Straw Dolls

Note from me: This follows on from Glass Dolls. I don't know if it works on its own. If you don't get along with it, try reading Glass Dolls first and then come back. Let me know in the comments if that's what you do.

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There were so many last straws. I was drowning in an ocean of them. I picked just a few, and twisted them together into shaky resolve.

Two years ago, rationing was the last straw. Women (those with the implant), were de-prioritised in the food lines. The implant inhibits both appetite and digestion, as well as aging. You don't need the nutrients as much, we were told. It will mostly pass right through you. Wasteful! Back of the line.

Last year, a politician's wife published an article about women's football. It made it to the national newspapers. BEFORE THE IMPLANT, it was called. For a handful of decades, she wrote, women weren't just spectators. We were represented by extraordinary female athletes. We had our own categories. We had football, rugby, cricket, tennis. We raced. We competed in the Olympic games! Sometimes we even had the same amount of prize money as the men! We are doing young women a disservice by denying them their full physical range of capabilities. We are preventing them reaching their full potential. It's a scandal. The politician made a statement about how he didn't share her views. She was fired from her job on some pretext.

A woman raised her daughter as a boy so that she could avoid being implanted when she turned 18. When the secret broke, Family Protection stepped in, and the daughter was taken into care. My heart cracked, which pleased me, because I sometimes thought I was numb to any feeling at all.

Last week, there was another city-wide curfew implemented. All women have to be at home - or at least, off the streets - by 9pm.

Someone used marker to black out the W and O on the curfew posters, so that they read, "MEN MUST NOT BE OUT IN PUBLIC AFTER 21:00". She was identified by CCTV and arrested. Police searched her home and seized "questionable materials". Books on feminist theory and heretical stickers. They said things like, "Let Us Grow!" and "Freedom For Women". Some were decorated with pictures of guinea pigs, and pink, triumphant fists. I don't know what happened to that woman. Her social media pages all went quiet. There was a flurry of concern from some corners, and then... nothing. Had she been intimidated into silence?

Every so often, women just... disappeared. Last month, Alyssa in accounts didn't turn up for work. She was never on the news as a missing person. There are plenty of those. Are they women who escape this lipstick prison? The rebels and outcasts who don't want this diluted half-a-life, who rejected it and the rest of us. The jackals who bit down their screams and cut into their own flesh to free themselves. Or are they women who tried... and got disappeared?

Today, the doctor's letter was the final last straw. Once again, I was informed that my implant was about to expire. I was to present myself at my doctor's office for a replacement. I remembered the last time I'd got the letter. I'd ignored it and...

I thought, I really can't take any more of this.

I'd hit it. That moment. That upper quota of what I would tolerate. I put a hand down to feel the scar tissue on my thigh, marring my otherwise smooth skin. I need to get this thing out of me. I need to get away, and find out if the stories are true. If the Jackals really do exist.

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I knew it was no good searching the internet - I'd have a knock on my door within an hour, most probably. I tried the dark web. It felt like sloping down a dirty alley late at night. Sleazy and dangerous. But after several days of poking and questions, I got a lead. It wasn't much, but it was something.

I called my mother, and asked her if I could stay over for a couple of days. "I've had a row with my boyfriend," I said.

I could hear her light up over the phone. "Boyfriend? Oh, Grace, I didn't know you had a boyfriend!" I heard the words she chewed back before they could escape: At last!

No, because if I did have one and told you about it, all those questions about when I was going to give you a grandbaby would become more frequent and less tolerable.

I texted her to thank her for letting me stay, careful to suggest it might be for as long as a week. (Got to lay the trail.) I packed a few things. Toiletries. Clothes, more for the look of it than anything else. What would she think, if I turned up with nothing?

I prised up the floorboard in my bedroom and took out the scalpel, still in it's little packet. Sat on the edge of my bed and spread my pale thighs. Felt again the little patch of scar tissue marring my skin, just out of sight. Steeled myself. Do it. Do it! There will never be good time.

In my mind I could see the pale bedspread drenched in red, and I shuddered. No. I can't do it. Not here.

I moved to the bathroom and tried there. The edge of the bath. The floor, with the white mat carefully folded and left on the cistern, out of reach of long, bloody fingers of spray. Ceramic cold and hard on my buttocks, but in my mind, crimson, warm and slippery. To the kitchen then, to fetch the first aid kit and sit on the burnt orange flagstones, trembling in my underwear.

Like a lover, (I imagine), I took myself through different rooms, different positions. Laying back with my legs spread, and an awkward mirror propped, staring at me. Sat upright, hunching forward. Back to the bathroom, standing and powerful, one foot up on the toilet. Expanse of soft thigh exposed and vulnerable, like the belly of an animal. I hesitated. I could bleed out here, alone. Do I want to bleed so badly? I shrank, jelly-like, in the bitter acid of my own cowardice.

