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Grace slowly trudged toward his front door, bones aching and throat raw from the Bowie-Dance-Party he had hosted the night before.
He creaked open the door to let in the beautiful Eridian sun, he caught a glint of silver, and swung the door open fully.
There, sat innocently on his front doorstep, was a large, xenonite chest, approximately two metres long and half a metre deep, it had been marked with– in written Eridian– To: Saviour-Grace. From: Calico.
Grace’s bewilderment slowly turned to dread as he went to drag the chest inside. It was light. Too light. He had a horrible inkling about where this was headed.
The box taunted him from its place on his living room floor, alright Grace, you can do it, face the music.
He slowly lifted the lid of the chest. And yep, that’s a doll.
Around 6 feet long, and made of a hard plastic-like material, with an ever so slight give when he pushed his fingers into its arm. He investigated it further, surely they wouldn’t… he discreetly checked between its legs. Oh no, they would. That’s definitely a sex doll.
He let out a tired sigh, placing a disappointed hand to his forehead. He looked back at the doll.
Hey, wait a minute, the doll sorta looked like him! He evaluated the doll’s nose, a smooth, straight bridge, the doll’s eyes, mouth, even its facial hair. It was indisputably meant to resemble Grace.
Interestingly, Eridians had a wealth of other human references to base the doll after, having access to, y’know, a laptop. Yet they had decided that Grace was the perfection of the human form, and further, the perfection of living organisms in and of themselves. Thus, the design team at the Centre for Human-Eridian Friendship saw no reason to base the doll off any model that wasn’t Grace.
Grace is deeply disturbed over the implications of now owning a sex doll that resembles himself. He finds the choice morbidly bewildering, did Erid believe him to be some sort of narcissist?
Regardless, Grace had a certain, devious friend, who he believed had a lot to do with his current conniption.
“Rocky has no idea what Grace is talking about” his friend, currently cornered in his living room, innocently chirped.
“Rocky, this has your claws written all over it, help me out here man”
“Fine. Calico wanted to surprise Grace with a doll. Rocky said the idea was amaze! Grace now has a doll friend, amaze!”
Grace, for the 40th time in the past hour, sighed. It was almost sweet, or it would’ve been, had the doll not had an Eridian-made fleshlight installed in it.
“Rocky meet Sexy-Grace now, question?”
“Sexy-Grace? Who is–
No. We aren’t calling it that. No way in Darwin are we calling that thing Sexy-Grace.”
“Rocky meet Sexy-Grace now, statement” Rocky declared, barreling through a gap between Grace’s legs and sending the man flying to the floor.
Without realising he was doing so, Grace began to grow accustomed to having Sexy-Grace around.
Initially, Rocky had taken great joy in moving Sexy-Grace whilst normal Grace slept, like some perverted elf-on-a-shelf. He relished in the startled yelps his friend let out when he would wake, and find a human figure somewhere in his house. The first time he had walked into his kitchen, and seen the silhouette of a human sitting at his dining table, he had screamed so loudly that Adrian had come running in from the beach outside.
Alas, Grace was starting to enjoy searching for Sexy-Grace each morning– was he truly that starved for enrichment? Holy smokes that’s bad.
And if one morning, after his jester of a best friend had placed Sexy-Grace in his bed whilst he slept, he lay next to what appeared as a human, pretending for one, soft moment that he had awoken on Earth, laying next to a living, breathing human. Well, that was nobody’s business.
Grace hurriedly dealt out the deck of Uno in his hands, so far, he was winning. This was an exceptionally rare occurrence when one was playing against two creatures with photographic memory, and exceptional skill at counting cards.
“Grace, you might want to check how many cards everyone has.” Adrian voiced gently.
He counted his, 7 cards, Rocky 7 cards, Sexy-Grace 7 cards, Adrian 7 ca–
Wait, Sexy–Grace?
Grace smacked his head into the table in shame, abashedly returning the little pile to the deck.
Later that week, Grace had handed Sexy-Grace a vitamin shake, and was confused when it remained untouched.
Oh fudge, he was going crazy, wasn’t he?
Erid’s most popular talkshow, Saviour-Sounds, was a series dedicated entirely to the explanation of the human concepts Grace was engaged in, contextualising to Grace-watchers, and just generally curious Eridians alike, what exactly Grace was doing inside his biodome.
