Dolls

Originally posted April 8, 2022 on my Patreon. Content warnings: corporate capitalism’s cruelty, being mean to dolls, and pet stores. “I heard that there’s a new dollmaker moving into town.” “Oh?” “Yeah, they’re setting up at the old mushroom farm. Everyone in the market was buzzing about it.” “Who?” “One of the big corporate ones, I think—” Your witch barely reacts, but with her hands inside your open chest the barest reaction is all it takes. A tiny shudder, just enough to turn the tuning probe off course; it hits a taut string and your entire body shakes. It’s like licking a power outlet, like holding your hand to a hot stove— ...

Originally posted to Twitter on July 13, 2022. There’s a doll in the alley behind your apartment building. It’s an old thing, limbs and mask shaped in a style that’s almost old enough to be retro; in another few years it will probably be fashionable again. It’s been there for years and years, just as long as you have. Mostly it spends its days curled up next to the dumpster. You didn’t know it was there for your first few months here, not until one of the other residents mentioned that cutting through the alley shaves a few minutes off the walk to the subway. Now you pass by it every day. ...

“Are you sure this is okay, Miss?” “Of course it is. Get that lock open.” Doll’s fingers, long and fine as needles, dip inside the keyhole once again. She fancies that she can hear the house shudder as she massages its pins, and it’s hardly a moment before the door clicks open. Behind her she feels her witch’s smile: a vast gash cut into the night’s fabric, teeth dripping with the moon’s pale blood. Its empty eyes gaze hungrily past her from the sleepy suburban street’s every shadow, and Doll thanks her lucky stars that no one’s awake to see it. ...

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that. I never wanted you to know that side of me. I wanted,” a drop of blood slides down her perfect teeth, “I wanted to keep you safe.” This isn’t when the doll found her in the woods, covered in stolen blood. This is some time after. She’s cleaned up, mostly, freshly showered. Her still-wet mane looks faintly depressed with so much of its volume gone. It smells good, though, like a tropical vacation that she’s never had the money to have. ...

“Call me Ishmael” the doll said, though its path had never led it to the ocean and it had little regard for water. It thought that it was clever even so, and Ishmael was a better name than the one its witch had given it when he stitched its wings. Ish (which was what the other dolls called it, and which it held was because they had no flare for the dramatic) was a aeronaut aboard the great ⸢Remembrance of Her Unwilling Blessing⸥. A sky-ship one hundred and sixteen meters from bow to stern, with a wingspan thrice that! The culmination of a witch’s craft, powered by banks of witchwork hearts driving it forward and pumping reality away with their every bone-shuddering beat! Vast and powerful, held together only through the unceasing effort of a dozen lobotomized witch-houses … ...

The doll wakes up. This is the first mistake she makes each day. The second mistake is sleepily grasping for her phone, hands moving in long-conditioned reflex: swipe through the pattern and tap the brightly-colored little icon— Many wild species use bright colors to indicate danger. It is meant as a warning against attack: you may hurt me, they say, but you’re going to have a fucking awful time afterward. ...

The ground is warm beneath Doll’s back as she lies in the fire’s ruins, its erstwhile host’s half-frozen blood splattered all around her. Her skin is pristine; her witch’s wrath was careful when that pitiful storyteller finally turned its teeth on her. She enjoys the warmth with the same sad hunger as she might regard her last meal before execution, were she a thing which could die. There’s precious little of it left in the world, and the false-sun’s baleful eye leeches more away with each passing day. ...

There’s something wrong with the sun. It hangs in the sky like a cell caught mid-mitosis, embarrassed to be seen in such a flagrant state; the nighttime secrets which it has always hid in its lair beneath the sea finally dragged out into the day. Doll stares up at it through a sheet of smoked glass, a jagged-edged thing salvaged from a wrecked limousine. It’s already streaked with blood from the false-flesh that coats her carefully woven fingers, little candy-colored droplets fanning out in painful rivulets. ...

Doll has always hated the subway. Each time she descends into those fetid, intestinal depths her skin prickles and her stomach roils; something deep in her unbeating heart recoils from the trains’ steady rhythm. But it’s raining today, so she has to. Things are almost normal on the surface; the escalators are safely mechanical and the advertisements purely mundane; buy this and go here and spend your money! Chase happiness! ...

“Stop touching that!” “But missssss, it’s so much fun, all nice and smooth with those jagged edges, and it’s oozing! Look at it ooze!” “That’s fucking gross.” “You’re just jealous that no one wants to break your arm!” “Why would I—ugh, dolls …” They’re stumbling, leaning against each other; one drunk on pain and the other simply drunk. The street isn’t making their lives easy: the undulations which drove them off the sidewalk have begun to spread across it, soft snakeskin ripples pressing up against their soles. Probably there’s something wrong here; probably the ground is angry at the bloody marrow dripping from her arm or the silver cursework carefully threaded through his leather jacket. Probably their minds are too hazed, too lost, unwarily willingly poisoned— ...