Short Story Collection

Dolly

This one is really weird... :p

Dolly lives in the cupboard of classroom 12. She kind of looks like a Barbie doll except with dark blueish-purple skin, with long brown hair, blue eyes and dark red makeup splattered on her face. And she's just a doll head, about the size of a softball. According to the math teacher, she came with removable scarlet lipstick and eyeshadow, so I think she was just a toy for girls in the art class to dress up.

My math teacher, Mr. Lee, always takes pens, whiteboards and supplies out of the cupboard at the start of the lesson. When he did this, I used to get a glimpse of Dolly, tucked away in the shadowy corner of a dusty shelf. My friend Nat loves dolls, she always has, and she likes to collect them as well (Yeah, that's not creepy at all). Since the day we saw Dolly, Nat has insisted that doll head looks familiar, and she thinks she has the same doll, somewhere at home. I had been to her house before and I agreed, because there was something about Dolly that made me think I had seen it before. Unfortunately, we sat at the back of the classroom, and we could never get a closer look at Dolly. Mr. Lee said that he'd allow us to play with her and put on her makeup if all of us got all our problems right on our weekly math quiz, which never happened, so we never got to see the doll head up close. Ever since then, we've wanted to see it better, but it remained tucked in the shadows. Nat and I used to always try to note every detail of Dolly, mainly because it gave us something to do. We noticed Dolly had four eyelashes on one eye and three on the other, and that her neck and chin were covered in red makeup, for no reason whatsoever.

At first, there was only one Dolly. Then, one day, I noticed that when Mr. Lee opened the cupboard there was another doll head in the shadowy corner, except with blond hair and brown eyes. He called both of them 'Dolly' interchangeably, so Nat and I named the brown haired doll head Dolly 1, and the blond one Dolly 2. Then two more Dollies showed up, one with green hair and another with red hair, and Nat was certain that all the doll heads look familiar. She thought they were part of a limited edition collection, and she wondered where the Dollies came from. I noted that the only similarities between the Dollies were that they all had dark red makeup on their neck and chin, which struck me as odd. Why did no one both to clean it off there?

At the end of the next lesson, at morning tea, I stayed behind and asked Mr. Lee where he got the Dollies.

"I didn't get them myself." He said, stirring his coffee and smiling. "They were always in the cupboard. I assume the Art teacher Ms. Preil put the Dollies there."

Ms Preil was the round faced, rosy cheeked, generally liked art teacher but was known for giving unfair detentions. We still really wanted to know about where the Dollies came from, so Nat volunteered to ask, mainly because I didn't dare Nat was always the braver one (She dyed her hair bubblegum pink a few weeks before, but it really went well with her green eyes) and I didn't like confrontations, even over trivial stuff like this. I trailed silently behind her as she knocked on Ms Preil's office door.

"Come in!" Came a cheerful reply.

Nat and I entered her office where we saw Ms Priel doing her makeup with one hand and tapping her hands on her desk, her black nails making a distracting clack-clack-clack sound. I shifted my weight from my right foot to my left.

"Hello girls. What can I do for you?" Asked Ms Priel, finishing applying blush before facing us, blinking her blue eyes.

"Sorry for bothering you, Ms Priel," Said Nat as casually as she could, although it sounded a bit forced to me. "We were just wondering where you got those dolls in room 12. I collect them, you see, and I thought they were quite nice."

"Ah, yes." Said Ms Priel, taking off her reading glasses and looking at Nat with dark blue eyes. "I made those dolls myself. I can teach you how to make them now, if you like."

Nat smiled eagerly and I quietly left the room as Ms Priel began talking to her. I had no interest in making dolls, and I was also hungry (It was morning tea time). I ran back to my lockers before stuffing a candy bar in my mouth and going directly to History. Nat arrived late and sat down next to me, happily informing me that Ms Priel had offered to teach her that lunch.

"That's great!" I said, although faint alarm bells rang at the back of my mind. I had no idea why, and I dismissed them.

As I expected, Nat did not show up at lunch, but she was absent from class 5, which was English. By the time class 6 came by, I was starting to get a bit worried. She didn't do any music or PE, and she couldn't have gone home because she never liked to miss any school. When school ended and I went home, I tried texting her and sending emails. She didn't reply at all, which was very unlike her.

The next morning, I woke up feeling uneasy. Nat wasn't at school, but I pushed aside the alarm bells ringing in my head when Mr. Lee announced that one of the boys had gotten a perfect score on his quiz. I shook with a strange sort of excitement; Maybe anticipation when Mr. Lee said anyone that wanted to play with the dolls were welcome to stay behind.

That math lesson was the longest ever. My mind kept wandering back to Nat, and I wished she was here. When the bell rang, the class shuffled out. Even Mr. Lee left, turning off the light, and I was left alone in the classroom.

I opened the cupboard.

There were two new Dollies stuffed in the shadowy corner of the shelf. And I noticed immediately something was wrong.

One of the new Dollies had bubblegum pink hair and green eyes, and looked like a Carbon copy of Nat, save for the red makeup all over it's face and the red tattoo above it's eye. At first, I thought Ms Priel must have made it for Nat, but when I looked at the other Dolly, I quickly changed my mind.

Dark hair in a messy ponytail... Dark eyes... Even the old scar on it's forehead. It looked like me. There was no makeup on this Dolly or red tattoo over it's eye. I picked up the Dolly that looked like Nat, turned it over and now I was looking at it up close I could see two words written in red ink on it's head.

Natasha Bredalen. The full name of my friend. It also had a red line through the word.

I went to the other Dollies and noticed they all had names written in red ink with a line through them.

Miyui Tashi

Annie James

Michelle Briar

Beatrice Faith

I was certain I knew the names from somewhere. Just one Dolly left. The Dolly that looked like me.

I trembled and turned it over, reading the name in red ink, that curiously didn't have a line though it. My name, it was my name, but there was something else written beneath it. I struggled to make out the sentence in the dim light, but when I did, I dropped it in horror.

And I suddenly realised why the other Dollies looked so familiar as the classroom door creaked open and a flash of silver caught my eye.