Page 21 of She’s a Doll

I reached out and laid my arm, twitching and weak with relief, gently against Cookie’s massive side.

Thanks, boy.

He kept snoring.

Cookie had never been a super smart dog. His one trick was “sit,” and even that was a little flaky. He was also unaware of the fact that he was a big, scary sort of dog. He seemed to think he was of the small, fluffy variety, and couldn’t clock how terrifying he was to the chihuahuas at the dog park. But whenever I’d had a bad day at school, he’d always somehow known. He’d sat with me, thumped his tail against the floor, or just rested his too-heavy head on my lap.

Perhaps that instinct helped him recognize me. If so, he knew it was me and he was keeping me safe. Or maybe he was just saving his new toy for later. If that was the case, I didn’t have much time. Even so, it was hard, against the warmth of his body, to hold on to my anger.

It took me a few minutes to find the strength needed to turn my head and look around.

The living room. Stacks of books, DVDs, and PS2 games, and old brown curtains, too small for the window, kept closed with a line of rainbow safety pins. There was a pile of paper on the coffee table. I saw my face printed on the top page, flushed and smiling. The words below that photo seemed to smear together.

Missing . . . last seen . . . if you have any information . . .

My family didn’t know I was dead. I’d known that was probably the case. Kyle had days to hide my body. Days before Grandma came home. But having it confirmed sucked me deeper into the storm, the violence of my despair raging around me.

My head throbbed, my eyes burned, my stuffing felt clumped in my throat. I wanted to cry in relief, but no tears came.

It was an alien sort of agony. The need for a release that I could never have again. The remembered reactions of a body I no longer had. A body that was probably rotting away in a shallow grave on the outskirts of town.

The TV’s screen glowed gray, not all the way on, but never quite off either.

I couldn’t stop.

I needed to get off the sofa, find Grandma, and figure out some way to talk to her. Maybe I could write something down? It’d be hard. If Haunted Doll was a D&D build, then dexterity would be the dump stat. Actually, everything would be the dump stat. If there was an advantage to being dead, I hadn’t found it. I wasn’t strong. I didn’t have any powers. I couldn’t even close my hand around a pen. But maybe I didn’t need to. If I found some paper and an inkpot big enough to dip my whole arm in, then I wouldn’t need a pen.

What would I write?

Hi Grandma. It’s Lucy. I’m trapped in the doll. No this is not a joke. Kyle Lawson killed me. Could use a hand returning the favor.

How would I convince her that it was me?

P.S. sorry I didn’t eat the dinner you left me.

It all sounded like a sick joke, but it was the only plan I had. The only one I thought might work, anyway. My grandma had always been a little bit weird. She believed in healing crystals, psychics, and UFOs. I hoped that meant she believed in ghosts too. I hoped, once she figured out that I was here, she’d help me kill Kyle. She’d spent nine months in prison back in 1972 for assaulting a police officer. I didn’t know what that police officer had done, but I reckoned the odds were even to fair that Kyle had done worse.

I imagined his raging red face turning white as he saw my grandma and her shotgun.

That image gave me the strength I needed to sit up, still clumsy and uncoordinated, head lolling to one side in a way it hadn’t before. I scraped my arm across my face, trying to push the veil back and succeeding only in tangling my puffy sleeve in the lace.

My ringlets weren’t ringlety anymore, the hem of my skirt was unraveling, and my whole body was spotted with dried slobber and dog hair. But none of that mattered.

I inched myself forward, stitches straining, skirts tangling, limbs jerking unnaturally. Eventually the slope of the cushion gave way and I slid off the sofa, tumbling down onto the floor with a solid thump.

Cookie twitched in his sleep, but didn’t wake.

I rolled onto my belly and pressed my hands into the carpet. My knees were slightly bent and didn’t move. But, on the other hand, I didn’t have a pelvis, so my hips were flexible as fuck. I kicked aside as much fabric as I could and pushed my toes into the ground. Slowly, shakily, I walked my hands up the side of the sofa, shuffling my feet closer until they were flat against the carpet and I was standing.

I was standing.

The thrill of that tingled sharp and terrifying in my stitches.

Keeping my hands against the sofa, I took a step, and then another, and another.

My core strength was nonexistent. My legs were rigid and pulled at my stitches every time I moved them. My skirts dragged behind me, threatening to unbalance me. But I was doing it. I was walking.

I wondered if this was how Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary felt walking up the summit of Mount Everest⁠—a stomach-turning mix of terror, exhaustion, and triumph. They were the first people to stand on the top of the world (and make it back alive). I was the first doll to walk across my grandma’s living room (and there was no way I was making it back alive). It felt absurd to compare the two situations, but I couldn’t help it. Just like a mountaineer, I focused on the intoxicating dream of success⁠—of killing Kyle Lawson⁠—and took another step.