Title: The Realness of Things
Author: Harper Kingsley
Description: A man that’s afraid of the doll in his house.
It watched him from its perch in the corner. That fucking doll.
He hated it because he feared it. Such a stupid, childish fear.
He hated that it was able to eat away at him, draining the energy from his bones with each moment that he knew it was there. Watching him. Waiting in the dark for him to fall asleep. Planning during the day when he was away.
The thought of it moving around the house when he was gone made him tense all through the workday. It was the dark circles that grew beneath his eyes that had him ordering surveillance cameras. He had them sent to the office.
Innocuous-looking items he was able to arrange around the house as though he’d simply gone on a store closeout shopping spree. He mixed in non-surveillance ornaments he’d purchased to get the garishly bright shopping bag he’d carried the cameras in. He’d made sure the doll could see the name of the popular shop on the bag.
Every day at work, he would call up the camera feed from his house on his tablet. He’d set it up on its stand within his line of sight and it would comfort him to see the doll perched in its corner.
He hated the doll because he feared the doll. Because his only comfort was looking at that screen and knowing the doll was still there. Because he spent every night with the curtains drawn tight around his bed and his ears tuned for the tinkle of the "decorative" bells he’d sewn all around the hem.
He hated the doll. He feared the doll. His every moment and every thought had become wrapped up in the doll.
He dreaded going home every night. He thought sometimes of stopping and sleeping in the park. Those benches looked, if not comfortable, safe to his desperately tired eyes.
Those benches called to him. Beckoned him with the promise of enough sleep to survive the night. He’d be able to react faster if he wasn’t so tired. If he rested for just a little while. Closed his eyes. Slept.
He would walk past the lure of those benches as fast as he could. Would rush to the bus stop only to have to wait for a small eternity every night.
He wouldn’t sleep on the bus. (He’d been robbed before. Hurt.) Never again.
His bus was the last bus of the night. He’d only fallen asleep on the bus once, and it had been a long, cold walk home from the bus depot. It had been yet another painful lesson in a life full of tests.
He’d make the last bus and ride the forty minutes to his stop. Then he’d walk up the long hill to the house he shared with his bed-ridden father. The hospice-worker would stay long enough to give his father the last medication of the night before briefly recapping his father’s evening and leaving to wherever.
And his father would already be asleep. And he would be alone. With the doll in the corner.
It had been his mother’s. Given to her by her mother, and left to him with both their deaths.
He hated the doll and would have long since exiled it from the home. But his father insisted that it remain in its pride of place overlooking the family room.
As long as his father was alive, he had to keep that doll in his life. And he hated it because he feared it and because it made him anticipate his father’s demise.
That doll was always there. Was always going to be there. As long as his father was alive.
And every night when his work was done, he would rush past the park and head to the bus stop to wait. Huddled in his coat during the winter or with his shirt sleeves rolled up in the summer. Year round, he would rush to the bus stop so he could wait.
Until the day he was laid off. And there were hours and hours until the last bus. And he couldn’t make himself go home. To that house. With that doll.
And not knowing what to do, for the first time, he went to the park. And he walked around in the sunlight, and for the first time ever he gave in to the temptation of those benches.
He picked one that was out of the way but still within view of help, and he sat down.
His awkwardness lasted only long enough for his tiredness to urge him to lay down. And then he was asleep on a park bench in the middle of the city.
He could have been robbed.
He could have been murdered.
Instead, he woke to meet the concerned eyes of a stranger that would become the love of his life.
And he feared the doll. And he hated the doll because he feared the doll, and because that fear had led him to happiness. Because someday, even after he was finally able to send the doll away, it would still be there perched in a corner of his mind. Tied to every happiness he’d found since.
And he hated that doll. Because he feared the doll. Because it had made itself a home in his head, and he would never be freed from it.
That fucking doll.
=THE END=
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