All Dolled Up!

Charlotte

We then set to work like we usually would. Today, he had decided to deal with the attic in the main building, and was working on dusting it off. I helped where I could - and in this case it was something that I could help with given that it didn't require much strength.

There were unfortunately, very few things in the attic that still remained. It looked like anything that was deemed to have any value was sold off, and so, all we were left with was a large room with far too much dust.

Come to think of it, if I had wanted to, I could've cleaned up the house as well... but the thing was that I knew that with my size, there was no way that I would be able to get it all done regularly. And if it wasn't really possible, then I didn't see the point in even starting. Not to mention there were areas that I couldn't reach, and things I couldn't fix. And so, I had eventually given up on keeping the house in shape, and had settled for simply keeping outsiders out.

But, with Charlie's help, it might be possible to get things done. It still wouldn't be easy, but I had the advantage of time being completely on my side, so even if it took several months, what was it to someone like me, who had eternity?

Once we were halfway done, Charlie said that was enough for now. He made lunch - something that he called noodles - while the cereal had been too sweet, these were far too salty. It seems that 'too much' is the standard for food now-a-days, with it always having some extreme of flavor, and never anything in moderation.

Instead of going to watch something, he took out a set of books and asked if I'd also like to join him.

"What are these?" they had strange symbols on their covers.

"Books on the occult, ghosts, and stuff," he said. There were about eight of them. Just flipping through one made me slightly nauseous given what was written inside.

"This is… sacrilege!" I said. If my mother had been here, she'd have thrown the books out for being 'witchcraft' without a second thought. These weren't even the kind of books that May would be into - she was into salacious romance novels, not the occult.

"Hmm? Yeah, I guess, but we need answers as to why you are like this, and I think the answers have to be somewhere if this is some sort of curse that someone placed on you," he said. "But if you don't want to help me out, that's fine then..."

"No... it's fine," I said. I was also curious as to whether or not we would find an answer- or even a possibility of turning me back into a real woman. I picked up one that said 'Spells For Witches' and with a silent prayer for protection opened it up.

Half an hour in and I was bored. The book didn't really say much- it just had a bunch of 'spells' that people could use, which I was sure did not work at all. There was this old gypsy woman near town who was said to be able to cast magic, and some people paid her to remove curses or tell the future for them. Most of us thought that what she was saying was hogwash, and I was one of them. Reading this book didn't shake that assumption from my mind - the rituals were strange and made little sense whatsoever. They were also for things that had nothing to do with my predicament at all, and instead were things like love spells or lucky charms.

I was finished an hour later, and then I closed the book. "Nothing in this - it's just strange things that I don't think would ever work."

"Hmm... yeah, I didn't really research into what I wanted, I just picked up some occult books at random," I told her. "I guess some of them really have nothing to do with what's going on with you."

We finished half of them in one sitting, and as he was about to close one, I noticed something.

"I've seen that symbol somewhere before," I said, pointing to a strange design I saw.

"That's the Samsara Chakra, a symbol of Hinduism and Buddhism that describes the eternal nature of life, you know, death and rebirth, reincarnation like that," Charlie said.

"Yes, but I think I saw it recently somewhere," I said, straining my mind, but I couldn't find out the answer.

"Eh, it's there in a lot of places," Charlie said. "It wouldn't surprise me if you'd seen it before." Thing is I was sure I had seen it very recently- though the answer was on the tip of my tongue, I couldn't formulate what it was. "Anyway, I think that's enough reading for today- I don't think we're going to get any further right now. Say, what kind of movie do you wanna watch today? I mean, I think a documentary might suit you given you don't know a lot of what's going on since you were... you know..."

I tapped my chin. "Are there any stories of people like me?"

"Of haunted dolls? Yeah, but those are horror movies... I'm not sure that you'd like them," he said, gaze askance.

That piqued my curiosity all the more. "Well, we can give one a try, can't we?"

"I mean, they're designed to scare people," Charlie said. From his tone I got the impression that he thought that this was a bad idea. "I mean, if you want, we could watch something like Annabelle though again..." he trailed off, as if he was trying to avoid saying something uncomfortable.

"Alright, might as well," I said. I personally couldn't see the issue - I had heard of frightening films before, so this didn't seem to be as big a deal as Charlie was making it out to be. I really didn't understand his reluctance.

At least, that's what I thought initially - but this would quickly turn into a situation much like the smoking incident.

The thing was, that these new films, with their cameras and new special effects, were quite real. Or at least, they felt quite real, as if I could walk through the television and it was a direct portal into another world. As such, anything frightening appeared truly frightening given that I could easily imagine it happening.

"Ah, that's it! Stop it, stop it!" I yelled out within forty minutes of the movie. I didn't want to see anything more.

"Ah, okay," Charlie said. He didn't seem to be too surprised by my response.

"I can't believe it," I said. "I'm going to see monsters lurking in every shadow now..."

"Uh..." Charlie seemed to want to say something as the corner of his mouth twitched. "You do realize that you're very much a doll that comes to life... right?" I realized he was trying hard to contain his laughter.

"Agh!" I said, appalled that he thought of me in the same way as the doll from the movie. “I am nothing that like abomination!”

"Then again," Charlie said, tapping his chin. "I suppose if you met a haunted demonic doll, it would still make sense for you to be scared. I, too, would be scared if I ran into another human if they were a serial killer..."

Those words struck my heart in a way I don't think he intended. "I... am still a person, you know?"

He seemed to have realized his mistake immediately, and said, "Right, of course, you are. Sorry, I was just thinking aloud, don't take that too heart please."

However, he had misread what I was thinking. A particular memory struck me- of that girl who had complimented my dress when she had first seen me. It was a warm memory, but tainted as I remembered that one day, while she had been heading towards the bathroom, I had snuck up and screamed at her from behind. She had been so terrified she nearly fainted, and I had scampered away, victorious.

That night she told her mother about the scary doll that had frightened her and how she couldn't sleep, and to prove to her that nothing was wrong, her mother had come with her to my room, where I was sitting in my display case, motionless. The daughter had been too scared to come within ten feet of me, so to prove that it was perfectly safe, the mother opened my display case and then touched my cheek. Only for me to grab her hand and tell her to get out of the house. The mother was even more horror-stricken than her daughter had been.

At the time, of course, I had been justified in doing so to chase them off - and they had, as a matter of fact, left and not come back after that. But, seeing this movie- seeing how terrifying the doll was from another person's perspective- it made me think about how much I had scared that little girl out of her wits. How was she doing now? Did she grow up with a crippling fear or anxiety of dolls because of that - would she wake up from her sleep in a nightmare-induced sweat even in adulthood at the thought of what I had done to her? If a simple movie was too much for me to bear, how much worse would it have been in real life? She had been such a happy child when she saw me for the first time - had I inadvertently scarred her, possibly for life?

Regret filled me again when I thought of that now. But then again, that was the only real weapon that I had - fear. As a matter of fact, I might've even been able to scare off Charlie if I had been a little bit more careful and subtle - and if fear hadn't lead him to lash out with the chair like that. I had triggered his 'fight' rather than 'flight' response, and it had backfired on me.

"Alright, I won't," I said, rather than explaining all of that to him. "Don't you have any happy movies about living dolls?"

"There might be some," he said. "I'd have to look them up though- want to watch something else in the time being?"

"Are any of Jane Austen's novels put into film?" I asked. I had been somewhat encouraged to read those. I was rather certain that Shakespeare's plays must have been made into movies over and over again, but I didn't want to see another one of them.

"Sure, there are," Charlie said.