The Doll From New Orleans

I used to think of myself as a major doll collector. Dolls from all around the world decorated every room of my house. My friend, Michelle, was the biggest supporter of my collection, bringing me a new doll every time she came back from one of her many business trips. With her help, I practically had every kind of doll there was; handmade, machine made, porcelain, plastic, cloth, wooden, creepy, cute, large, or small, I had it.It wasn’t until her most recent trip that I started to change my mind.

Michelle called me from New Orleans, super excited about the new doll she found for me. It was a few days before she was to return and she refused to give me even a hint about the new doll she had found. Her excitement and secrecy just helped to fuel my own.

When I finally received her call that her plane had landed and she was on her way over, my excitement rocketed up a few more notches. I couldn’t stop pacing through my house the entire time. When I heard a car pulling into my driveway, I rushed out, not even checking to make sure it was Michelle’s car in the driveway. When she saw me rushing to meet her, all she could do was laugh at my enthusiasm. I gave her a quick hug before starting in on the questions burning in my throat.

“Where is it? What kind of doll is it? Where and how did you find it?”

“Stephanie, don’t worry, I have it in the backseat of my car. Give me a moment to grab it before we go inside for the big reveal.” She told me as she opened the car door to do so. It was in a plain black shopping bag, sitting amongst the rest of her things from her trip.

When we both were finally settled in my living room, with warm cups of tea in hand, Michelle started to tell me a bit about how she found the doll. “As you know, I went to New Orleans this time around. I was looking at a bunch of different shops, hoping to find you a doll that would be extremely unique for your collection. I was having trouble finding the ‘perfect’ new addition to your collection when I finally stumbled upon the shop I bought this doll at. Honestly, if I hadn’t noticed the sign above the door that said ‘Custom Dolls,’ I would have just walked past it. When I walked in, the shop was more than a little creepy, causing me to almost walkout empty handed. The whole place was covered in various doll arms, legs and other body parts. Two things caused me to stay, the wall of pictures on one wall of dolls and their owners and the sweet old lady behind the counter calling out to me.

“I was the only customer in the shop, so I immediately had the whole of her attention. She asked me if I was looking for myself or a friend. I went up to the counter and told her of your massive doll collection and my part in helping it grow. I also mentioned the trouble I had been having this time with finding you a new doll, that I was looking for something really unique, something you didn’t already have. That’s when she told me about her doppler-dolls, the dolls in the photos on the one wall.”

“What exactly is a doppler-doll?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Well, it seemed to me like it was just a really life like doll modeled after the person it is made for. The old lady said she named them the way she did because of her fascination with the legends about doppelgangers. The legend tells of look-a-likes that will steal the lives of the original person that they look like, completely taking it over from them. Because of how much she makes her dolls look like the people they are to be given to, she thought the name was fitting.”

“They won’t steal their owner’s life, will they?” I jokingly asked.

“Who knows..Oooohhhh,” Michelle played along. “But seriously, it’s probably just some superstitious nonsense. Any way, I gave her a picture I happened to have of you in my purse. After writing your name on the back of it, at her request, before leaving with the promise your new doll would be ready in a few days, in time for me to pick it up before heading to the airport. When I stopped in to pick it up, she showed it to me and the likeness was really shocking.” Michelle finally handed the bag over to me.

Eagerly, I carefully pulled the box out of the shopping bag and was stunned. Like the bag, the box itself was fairly nondescript, black with a plastic window in the front, across the top was the name of the store Michelle got it from, but below was my name. What really shocked me though, was the doll itself. I had seen plenty of other dolls designed to look like people, yet they couldn’t compare to this one. Most of them had been obviously dolls, but this one looked more like a 3D photo of me. All I could do was stare.

“Oh, Wow, this is so amazing!” As I continued to stare I noticed all the details I notice about my own face every morning when I look in the mirror, my freckles, the shape of my face, the little scare under my left eye, that only I really ever notice. “Thank you, Michelle. I think she deserves a place of honor.”

I got up and went to my mantle. Out of every surface in my house, it was the only one that wasn’t completely covered in dolls, besides the ones that have functional uses as well. On it were only the dolls I cherished most, which were the first doll I ever received and the last one my mom gave me before she passed. Moving both so that they were framing my new doll, I placed ‘Stephanie” on the mantle, still in her box. I stared at her just a little longer before going to sit down with Michelle again.

