…the question isn’t whether or not something is real but
when is it real and for whom.
Kristiana Willsey

WHEN I WAS twelve or thirteen, the kids at school used to whisper about the Toy House, a lone weatherboard dwelling at the end of a cul-de-sac, hidden deep within an industrial estate. Picture the front yard, they’d say: its soil dry and red, clumps of hedge along the front boundary. Straggly trees dot one side of the garden, then grow haphazardly around the dead-end. And amid the boughs of those trees you’ll find fluffy toys, maybe a hundred of them, strung up with rope. Some toys dangle from a limb, others by a noose around the neck. If you go to the house, they’d say, the man who lives there will lurk inside, watching you while you survey the toys – waiting until you’ve found one to liberate from torture. With your arms reaching and your back turned, you won’t see him spring out to snatch you.