The Nutcracker Bleeds (PUBLISHED 2017)

Chapter Three - Hickory-Dickory-Dock

                                                            The Nutcracker Bleeds

                                                                 Chapter Three:

                                                            Hickory-Dickory-Dock

                                                                              1

                Even though there was a deep hush over the Ellington house, Anne awoke in her bed after only being asleep for two hours.  Admitting that something felt odd to her would have been understating, because truly, something had not been sitting right within her mind and gut since dinner.  It was a number of different things that had been keeping her awake as she lay in the dark, closing her eyes only to be barraged with questions and images of strange things. 

                The nurse had been dreaming, and in that dream, she’d been a doll – or at least dressed as one.  She was wearing an elegant dress, as royalty would wear, but when she’d looked down at it, she’d noticed that the material was not actually velvet, the gems that adorned her neck and crown were not real, and her shoes were painted on.  She’d looked in front of her – across a large span of shining floor – and heard sounds of chaos.  There was clanging of swords, and she quickly recognized the very interesting nutcracker doll that Olivia had been presented with by her uncle. 

                The soldier doll with long, white hair was battling fiercely against a mouse that was nearly half his size, and Anne thought maybe it was the one that she’d seen the day before in the breadbox – the one that had bitten Olivia.  Somehow, through the cloud of her dream-state, Anne knew she was a princess, and the soldier was defending her against this rodent.             

                The fight raged on, and finally the nutcracker cut the mouse down with his sword that was made of wood, but not without taking a wound to his arm.  Anne watched as blood gushed from the injury, pooling over the light-colored floor. 

                She was then compelled to run to her hero, not seeming to care about the blood that soaked into her dress as it drug across the floor.  She ran for a very long time but couldn’t quite reach him.  The nutcracker had fallen past the mouse it had slain, and when she passed the rodent, its corpse rose up and bit her ankle. 

                There was a screech as its teeth slid against the pale porcelain that her leg had become.  There was a hint of pain, but she didn’t stop running.

Anne reached the fallen soldier, but before she was able to grip his arm, she happened to look down into the pool of red that was all around her now.

                 Anne had screamed when she saw her reflection in that blood, because now she had turned into a decidedly ugly young woman.  Her lovely face and hourglass figure were gone, replaced now by a bloated and hideous creature with blemishes on her face, a terrible nose, brittle hair, and more fat around her waist than she could make up for elsewhere.  

                 That was when the nurse awoke – a nightmare! – and since then her mind had been unable to find that rest again.  She thought about Olivia and about that girl’s earlier certainty that she was shrinking.  She thought about the way Todd had looked at the child at dinner.  Anne thought about how Olivia had insisted that she leave the light on in her room so that the dolls wouldn’t be afraid.  The way she’d cried and cradled the nutcracker with his broken leg, claiming that the toy was bleeding…