Page 29 of Cracked Doll

"Slow day," I say. "Barely any customers."

He grunts, mutters something about it barely being enough for a proper pint, and shuffles off toward the door.

I watch him go and look down at my own dress, my own hands, and think — not for the first time — about how wrong people's assumptions about me really are. They think I dress like this because I love it, this whole gothic, Victorian, out-of-time look, and in a strange way, I suppose I do, now — it's mine, it's become part of who I am. But that was never the reason I started. The truth is far simpler and far sadder than that: my father drinks away nearly everything the shop earns, and what's left barely covers food, so there's never enough spare to buy anything new. These fancy dresses — my mother's, my grandmother's — were simply the only things left in this building that still fit me once I outgrew my own childhood clothes.

When I grew up and my clothes from 12 years old stopped fitting me, I started taking them to my room since my father wouldn't buy me new clothes. And they were all black, or dark aesthetic like. I tried my best to save money to buy new clothes but each time, I needed to either fix something at the house, or clean, get food, or pay a bill. So I had no choice.

I used to wonder why I couldn't at least wear something of my mother's from her own adult life — something more modern, less conspicuous. But there's nothing like that to wear, because there's nothing like that left at all. My mother died the day we were born, and my father, unable to face a single reminder of her, destroyed every trace not long after — burned or donated every stitch of her modern clothing while we were still too small to remember any of it. All that survived were these — the Victorian pieces, kept only because they were never hers alone to grieve. They were shop stock she came with from her mother's house. Antiques. Things that existed for the business, not for memory, and so he never thought to destroy them.

Which means everything I own, everything I wear, every single day, once belonged to a woman who died before I ever knew her, or to a grandmother I barely remember. Nothing in my wardrobe was ever chosen for me, bought for me, given to me because someone loved me enough to pick it out. It's all inventory. Leftovers nobody cared enough to burn.

I wonder, sometimes, if that's exactly why he calls me his doll. Because in every way that matters, I already am one — dressed in whatever survived, whatever nobody thought worth destroying.

That night, I light every candle I own — the shop, the kitchen, my bedroom, the hallway, the sitting room, every last stub I can find. I can't afford to let the dark hide anything from me tonight, not after everything.

I leave alone the rooms I always leave alone. My childhood bedroom which I only now see as my sisters’ bedroom. And then the attic that my father always tells me never to go to.

I’m still shaking, my nerves frayed to a thin, snapping wire. I move through the kitchen like a ghost, preparing a quick, mindless dinner. Cooking is the only thing that grounds me; the repetitive chop of the knife, the sizzle of the pan, the smell of garlic and butter—it forces me to exist in the physical world, away from the screaming void in my head.

I make a quick supper — beans on toast, simple, fast, the kind of meal that asks nothing of me — and settle in with an old, cracked-spined novel from the Victorian side of the shop, one with my mother's victorian's dresses that I took from when I started getting too big from my own clothes, its pages gone soft and yellow with age. I never watch the television anymore, not properly — not tonight, with no power to run it anyway, but even on ordinary nights, the thought of that black screen going dark and throwing my own face back at me keeps me well away from it. I avoid the TV, the microwave door, anything with a dark, reflective surface. If the screen goes black, I might see her—or worse, I'll see the fragmented, broken version of myself that I can't stand to look at. Instead, I light a few thick candles, their amber glow casting long, dancing shadows across the walls.

Cooking settles my hands. Reading settles my mind. Together, most nights, they're enough to get me through until sleep takes what's left. Tonight, buried in someone else's story, someone else's ruined love and gothic tragedy, I let myself disappear a while — anywhere but here, anyone but myself.

‎I take my book to the table and begin to eat, the pages my only sanctuary. Reading is my escape, a way to slip out of my own skin and inhabit someone else's reality. For a few hours, I'm not the girl haunted by mirrors and dead sisters; I'm someone else, somewhere else, far away from this messed-up life.

‎

That's when I hear it.

A sound in the hallway.

‎A floorboard creaks in the hallway. A heavy, deliberate footfall.‎

‎My heart leaps into my throat. He’s here. He’s actually in my fucking house.

I set the book down slowly, my breath hitching, and rise, reaching instead for the kitchen knife still resting by the cutting board. I reach for the kitchen knife on the counter, my fingers curling around the handle. "I know you're there," I call out, my voice far steadier than I feel. "I'm not afraid of you."

I stand straight, trying to summon a courage I don't possess, and shout into the gloom, "I know you're there! I'm not afraid of you, you fucking creep!”

‎I cross toward the door, my legs feeling like lead, and swing it open.

Rhys is standing there in the hallway, framed by the darkness. He slowly turns his head to look at me. For a heartbeat, I find myself unable to look away. In the flickering candlelight, his eyes look predatory, shimmering with a dark, obsessive hunger that makes my stomach flip. The light dances in his pupils, making him look less like a man and more like something ancient and starving.

He's standing there in the hallway, lit gold and flickering by candlelight — dressed immaculately, all black, a coat cut so sharp it looks like something a monster might wear specifically to pass as a gentleman. Every line of him utterly still.

And when he turns his head toward me, it’s the kind of movement I'd expect from a film, not real life — unhurried, deliberate, his eyes finding mine in the wavering candlelight like something rising up out of an old nightmare. And for one terrible, suspended moment, I can't look away. I hold his gaze, the flame throwing shifting gold and shadow across his face, his eyes gone nearly black in the low light, and something in me both breaks and steadies all at once.

I tear my eyes away first. ‎

I snap my gaze away, terror flooding back in a cold wave. I try to command my body to run—to bolt for the toy shop where I might find some semblance of safety—but I'm paralyzed. I move in slow motion, the room tilting faintly at the edges, my muscles locking up as if I'm about to faint outright.

He's already moving. I hear him. I feel him, close behind, unhurried, the way he always is, because he's never once needed to hurry for me.

‎He is walking. I don't have to look to know he's right behind me; I can feel the heat of him, the oppressive weight of his presence pressing against my back. I stumble, clutching the walls for support, the knife still shaking in my hand.

I claw my way along the wall toward the shop, the knife trembling in one hand, and by the time I reach the counter I'm gasping, my whole body shaking. ‎I finally burst into the shop, the familiar scent of wood and paint usually comforting, but now it feels like a cage. I scramble to the black landline, my hand trembling so violently I nearly drop the receiver.

I snatch up the receiver and dial with a hand that barely cooperates, the knife still clutched in my other hand, nearly slipping from my palm entirely.