At Odds

Luca

A little backstory on Dolls and Screws. It's like and inside joke between me and Edith. Well, not really much of a joke, more of a just us thing.

In middle school, we were major outcasts. I mean serious weirdos, only difference now is that she's outgrown it, and I am still as socially pathetic as ever.

We didn't look like the other, we didn't fit preferred stereotypes of what kids our age looked like, acted like, and so on. Everyone else was depicted in dolls, and magazines. We weren't.

Edith was still working on the anger and negative feelings from the lab she was raised in, so she dealt with many night terrors, emotional breakdowns, and reliving trauma, similar to post traumatic stress disorder.

Kids at school didn't accept me either, I was getting bullied and that takes a toll on a kid. So one day, I found her in her room burning and breaking apart the dolls Lucinda had gotten her. She didn't look like any of them. She didn't have anyone to play.

Around this time me and her weren't the greatest friends. But I could tell she was hurting, and so was I. So instead of telling on her, or getting upset. I returned with screws. Sharp ones I'd found in Lucinda's tool box.

I joined in with her. As disturbing as it was for two kids to stab and rip to shreds the poor dolls. It felt good releasing that build up anger and stress. We cried, a lot, but we also felt better. Being in control, destroying the perfect visual representation of what we could never be.

Sure we got in trouble for it after when they found us with cuts in our palms and doll parts scattered everywhere, but we swore to keep it between us. We both took the blame. We weren't alone.

Now we use Dolls and screws as our time, when we say it, it's to let us know that it's something no one else would understand. That we can say anything afterwards without judgment. That it's just us.