Dolly Dearest

Shadows blanket the house where the family sleeps. A neighborhood cat prowls the bushes under the windows, seeking an unwary mouse. A few crickets still buzz in the dark yard, strumming a sleepy tune in the sandbox. A bicycle waits patiently for the sunny summer day, standing hipshot on its kickstand. The swings stir lazily in the cool night breeze.

A shriek from an upstairs bedroom splits the night.

“Mommee—e—e—e!”

A mother comes running in response to the frantic wail. “Shh, Alyssa, it’s okay, everything’s okay, Mom’s here, it’s okay. What’s wrong?”

“Nightmare,” the young girl gasps. Her heartbeat rabbits under the thin pink fabric of her nightgown. “I dreamed I was a doll, sitting on a shelf. I could see but I couldn’t move, and I knew I was just a doll, but I was a girl too, trapped inside, and I was so scared –“

“Hush now, you’re fine, sweetie,” her mom soothes. Her hands move automatically across the landscape of the bed, her brain still fuzzed with sleep and the sudden waking. She hugs the girl tightly, giving magic mother-comfort. She guides the girl back down to her pillow, pulls the comforter up to her chin, tucks the favorite stuffed bunny under the girl’s arm. She picks up a book, intending to put it on the table next to the bed. Her gaze finds the cover, and she frowns.

“Good god, no wonder you had a nightmare! Where on earth did this come from?”

The book has no title. A grinning goblin, the color of cold wet autumn leaves, peers up at her from the cover. Its gap-toothed mouth is open, a forked tongue darting out to taste the air.

“Dunno,” Alyssa mumbles, already halfway back to sleep. “Library, I guess.”

“Well, from now on, I suggest you don’t read it right before bed. Honestly, kiddo, what did you expect?” She puts the book on Alyssa’s desk, all the way across the room. She yawns as she flicks the light switch. “’Night, honey pie.”

“’Night mom.” Alyssa snuggles her bunny tight, her fist curled under her chin. Her mom’s question flits across the screen of her mind, tickling on its way past. Where had she gotten that book? As far as she could remember, she had gotten it at the library … but it didn’t look like a library book. And it was weird inside. There wasn’t a story between the covers, just … directions. Recipes, almost. But not recipes for food. Recipes for … for making things happen.

Things like putting your mind inside a doll.

Alyssa trots down the stairs, drawn by the smell of scrambled eggs and waffles. She follows the smell, and a banging sound, into the dining room.

The smell is indeed breakfast. The banging sound is her little brother. Gage is holding his sippy cup by its handle, whapping it against the tray of his high chair, and babbling to himself. His favorite toy, a sock monkey called Boopie, is crammed between his hip and the arm of the high chair.

“Morning, pipsqueak!” Her father folds his paper down to look at her. “That shirt looks familiar. Didn’t you wear it yesterday?”

“Ew, dad, no!” But he’s sort of right – the shirt is in heavy rotation. It’s yellow, with a cheerful smiley-face sun on it. The sun is wearing too-cool-for-school shades, and grinning. He looks the way Alyssa feels most days, happy and ready to take over the world. Alyssa loves this shirt.

In the high chair, Gage stops whanging the sippy cup. An expression of intense concentration crosses his face, and he grunts. A smell distinctly unlike scrambled eggs or waffles drifts into the air.

“Did somebody fill his diaper?” Alyssa’s mom croons as she puts a plate of waffles on the table. “Alyssa, would you be a dear and change him for me?”

“Gross! Why do I have to do it?”

“Because that’s what big sisters do. Besides, it’s good practice for when you start babysitting.”

“Bleurgh. No way I’m changing some other kid’s yucky diaper. Bad enough I have to change Gage’s,” Alyssa grumbles. But she lifts Gage out of his high chair – Boopie falls unremarked to the floor – and carries him over to the changing table in the living room. She unsnaps the crotch of his onesie, works his kicking feet out of the terrycloth, and undoes the diaper.

No poop, thank gosh. The diaper’s not even all that wet. “False alarm, huh buddy?” she mutters. “Guess you love your big sis after all. Don’tcha?” She makes a funny face, and Gage gurgles with pleasure and blows a spit bubble.

She reaches for a fresh diaper.

“Make sure he’s nice and dry before you put the new one on him,” her mom warns from the other room.

Alyssa blows her bangs off her forehead in irritation, and pops the top on the baby wipes. She wrinkles her nose. Boys had so much … dangly stuff down there. Not at all like her own smoothness below the belt. She is so glad she’d been born a girl.

