The stuffed animals watched me with glass eyes that somehow seemed more alive than dead. Their gaze followed as I moved through my apartment, arranging and rearranging their positions with obsessive precision. Each one was unique - hand-crafted by a reclusive artisan I’d discovered online who specialized in creating uncannily lifelike pieces.

“They’re perfect companions,” I would tell my sister Mei during her increasingly rare visits. “They never judge, never leave.”

She would purse her lips, clearly concerned. “James, when was the last time you went out? Saw actual people?”

I ignored her questions, carefully adjusting a fox’s pose. Its rust-colored fur gleamed in the afternoon light streaming through my windows. The craftsmanship was exquisite - you could almost see the intelligence behind those painted eyes.

“The artist who makes these,” I said instead, “she understands what I need. Each piece captures something… essential.”

“That’s what worries me,” Mei replied softly. “You’re surrounding yourself with death dressed up as life.”

I scoffed at her melodrama. My collection wasn’t about death - it was about preservation, perfection. The eternal moment caught in fabric and thread.

The packages kept arriving, each containing a new masterpiece. A snow-white ermine. A watchful owl. A serene deer. I arranged them throughout my apartment like silent sentinels.

That’s when the dreams began. In them, I would wake to find my collection had come alive - not in the playful way of childhood stories, but something more unsettling. They moved with jerky, unnatural motions, their glass eyes now holding real awareness. They would gather around my bed, watching.

I started noticing small changes during my waking hours too. A rabbit that had faced east now pointed west. A bear’s head tilted at a different angle than I remembered.

“You’re being paranoid,” I told my reflection. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that my collection was… studying me.

The final piece arrived on a rainy Tuesday. A magnificent tiger, larger than any previous creation. As I unpacked it, my hands trembled at its lifelike quality. The eyes seemed to hold particular depth.

That night, I dreamed again. But this time was different. The tiger spoke, its voice a rasping whisper:

“We were not meant to last forever. You took our forms but could not capture our spirits. Now we take yours.”

I tried to wake up, but the dream held me. My collected menagerie surrounded me, their glass eyes now burning with cold fire. I felt my consciousness fragmenting, pieces of myself being pulled into each creature until I was scattered across dozens of bodies, trapped behind glass eyes.

When Mei finally checked on me days later, she found only my collection. Among them sat a new piece - a startlingly lifelike human figure with my face, frozen in an expression of dawning horror.

They say my sister sold the whole collection to various buyers. Sometimes I catch glimpses of my other fragments in photos online, in the backgrounds of strangers’ social media posts. We are scattered now, my consciousness fractured across continents.

But in quiet moments, I can still feel the others. We watch. We wait. And sometimes, when a new collector grows too obsessed with our perfect forms, we welcome another member to our eternal menagerie.