Broken Dolls (2 page)

“This is Lisa, but you’ll have to tell her that. She won’t remember her name.” He kneels to speak to me. It’s odd when he looks into my chest like this. His face looms round and bright, the way the moon looks on TV. “I’ll go into my lab to activate her. She’ll be shocked, so I’ll close the chest and let you ease her into it. Can you do that, Ella?”

I nod firmly; I won’t let him down. The professor uses his finger to tickle underneath my chin. I can’t feel the pleasurable sensation you’re supposed to, but I know to laugh anyway.

The chest lid creaks when the professor closes it, leaving Lisa and me in a morbid darkness. I switch on the lamp by my bed, made from a human torch, and wait patiently on my bed for Lisa to be activated. I consider turning on the other lights, but stop when I remember the TV shows. Goths like darkness, so maybe she’ll feel more at home with less light.

I run my ballet shoes through the carpet as Lisa lies still, stiff, lifeless, staring at the ceiling. The professor has painted her so she looks sad. I don’t know why he did that.

My eyes widen when Lisa snaps from her upright position into a curled ball. Her jaw hangs open and she
squeals
, high-pitched and desperate, then brings her knees to her face, muffling her cries. Is…is she biting into her limbs?

Her hair covers her face, no longer straight and pristine. A bald patch winks at the back of her head – presumably, where the professor missed a stitch. His eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.

“Hello?” I ask softly. Lisa lifts the hair from her eyes and peeks at me.

“Who are you?” She growls, her voice reminiscent of a TV werewolf. Husky, deep, and vicious. “You’re a child!”

“I’m twelve.” I cautiously step towards her. “I mean, my age is. My
name
is Ella.” She flinches when I move, so I halt. “You’re safe, you know.”

Lisa slowly uncurls and sits hunched on the end of the bed. She scans the room suspiciously, as if trying to make sense of her new home. “Where am I?”

“A safe place.” I keep my tone calm. The professor said not to tell her that she’s a doll right away. That it would only cause panic. He also said she wouldn’t remember anything from her human life, so try not to force any memories. “What should I call you?”

She narrows her eyes. “Lisa.”

Lisa? She knew her name was Lisa? She’s not supposed to remember anything from her human life. I clear my throat, even though there’s nothing there. “You… you know your name is Lisa? What else do you remember?”

“What kind of stupid question is that? I’m fifteen. My best friend is Marcy, and my parents are divorced. I’ll ask you
again
. Where am I?”

I can’t keep my jaw from slackening. How does she know that? Did something go wrong? I raise my hands defensively. “A new home, far away from anything evil, I promise. Lisa… do you know what happened before you came here?”

She stands, unaccustomed to her new body, then stumbles and falls back onto bed, her eyebrows whooshing up. “I remember… I remember going to hospital… I had a fight with Dad…” Her eyes flutter, and she cradles her head in her hands. “Then it’s black.”

“Wow.” I’m genuinely impressed. “I don’t remember anything before…” I motion towards my body. “
This
.”

“How long have you been here?”

I shrug. The professor said he had dark hair when I first met him; but it’s always been ashy to me. “My whole life.”

Lisa draws her knees to her chest again and studies her hands. She bends each finger one at a time, her nostrils flaring with each squeak of her fingers. She lifts her skirt and stares at the hinges where her knees used to be, then taps her legs, the plastic loud in the silence.

She lowers her dress and gazes at the wall in front of her. Her shoulders rise and drop quickly.

“Are you okay?” I whisper, still too nervous to walk any closer.

Lisa doesn’t make eye contact. “
This
is why I don’t need to breathe. Or eat. Or
blink
.” She locks her jaw. “I’m a monster.”

“No! No, of course not! We’re
dolls
!” I smile my most encouraging smile. “
Pretty
dolls. See?” I pirouette, but she doesn’t look. I don’t know what else to do. Lisa has made the whole situation uncomfortable–not enjoyable like I’d imagined.

Lisa rolls on her side, her back facing me. “I’d like to be alone, please.”

“Why do you want to be lonely?”

“Just because I want to be alone doesn’t mean I’m lonely!” She barks.

I start to respond, but there’s no point. I can’t stay in this chest with her–her mood is suffocating me. If my heart worked, I’m sure my face would be flushing from frustration. I reach for the ladder in the center of the chest and climb up. I check to see whether Lisa is watching, but her head is buried in the pillow.

There’s a window at the top of the ladder, so I awkwardly throw my leg through and force the remainder of my body until I topple out and land on the floor.

The fall doesn’t hurt, but I’ve twisted my wrist. I try to screw it back into place, but it doesn’t budge. It’s hideous. My palm is just, like, staring at me, facing the wrong way.