Gage goggles up at her, and chortles a baby belly-laugh. Then a perfect fountain of pee arcs from the tip of his willy and hits her square in the chest. A split second later, the rank stink hits her nose.

“Eww, Gage, gross! My favorite shirt!”

Back in her room, Alyssa looks down at her favorite shirt. She is soaking wet with Gage’s pee, and she mewls in helpless disgust. The little brat must have been saving it up for hours. She wrinkles her nose as the stink insults her. She gingerly strips off the sodden shirt, tweezing it away from her skin and trying not not NOT to get any pee on her face as she lifts it over her head. She slings it into her hamper – she can’t even face rinsing it out in the sink, even though she knows her mother would prefer it if she did. It’s just too yucky. She opens the door, checks to see that the coast is clear of parents, and sprints across the hall to the bathroom. She sponges off her chest with a wet washcloth, then dries herself; heaven!

After another hall check, she streaks back to her room. Still fuming, she yanks open a dresser drawer in search of a clean shirt. She chooses one of sky blue, with a rainbow and puffy clouds on the front. Not her favorite – it’s no devil-may-care sun – but it will do.

Alyssa can’t go back downstairs yet. The sting of being drenched in her little brother’s pee is still too great. She can’t go back and have breakfast with her parents, pretend that nothing is wrong, while she can still feel the coolness of her clean skin under her new dry shirt. She huffs with irritation, takes the library book off of her desk, and flops down on her bed to read for a while.

She flips slowly through the pages. More and more, she is drawn to the book – its gory illustrations of ghouls and dark woods, its mysterious chant-like stories, even the freaky goblin creature on the cover. She can’t quite figure out the stories. They’re not like any fairy tales she’s ever read before … but at the same time they have a seductive grace to them that makes her eyes feel as if they’re floating above the words, reading them from a very long way up. It’s kind of fun.

Alyssa turns a page too fast – and gasps as bright pain lances through her finger. The shock travels all the way to her wrist, and she shakes her finger in hurt dismay. It isn’t her first paper cut – with all the books she reads, it’s amazing she hasn’t gotten more – but it’s a bad one, and it stings.

She peers at her finger. Blood wells from the shallow cut, and she hisses. Before she can pop her finger in her mouth to soothe it, a drop of crimson plops onto the page.

“No!” she cries in dismay. Blood on a library book? The shame and horror can barely be imagined. She’ll probably have to pay for the book, and her allowance would certainly take a hit from a book this gorgeously detailed and illustrated.

Are you sure it’s a library book? The question flits through her mind again. She has been going to the same library for ages, ever since she learned to read. She knows their collection pretty well. This doesn’t look like a new book – it doesn’t feel like a new book. And for the life of her, she can’t remember where on the shelf she’d found it. She had just opened her book bag after the last trip to the library … and there it was.

The drop of blood sits on the page for a moment, its bright red accusing her for her carelessness. The drop oozes a bit bigger as the paper soaks it up, a crimson bloom exploding before her horrified gaze.

Then the blood is gone.

It fades into the paper, as though the page is drinking the red away. In a few moments, there is not even a stain of pink left on the paper. Alyssa blinks. She stares, but the blood is gone. She looks at her finger, even though the sting tells her that her skin has not healed. Blood still oozes from the cut. Holding her finger out of the way, she turns the book to look at the cover.

There is still no title on the cover, no author, just the grinning goblin. Is it her imagination, or is the goblin’s toothy grin just a little bit wider? And is the tip of its seeking, tasting tongue just a little bit redder?

Alyssa closes the book and puts it face down on her bed. She has no explanation for the weirdness of the book, its strange spells, its creepy illustrations. And she no longer has any delusions that it came from the children’s room of her hometown library. Where did it come from? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, and that doesn’t bother her as much as it probably should.

She trots across the hall to the bathroom one more time. She rinses her finger under cold running water, and inspects the paper cut. It has stopped bleeding. She is vaguely disappointed by this. That’s the only fact her brain can hang onto – a drop of blood had hit the page, and had been sucked up by the paper. It was weird, yeah, but it had happened. She had seen it happen. It is the only thing she can say with certainty about that strange book … it had drunk her blood.

It had drunk. Her. Blood.

But she is no longer bleeding. The water has stopped the thin trickle, and the cut is nothing more than a thin red smile on her fingertip. Alyssa stands on the bathroom stool to reach the medicine cabinet, and gets out a bandage. She tears open the paper, tapes the bandage over her finger, and smoothes the edges down. Then she goes back into her bedroom.

She has a book to read.

That night, Alyssa dreams.

She dreams she is Gage’s sock monkey.

She comes slowly awake to a pain in the side of her head. She is in Gage’s crib, lying next to him.

