Who Are You?
It stared at her blankly, all curls and stupidity. It was an awful present. It didn’t even meet the criteria for being truly horrifying, it was too bland for that. It had a stupid porcelain head and small stupid pink porcelain lips. It also had a dress. A frilly dress. Why? She did not like frilly dresses. She did not wear frilly dresses. If she owned a frilly dress it was shoved back in the corner of her closet, crushed and smothered and probably outgrown—a remnant of some Easter long-past when they’d maybe made some pretense at being religious for a weekend and dragged her to church.
They’d handed it to her excitedly, and even though she was only seven she’d understood that she was also supposed to feel or at least seem excited. But she was not excited. She’d said “thank you” as they’d expected her to and pretended some thrill she did not feel, as she was more confused than anything. They’d seemed satisfied with this, and walked away to attend some adult business or other. Now they were gone. But why had they given her this god-awful thing? Why not a nice stuffed toy she could sleep with, or drag around by its leg? Or the lego set she’d been asking for, the one she could build the ship with? Why this odd thing with the frilly dress and the tiny felt shoes that looked as if they were already wanting to fall off and be lost? And then she’d no doubt be in trouble for not appreciating things again. Was it smirking? It was. A self-satisfied, smug little smirk on its stupid pink porcelain lips. It wanted her to be in trouble for losing the shoes.
What was she even supposed to do with the thing? It wasn’t a doll to play with, and she certainly didn’t want to set it on a shelf to look at. It was creepy. But not quite creepy enough somehow. Had it been really and truly haunted, and come to life to stab at her in her sleep, now that would have been something. She could have explained that to Jeremy and Tom the next day, in the woods behind the house. They’d have listened with rapt attention as she’d described how she defeated it with craft and cunning and swiftly thrown blankets. How she’d bundled it up and stuffed it down the laundry chute and heard the screeching of its tiny knife against the aluminum as it slid to its concrete-floored doom.
Their eyes would have been large and incredulous as they were for all her stories and then they’d have jumped their bikes across the creek until one of them fell off into it and had to go home and change out of their wet clothes. But no. This thing only looked creepy, and was not actually creepy. It was not about to come to life or provide interesting stories. If it came to life it probably wouldn’t be able to move in that ridiculous dress anyway, it was way too puffy. She was sure if she took it out to the creek behind the house and blew it up with firecrackers they would find out and then she would be in trouble.
She stood silently behind her closed door and listened to the low hum of them talking to each other contentedly in the other room. She wondered what to do.
———————————————————————————-
This work by superBadGirl is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at thegrandconspiracy.org.
One Response to “Who Are You?”
Leave a Reply
#2 – Awesome, as usual :)