didn't know a thing about video games, she had always been more of a bookworm. Anne Rice was her vice, which invited mockery from her circle of friends. Well, ex-friends. Everyone had ditched her when she came out as bisexual. Or rather, stopped dating women exclusively. She'd never lied about being bisexual, but that was the thing about it. If you were bi with a same-sex partner, you were gay. If you were bi with an opposite-sex partner, you were straight. In South Carolina, being a gay man was at least tolerated, but a bi woman apparently wasn't understood. She was supposed to "pick a team" - the few friends she had left, mostly gay men - dropped her when she started dating Mark. Her straight friends had mostly dumped her the previous year over Bethany, and that had been a disaster on its own. Bethany was a catastrophe on two legs. Everyone warned Sabrina. She didn't listen.

But "switching teams" was apparently the final straw.

When the poultry plant "downsized" her, Sabrina Warren had nowhere else to turn. She had tried desperately to find another job, anything, but it hadn't been going well. The tattoos on her arms weren't helping. She ran a hand over her shaven head, feeling the prickles of the stubbly purple-dyed hair as she wondered whether she was crazy enough to just drop in on these people.

The Dollhouse on Sortwell Road. A friend of a friend had suggested it. Apparently a trio of queer women ran the house and offered refuge for a fellow queer down on their luck. They had a reputation for kindness, but there was also a dark rumor or two. That they were into some weird stuff. All she had was an address and a name - Kinsley Adams.

"Beggars can't be choosers," she muttered to herself as she stepped toward the door, an old gym bag clutched in her left hand. She knew she looked like a typical bull dyke at this point, camo pants and a tank top, showing her modest cleavage. But it was hot, and also it was her last clean outfit. That aesthetic was ruined by her height, however. At 5'4", she wasn't exactly intimidating. The gym bag held the rest of her clothes, basically everything she owned now - her crazy landlord was holding the rest of her stuff hostage until she could come up with the back rent. She knew it wasn't legal, but she wasn't about to call the cops. Too many unpaid tickets to risk it, and too many prior arrests to talk her way out of it. She was pretty sure that the unpaid tickets meant there was a warrant out for her.

One hand raised and ready to knock, a black flash of movement caught the corner of her eye. A tuxedo cat, fat and saucy, glared at her from the window, poking its face through the broken blinds. It croaked out a hoarse mew before bolting away at her knock.

The sounds of the video game and the flashing blue lights ceased.

"Faith! Get the door!" The voice was high-pitched and came from just inside the window, but almost certainly belonged to an adult. Sabrina resisted the urge to peek through the window to see who was doing the shouting.

Second thoughts gave way to third thoughts, and she very nearly turned and left... but the sound of the door unlocking convinced her to turn back around.

"Hey." A slender grunge chick greeted her, red flannel tied around the waist of her skinny black jeans. Some brightly colored monster smiled from her tight black t-shirt, too short to cover her midsection. The woman had lovely abs and a pair of perky breasts, and Sabrina blushed as she forced her gaze upwards. She looked kind, a fire-engine-red pixie cut and a warm smile. The blast of cold air that rushed out felt like a gentle kiss to the shaven-headed woman. "What can I do for you?"

"Um.. I'm looking for Kinsley? My friend Jules suggested that I look her up, but nobody knew her phone number."

This brought a raised eyebrow, astonishingly also a bright red, like a character from a cartoon. Her eyes were brown and showed her suspicion, but still generally friendly.

"Did your friend tell you to ask her something in specific? She's asleep right now, but I can deliver a message."

That seemed strange given the volume of the television and the fact that it was four in the afternoon on a Thursday.

"Uh.. " She felt like an idiot saying it out loud, but it's what Jules said her friend told her. "Is this the Dollhouse on Sortwell?"

"Kinsley!" The other girl shouted from just inside the open door. "Kinsley! It's someone for you!"

Sabrina jolted from the sudden voice, startled, and nearly missed the strange glint that appeared in the red-haired woman's eye for just a split second. She smiled wide and stepped back, holding open the screen door. "Come on in. I'm Faith, that's Lila. Kinsley's upstairs."

"Oh, I don't want to wake her up." Sabrina stepped in tentatively, looking over at the short woman in comfortable-looking pajamas, white and blue striped. She held some sort of controller in her hand and had a roundish face. Her hair was also red, but a much less shocking red - more of an auburn, in a pretty bob that suited her. Her face was nicely framed by it, and accented by a pair of maroon eyeglasses.

"She won't mind," the small woman chirped from her seat on the couch. "You said the magic word. This is the Dollhouse and we're the dolls!"

Her giggle was innocent and bubbly, and Sabrina couldn't help but smile despite the odd statement.

"That's just a nickname." Faith slipped an arm around Sabrina's shoulder, leading her deeper into the house and closing the door behind them, taking a moment to lock the deadbolt with a key, leaving it poking out of the door. "We help people. One of the first people Kinsley helped called her and Lila 'a doll' all the time, you know? Like a term of endearment. 'You are such a doll'. Kinsley liked it so much that she kept it."