There were rumours that the newer versions of the implant carried a tracker. That no one was accepted at the compound (if it even existed) unless they cut it out first. But even if that was true and not just a wild theory, I couldn't do it. I didn't even get so far as taking it out of the sterile package. I admitted defeat and called a taxi.

I hid the blade in the lining of my bag, and secured it with tape. Mother mustn't find it. She mustn't guess what I'm about to do.

When the car growled to a halt outside the building, I locked the door, exactly as if I planned to return, and click-clacked my way down the stairs in my hated heels.

The car was driverless. The recent spate of attacks meant that men weren't sent to collect lone women. I got in, tapped the screen to confirm the destination and settled back in the seat for the brief journey.

There was awkwardness in the hug Mother gave me when I arrived. I couldn't remember a time when love had been easy between us. She squinted at me.

"Are you OK? He didn't hurt you did he?"

"No, mum. I'm OK. It was just a row."

A slight frown dipped across her face.

"Here," she said, "let's get you inside, it's almost nine... I'll help you get your things up to your room..."

I followed, as if I couldn't remember full well where it was - the bedroom of my childhood. Since she couldn't see me, I let my gaze linger on the other door.

"Is Danny home?" I asked, tearing my eyes away from it and keeping my voice light.

"Oh, no, your brother is never home these days - always off with that girlfriend of his. I'm surprised I haven't met her yet... Mind you," and here she let me feel the dig in her tone, "at least I knew he had a -" I cut across her.

"Mum. Please. Don't. Not now." I let a pained expression crease my satiny features, just in time for her to glance round and see it.

"Right. Of course. Sorry." She opened my door for me. "Do you need anything?" I shook my head, and she turned to go. Hesitated, hopeful. "I've a bottle in the fridge. Come and have a glass with me." Now it was her turn to keep her voice airy and thin. Despite that, I could hear the echo of a plead.

I cranked a smile on to my face and hoped it looked genuine. "I'd like that."

Oh, the masks we wear.

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The evening was long and dull. I moved my face into the expected shapes and interjected at the right times with proper noises, but I'm sure she saw through my effort. Still, I'm also sure she appreciated it. She prattled on - about work, about Danny, about her ("Her" was dad's mistress - my mother had still not forgiven either of them) and I saw the days stretching in front of me. How soon can I cut this visit short? I tried to squash the thought. I'm not just here to take Danny's things. I'm here to see her, too. It's important.

Near to midnight, I forced down another half-glass and told Mother I was tired.

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I almost did it that night. I heard her footsteps retreat to her own room. Saw the hallway light blink off. Listened to the water running. Waited until she must be in bed. Must be asleep. Held my patience and gathered my courage a little longer. Switched on my lamp, shucked my silk pyjama shorts and pulled the plastic parcel from its hiding place. Pried my knees open. I remembered, again, how quickly Danny's crow's feet appeared when he didn't take the tablet. I thought of all the stories and movies where, when the youth giving amulet is taken away, the character ages alarmingly quickly. If I succeed, will I become ash and bones and blood, right here on the bed?

I set my jaw, pressed my thumb and forefinger against the collagen-rich skin surrounding the scar, and stretched it wide, ready to cut. Is this the place? Delved with my fingertips for a telltale bump under the skin.

No. I can't. Not yet. The lamp isn't enough to see by. It's going to be fiddly. Tomorrow. Maybe.

I lay wakeful, the scalpel laughing at me from its packet. To distract myself from my craven failure, I turned my plan over and around in my brain. I could leave after she went to work. As long as I was outside the city before 9 p.m. Or I could wait until night, dress in Danny's clothes, and get as far away as possible before morning.

The room had barely changed. The sand-coloured carpet and fluffy blue rug. I used to pretend I was at the seaside, I remembered. I was so fascinated with the idea, my parents took us there for the day. And I hated it. I'd watched Danny run about in his tiny trunks, getting sunburnt, climbing rocks, hair plastered to his head and eyes sparkling. I'd watched from a chair under the parasol. In my pretty dress and uncomfortable shoes. He disappeared from view briefly when I closed my eyes to avoid getting high factor suncream in them. Don't scrunch, Mother said, rubbing it in liberally, You'll get wrinkles. I never went to the beach again. Danny did, many times. I always got a stomachache and had to stay home. Dreaming of salty freedom, with my feet in a deep blue rug.

