You find a pretty wooden music box up in the attic. Funny, I don't remember owning a music box. You blow off the the dust and examine it. Probably wouldn't fetch much in an auction. You sit on the floor and set down the box. As you go to open it, a sense of foreboding washes over you. Maybe I shouldn't open it. When you do open the box, you notice that unlike regular music boxes, this one has no compartments, no mirror. The only thing in the box apart from the blood red velvet padding is a little mechanical dancer, dressed in a delicate black tutu and satin ballet slippers. She looks so real.
You wonder if she dances when the music is playing, so you check the bottom of the box for a key to wind it with, but all you find is an empty keyhole. Maybe it doesn't play. Don't make it play. Then you remember the key your grandmother gave you years ago, that you kept in your wallet because you thought it was pretty.
You find the key and decide to try it in the keyhole. Curiosity killed the cat. You realise your hands are shaking, and your palms sweaty. Why so nervous? It's just a music box. The key fits, so you wind it with caution, not wanting to break anything. But if it breaks, it can't play. You place it up the right way and carefully lift the lid, but no sound comes out. It's broken. You put your ear to the box, but still can't hear anything. You peer closely into the box, to see why it won't play. As you study the box in more depth, you start to notice details that you seem to have missed the first time over. How the velvet padding is stained and torn, the dancer's tutu is ripped and her satin ballets slippers dirty. You look more closely at the dancer. Her hair is falling out of her neat bun and her knees are scraped and bloody. But the strangest thing about the little dancer is her eyes. Her eyes are grey as concrete and cold as winter.
You stare in wonderment at the tiny dancer in the music box and a million questions flood your mind. But before you can begin to process anything, you hear a faint melody, just a few striking notes, then silence. Your attention snaps back to the music box and you wonder if you really did hear it, or if it was a figment of your imagination. But then you hear it again, a little louder, but again, it stops. You put your ear to the box and suddenly music bursts out loud and clear, but it's something the likes of which you've never heard. It has an eerie beauty to it, and already you can feel yourself becoming entranced by it.
The sweet symphonies swamp your mind and you let them crash over you like waves crash over the beach. As you stare in a daze at the music box, the little dancer in the ripped tutu and the dirty satin slippers begins to move. She rises up, her actions slow, jerky. So she is real. She reaches up and grabs you by the collar. Don't let her. You try to resist her but you know you can't win; the music has you under its spell. She pulls you into the box, the music now almost deafening , and suddenly you are floating in nothing, you are nothing, the music has taken over.
.
.
You wake up in the attic, sunshine flooding in through the tiny, dusty window. Everything seems to be normal, until you realise you can't move. Your eyes dart around frantically, and that's when you notice how everything around you seems larger than normal, and you are standing on a carpet of blood red velvet. You are dressed in a ripped black tutu and dirty satin ballet slippers. Your knees start to sting and you know that your eyes, once a delicate sea foam blue, are now cold and grey, just like the dancer in the music box. And then it hits you. You are the dancer in the music box. You hear footsteps coming up the stairs...
