Melancholia

Remnants 25 - Doll Day

"Hey, guys, do you know what day it is?"

"Of course we do! It's Doll Day!"

"I wonder who will be the doll this year."

"Luckily it's not me, I've been the doll last year."

They looked at the door of their classroom and waited for more students to come.

"Emily! Emily looks weird!"

"Emily!"

"Yes?"

"You're... Not you."

"Me?"

"Your face. No blemishes you have."

"Impossible!"

"You're the doll this year!"

Everyone stood up and rushed to the door, just to see Emily. Indeed, she did not look normal. She looked rather artificial.

"Here, take a look in this mirror!"

"Ah!"

"Don't you see?"

"I'm... I'm... Yay!"

"You're happy?"

"Of course. To be part of a tradition is such an honour."

"I see. Well then, good luck."

Soon, the teacher came.

"Good morning, students!"

"Good morning, teacher!"

"So... Is there a doll among us this year?" asked Mr. Ames.

"Yes, teacher! I am." Emily said, raising her hand.

"I see. Well, good luck for the festival this evening."

"Thanks, teacher," Emily replied, slowly feeling her face get slightly stiffer.

In fact, throughout the whole day, her face slowly changed, becoming paler and paler. Her facial features too, looked quite artificial and mechanical. Uncanny was she, a living doll.

Her eyeballs didn't roll around that much as usual, with her eyes just mostly looking forward. Like an owl, she could spin her head around in a wide range, as her head was splitting from her neck.

After a few hours of learning, it was time to return home. The students went back excitedly, and the teachers did too. How excited they were for the day!

"Tell me, are you really enjoying being a doll?" asked Sarah, Emily's best friend.

"Sure I am. It's wonderful. Though... I am feeling stiff."

"Hmm... Well I wonder what type of doll you're going to be."

"I do hope I'm a wind-up doll."

"We've arrived at my house. See you, Emily."

"See you," Emily said as she felt her jaw stiffen, becoming harder to talk or move her jaw.

"La Li. Lu Le. Lo!" Emily tried to sing, but with her stiff jaw, she found it hard to sing properly.

"Well, at least. I still can. walk," she said to herself, despite her movements becoming more rigid and mechanical, spheres slowly forming from her joints.

"I'm home!" she said, arriving home.

A long period of silence followed. Nobody replied.

"Click, trink! Click, trink!" A key wound up. "Click, trink! Click, trink!"

"Creak..." Footsteps were heard on the creaking floorboard.

"Who's there?"

A nutcracker walked out of a door stiffly, legs moving one after the other.

"Dad? Is that you?"

"Dad?" asked the nutcracker, with a jaw open wide.

"They got you too?"

"Me? No, heavens I'm not. I'm just trying to help you get accustomed to it."

"Ohh, thanks Dad," Emily said, smiling, for that was soon becoming the only emotion she could show.

"One! Two! One! Two! And through and through!"

"Where's Mom?"

A doll in a frilly pink dress appeared from another door, walking quite stiffly, with legs that didn't bend.

"Hello. Welcome home, doll."

"Mum?"

"Yes?"

"Are you ... ?"

"Does it matter?"

"No, it doesn't."

"You're a pretty dolly, just like Polly!"

"Click clang clung," a sound came from the room where the doll came out from.

Out from the room, the nutcracker who went back in came out again, with a trolley with a shiny cyan pedestal on it. On it, a girl was in a pose of dance, frozen stiffly.

"Click clang clung," the nutcracker turned the golden key in the pedestal. Soon, the girl started dancing and singing, "What do you see? You see a doll on a music box..."

"Sis! Sis are you alright?"

"How can you tell? I am under a spell."

"Your sister is no more," said Polly the dolly. "She is just a mere dancer on a music box."

"Sis!" Emily tried to hug her sister, but her arms were stiff, and was pushed away by the dancing of her sister.

"Huff...huff..." Emily began to pant as she tried to get up. "It's getting hard to move," she thought to herself.

"You alright?" asked the nutcracker, extending a hand.

"I..." Suddenly, Emily found that she couldn't talk anymore.

"Hmm?" asked the nutcracker.

Emily just gave up and lied down on the floor, no longer trying to get up. Slowly, she lost control of her body and four limbs.

Her head could just look around, the nutcracker, doll and dancer surrounding her. Soon, she couldn't turn her head anymore too.

Now, she shrank down to the size of a doll. A ball jointed doll she had became, a conscious one.

"She looks good," said the dancer, picking Emily up.

"Let Polly see!"

"Yes, she is good."

"Finally we can get out of our costumes," said Emily's father, formerly the nutcracker. "Let's bring her to the Doll Festival."

At the doll festival, Emily was placed sitting on a high platform in the middle of the field, together with the other transformed people.

Everyone danced around the platform, in a ritual of pleasing the Doll Goddess. They danced and danced all night to twelve. Then they took down the dolls, and brought them home.

The next morning, Emily woke up to find herself normal again. "I'm back to normal again. I hope the festival last night was a success."

"Hopefully next year it could be even better."