Realism Fan Fiction / Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Rag Doll ❯ One-Shot

Rag Doll

By Amaunet Mortensen

 

 

It wasn't that she couldn't go back. The doors were always open but what waited behind them was exactly what she was running from. Drew closed her eyes and stuck a hand in her tangled brown hair and allowed her shoulders to sag.

She clutched the bag of her only worldly possessions close to her chest as she tried to shield her fragile body from the cold. The touch of the wind on her skin brought the thoughts she had been trying to repress to the surface of her mind once more. She shivered more from the memory than the cold and a tear rolled silently down the contours of her face.

There was her mother again, sitting in her favourite chair gently rocking, clutching the rag doll and singing softly to it as she stroked its hair soothingly. She took no notice of Drew.

She remembered running home from school when she was young, bursting with excitement, dying to see the pride in her mother's eyes when she saw her report card: she had placed first in the class.

For years all she had ever wanted was her mother's approval, her affection, then eventually just her attention. Anything that showed that the woman was even remotely aware of her presence would have satisfied her.

But it never came. Day after day Drew watched her mother interact with that rag doll. That wretched doll, that stupid lifeless substitute: incapable of thought, feeling, or even independent movement, that lump of cloth.

And Drew grew to envy that doll. She tried to be more like it, to gain her mother's attention. She dressed like that doll. She did nothing unless she was told. She was so careful not to make her mother angry. But nothing was ever good enough. She remained in that chair, rocking her imaginary child and ignoring her real one.

Sometimes she had even spoken to the doll about Drew, telling it that it should not cry as Drew did, it should not behave rudely as Drew did. But she never spoke directly to Drew.

And Drew grew to hate that doll. She hated the way it slumped in her mother's arms seeming to mock her with its effortlessness. She hated the way the doll seems as oblivious to her mother as her mother was to own daughter. But still, the doll won day after day, every day.

And Drew grew to hate that woman. She no longer craved for her affection she wanted only to make her presence felt. She was no longer content to sit and wait and beg for her mother. She was ready to inflict as she had been inflicted upon over the years but even when she did her worst she was unable to get any response from the woman other than more mutterings to her doll.

There was that time she had let that boy from school have his way with her in the parlor where her mother sat with her doll every day. She had angled herself where she would have been in plain view of anyone entering the room. As expected her mother walked in, glanced her way showing no sign of registering the scene before her, and then took her seat with her back turned to Drew and her companion and began singing to the doll. While the boy had been thrusting and moaning softly, Drew had felt nothing, nothing but contempt and a nauseous sensation as she saw her mother's outright oblivion.

At that point she had seen her mother as she had never seen her before. She saw a monstrous, cruel woman who had killed every single pleasant memory she could have possibly had of her childhood. All at once, she had felt complete loss, rebirth and shame. Just when she thought she could feel nothing else at that single point, the boy finished and she felt all her dignity drain from her as the warm liquid between her legs ran down unto the tabletop.

Today Drew could bear no more of her mother's back, her ignorance and no more of that doll. She had come to the realization that nothing in her could meet the expectations embedded in her mother. Only a doll could ever be so completely subjected to the will of another. And lately Drew had come to see that in a way, she herself had been her mother's doll: the one sitting on the shelf waiting to be played with. Even when she had thought she was trying to hurt her mother, it was only another attempt to make her mother see her, if only for once. The boy had meant nothing to her. He was only a means to an end, an end she had never achieved and she had never made these conclusions until she had done irreparable damage to herself.

This morning she stood in the doorway and watched in detached silence as her mother chatted cheerfully with the rag doll, filling in the doll's part of the conversation somewhere in her mind. She stood and watched and then with a deep breath she opened her mouth and said to her unconcerned mother's back:

“Please… Please forgive me but I won't be home again. Maybe some day you'll look up and barely conscious you'll say to no one, `isn't something missing?'.”

The woman stopped chattering but didn't move and inch. Drew continued. “You won't cry for my absence. I know you forgot me long ago.” Irritated by her mother's lack of response she added, “Am I that unimportant? Am I so insignificant?”

She realized that she had raised her voice and was shouting at her mother in what she recognized as a last attempt to reach out the woman who had been the center of her life for its entire span, the woman she called mother for the last time today.

Drew looked at the rag doll propped up against the back of a chair opposite her mother, turned and walked out of the house never to return.

Now she sat in a field miles from her home, from her mother and her doll but not her memories. As she stood trying to figure out her next move she couldn't help turning southward from where she had come and whispering into the mild breeze:

“Even though I'm the sacrifice, you won't try for me; not now. And though I die to know you love me, I'm all alone.”

 

Twelve years later, Drew walked down the hallway she had come to know like the back of her hand. She walked slowly almost tentatively up to the doorway she had visited so many times in her dreams. She stopped as she reached it and slowly positioned her body so that she could not be seen by any one that may be in the room.

As she stood there pressed against the wall and easing her face in to see into the room, she heard voices or rather one voice in conversation. She shifted to increase her field of vision and slowly she made out the figure of a woman sitting in a corner of the dimly lit parlor with her back turned. Opposite her sat a rag doll propped up against the back of the chair. She was saying something to the doll about how it had been when it was just a child. Her sentence trailed off and she remained silent for a few seconds.

When she spoke again she said, “It seems something is out of place here dear,” she supplied a mental response to this. “Yes darling, I know I say that quite often now but… I can't shake…,” she sighed.

“Isn't something missing?”

Drew's heart almost stopped. She caught her breath and thought of revealing herself as had been her original intent. She began to take a step then she heard again:

“Isn't something missing?”

Drew stopped, smiled faintly to herself as a single tear rolled down her cheek. She walked down the corridor towards the front door pausing before the doors. She looked back over her shoulder wondering if she was doing the right thing. Something deep within her wanted to go back and show herself to her mother but she also knew that she feared the rejection that was to follow. Standing before the doors of her childhood hell she reached into her pocket and pulled out a doll, one that was strikingly similar to the one that had been her substitute. Still looking back towards the room she let the doll fall from her hands and unto the floor. She looks at the motionless object staring blankly with its painted eyes up at her. The most irrational sensation struck here and she felt her mouth go dry.

With great effort she pried her eyes away from the fallen doll and opened the doors letting the bright sunlight enter her tavern of nightmares.

“Mummy!” the little screamed as she ran up to Drew. She had wild brown hair and vivid green eyes that matched those on the man standing next to the running car.

“Isn't that your dolly mummy? Why did you drop it there” she asked pointing to the doll through the open doors.

“No dear, not anymore.” She looked up and smiled at the child's father, her first genuine smile in a long time.