The doll was beautiful. It was scary.
When I walked into the red room, I felt eyes on me. Not just the eyes of the husband and wife who recently moved into the house, nor the dolls'. I felt the eyes in the walls, on the floor looking up at me. The doll sat atop the dining room table, temporarily placed there as the wife frantically searched for a fitting place to display her colors.
The doll’s eyes were the hardest to meet. I could walk on the floor and therefore step on the eyes in the floor, but no matter where I looked, my eyes met the dolls’. She was angry at me.
The wife had bought her in an estate auction. She was cracked and molded, but she was still beautiful. The husband paid for her repair so she could once again grace the living room of her owners.
When I left the house, the shroud over my shoulders had lifted but was replaced with worry. The husband had fallen sick. The wife moved about the house, fetching water and food, blankets, calling doctors. One day she fell down the stairs and her brain graced the floor.
The doll became angrier. The husband invited me back to the house for tea. He was lonely.
His sunken eyes gazed into his teacup as he waited for my answer. His proposition surprised me, but I was lonely too. I told him to wait three months so the color could return to his face.
We regularly walked the gardens; almost every day for those months. His flesh grew rosier each passing day, and when I found him chopping wood last Sunday, I agreed. We had waited long enough.
His bedroom was cold. The curtains had been drawn. He opened them again and dust filled the air. He coughed and told me they hadn’t been opened since the accident. I told him not to worry. The warm air from the open window would fix it.
I felt the doll's presence, her eyes on my back. She was angry, but I ignored it. She moved, her head tilting to meet my stare. Her anger was tangible, roiling and frothing over like an angry sea.
For a reason known only to the doll, I smiled. My smile was wily and dangerous. The doll's anger rose, her porcelain face as flush as mine. The bedroom grew eyes. Eyes on the ceiling, on the floor, on the walls. The doll’s beautiful eyes cried.
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