Take Your Vitamins

(Originally posted May 27, 2023)

“Miss,” the doll plaintively asks, “what are all of these pills?”

“They’re vitamins, dear. Here, let me get you something to wash them down …”

She stares at the bowl before her as she bustles off.

Some of them look like vitamins, true, little oddly shaped gummies and tiny pressed pills: familiar sights from all the other times she’s been given supplements to keep her nice and healthy and to help her hair grow into beautiful curling locks.

Beatrice’s Eyes

Originally posted to Twitter on August 17, 2022   .

Beatrice sniffs the air uneasily, unsure of herself in a way that she once vowed she would never be. Something has changed, something has shifted within her home’s generous confines, and she hasn’t the slightest idea what. An absence in the air; a lack of smell and noise.

“Cinnamon,” she calls, “I need your eyes.”

The doll doesn’t answer her. Its warm, welcoming scent doesn’t swell in the air around her as it pads towards her waiting hands.

Fangs Over Breakfast

Originally posted to Twitter on March 1st, 2022   .

She wanders into the kitchen midway through your preparations, drawn by the warm scents of cooking meet and browning bread and your heartbeat’s happy rhythm. You tug the blackout curtain closed as she does, walling out sunset’s last beams before they can touch her grey skin.

“Hey!” you cheerfully greet her sleep-mussed hair and hollow eyes, “do you want some coffee? It’ll be ready in a minute.”

The Stained Doll in the Window

Originally posted to Twitter on February 22, 2022   .

Each day you walk past the dollmaker’s store, past those wide glass windows full of carefully constructed cages. They almost look like they’re not cages at all, just dollhouses, but you know better: you’ve spent enough time watching to notice the bars.

The dolls gambol and dance, climb their furniture and nestle in little display cases almost like they weren’t alive at all; sometimes you even pass by as they’re having a tea party, a matched set drinking in unison.

And they all look just the same

Originally posted April 8, 2022   on my Patreon.

Content warnings: corporate capitalism’s cruelty, being mean to dolls, and pet stores.

“I heard that there’s a new dollmaker moving into town.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, they’re setting up at the old mushroom farm. Everyone in the market was buzzing about it.”

“Who?”

“One of the big corporate ones, I think—”

Your witch barely reacts, but with her hands inside your open chest the barest reaction is all it takes. A tiny shudder, just enough to turn the tuning probe off course; it hits a taut string and your entire body shakes. It’s like licking a power outlet, like holding your hand to a hot stove—

Rue’s Waxy Friend

Originally posted to Twitter on August 8, 2022   .

With the click of a button the room fills with the mournful sounds of a funerary dirge, a piano’s mournful notes weaving through droning prayers and grief-filled tears. The music drips down the cold stone walls and across the marble slab—

“Ugh, it’s so cold in here …”

The body on the slab shifts just enough to stare at its companion. She’s shivering in a lacy black dress and mourning veil, nipples hard and skin goosebumped.

Heaven’s Light

Originally posted to Twitter on September 16, 2022   .

They say that light hangs timeless in an eternal now.

They say that each glimmer of starlight is a glimpse of grace; that heaven lurks among those twinkling pinpricks and only light will ever be truly saved, in that eternity lingering between emission and absorption.

They lie.

It’s obvious if you have the nose to smell it. Few do, and fewer bother.