"That's um, that's why I'm here. I just need a place to crash for a week or so until I can find another job. I'm really sorry, I wouldn't normally do this but Jules- "

"Don't worry about it. I'm not making any promises, though. That's up to Kinsley. C'mon." Her teeth were blindingly white, pearly in her mouth. Sabrina relaxed a bit, but still felt uncomfortable and pushy, barging into a stranger's house and asking to sleep there. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as Faith led her up the rickety stairs in the center of the house. It was an odd layout, a long living room on one side of the stairs with a doorway to a kitchen on one end and a doorway to another room on the other, and a hallway on the other side of the stairs, a series of closed doors. The place was old, and the push-button lightswitch on the wall drew a confused blink from the visitor.

The stairs led to a large room with a vaulted ceiling, exposed beams above them. The windows were low, inches above the floor, and the big room was lined with desks on one wall and a sectional couch facing a very nice looking TV and entertainment setup. Faith guided her, toward the desks, where a mass of short blonde curls waited, bobbing above the back of a large chair in front of a truly intimidating computer setup. Six monitors with graphs and charts in red and blue with green lines moving across them.

"Hey Kinsley. We've got someone asking about the Dollhouse."

Glancing around the room, Sabrina felt awed by the setup. So much technology in such a bad area of town, it seemed like a recipe for disaster. Sortwell Road was in a bad part of Columbia, there was a lot of drug activity and very little in the way of law enforcement. It wasn't a place she wanted to walk around alone at night. She stole another glance, looking at Faith. The woman was slender but her arms looked wiry and strong without losing that delicate quality of femininity. She stood slightly taller than Sabrina, maybe 5'5", and she stood with her hips at an angle, her arms hanging loosely.

The chair turned slowly, revealing the smiling woman who owned those natural curls. Her eyes were an icy blue, but they were lit with a warm light and her grin was equally warm and welcoming, spreading from ear to ear. She was dressed from head to toe in mismatched pastels, a soft peach blouse and blue pants ending above a pair of pale green sandals. Her fingernails were something else, a riot of yellows and pinks, with a dash of green to them. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to them.

"Welcome! Would you care for some sweet tea? Oh, they told you I was asleep, didn't they?" Sabrina blinked, realizing that her confusion and suspicion was written plain on her face. Her cheeks flushed red once again. "I was, actually, until about twenty minutes ago." The blonde tapped a fancy looking watch on her wrist. "But the euro took a tumble, so there's things to be done. You know how it is."

Sabrina had absolutely no idea how it was.

"Um, thanks. This is kind of awkward for me, and I'm really sorry, but I was told that you sometimes help people in the community who need it."

Faith gave Sabrina's shoulder a friendly pat. "I'm going to go back downstairs with Lila. Call if you want that tea."

"Come in, sugar." Kinsley beckoned, gesturing to a chair at the desk next to hers, a fancy-looking flat monitor on the desktop and a keyboard covered in softly blinking lights. Nice but nowhere near as intimidating as the multitude of screens that floated on steel beams behind the other woman. "Faith won't mind if you sit at her desk while we talk."

Tentatively, Sabrina took the offered seat, setting her gym bag gently on the floor to one side. "Thanks... Kinsley." She scanned the pastel-clad lady, only realizing now that she was closer just how tall Kinsley was. Her chair was wider than the one Sabrina sat in, and it was raised higher. Kinsley's hands were elegant and adorned with thin silver rings, fairies and butterflies dancing on her fingers.

"Of course." That warm smile never faltered, and unexpectedly, that pastel-tipped hand was resting on Sabrina's camo-covered leg. "You look like you've had a tough day. We do help people, why don't you tell me the kind of help you need?"

The gentle touch, the soft voice, took Sabrina by surprise. As did the tears.

"I... I just need a place to sleep for a week or so, just until I can get another job."

"What happened?"

To her shock, the whole story began tumbling from Sabrina's lips. Mark and Bethany. The betrayal of her friends. The problem with her landlord. Her job, her back rent, losing her connection with her parents when she came out. She poured her pain all over the floor at Kinsley's feet until she was sobbing, her head in her hands. It was all too much. It was too much to deal with, and she had no one to talk to lately. She had no one to tell just how alone and hopeless she felt. Jules wasn't so good with feelings.

When she was done, when there were no words left to break the sobs, she felt arms wrap around her, felt herself being pulled into the bigger woman's lap.

"That's quite a story, and quite a lot of pain. Of course you can stay for a week, or however long it takes you to get another job and a place."

Embarrassed and overwhelmed, Sabrina relented and wrapped her arms around Kinsley, her sobs slowing as the woman hugged her. It seemed impossible, that this oasis existed, that there were people who were just ready to help with no questions asked, just because she needed it.

It seemed too good to be true. She expected to wake up any moment, laying on her back in an alley somewhere. The fate that would have been awaiting her without this woman's help.

"I'm so ashamed, Kinsley. I'm so ashamed to ask for help."

"Now now, sugar. Everyone needs help sometimes. You think I never needed any help? Let us help you. You just need a place to rest your bones and recover, and you found it. We've got a spare room at the moment, since Emmie moved out. It's ready to sleep in, honestly. Let's go introduce you to the dolls and get that glass of tea, hmm?"

Kinsley rose, setting Sabrina gently on her feet and taking her hand. She towered over the smaller woman, close to six feet tall. Sabrina found herself eye-level with Kinsley's chest, which brought yet another blush.

"Thanks. I don't deserve your help, but I'm happy you're offering it."

"Think nothing of it. And welcome to the Dollhouse."