Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

Christmas shopping is always a challenge for me. First off, I’m not wild about crowds of people, which is pretty much what you get if you put off your shopping until December. Though I always have the best of intentions about getting started earlier, I never seem to. Then you have the challenge of picking out just the perfect gifts for each of the people on your list, while sticking to that annoying budget that unfortunately can’t just be tossed out the window.

One of my favorite places to find special gifts is antique stores, because nothing there is mass produced or impersonal. Every piece has a history, and that makes it much more personal.

Today, though, amidst the vintage women’s fur hats and beaded gloves, and the cool wind-up tin cars, I found what has to be the beginnings of a horror tale.

Seated at an antique tin table were three worn dolls, each clearly showing signs of heavy play, and each about the size of a two-year old human child.

The first doll was human looking, with a cloth body and a porcelain face. Its eyes stared sightlessly forward, its mouth open in what was clearly meant to be a smile. Unfortunately, with its pale skin, protruding teeth, and vaguely sinister expression, it much more closely resembled an infant vampire than it did a human child.

Seated directly to the blood-sucking child’s left is a monkey of matching size. Its’ too-human face is surrounded with dark, wiry hair marred by bald patches from long ago playtimes. It glares at you, unmoving, with an expression just this side of homicidal. Due to the wear, white stitches show through his fur in many places, giving the impression that the creature has been through a terrible surgery and then repaired by an inexpert hand. As creepy as the face is, though, that’s not all of the story. Unlike the human doll, this one wears clothes: red corduroy overalls with bright green buttons.

Try as I might, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had made this ape up to be their replacement child, at the first one’s expense.

Then, of course, there’s doll number three.

A bear, but not one of the familiar stuffed variety. True, his body was the kind of overstuffed brown plush you take for granted in the Teddy Bear family. This one, though, sports a molded plastic face, done in pale pinkish brown. Its blue eyes don’t line up, they stare at different points on the horizon, and with the way that the dolls are posed, it appears to be keeping a single eye trained on each of the others. Its hat might have been meant to be jaunty, but limp and bedraggled as it is, it only manages to be sad.

Then there are its hands. Yes, I said hands.

Bears should have paws. That is the natural order of things. I’m fine with fluffy stuffed bears having arms that end in blunt blobs like good old Winnie the Pooh. That’s perfectly legitimate artistic license.

Giving the bear realistic rubber human hands just isn’t right.

So now, instead of being in the Christmas Spirit, I’m up writing short horror stories about this cluster of dolls I can’t quite get out of my head. That’s one of the downsides to being a writer.

Cheers,

Michelle