Their most recent episode had been in relation to the “human-doll” that had been delivered to Grace’s biodome earlier that week.
The host, Jasper, explained.
“Now what we are seeing here is the human concept of a ‘Sex-doll.’
This gives us a couple of things to explain. Firstly, a doll is a kind of inanimate object, generally they serve no function beyond the enjoyment and enrichment of the person engaging with them. This is not an unexpected phenomenon in Saviour-Grace’s biodome. I mean, who remembers when he started drinking those weird shakes all the time?
Oh, I’ve just gotten a note from our producers, those shakes are apparently used for its nutrition, correction there sorry, they aren’t useless.
Now, and here’s the interesting bit, the “Sex” part.
Unlike Eridians, humans are not hermaphrodites, this means that when engaging in mating there is a complimentary set of organs, that the sex-doll recently delivered is providing.
Unfortunately, we have had little chance to study the process of human copulation, and as attested by avid Grace-watchers, he has yet to mate with the doll outside of his sound-proofed home.
Here’s to hoping that he will soon!”
After “Saviour Sounds” published their tell-all exclusive on Sex-Dolls the crowd at the Centre for Human-Eridian Friendship had a sudden increase.
And, because, unfortunately, perverts are a constant across the galaxy, the replica Sexy-Graces in the gift shop had sold out instantly, and the current Grace-watchers were trying their hardest to catch Saviour-Grace in a demonstration of mating.
Adrian, who was far more merciful to Grace than Rocky, decided to warn Grace.
“Grace, Erid is trying to catch you mating with Sexy-Grace, please make sure you keep your activities inside the biodome, but if you would like to move outside, let me know, I will soundproof a section of the beach for you.”
“Excuse me? I’m not doing any of that with Sexy-Grace.”
“You aren’t, oh, no worries then”
“No, no, no, don’t leave that there. What do you mean they’re trying to catch me with Sexy-Grace? They think I’m doing the devil’s tango with him?” He exclaimed worriedly.
“Well, Grace, it’s a sex-doll, we kind of assumed…”
“Adrian, I need you to publish a statement for me”
Thus, to the disappointment of Erid, Grace released an official statement clarifying that he was not copulating with the sex-doll he had been gifted, and that it was really just an accessory to boost his psychological wellbeing.
To prove this point, he started taking Sexy-Grace on excursions outside his house.
It started with simple activities, walks along the beach (that involved Grace carrying Sexy-Grace like a surfboard), sun-baking, and it even attended the grunge themed club night that week, dressed for the occasion.
Despite himself, Grace was starting to enjoy having the extra human around, even if it never spoke back to him. It helped fool his hindbrain into thinking he wasn’t the only human in a 16 light year radius.
Grace and Sexy-Grace sat in the sand, building little castles together, which was to say that Sexy-Grace stared vacantly into space, and normal-Grace built a killer sandcastle.
A gust of wind flew through the biodome, and Sexy-Grace face planted straight into normal-Grace’s sandcastle.
“Oh no! You’ve gotten all dirty. Don’t worry, I’ll fix you up.” He scooped up the doll, and returned to his house.
He placed the doll in the bathtub, and began to clean the dirt and sand off its skin.
It was smooth, but not warm, not alive.
He trailed his hand up its arm, it was so close to human skin. Yet it had no hair, no wrinkles, no warmth.
He held its hand, pressing into its thumb he felt no pulse, completely absent of life.
He placed his face into its hand. It was so close.
He squeezed his eyes shut tight as hot tears slowly rolled down his cheeks.
He pretended that his face was being cupped by a friend, a lover, a mother, something alive. Something that bleeds. Something that could touch him back.
The doll slipped out of his hands, tumbling into the bathtub, hitting his shoulder as it fell.
The unexpected touch on his shoulder had set the nerves alight, a shiver ran through his body, a tingling sting that made his stomach churn with nausea.
He fell backward in shock.
Then launched toward the doll, wrapping his arms around its middle.
The doll laid still, arms flat and haphazardly positioned as Grace squeezed it, searching for a sign to fool himself into believing that he could feel it hug him back.
It hurt him, the contact making his skin buzz painfully.
His lips swelled, and snot smeared across the doll’s middle as he sobbed into its plastic arms.
So close to touch, so close to another human. It only made him ever more aware of how far away from Earth he was.
He would never be held again.
There would be no one to look into his eyes and cup their hand around his cheek.