Sometime after my eyes closed, I was running barefoot on the sand, nearly naked to the sand and the elements. Gritty, wet and free! I stole handfuls of pebbles from the waves and put them in a plastic red bucket. I looked over at Mother and saw a solemn little girl next to her. Both seated on fold-able chairs, wearing floppy hats and dresses that looked impossible to move in. I'm glad I'm not her, I thought. I forgot her the moment I turned away. I climbed the slippery rocks, revelling in the unforgiving sharpness against my knees, and my own youthful strength pumping through every limb. This is brilliant, I thought. The best day of my life.

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In the morning, I showered. I barely needed it. We don't smell. We are like dead things, but not the squishing, smelly, rotten sort of dead. More dessicated. Dried out. Preserved with care. But I like hot showers. So hot they nearly scald me. It's nice to feel.

I put on a clean dress with stockings and donned my wig - the only one I'd brought with me, and close to the natural hair Mother remembered. Does she know I shaved my scalp? I applied makeup. Mother would expect it. I emerged downstairs for breakfast the carefully embalmed doll she'd long ago trained me to be. Like any dutiful mother.

There were pastries and juice set out on the table. Mother must have had them delivered. To my surprise she was still in her night-clothes. Mother was all about appearances, or so I'd thought. Yet here she was, a faded cotton robe tied at the waist and dotted with pink flowers. Bare legs and fluffy slippers. Her dull, sparse hair wisped around her head like dandelion fluff. The familiar red wig was nowhere in sight. I remembered the times I'd appeared, bed-tousled and sleepy, only for her to chase me back upstairs until I was "decent" as she put it. She turned, halfway through spooning coffee grounds, and there was a jolt of something there. Maybe she hadn't expected me to appear pristine for breakfast, or maybe she felt the same jarring role-switch I did.

I wasn't hungry, but she'd gone to such effort, so I nibbled and sipped. I tried to remember that the next day or two might be our last opportunity to spend time together. I winched at that smile back into place, and accepted a black coffee.

I steeped myself in her chatter, not listening to the words so much as the pitch and rhythm of her voice. Committing it to memory. Trying to congeal it in my mind and keep it there, exactly like that.

From here, I could see the garden and the fruit tree I used to watch Danny climb. I could see him, now, all dirt and scraped knees and gappy teeth. With my uncomfortable shoes firm on the ground, and a breeze barely permitted to lift a single tendril of my combed hair out of place. The whole time, her voice rolled over me. I blinked hard.

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After she left for work, I rummaged in Danny's room for jogging bottoms, trainers, a dark hoodie. Things I'd wanted to wear for as long as I could remember. Invisible clothes. I found a knife - something I'd never been allowed to have. The trainers looked too big, so I stole some fluffy socks from Mother's room.

I hid the haul under my bed, knowing already on some level what I was going to do.

I'm going to break her heart. Is putting it off really going to help? Drawing this out is only going to make it harder. Messier. More painful.

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She cooked dinner. I pushed the lasagne and salad around my plate and tried to look grateful. Another evening of drinking wine I didn't want and making painful and stinted small talk. When she wasn't looking at me (which wasn't often) I scrutinised her face, trying to memorise it. Before I left for my room, I moved to give her another hug. It was unwieldy, just like the last one. Her response was camouflaged in her concrete-Botox features, but I thought I could feel her surprise and joy at my clumsy affection.

I'm sorry, Mother.

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I wrote her an insufficient letter. I couldn't tell her where I was going or what I was going to do. I lied. I told her I was going to stay with a friend for a couple of days. I thanked her. I wrote, I love you.

Will she know this is goodbye?

Danny's clothes felt comfortable and warm. I drew the hood up over my slinky pate and eased the front door open. A few essentials in my bag. Trainers laced tight on my feet with two pairs of socks. This felt good. This felt right.

I tucked my phone under the wheel of a parked car. I could have dropped it, couldn't I?

I'm coming to find you. Wait for me.

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Leaving the city was easy. I marveled at my own invisibility. People didn't notice me, except insofar as to respect my personal space. It was probably very obvious I wasn't a man, but I thought I made a very passable boy. I put my earphones in (also Danny's) and perfected a sullen slope along the street. Slouched across the seat on the bus as if I was twice the size I actually am.

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Outside the city, I sat in the doorway of an old barn, watching the drizzle. I think I am close now. I didn't know the precise location. I still hadn't cut out the implant. I decided not to, until I had other women around me to help me.

I'd found a late autumn apple, and stashed it in one of Danny's (many, roomy) pockets. I ate it just because. For the enjoyment of eating. Perhaps I will get fat. I smiled at the thought. Its skin was starting to wrinkle, but it seemed all the sweeter for it. I took another bite, just as the shadow fell across me, and the blade pressed to my throat.

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TO BE CONTINUED...

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Thank you for reading. Be gentle in the comments, please 😁 I reciprocate genuine reads!