“Ella?”

I flinch at the sound of the professor’s voice. Gah. That sneaky thing again! He towers over me, but makes sure his shadow doesn’t encompass me–he knows that freaks me out. He bends over and cups me in his palms, elevating me to his eyelevel.

“You jumped out of the equivalent of a three-story building after spending five minutes with Lisa?” He laughs, but it’s more like a quiet wheeze. “Things didn’t go so well?”

“It was awful!” I cradle my broken wrist. “
She’s
awful! She’s moody, rude and just, well… awful!”

With his thumb and index finger, he tweaks my wrist, putting it back into place almost immediately. “Is that better?”

I test my hand and flop it around. “Yep. Thank you! How can I stop her mood? Or is this what all teenagers are like?”

“Maybe we could help redecorate the chest?” He strokes my hair, studiously. I can’t help but notice he’s ignoring my last question. “We could make it feel like it’s her home, too.”

I lean forward to place my palm on the professor’s thumb. “But she remembers her old home.”

His thumb flinches, and he inhales, staring at me like I’m an alien. I don’t think he’s ever going to exhale. “How much of it does she remember?”

I shrug nonchalantly, but I’m unnerved by his demeanor. “Her age, her family, her friend, the hospital.”

The professor splutters and puts a hand to his forehead. He almost drops me and falters to keep me from falling, then places me back on the closed chest and paces, scrunching the tips of his lab coat and scratching his head. “She’s beyond repair,” he mutters, before stopping to bite his nails. “She is beyond repair.”

eyond repair…

His words haunted me through the night. What had he meant? Do I really want to know?

The professor made a bed out of a half-empty tissue box so I could sleep in the attic and watch TV. He understood that I didn’t want to be in the chest with Lisa.

“The recent outbreak has infected as many as ten thousand Denver residents with an over ninety-five percent fatality rate.”

5:06 am. The news has been reporting the same story for hours. I flick the channel several times to try find something–
anything
–else, but the same thing is on every station. It’s times like this I really wish the professor would invest in cable TV. I’ve seen it advertised before. They have a whole channel dedicated to musicals where people sing and dance all day, every day. A perfect paradise.

The TV’s backlight is less intense now that the pale sky outside is peeking through the window. I wish we had curtains. I hate the idea of anything watching me from the outside in.

I yawn, even though I don’t need to. I don’t get tired if I don’t sleep. I just… don’t think as clearly. Memories scatter and my words jumble. I refused to sleep for three months once and by the end of the stint, I was an incoherent mess. But I didn’t care. Anything was better than sleeping. Better than those vivid dreams that petrified me: images of fire and dead bodies. I haven’t dreamed since I told the professor about them. Now, I can sleep peacefully in oblivious darkness.

Sleep didn’t come naturally to me tonight. I kept thinking of Lisa and how she wanted to be alone, meanwhile claiming she wouldn’t be lonely. That’s got to be poppycock, as the professor says. Things can’t work like that. Can they?

I pull the tissue over my shoulders, imagining the warmth. I like to pretend I can feel, sometimes. Even when the professor accidentally pricks his finger with something sharp… I don’t know, I kind of envy him for it, even though it hurts him. It’d be nice to feel again. Anything. Something.

Lying on my side, the news anchor looking funny from the twisted angle, I rest my eyes for the first time in hours and tune out the woman’s calming, melodic voice amongst the chaos.

There’s pressure by my feet, like the stack of tissues beneath me has been pushed down. I open my eyes to see Lisa sitting erectly at the other end, grinning contritely. I sit up and smile politely, fighting the urge to snark. I guess I should give her another chance. We all deserve at least one.

“Hey,” Lisa says, her tone a lot softer now. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“How did you get out of the chest?” I scan her body for injuries.

“Same way you did.” She sweeps her hair from her eyes. “I got lonely in there.”

Ah. So she
does
get lonely. “Well, that’s good. I mean, it’s not. But, I was getting lonely out here, so it’s good you came out. Gah, I’m rambling. Sorry.”

She laughs.
Wow
. I made the goth laugh! Her whole face seems to change. Her giggle is light, breezy, and completely contradictive to her fashion sense. “I had time to process everything.” Her laugh fades, and her face droops. “So, I’m a doll now. I was human yesterday, and today I’m not. And you can’t tell me why?”

I shake my head, uncertain how to take her new attitude. I’m not buying this sudden acceptance –it’s like she has an ulterior motive or something. “The professor told me something bad happened to us as humans, so he turned us into dolls. That’s all I know.”

Lisa bites the inside of her mouth before forcing a smile. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this. And guess what?
You’re
going to show me around. I’m sure the professor has a diary detailing his sordid workings.”