DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.

No. No, no, no. It simply wasn't right. He'd seen fields littered in bodies. Veritable rivers of blood. Men missing all four of their limbs. This should not be the one thing that truly frightened him.

No one else seemed to understand it, either. Whenever he told someone, which had become never, they assumed it was some kind of joke. "Did one fall on you in the crib?" they asked with a laugh. Because that had to be the only explanation for it, right?

He said he didn't know, but that was a lie. They had done nothing to him. Yet. Besides, it wasn't what they did. It was what they were. Their smooth, unnaturally pale skin. Their small, serene and vaguely calculating smiles. Their vacant, glassy eyes that somehow weren't vacant. It was like they were dead and alive at the same time. He imagined their heads turning to follow him as he walked past, silently plotting, and shuddered. "At least they're not gonna pop up in my house or something."

On a nearby rooftop, a bored god of death heard his words and smiled. "Ooh, you shouldn't have said that."

"Joaquin?" Manolo knocked on the door of the Mondragon house a third time, then a fourth. When he tried to open it, he found it locked. Maybe he's out back. Hurrying to the other end of the house, he vaulted over the garden gate. "Joaquin?" he shouted as he looked around the garden. "We haven't seen you all day."

All the windows on the house were shut except for one on the third floor. Through the open shutters, Manolo heard a fearful yelp that was simultaneously unrecognizable and all too familiar. "Joaquin!"

The tallest tree in the garden was next to the house, one of its branches stretching beneath the open window. It took Manolo a few frantic seconds to scale the trunk, walk along the branch to the windowsill and tumble into the room with a sword drawn. "Joaquin, are you…?" The tension in his body turned to confusion as he took in the situation before him. "Okay…"

Joaquin was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace - no, "sitting" wasn't the right word. Perhaps "cowering" would be better. He had lifted both his feet off the floor and drawn both his knees up to his chin. His head was tucked against them, and he covered his eyes with his hands. The only sound he was making was a small, high-pitched whimper. All around the armchair - all around the room, in fact - were dozens of porcelain dolls. They stood or sat facing Joaquin, and the majority of them wore dark clothes and stern expressions.

Manolo half expected to suddenly wake up as he made his way to his friend, gingerly stepping around the dolls. "Um…how long have you been like this?" It was the only question he could think to ask while his brain rebooted.

Joaquin wouldn't roll out of the ball he was in. "…They're gonna get me…!"

"What, these?" Manolo picked up one of the dolls. "You're not honestly afraid of these, are you?"

Joaquin uncovered an eye. "You're not?"

"It isn't going to hurt you." Manolo held it out towards him. "Come on, hold it."

"I am not holding that thing, Manolo."

"Why not?" Smiling impishly, he held the doll up to Joaquin's face and waved it around a bit. "I think it likes you!"

"It likes the thought of how my soul would taste, that's what it likes."

Manolo snickered. "Oh, stop being so dramatic."

"This isn't cool, bro…!"

"Have it your way, then."

Joaquin lifted his head and saw Manolo's smile. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"In the sense that I know I'm never going to see this again."

As Manolo started to pick up the dolls, Joaquin untangled himself. "Who likes these things?" he said to himself, glaring at them. "Who woke up after a bad nightmare and thought 'Hmm, I'm gonna bring these little monsters into the real world'?"

"Says the person who has a room's worth of them."

"I don't! I have no idea how these got here, honest!"

"Fine. But either way," Manolo continued, "it doesn't exactly go with your image."

Joaquin's face blanched. "You're…you're not gonna tell the other guys, are you?"

"Not a word. I promise."

At this, he seemed to relax a bit. "Thanks, Manny."

He had said nothing about not mentioning this to Maria, of course, but Manolo wasn't about to remind him of that. "Let's find a box for these things."

Two gods sat atop the house, one of them laughing uproariously at his handiwork. "Did you see his face when he woke up?" Xibalba said through gasps for breath. "Now you have to admit, that was funny."

The only answer he got from his wife was a sour glare and a raised eyebrow. Sobering up, he tried to glare back but ending up grinning again. "Come on, someone was eventually going to do that."