“Aren’t you going to take her out of the box?” Michelle asked. “I think she’d look better without it.”

“No, a doll this magnificent deserves the added protection.”

“If you’re sure. So did I choose a good one?”

“The Best!”

“Alrighty then, I should probably be headed home for some serious RNR, I’m exhausted. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She said, getting up.

“I bet, drive safe,” I told her while walking her to the door.

Weeks have passed and nothing unusual happened, at least not at first. It all started when I noticed something off about “Stephanie” one day while I was cleaning. I couldn’t figure out what it was at first, so I did my best to just brush it off. It wasn’t for another few days that I noticed she had been moved. I tried to reason it out, gravity, settling, anything, just to calm my nerves at the idea of the doll moving without me moving her. I finally convinced myself it must have happened when I moved the box to clean around it.

I continued to ignore the slow build of unease I had whenever I was in the same room as the doll, telling myself I was just being silly. It wasn’t until I walked in the living room one morning and found her box completely upright, side panel open, and “Stephanie” sitting perfectly across the room on the couch, that I started to completely freak out. I quickly ran around my house, checking to see if there were any signs of a break in, hoping this was just some cruel neighbor kid prank. When all of my window and doors to the outside appeared close, locked and intact, and everything else looked to still be in it’s place, I called the only person I could think of who had a key and would pull a prank like that.

Grabbing my phone to call them, I started in as soon as I heard them answer, “Very funny, Michelle!”

“Stephanie? What’s funny? What happened?” She sounded confused by my outburst.

“The Doll, Michelle! I know you had to be the one to have moved it. No one else would prank me like that!”

“What doll? Stephanie, what are you talking about?! I’ve been out of town in Hawaii for the past week. You were there to send me off.”

“So you’re telling me there is no way you could have been responsible for the ‘Stephanie’ doll moving from my mantle to my couch all the way across the room?”

“Of course not, Stephanie. What do you mean it moved across the room?” She sounded disbelieving.

“Exactly what I said. When I went to bed last night, I was sure she was on my mantle, in box, like always. This morning, her box was standing open on the mantle, empty.” I decided to peek into the living room to confirm what I was telling Michelle, “The Stephanie doll was all the wa...y? What the hell! I could of sworn she was just sitting on the couch when i got up this morning?”

There the “Stephanie” doll was standing in her box the same way she always was. The box was closed tight and ther were no other signs that she could have moved in sight. Nothing! The box was centered the same way as before, the couch didn’t have any dents or wrinkles from where she had been sitting. I felt as if I was losing my mind, I had been so certain of what I had seen earlier.

“Stephanie, did you ‘see’ it before your first cup of coffee?” Michelle asked, bringing me back out of my head.

“What would that have to do with anything?” I asked, frustrated about the whole thing.

“You know you normally have to have at least one cup of coffee before you could be considered fully awake, right? Well, what if you were still mostly asleep when you saw the doll? I know I have seen some weird shit when I first wake up, before my first cup of joe. With what you do for a living, it wouldn’t surprise me if you were still partially dreaming the whole thing.”

Michelle was right, my career as a Horror writer did have a weird effect on my dreams sometimes. While this felt different than my normal dreams, it sounded more plausible than anything else I could come up with. With that in mind, I headed to the kitchen while listening to Michelle tell me about some steamy waking dream where she had a hot actor naked in her living room. I laughed at her story while starting to make my coffee.

By the time I was slowly sipping from my coffee, and after hanging up with Michelle, I was practically convinced she was right. That and it was probably time to let my publisher know that I needed a break from all the scary stuff I’ve been working on lately. There was no way a doll could have moved that far on their own in the real world, I convinced myself.

A few more days passed, and strange things continued to happen around the “Stephanie” doll. While they weren’t as drastic as the morning I found her on my couch, they still were weird and harder to ignore each day that passed. The possibility that the doll was actually moving on her own was more of an impossibility. Yet there were times where I saw her in positions she shouldn’t have been in because they weren’t explainable by gravity or settling. I also saw crumbs scattered near her box and on the floor in front of the mantle, a place where I never bring food, let alone eat.

Slowly but surely, I was more and more convinced I must be losing my mind. No matter what I tried to tell myself, it was becoming harder and harder to brush off each weird thing that happened around the doll off. I was seriously considering getting rid of her and then seeking psychiatric help. That was until I was pushed over the edge one evening when she found me in the dining room and spoke to me.

