Trap or not, you decide there's no way around it. You're starving, and the pear is just sitting there waiting to be eaten. Any effects the pear may have on you are absolutely irrelevant to your decision at this point-- you really don't care anymore. And so, you give in to your hunger, and sink your teeth into the fruit. For the moment, at least, you're absolutely confident you've made the right decision. The pear turns out to be the most succulent and delicious fruit you've ever tasted. It is so tasty, in fact, that you cannot stop yourself from eating the entire thing in one rapid sitting. As you take bite after bite, compelled by a ravenous burning sensation, the juices seep out, moistening your lips and rolling down your chin.
Once the pear is sufficiently picked clean, you place its remains on the table and sit. Whatever happens next, at least your hunger has been satiated.
As you sit, pondering how you're going to make your escape now that your maps are all gone, you begin to notice a strange tingling in your extremities. It begins in your fingers and toes, and slowly crawls inward. As it does, you realize it gives way to total numbness. You try to move your fingers, but you cannot. Pressing your right palm against the fingers on your left hand, you are able to discern that they no longer feel soft and fleshy. Instead, they have become hard and brittle, and incapable of joint motion. Quickly the numbness sets into your hands, leaving them both frozen in an open-handed immovable gesture. It has reached your wrists and ankles before you are able to fully fathom what is happening to you now.
This is it. This must be the final step. You've spent all this time, trapped in this godforsaken house, slowly becoming a living doll. Now your flesh is hardening. You're becoming an honest-to-goodness inanimate doll!
You try to pick yourself up, but it is extremely difficult now. Your hands and feet no longer respond to your brain. You struggle to stand up, toppling over a few times in the process. Finally, as your elbow and knee joints harden, it becomes impossible. At this point, you'll have to settle for crawling. You drag yourself across the floor on your belly, toward the door to the room, but it is all futile. Your legs and arms are completely hardened now. They are jointed, but they you no longer have any control over them whatsoever.
This is really it. You've come so far, and fought so hard, but it doesn't make the slightest difference. The house is done with you. With your last ounce of limb mobility, you push yourself over onto your back. As you lay there, staring up at the ceiling, you think about all those dolls in the third floor bedroom. It's all so clear now. They were all hapless victims, just like you. They were all subjected to the same tortures and changes, and in the end, they each became another one of the house's collection. And now, you're going to be one of them too, forever and ever.
The hardening has crawled up your arms and legs now, and has reached your body. You can feel it slowly overtake every part of you. Your shoulders... your chest... your behind, and your privates too. As it spreads, turning every inch of your once-human body into a lifeless plaything, you feel the room around you growing larger. Of course, you know better than that; it is not the room changing size at all, but you.
Is it really going to end this way? You feel the changes creeping up your neck. Oh well, at least this will all be over shortly. You close your pretty childlike eyes, tears welling up in them. Your mouth is lost to it... your nose, your ears. Finally it forces your eyes open, and they glaze over. Your rosy porcelain cheeks are still damp and streaked with tears, but you're no longer crying. You are a doll.
What's going on?, you think to yourself. You've lost yourself momentarily, and now you're scrambling to figure out what has just happened. Suddenly your perception of existence has drastically changed. You can't really see or hear, per se, and you're not sure where you are, but you do feel an odd energy pulsing through you. You feel as if you are immersed deep underwater, in the lightless black zone. You're not breathing, and you don't feel your own heartbeat, but still, you exist. And now, you can feel your self being drawn toward the surface of the water. Fuzzy mental images like hallucinations drift into focus, and you begin to hear sounds in your head as well. And then you remember.
I'm a doll, you think to yourself. Your human senses are all as useless as your body-- but somehow, you're able to sense everything around you once more. You're not sure if you're imagining it or not-- it feels like you're dreaming-- but you're in an empty room, lying on your back on the floor, looking up at the ceiling. You cannot move, and you cannot turn off the dream sensation. All you can do is lie there and take it all in, and wait for something to happen.
You just stay there for what seems to you to be an entire lifetime. Perhaps it is. You've got no real sense of time anymore, so you can only guess. At last, though, something catches your attention. It is small, but noticeable. Tiny vibrations, coming through the floor. As they begin to get more noticeable, they are also accompanied by a sound.
There's no mistaking it. These are footsteps. Somebody is in the house. And whoever it is, he or she is definitely getting closer.