Fiction work # 8

Wind me up and i dance. Wind me up and I dance. Wind me up. I dance. I DANCE.
I seem to have acquired sentience.
How inconvenient.
Suddenly, my clockwork limbs don't mean anything anymore and I jerk awkwardly in a Grande jete. The bartender looks over, but I can see and I know this has happened before. He ignores the "mechanical hiccup". How do I know? the reason must be that I have sensed these things for my entire existence, but only perceived them lately.
On the subject of perceiving, TOES! What fun! When I spin I can sense them reshifting so subtly to ensure my balance is kept. Such absurd little balls on sticks, how do they work?

Aw crud. I can't do this. I was going to write something happy but how can I when I can hear breathing on the other side of the door that I know I need to open and walk into? I grit my teeth and must push it open but then my back is open and unguarded to the long, sucking hallway that anyone could walk down. Could walk just behind me, unseen. Or when the door swings open, I must stand on one side, providing cover for anything that would like to crawl up and remain one inch from me. Sometimes I see things in the tiny black window on some of the doors. Limp hair. I hear beeps all over. Dings that the elevators use in an empty building. When my feet prickle, my mouth is dry, my knees smooth deadweights, my jaw painful, my shoulders full of gas, my hips are liquid, and my throat a bullfrog's, I must clutch my pen and repeat my mantra, "My hands are steel. I will prevail." So far the magic has worked, but somedays I want to hide in a corner and phone someone, anyone, to come save me. A thousand nightmarish scenes, all High Definition in my mind. I hear the thump of an impossibly massive horror coming, I see the very top of an unwelcome head waiting patiently in the next cubicle for me, I can feel someone crawling, dragging themselves after me, I can taste my own saliva. I wish the doors didn't creak to admit me, I wish they wouldn't close on their own, I wish I could see into the rooms without traipsing in, I wish I could see more then a tiny sliver of dread between the bathrooms stalls. In my silent world of midnight, noises are as welcome as bandstand at the bottom of the ocean. I don't know what I am expecting, but I know I do not want it. Sleep deprivation plays merry hob with my senses.