He would never feel that soft sensitivity of a light, human touch.
His skin, his body, ached painfully.
Grace had started to become dependent on Sexy-Grace. It followed him everywhere.
Each morning, he sat next to it at the dining table, leaning on it whilst he ate his breakfast shake.
During movie nights with Adrian and Rocky, he sat next to it, pressing his thigh against the plastic.
He held onto it whilst he slept, arms wrapped tight around its middle.
He danced with it during music-night.
He seemed to orbit the doll, never straying far enough for it to leave his sight.
Erid, ever observant, noticed. Speculation surrounding Grace’s clear attachment to the doll ran rampant. One young Eridian began their post-doctoral psychology thesis specifically regarding Grace’s relationship with the doll, and was seen at the Centre for Human-Eridian Friendship daily, monitoring his increased reliance upon the object.
Rocky wasn’t jealous.
It was probably healthy for Grace to interact with others more.
He just– he misses when he had Grace’s undivided attention.
He misses when Grace would press himself against his xenonite suit in greeting, leaning on each other.
That stupid doll, stealing away his Grace.
Subconsciously, he often found himself emitting a low growl toward it, outside of the range of human hearing. Especially when Grace held it.
It had taunted him recently as Rocky watched Grace sleep. Staring smugly at him from its place wrapped in Grace’s arms.
The tension had reached its breaking point when Rocky had entered Grace’s biodome through the VIE (Very Important Eridian) gate, and for the first time, Grace did not look up to greet him. He was far too enraptured with explaining why triangles made better structural support for sandcastles to Sexy-Grace.
Rocky formulated a plan to get his Grace back.
In the dead of night, whilst Grace was sleeping as still as an Eridian, Rocky extracted Sexy-Grace from its place in Grace’s arms. Cunningly, he left the room with the doll, hiding it, ready to take his Grace away from its greedy clutches.
Grace awoke to a familiar weight in his arms missing.
He rushed through to the kitchen, missing, the bathroom, missing, living room, missing. He ran down the shoreline, missing.
He searched his wardrobe, missing.
The world blurred.
Breath came to Grace in short, wheezed bursts. Where was it? A faint whine came out of his mouth. It was gone. Taken.
The closest he had to a human. He ran to the bathroom and lurched, holding his stomach as anxiety swirled within him. It was gone. The human was gone. He was alone again.
He sank to the floor, sobs wracking his body as he hugged himself, desperately aching for a touch he would never feel.
That was how Rocky found Grace. Alone, miserable, heartbroken.
Rocky felt his carapace lower, and his arms stiffened. What had he done?
As Grace slowly came to, Rocky splayed himself flat upon the ground in a deep Eridian apology:
“Grace, I am so sorry. I took Sexy-Grace.
I was jealous. I never see you anymore, it was so vile of me, I am sorry. “
Grace, considered the greatest friend he had, splayed on the floor, apologising for the first time to Grace. He also considered his aching head and swollen lips. Perhaps, this wasn’t healthy.
“It’s alright, Rock.” he croaked with a heavy voice.
“Will bring back Sexy-Grace now”
“No.” Grace weakly interjected.
“I don’t want it back. This isn’t good for me, Rock. I need to move on.”
The Centre for Human-Eridian Friendship was closed for a full 48 hours to give Grace privacy, Rocky and Adrian stayed with him the whole time.
“I miss humanity, not Earth” he confessed.
“I miss touch. I miss the feeling of being held. I miss it so much.”
Rocky placed two of his arms around Grace’s middle, holding him as he cried.
Adrian moved behind Grace, letting him lean against them.
“Is normal. We will help Grace through it all. We will do whatever Grace needs to be happy”
Rocky carded his fingers softly through Grace’s hair.
“I want you to send Sexy-Grace back to Calico, tell them they can do whatever they want with it, auction it off for all I care.”
“Is Grace sure? Humans need contact for wellbeing”
Grace considered his current situation, positioned between his greatest friends in the universe, his skin softly buzzing as they gently held his body.
“I have all I need, right here.”
Sexy-Grace was, in fact, auctioned off by Calico. And was sold to a private collector for a staggering 3 million jewels, which was enough Eridian money to build Grace’s biodome 8 times over.
Grace, upon hearing this fact, suddenly wished he had the fleshlight taken out of it before he sent it back to Calico.