My Special Dolly

• Arion Marama, Grade 8, Kinross College
• Short Story
• 2017

Finalist in the 'Write Here Write Now 2017' competition

Dolls were never really my thing. I had suspected it since I received it, from my grandmother, for my eleventh birthday. Coincidently she was found deformed and deceased in her bathtub a day later. I had found her with a jaw that seemed to be playing hide and seek.
The police don’t have a single lead on who could have committed this atrocity. My parents told me that I had an overactive imagination. Contrary to their belief, I know it was the doll. I had heard the clickity clack of her miniature porcelain boots, the groan of my floorboards as she walked past and her devilish laugh as she planned her next murder.
I have devoted the last two weeks to tracking her and planning how to get rid of her, permanently. My studies on her behavioural patterns have led me to believe that at 7:06 she will go to sleep for exactly six minutes and sixty six seconds. That is when I will set my trap.
Through a crack in my wall I spied on her, it was finally time. She toddled down the hallway to her chosen place of rest and began her slumber. My theory was that there was a malevolent soul trapped beneath its porcelain skin and if I broke it then the soul would be released.
My uncle owns an old bear trap that could easily break the doll. I considered simply killing the doll in its sleep. I was deterred from the idea because of what had happened last time. Second degree burns in the shape of a small child’s hands. If I placed the trap on the floor, she would see it and walk around. So I decided to suspend it over her head. In my hand rested the switch that would trigger a pulley, releasing the trap and crushing her head.
I slammed my finger down on the switch, the pulley started to move but was caught on something. It was a tiny bow, just like the one the doll wears...
Her eyes snapped open, her demonic gaze bored its way into my mind. Without moving her lips, she spoke, “Hello Michael...” She continued to talk but my focus was moved from her freakish speech to the creaking pulley above her head. The bow snapped, and as it did so did the pulley. The trap came crashing down onto her. I couldn’t see what had happened due to the clouding sheet of dust that was thrown up from the floor. As it cleared, I saw her, sitting there slightly lopsided with a blank face that was three feet away from the rest of her frail body. My Special doll was finally now only a doll.