Broken Doll

Mariana sat at her desk in one of the dimly lit rooms of her shop, cutting out different shapes from pieces of soft cloth. A small, stuffed, white rabbit sat in front of her on a stack of books. Mariana made dolls for a living and, at the moment, she was trying to make an outfit for the little rabbit.

She soon set down her scissors after cutting out the material she needed for a little jacket. Looking around her desk, she noticed there were no buttons to sew on to the rabbit's clothing, so she quickly left the room to retrieve a few buttons and some extra material to work with.

When she returned with a small box filled with the supplies she was going to work with, she noticed the white rabbit was missing. Confused, she hurried over to her desk to see that her scissors were missing, too. Mariana quickly placed the box on the desk and started to move things around. She moved papers, books, folders, and materials, but it was like the rabbit and scissors just vanished. She wondered if they had somehow fallen onto the floor so she knelt down and peered underneath her desk. She started moving boxes around and while searching underneath the desk, a sudden sound of glass breaking could be heard. The sound made her heart jump and she lifted her head quickly, hitting her head on the desk. She yelped and rubbed her throbbing head as she slowly crawled out from under the desk and back onto her feet.

She paused, looking around the room because she thought she heard something, before walking out into a short hallway. She was heading towards the room where she puts out finished dolls for display. Taking small quiet steps into the room, she was surprised to find one of her dolls shattered on the floor. Mariana started to pick up the pieces of the broken doll. A foot, both of its hands, and most of the right half of its face had broken off. She observed how the doll's wavy hair started to curl inside the broken part of its face and she began to pull the strands out, thinking about how she would fix the doll.

Then there was a sound as if something was scurrying around and she pulled her hand away from the doll's face quickly, cutting her finger against the sharp edge of the doll’s face. She looked down to see the small wound and watched the red liquid slowly start to seep out from it. She didn't have time to focus on the wound for too long though as the sound of something shifting around was drawing her attention. Mariana scrambled to her feet to investigate the noise, assuming some rat was scurrying around.

As she was getting to her feet, dolls started crashing to the ground beside her. She turned her head to see the shelf behind her had started tipping over and was just inches away from her. She tried to hurry away from it, but didn’t get too far before the shelf crashed down, shoving her to the ground and smacking her head against the hard floor. She gasped when her head hit the floor and her vision went black.

She lay motionless for a long time. The twitching of her fingers was the first kind of movement she made. After a few moments she started to slowly open her eyes. Everything seemed bright at first, making it so that she couldn't see anything, but her vision was slowly starting to clear up. She brought a hand to her forehead as she looked at her surroundings, trying to remember where she was and what happened. Her fingers touched something strange and sticky. She quickly looked at her fingers to see blood on them and her heartbeat sped up when she saw it on the floor too. Her eyes started to feel heavy and she began to feel dizzy and lightheaded.

She blinked and lifted her head slowly, looking straight in front of her. The rabbit she had been working on stood about two feet away from her. She blinked again and it seemed to get closer and it only got closer and closer with each blink.

All of a sudden, the rabbit was right in front of her face, staring at her with beady eyes. She noticed the rabbit had tears in the cloth that held the stuffing together and it looked as if someone else had tried to sew them up very quickly. It had also been holding the scissors she had been using earlier, pointing them at her face. Mariana stared at it with dead eyes as she moved her hand to touch the rabbit, her mind going numb. She struggled to keep her eyes open, trying to inspect the poorly sewn holes in the rabbit, thinking the words, ‘I’ll fix you,’ over and over again. The room started to spin as the lights began to die. Some sharp object pierced the right side of her face before she fell unconscious.

When the next day came, the shop door creaked open, revealing a dark haired customer. He found Mariana still under the shelf. Her right eye had been removed while the right side of her face was completely cut up. Around her wrists were deep cuts as if someone had been trying to cut off the hands. The doll that Mariana had found was laying in the same position right in front of her. Panic filled the customer as he ran for the front door and tried to leave, only to find that it wouldn't open. He heard a crash while pulling the doorknob, trying to get it to open. Then a chain of crashes began, sounding very faint at first but soon getting louder, as if they were getting closer. He shouted for help and slammed his fist against the door, hoping someone would notice. No one came in time though.