My therapist maintains that these episodes were no more than violent fantasies, the products of a child’s imagination, which we brought to life in order to confront the unbearable stress and confusion we were faced with. Still, after a while I had to tie Vili up at night because he would often crawl into my bed, nauseating me with his foul breath, his burning gaze pointed at me, and clutching a tiny plastic sword in his hand. If I tied him up, nothing of that sort would happen; then I would only hear his painful groaning, his whining that overflowed with his terrible fear of death and his cursing of life. He cursed the one who brought him to life, who forced him to live and die, for he had existed in lifeless unconsciousness until then.

He was cursing me.

Our friend with the glasses was first. One day he found Nyinyi lifeless on the floor. Nyinyi had passed away in his sleep. Our friend’s parents threw Nyinyi’s corpse in the trash, and when the body disappeared from the trash can, leaving behind dirty marks on the floor, they resorted to spanking their son, despite his firm insistence that he hadn’t touched Nyinyi’s corpse. The second night after Nyinyi’s disappearance our friend saw him from his window. The deceased toy was dragging a dead cat through the street, disappearing under a garbage bin with his victim. The next day our friend examined the bin and its surroundings but found nothing but used stuffing.

Vili talked less and less; he would instead broadcast a sort of feeling, like a radio station. I’m ready, he broadcast to me, I’m ready to die. He had suffered enough; his eyes couldn’t see anything but red, every single breath was an agony. He asked me both verbally and non­verbally to end it all.

Naturally for a long time I resisted. Though I killed off many other plush toys just so Vili could live, killing Vili was a different matter. On the other hand I also knew that Vili had to die. My mother’s prophecy had to be fulfilled, otherwise all this suffering would have been in vain.

Meanwhile, the girl’s plush toy died as well – she found him in the middle of her room when she got home from school. The stuffing was still pouring out of his emaciated body, his hands stretched forward as if trying to reach something. The girl read up on the topic, and she found that the only way to prevent our plush toys from being resurrected was to bury them together with an onion – at least that’s how I understood it at the time.