Doll House

V. The Escape

 If there is a chance for freedom, it has to happen tonight. Tara isn't sure how the thought had first come to her, it wasn't like she'd ever thought of leaving the house before. It isn't something she wants, she knows that much. Flashes of fear invade her clear eyes as she recalls the Overall Man coming in with his big black bag, tossing in the toys, maybe to never take them out again. And why would she be so scared of him if she wanted to leave, after all?

Maybe she's been lying to herself all this while and maybe she deserves to be taken by the Overall Man. Trapped inside her metal bars on the cold, marble mantelpiece, the doll waits. Because that's all dolls can do, isn't it?

And nobody comes for her and then she waits, and nobody comes some more. She is alone, just like Vicky had been alone before Miss Francine. Only she hadn't, she'd had Tara there to make it worse, and now Gud knew where Vicky was, and what the other children had done to her.

Tara doesn't know who Gud is, but she's heard it said he knows things. Miss Francine always calls on him when she wants to punish one of the children, which is basically all the time. Tara thinks maybe Gud is one of the children who've been inside the house, but aren't anymore, for indeed, there have been a lot of children and even though it's difficult to imagine Miss Francine as actually liking one, Tara thinks it's possible.

Maybe Gud ran away, too, the doll thinks, because from all Miss Francine ever says about him, it seems clear he's never coming back, that he has "forsaken" this place.

And if Gud managed it, why shouldn't they? It seems they weren't chasing after him, that Miss Francine didn't sent the Overall Man to hunt Gud down, so one can only assume Gud is free. Or dead and there is no reason to look after him anymore.

Tara knows death, as well, she's seen it many times over and honestly, she doesn't understand why it's so bad. It is a favorite part of the story for the children, especially the older ones, and their games often feature one or more toys dying. Which mostly means they make some gurgling noises before being discarded on the ground or back into the toy pile. But the toys always come back in the game the following day, or even later in that same day, with different names and perhaps even other voices. But they're there, nothing happened to them and it seems to her like this death is just another way of saying they were out of the game. For a while.

Secretly, she thinks that what has happened to her is far worse than this death, even though some of the other dolls complain sometimes that the children bent them in weird positions or they threw them too hard on the ground. At least they're still part of the game, which can't be that bad. Death means you still have a role to play, it's just another part of the game – like burning the witch in the red, hot cauldron or kissing the prince when he arrives to save you.

Not having a part at all seems much worse to Tara.

Her thoughts drift, sliding away into dark corners and voices. The Overall Man. Morning. Open wide, here it comes. Hush now, don't run. Sit still and you may sit forever.

There's another weird thing, the kissing. They would take the dolls and mash them together in some sort of primitive scuffle. And they all seemed to like it, though it seems horrible and violent to Tara. It seems to her like some altered form of dancing. The children once used to make the dolls dance close with each other, so maybe this is a form of that.

But she doesn't understand, because she hasn't danced in so long and in truth, nobody has kissed her. Except once, with a soldier missing an arm – his rifle arm, too – and almost by accident. The children never used to focus on her, for some reason and she never used to mind all that much. But now that she has had more time to think, she notices things, notices the sort of toys who always get picked to be the princess, the heroes. Tara isn't a hero, and she thinks sometimes perhaps she's far too plain. She was beautiful, with her elegant dress and her pretty blue eyes, once. But she's ruined now and even before, she didn't use to be much. Or thought she didn't. Tara can't remember the time before she came to the house, though some of the other toys insist there has been that, too. Many of them tell stories of other children and other places, of grown-ups and strange houses. Except for Tara. Tara only remembers this, here. Her life in the pile and then, on the mantelpiece.