He’s chewing on her ear in his sleep.

She jerks her head away from his drooly mouth. He waves a sleepy fist, mumbles, and drifts further into sleep.

She is Alyssa, and at the same time she is the monkey. She must be dreaming. Bemused, she reaches out with her mind. She can sense monkey-thoughts crowding her girl-brain.

The monkey-she doesn’t like Gage, not really. Boopie is Gage’s most favorite toy, and he is inconsolable without it. But oh, how Boopie suffers at Gage’s chubby hands. How many times has Gage thrown it on the floor, chewed on its ear, slammed it against the glass of the car window while sitting in his car seat? With a shudder of disgust, it remembers the constant, unrelenting indignity of the high chair. Just last week, Gage had dumped a bowl of strained peas on the tray, then dragged Boopie through it, mopping the green goop up with its skin, grinding it into its seams. Boopie had to go through the wash after that little incident. It still remembers nearly drowning in the washer, pasted against the side of the drum by the spin cycle. Then the endless, mindless thumps of the dryer, tumbling over and over until it thought it would hurl stuffing.

Boopie. What a stupid name. Stupid name, stupid monkey. Stupid baby. It tried to say the words out loud: “Stoo-id ay-eeee.”

The words come out with a squeak, and Boopie groans in frustration. Its sewn-on lips can’t even form words properly. And what kind of puny noise is that? Boopie had always thought that if he could find his voice, he would have the deep full roar of a silverback, not that measly little yawp.

Boopie’s insides hurt. Anger threads and churns throughout its whole body. How can one little sock monkey be stuffed with so much rage?

Boopie pulls itself up with its lanky sock arms. It shimmies up the bars of the crib and flings itself out into space. It lands on the plush rug on the floor of Gage’s room – sheepskin, lovely to crawl on. Gage is learning to walk, and the rug makes a great landing place for his tushie when he can no longer stand on his chubby legs. Boopie swings along, knuckle-walking on yarn paws, following Alyssa’s memories, and its own, to the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Boopie swings up the ladder-back of a chair, feeling the call of the jungle thrum through its stuffing. Its red grin gets even bigger when it sees the butcher knife hanging from the magnetic strip next to the stove.

In the moonlight coming through the kitchen window, Boopie’s sewn-on mouth looks very, very red.

Back in Gage’s bedroom, Boopie shoves itself between the crib slats. No big deal – Boopie squishes easily. It grips the handle of the knife in its woven paw, savoring the moment. Then it gathers all the strength in its spindly arms, and slashes the butcher knife down.

The first blow slices deep into Gage’s soft throat. He gurgles once, but the blade has bitten deep, and he can’t cry, can’t shriek, can’t make any baby noises at all except for that one soft wet bloody little gurgle.

The blade comes down again, again, again. Ropes and tatters of blood spray, hitting Boopie in the face. The blood is hot, and it feels so much better than tepid pea-goop. Boopie laughs in triumph – eek eek eek!

Alyssa, stuck in Boopie’s fabric brain, doesn’t notice the steady green light of the baby monitor on the dresser.

Light floods the room. Alyssa’s mom stands in the doorway, her fingers frozen on the light switch. In the dark of the bedroom, the flings and spatters of blood had been black. Now Alyssa can see that the crib is painted a shocking red.

Alyssa’s mom gasps for breath. Alyssa drops the knife and watches her through Boopie’s button eyes, horrified. She knows that nightmare feeling of trying to hitch in enough breath to form a scream. Her mom finally breaks through her wide-eyed paralysis and lunges for the crib.

“GAGE! Baby, baby, oh god, baby, Gage!”

Alyssa’s dad stumbles into the room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. As soon as he sees the lake of blood in the crib, all sleep is gone in an instant. He stares around the room with a look on his face that Alyssa has never seen before, but recognizes instantly.

It’s the look of a man who has to break something, and break it right fucking now.

He grabs Boopie by its cloth legs. Alyssa screams silently as her consciousness swoops in a dizzying dip of space, worse than the gut-churning lurch of a roller coaster. Alyssa’s dad swings Boopie down hard on the crib rail, shrieking his anguish. Pain explodes in Alyssa’s stuffing brain. Her dad thwacks the sock monkey against Gage’s crib over and over, taking out his rage and loss on the closest thing he could find.

Alyssa feels the seams of Boopie’s neck coming loose under the repeated blows. “Dad … Daddy … no Daddy… please …”

Then her dad slams Boopie down one last time. Boopie’s head comes off and lands on the floor with a soft thump.

The last thing Alyssa hears with Boopie’s chewed ears is her mother’s screams.