𝐆𝐎-𝐆𝐎 | 𝐬.𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬

𝟎𝟎𝟐. 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐥𝐥

Chapter 2

Barbie doll

The problem with a mask is that if you wear it for long enough, eventually, you can't take it off.

Mitsy hid behind her porcelain shield in the form of red lipstick and innocent eyes. It was her trench behind the front lines. A place where she could hide amidst the blows thrown at her pride. In her mind, it had been like that as long as she could recall, she doesn't remember what she was like without it anymore.

As she looked at her face in her vanity mirror she could not come to recognise who stared back at her. Bare face, nude lips, oily hair and tired eyes all to her display. She hated it, she hated how her lips were sickly pale, that her hair made her a bimbo and she hated the deep purple that sat beneath her eyes, and she hated the colour purple!

But she was frickin' Mitsy Rhode! She doesn't even know what insecure means, she laughed at the idea of even thinking she was less than a goddess, the girl who was convinced she bled nothing but pure gold...At least, to those beyond the plastic Barbie doll she portrayed.

Inside the mask she wore was painted in fragile insecurity, the words that others threw at her like tomatoes sketched the walls in a raw red. Engraved in her mind like a prisoner does to stone as she counts the hours that pass, she has long forgotten what is day and night within the confinements of her isolated cell. Doomed to insanity within her dark room.

No, she couldn't think like that...She needed to clear her head. Unfortunately, her car was three stories down in the driveway, and as much money as her parents had, they wouldn't pay to replace the skid marks on their hardwood floor.

She opted to shower her debilitating thoughts away instead. The steam billowed from the hot water, enveloping the small bathroom in a hazy mist. The bathroom tiles, glistening with condensation, held a comforting warmth beneath her feet as she doused herself with expensive soaps and shampoos in blazing temperatures, allowing her negative feelings to run down her back and gurgle loudly in the drain like a helpless cry.

The warm water had soothed her mind as she coated her eyelashes in black mascara, she used a sharp pair of tweezers to remove all clumps under the watch of her hawk-like eyes and carefully painted her lips their signature Mabel red. She dried her hair to its usual voluminous state with great precision, placing troublesome individual strands into place before ensuring it stayed there via some luxury brand hairspray that made her 'do' harder than a rock.

Mitsy could hear her mother speaking loudly on the landline two stories down. Laughing and flaunting boisterously to the poor soul on the other line as she twirled the cord around her manicured finger like a teenage girl.

Margaret Rhode liked to pretend she was as young as she used to be, and she loved to believe she was just as free as she was then too, while she ran around with her various scandalous affairs that changed monthly, like clockwork.

Margaret loved to hang around young, impressionable men, usually ten to fifteen years younger. (give or take a few) The only thing that stayed consistent with her attraction was that they were always the rich, lonely, asshole kind of boys, the ones that brought the thrill of fast cars, sleepless nights and ear-pounding music.

To her, the thrill was like a drug, it silenced the voice in the back of her head and brought a Cheshire cat grin to her vibrantly coated lips. Margaret Rhode never truly loved any of the young men she went after, the only thing she ever loved was the thrill they gave her. Mitsy found it hard to believe her mother truly loved anyone.