Page 38 of She’s a Doll

With a sigh, she reached down, picked me up by my duct tape, and dropped me into the empty space beside her. I wriggled around until I could see the TV. As promised, there were zombies on the screen. They weren’t any better at walking than me, which was weirdly validating. They also weren’t as creepy as me, which was also weirdly validating.

Who’s that? I asked. Where are they going? What’s going on with her? Why are the subtitles yellow? Why is that guy wearing that weird hat?

Nicola took out her hearing aid.

Which, honestly, fair.

For the rest of the night, I watched the zombies move across the screen, sometimes with a flicker, sometimes in a slow slideshow of frames, and sometimes in real time. Nicola ate her food, curled onto her side, and started to snore, which reminded me of Cookie even though her snores were small and gentle and his were loud enough that Grandma used to say he was sucking in the curtains.

It was the closest to normal I’d felt since the night Kyle killed me. It was the closest thing to whole I’d felt since then too. Which, absurdly, made me want to cry again. The numbness that had consumed me while I sat on the shelf in Trash N’ Treasure peeled back; the pain of everything felt raw and new again.

What Kyle did to me.

Grandma’s crying echoing through the walls.

The look on Auntie Dawn’s face when she saw me move.

I still didn’t know what had happened to Grandma, or Cookie, or Auntie Dawn. I didn’t know where Kyle was or how I’d get to him. I didn’t have a plan. But I had something. I had a whole lot of somethings. I had Nicola. I had legs. I had this spot on the sofa, which was better than any shelf.

I shouldn’t have wanted to cry.

But I did. The need to cry twisted deep in my stitches and puckered the plastic in my Bubble Wrap. But, still, I couldn’t. Instead I hugged my limbs around myself and stared at the TV, watching zombies rip apart humans until the Are you still watching? message popped up. Weirdly, that was the thing that woke Nicola.

She stirred, cursed, and stretched, bones clicking audibly.

I watched as she stood, collected her discarded microwave tray, and then, almost reluctantly, scooped up her hearing aid and hooked it onto her right ear. “You’re really real, right?” she whispered, not looking at me, voice dry and croaky. “This isn’t just some long, elaborate dream, right?”

Yeah, I replied. Sorry.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit, I . . . This has all been . . . I gotta go to bed. I have work in the morning.” She turned toward the door.

Hey.

She paused. “Yeah?”

Can I . . . um . . . keep watching?

She turned back to me, gave me a long look. For a moment I thought the answer was going to be a resounding “No.” Perhaps even a “Fuck no.” Then, without a word, she picked up the remote, started the next episode, and dropped it next to me on the cushion.

Thanks.

“I have work in the morning,” she said again, and moved toward the door.

Sweet dreams, I called after her.

She froze. If the TV hadn’t been playing, I would’ve assumed time had also skidded to a halt. “Nope,” she said after a few seconds of what I could only assume was some intense internal buffering. “Nuh-uh. You are way too spooky to be saying shit like that.” She whipped back around to glare at me. “Try again.”

Try again?

“Say something less scary.”

“Sweet dreams” isn’t scary.

“It is coming out of your undead arse. Try again.”

I’m not undead. You need flesh to be undead, like a zombie, or a vampire. I’m a disembodied⁠—

“You’re doll-embodied. That counts. Try again.”