The machine—it makes you perfect. It squeezes you here, compresses you there. It fills you out and stretches you. Then once you have been squeezed, compressed, filled out, and stretched, you can fit through the Barbie-shaped doorway, the cookie-cutter entrance to a world of sugary delights with bitter after-tastes.

There are plastic elephants to ride, candy coffins to consume, pools of caramel and cherry in which to swim. The doll inhabitants are all your friends. You know this because when they see you they stretch ruby lips around pearly teeth, because they invite you to pastel parties where it is their habit to gather like mayflies, sipping salt from their dainty straws.