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Paper Doll

I arrived at the Luxury Mall where I work at one of my two jobs. I had about thirty minutes before my shift, so, I decided to go to the large mall restroom near my store to do my hair, refresh my makeup and to use the toilet. The usual.

Our mall is located on land leased from a Native American Tribe. It exists in a mountain pass in California, that has been the location for battles, a stage coach route, many many vehicles passing through on the nearby state highway, and sadly, the dumping sight for bodies for many, many years, (as legend has it). A nearby county regularly drives buses of homeless to a road about a mile from the mall, and dumps them to wander up and down the streets with their belongings. It is a place of travel and desert beauty. It is a pass that seems to experience the harshest weather during any storm. Of course, this odd place has a casino. But, the town has suffered from the financial crises like any other, and run down. There is a lot of good there, a lot of seediness, there.The place is saved by the hearts of the people.

It doesn't really matter where one sees a spirit, but, the public restroom, was the setting. I pushed the door open.

There were two women and a child in the first row of stalls. The child was bouncing all over the place. the women were loud and irritated me.

So, I went to the row of stalls on the far side of the restroom, because they are used less frequently. Cleaner. I went to the fourth or fifth stall because I felt like it. The back of my head was tingling, which is usually a sign I am going to experience something or other. I was in a hurry to pee, so, I ignored it. I opened the door of stall number four and there she was.

There was a young woman sitting on the toilet fully dressed. I think she was eighteen to twenty years old. She was two dimensional like a paper doll that had been folded at the hips.She was face down over her thighs. Her legs were paper doll flat and folded down to the floor in front of her. She was flat and transparent. Two dimensional. I could see through her and could see the front of her as well as the back.That is the way she imagined herself. "Paper doll".

In an instant, as it happens sometimes, she communicated that she felt sick. She was nauseous and her head hurt. She was high. She had vomited on herself and I could smell it. I could feel her nausea and that horrible hungover, drowsy vertigo. I was afraid I was going to vomit, myself.

She was dressed in faded ripped blue jeans and a white or cream halter top with tiny blue designs on it. . Her hair was blonde, long, dirty and stringy. Her arms were dusty. She was thin. Her hip bones protruded from the top of her jeans. He shoulder bones protruded from her back. Her arms were hanging down at her sides like twisted paper streamers. She was wearing a faded leather belt. She was covered in bruises. Her face was covered in blemishes. It looked like she had made them bleed, maybe had picked at them. In life, she would have been very pretty, at first. I could see track marks on her arms and calves. She had dark circles under her eyes.

I wasn't very nice. I said, " Dammit, I have to pee", (in my head)."Why did you do that"? I had taken in so much so fast.

In that fifteen or thirty seconds that I stood there, holding the stall door open, I was angry, at first. I knew she had been with two men, getting high in a car, and had overdosed on heroin. I knew that they panicked and drove out on a dirt road, and, threw her body out of the car, into the desert. I knew that the men had planned to get her high enough to make her unconscious and that they planned to rape her. She thought they were her friends. She showed me a random, innocuous portion of desert. It looked like a location close to our mall.

I have posted before. I am a sensitive and made a halfhearted joke about being approached and/or accosted by spirits in restrooms.

I arrived at the Luxury Mall where I work at one of my two jobs. I had about thirty minutes before my shift, so, I decided to go to the large mall restroom near my store to do my hair, refresh my makeup and to use the toilet. The usual.