“M-m-mis-mistress?” A small, eerily familiar voice called from the doorway connecting the dining room and the living room. When I looked in the direction the voice was coming from, what I saw made me completely freeze. “M-M-mistress?”

The world slowly started to fade black and I lost all my strength. “Mistress!” was the last thing I heard the voice excitedly call before I completely lost consciousness. I wasn’t able to process the fact that my “Stephanie” doll was standing on her own, calling to me.

Slowly, I started to feel myself coming to, distantly hearing a voice calling out, “...stress, Mistress? Please wake up, Mistress.” I couldn’t immediately place the voice.

“What happened?” I finally found my voice. My head was pounding.

“You fell down,” the voice simply stated.

I slowly opened my eye and glanced around me to get my baring and find out who kept talking to me. When my eyes finally found the source of the voice, I couldn’t believe them. I closed my eyes again before shaking my head in hopes it would help me wake the rest of the way up. When I opened them again, she was still standing there.

“Please, be a dream. Please, be a dream.” Closing my eyes again I chanted while I pinched myself hard enough to leave a bruise. Opening them again, I was still on my dining room floor with the ‘Stephanie’ doll standing over me.

“Mistress, what’s wrong?”

“No, no no nonono! This can’t be real! You can’t be real! I have to be dreaming, why am I not waking up!” I started to have trouble breathing.

“Mistress, why do you think your dreaming? I am very real.”

The dolls little hand touched me and all I could do was scream for what felt like forever. There was no way this was happening. Before I consciously decided to, I was up and running down the hall to my bed room.

“Mistress, Where are you going?”

I slammed the door closed.

“Mistress why are you running from me? All I want to do is play with you.”

I started to move my dresser in front of the door. BANG. Once that was done, I ran and hid in the bathroom, locking the door. BANG!

“Mistress, Come out and play!” BANG, BANG, BANG.

“GO AWAY!” I cried. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I leaned against the far wall, hiding behind the sink.

“Mistress, you can’t escape. Come play with me!”

“Go Away! You can’t be real!”

“Mistress, I can come to you. Don’t make me come to you. You will play with me.”

“Nooo!” I sobbed. “Leave me alone!”

BANG, BANG, CRASH! “Mistress, I’m coming in. Are you hiding in the bathroom?”

I could only whimper, when I realized she had broken her way into my bed room.

BANG! The doll had reached my bathroom door. BANG. I peaked out from my hiding spot, and watched how the force of such a small doll was able to shake the door in its frame. BANG! BANG! BANG CRACK. The door was starting to splinter and I had nowhere to go. I was trapped, and about to be found by a walking talking demon doll. Why couldn’t I just wake up.

“Please, wake up. Please, wake up,” I mumbled to myself, rocking back and forth in my hiding place. This had to be the worst nightmare I had ever had, there was no way this could be real. CRASH!

“Mistress, I found you. I guess, since you won’t play with me, I’ll have to make you.”

“Go away, please, please, please, go away,” I sobbed.

“No!” A strange pain wracked my whole body. The pain was so intense I couldn’t even breathe. I collapsed against the wall in the bathroom, unable to even make a sound. My scalp stung, back seized and my muscles spasmed. There wasn’t a part of me not screaming in agony from what was happening to me. I knew that kind of pain would kill me.

After what felt like an eternity, the pain started to fade and I was able to think once again. Still, I felt so confused, like I was naked, yet covered in some kind of cloth, my limbs didn’t feel like mine. They felt way too stiff.

“Let me see how your transformation went.” I heard a much deeper voice than the one I had heard the doll use, but it still sounded scarily familiar. I was unburied from the cloth by hands that were too big. Infact, everything looked too big once I could see my surroundings again. “Let’s get you straightened out before you completely lock up like that.” The hands seemed to belong to a too big version of myself. They were used to straighten out my legs and arms, laying me flat on the floor, where I had no strength to move, to fight. I couldn’t even talk to ask the questions burning in the back of my throat.

“Well, Mistress, soon, we will play. And you will have no choice in the matter. You will be my playmate forever and ever.”

I couldn’t help the giddy feeling as I watched another of my creations take her place in the life of the friend of the women who had received two dolls from me. As I looked over at the wall covered in paintings and photos of all of my creations and those foolish enough to think they were the ones to own them. My newest two additions, the two friends, had photos hanging there, side by side.

The END?