Our Ragdoll Hearts

Ragged Holes

        The doll walked for a month straight. She walked past the long stretch of highway eventually reaching a gas station, which turned into a small country town, which turned into a city, which then turned into a quiet part of the city by the park, resting in the day when the people were out and about, and traveling at night. She figured that there was nothing else to do but walk. As she walked past the park in the dark brisk night, the trees moaned their sad songs as the branches swayed in the cold wind. The doll kicked her feet through the tall grass and dirt. She preferred to not walk on sidewalks if she could help it where someone could step on her or see her. As she walked in the tall grass, dragging her now brownish black sock through the grass, she came to pass by a brown splotch moving in the grass. The doll was so zoned out in her monotonous march that walked for a good half a minute before realizing she saw something move as she marched past it. The doll quickly whipped her cold, brittle wooden form around and ran over to the shape. Maybe this was what she had been searching for? Maybe it would be something to interrupt her terrible cycle of walking and trying in vain to forget the pain she felt after losing Maggie. Maybe it would be something…

            The doll ran across the grass lugging the sock behind herself. She saw a brown rag doll, made out of a sort of burlap material lying in the grass staring at the sky with eyes that were colored onto the doll’s material. It had the occasional small pin in it, and was covered with two or three different colored patches covering holes in the fabric. It had multiple rows of stitches on it, as if it broke many a time. It looked old and worn out, like someone had passed it down from child to child until it eventually got thrown out. Its raggedy arms were laid across it’s stomach, as if it was stargazing with it’s black oval eyes. She could see a gaping hole in its side. Stuffing tumbled out of the hole like an avalanche.

            The doll rushed over to the ragdoll, staring aghast at the massive hole in its side. The ragdoll turned its head to look at her with its sad black eyes and then drew its eyes back up to the sky.

            “It’s no use,” it mumbled with its stitched mouth. “I’m rotting already. I’m old and worn out. No one wants me. Just let me be. There’s no purpose in life if I’m not wanted.”

            “I’m not letting you die,” the doll yelped out, astonished at the ragdoll’s words. She looked into her sock, and found the giant needle and thread Maggie insisted that she have in case of a clothing emergency. The doll easily threaded the needle and set it down beside the little brown ragdoll. She used both hands and salvaged what stuffing she could find scattered about the grass and shoved it back into the ragdoll’s side. There wasn’t enough stuffing to return the ragdoll back to it’s normal state, so she grabbed a couple pieces of the surrounding grass and put them into the ragdoll’s brown body. The doll grabbed the large needle, which was about a third of the size of her five to six inch frame. She took the needle between her two wooden hands and carefully threaded it through the ragdolls rough brown material. After she was done, all that was left of the rip was a long black row of stitches.

            “There you go. All better now. Now, you just have to get up and we can find some place to settle down and rest for a bit.”

            “You should’ve let me die. I wanted all my stuffing to fly away. I wanted to just be left alone. As I said before, there’s no use for me here. Why live if you’ve got no reason to?” the ragdoll said, turning its brown head to look at the doll with its dark black eyes.

            “There’s always a reason to live. You just have to look for it for awhile,” the doll answered back, not wanting to think about the question the rag doll just asked. Maybe there was no reason for her to live. But she at least had to try and look for one before just giving up.