Page 30 of She’s a Doll

She walked through the house/apartment/building/whatever and into a backyard. For a sickening moment, I thought she was going to drop me in the grass and get a shovel. How deep would she have to bury me before she couldn’t hear me? Would I be able to hear the worms as they ate my fabric and wriggled up into the remains of my head? Panic shot through my stitches, twisted the meager remains of my stuffing.

But she didn’t get a shovel. She kept walking, across the yard and into another building. The distinctive creak and clang of the door told me it was a tin shed.

A light buzzed. Something else thumped. The plastic bag yawed around me, swinging, then upending. All my broken bits and I plunged down onto an unvarnished plywood surface. A workbench.

She was fixing me.

Thank you, I said, relief still thrumming through me. Thank you so much. I know I wasn’t the nicest to you back in the store, but you’re a good per⁠—

A hand grabbed me, none too gently, and rolled me onto my back, pressing flat against my deflated fabric chest, pinning me down.

My vision swam and my porcelain went cold.

Nicola glared down at me, her hair a sweaty tangle on her brow, her lips pinched and twisted around a barely contained snarl. Her left hand was holding me down. Her right hand was aloft and clenched into a fist around a rusty old hammer.

What are you doing?

“Self-therapy,” she said. “I thought about just throwing you in the garbage, or maybe the river. But honestly, after all the bullshit you’ve been pulling for the last couple of weeks, I figured this would be good for me. Dealing with my demons, Van Helsing style.”

Wait. Wait! I cried, and thrashed frantically under the press of her palm, seizing my panic, my desperation, and pumping it into every scrap of me still intact.

Her lips trembled, the hammer did too, but she didn’t release me.

I’m not a demon. I’m Lucy. I swear to God.

“Lucy is literally a nickname for the devil.” I couldn’t tell if she was talking fast or if that was time slipping forward. “Is my subconscious really that uncreative?”

Nic is also a nickname for the devil!

“All the more proof that you’re a weird byproduct of my brain.” Her fingers tightened around the hammer, and my panic twisted into terror.

Lucy McQuinn, I said. I’m Lucy McQuinn. We went to school together.

“Prove it,” she replied, still holding the hammer aloft. “Say something only Lucy would say.”

I . . . What? My mind whirled. What’s something only I would say?

“You’re not⁠—”

No! Wait! That’s not fair. Give me a . . . um . . . I scrubbed frantically through my memories, searching for something, anything, to say. Jonathan Harker and the cowboy. Fuck, what was his name? Quincey . . . um . . . Morris. Yes. That’s it. Quincey Morris.

Her frown deepened. “What?”

You said you were going to kill me Van Helsing style. But Helsing didn’t kill Dracula. It was Jonath⁠—

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

You told me to say something only I would say.

“And you choose to ‘well actually’ me about Dracula?”

I . . . Yes? I read a lot of old books. It’s like my one personality trait.

“Reading old books isn’t a personality trait.”

Well I’m boned, then.

“This is such bullshit.”