Sticky-sweet doll-guts ooze out through the cracks in her teeth as she chews, mouth grinding in ceaseless motion. She’s a messy eater, our monster is, and her meal drips down to stain her ample chest and her temporary cell’s clean tile floor. By the time she’s done ruined dollstuff puddles around her feet and the poor broken thing’s porcelain shell is stretched as open as we’ve ever seen a doll’s corpse. ...
She doesn’t get a chance to understand before it kills her.
This story was originally posted to Twitter on June 6, 2022. Long-forgotten Fireflies finds her doll huddled outside, its display case’s well-polished glass shining in the little nook between two of the building’s many trash cans. She hums happily and kneels down beside it. “Hey, Lace. What are you doing out here?” It doesn’t meet her gaze. It’s garbage day, but they’re so far into the concrete forest that the truck won’t reach them until the evening; that vast thing rumbling past is just a bus, no matter its grasping arms or Lace’s hopeful gaze as it passes it by. ...
This story was originally posted to Twitter on May 7, 2022. It is the end of a story, written out of order. Today the two of them are nestled up in the boughs of a vast tree, one of the few around to weather the flood unscathed. Beneath them the water swirls and dances, unsure of what it is and unsure of what it wants to be and as hungry as the tide ever is, but up here they’re safe. ...
These stories were originally posted to Twitter in mid-2021. The still have a place in my heart. The doll lay on the beach, watching the waves. They went in and out so relaxing, just like how all her thoughts flowed out of her head when her witch looked at her; and the cry of seagulls above was oddly nostalgic, though she could not think of why. The witch sat on the beach, her arm possessively resting on the closed hamper of food next to her. Across the beach towel a delegation of seagulls balefully regarded her; several more circled the doll, their eyes full of menace. ...
(once, long ago, there was an Empty Spaces Anthology. This was the longer of my two stories in it.) There is a type of rot that breeds in silences, a moist decay that drips through the cracks in your life and softens your thoughts with its insidious warmth. It’s the sort of thing that lingers long after it was first welcomed in, that never quite leaves— “Miss,” the doll’s plaintive voice echoes through the bedroom door, “are you in there?” ...
Lave is walking through the market when someone fails to kill her.
(Originally posted May 27, 2023) “Miss,” the doll plaintively asks, “what are all of these pills?” “They’re vitamins, dear. Here, let me get you something to wash them down …” She stares at the bowl before her as she bustles off. Some of them look like vitamins, true, little oddly shaped gummies and tiny pressed pills: familiar sights from all the other times she’s been given supplements to keep her nice and healthy and to help her hair grow into beautiful curling locks. ...
Originally posted to Twitter on August 17, 2022. Beatrice sniffs the air uneasily, unsure of herself in a way that she once vowed she would never be. Something has changed, something has shifted within her home’s generous confines, and she hasn’t the slightest idea what. An absence in the air; a lack of smell and noise. “Cinnamon,” she calls, “I need your eyes.” The doll doesn’t answer her. Its warm, welcoming scent doesn’t swell in the air around her as it pads towards her waiting hands. ...
Originally posted to Twitter on February 22, 2022. Each day you walk past the dollmaker’s store, past those wide glass windows full of carefully constructed cages. They almost look like they’re not cages at all, just dollhouses, but you know better: you’ve spent enough time watching to notice the bars. The dolls gambol and dance, climb their furniture and nestle in little display cases almost like they weren’t alive at all; sometimes you even pass by as they’re having a tea party, a matched set drinking in unison. ...