A soft mocha ran the length of her hair combining with brown and framing her crystal blue eyes and snow white teeth. At her tallest point she stood 4 feet above the ground and every inch added to her mesmerizing beauty. Clenched in her right hand, a baby-doll with its eyes closed lay, comfortably sleeping. Its head was cocked to the left exposing its ear, creating a thought in the young girls mind that it heard all that she said. The young girl goes by the name A, however with no family but her doll she has neither record nor recollection of the truthful name given to her at birth.
Outside small droplets of rain dance down from the heavens and paint a picture of lines and dots on the window. A loved how each little drop on the glass landed in a different spot and was a different size than the rest. She could spend hours watching the water drip down the window and could tell her doll how the rain went up to the sky and then fell back down again, and how this process went by the name precipitation. As a seven-year-old she constantly received complements on her vast knowledge of rain, but never did they convince her that she was smart.
She sat with her chin resting upon her knees and her doll in her hands swing back and forth as if cradled out of habit. She had been watching the rain for hours, undisturbed, when the door creaked open and a soft light peered into the room. “A,” a voice called. “A, it’s time to go outside with the other girls. Put on a coat and we’ll go.”
She silently released her gaze from the rain, stood, walked over to the door and went out. “A! I told you to get a coat! If you freeze none of your tears will be seen by me!” the pestering woman said.
A sauntered past her, her head low to avoid the discomforting stares. A brought the doll do her mouth, “We’ll be fine… right Lucy?” A said, bringing the doll down again, like a mother embracing her child.
The storm beat down on A and Lucy, throwing rough shards of ice and sending arctic raindrops to soak them. The class began to head toward an undercover playground; however A turned and headed for a closer cover from the rain. Left of her, a dark forest stood with its trees stretching into the sky, and the tree’s branches intertwined, ultimately leaving no space for the rain to get them.
Once under the trees A began to collect pine needles. She placed them in a large pile and set Lucy on top of them. She sat across from Lucy, her scrawny legs crossed and hair dripping on her dress. “Now Lucy, you are too, too wet,” A said. “You should have gotten a jacket like I told you! And don’t cry, you’re a baby!”
The water dripping down Lucy’s plastic face appeared to be tears, when suddenly her eyes blinked. Blue once, then tan, then blue again. They closed, the blue fading again. A shook Lucy, “Wake up!” The doll opened its eyes showing a blazing red. A dropped Lucy, jumped up and backed away, “Lucy?”
The doll stood up its pink satin dress appearing more cherry than before. “Lucy,” the doll said. “It’s time to play!” It lunged forward knocking A to the drenched ground. “I know better, you’re just a baby!” The dolls claws dug into A’s skin, peeling it back. It shoved dirt into her mouth subduing her cries. Blood pooled around her, “We’ll be fine… right Lucy?” The doll shrieked.
The doll broke off her arm revealing another under it, this one more real, almost human. She slapped the plastic on A covering the crimson blood. A’s arm surprisingly fit into the doll’s petite arm. The doll repeated the process, replacing all of A’s limbs. She reached for A’s mouth, full of needles and dirt, shut it with surprising force and began to use the string from her dress to stitch it closed. The doll took out its eyes reveling a crystal blue, identical to A’s. She pushed the artificial eyes into A’s, sending a wave of pain and distorting her vision. She then ripped A’s hair from her skull, one handful at a time; leaving her with stubs of dirty blond. “Don’t cry, you’re a baby!”
Last, she exchanged the young, soft face of A, and the hard, lifeless face that once belonged to her. The doll stood, now towering over A. The doll’s pink outfit now fit the body of a seven-year-old, and with a dainty twirl, “Buy Lucy, I’m too old for toys!” and she walked away, leaving the plastic, foot-long, doll to rest in the forest until another girl found her.