Joy didn't know how long she lay on the ground, eyes screwed shut, red feathers tickling her nose. But a part of her really didn't want to get up. The world seemed determined to keep her down today. Perhaps she should stay down.
But hard plastic fingers poked her sides. Rocks littered on the gorund scratched her clothes. She shoved the lopsided mannequine off her body.
Dusting her skirt, Joy re-draped the fur coat on the mannuqiune's skinny shoulders.
She stood in front of a squat building, once a shop, its window front cluttered with plastic bodies and forgotten dresses. The mannequin that had attacked her, had been by the shop's front door for as long as she could remember. Like it guarded the place, keeping an eye out for tresspasers.
Something lifted a little in Joy's chest. It always felt like coming home. Or at least, what Joy had always hoped a home would be; unammusing on the outside, but full of the best memories on the inside.
Joy headed round the back, making sure to prop the fallen mannequin back in its usual position. Its beady eyes appraised her form in silent dissaproval. Joy stuck her tongue at it, and hurried to the back door. As usual the key lay between two loose bricks in the pavement, and she swept herself in.
The door closed with a bang.
Joy felt her way through the shop, her eyes squinting against the darkness. Her fingers brushed a switch and a single light came on. She lowered herself in the middle of the room and shut her eyes. For a long time she didn't open them. She already knew what she would see.
To her left stood a tall, black mirror. Each time Joy peered into it, she saw nothing but shrunken shapes. It dripped with silver ropes and silks of all colors, like it belonged to a fantastical royal family, living somehwere far away. Patsy had claimed she had stolen it from a forbidden island.
Patsy.
Joy could almost smell her rosewater perfume and strawberry scented powder.
The older woman would shuffle across the carpeted shop, always on a mission. Re-decorating the dressing rooms, or re-arranging the ring display, or yelling at her to re-order the shoes alphabetically (though Joy could never knew how).
There was always something Patsy was re-creating, re-building. She said it helped to start again. "When something doesnt feel right Seawell," She would say in her dry lilting voice, "you gots to bring some change in."
And Patsy was the biggest advocator of change. She was always snappy and complained about everything Joy did, but her eyes were watchful. Those eyes were warm, and saw something in Joy that Joy could never see in herself.
"You've got a love of the sparkly things dont you, seawell?"—the first words Patsy ever said to her.
Joy had been pressed up against the store front, so much smaller than she was now. That rainy day, she had been curious about the new comer in the old town. She had listened in on her mother whispering with her friends in the kitchen: "I heard she's a strange old woman, might be a witch."
And Joy had always been curious back then, of things far beyond her, so she had went. Her slippers slip-slopping on the wet ground, yellow umbrella cluthced tightly in her hand.
Joy would see the witch's lair for hersel.
And as Joy had pressed her nose to the shop's window, taking in the dripping diamond-iced scarves, the ruby blue rings, the explosive wirey earrings. She had begged Patsy to make her a witch too.
Granted Patsy had deemed her mad, but the look that she gaveJoy was the closest anyone would ever come to make Patsy smile. Everything that happened next felt like fate.
She became Patsy's shop girl, or as she whined to her school friends, Patsy's slave. But between the rough comments and grunts of dissapointment, Patsy let her dream.
She taught Joy the name of every jewel under the sun. She showedJoy how certain beaded-bangles clashed terribly with cotton. How pearl necklaces could rhyme like honey and bread with any dress.
Whatever Joy was known for in the old town: George's girl, that strange seawell child. There was nothing compared to the peace of being Joy-the-shop-girl.
Now Joy opened her eyes, and saw her hands shook. She willed herself not to cry, but a sob had begun scraping through her chest. With nothing but a short, clipped message on the back of a pizza menu, Patsy had vanished form the old town.
Patsy was off somewhere, Joy could only imagine, living in adventure and change. And now George was gone...
As Joy glanced around the shop, with its one flickering light, and its broken mannequins, understanding sunk into her heart.
She had no one.
Joy curled on her side, pressing her face into the musty carpet. Like a storm exploding from the night sky, she let lose her sobs.
YOU ARE READING
Where's Joy?
Fantasy"You have an open heart, and you feel things deeply. That's a gift." He stared at her with very serious eyes, like he meant all he said. In the dreary Old Town, Joy Seawell struggles with a heartbreak like no other. Perhaps with the help of a little...
