Please note: this is a work of fiction. It has been crafted by the author and is not a direct opinion from AHS. Part of the newspaper is student expression. Viewer discretion is advised!!
A china doll sits upon the china cabinet.
A befitting doll for a befitting throne. Like a queen in her domain.
She has auburn burnished ringlets that flow down her chest. They were lovingly glued in with the utmost pride by a doll maker from the century of her birth.
A doll maker that rots in a grave in the yard.
She has shiny shimmering black shoes that sit sweetly on her feet. They were bought by a father that purchased her off the shelf of the doll maker that rots in the yard.
A father that sits in an old rocking chair out on the porch.
She has a plaid dress made with verdant green striping that bunches at her waist and up at her sensuous shoulders. This was sewn by the mother that received the doll from the father on the porch, who bought her from the doll maker in the yard.
A mother that sits in an urn on the mantle.
She has dust buried in the folds of her clothing and laying gracefully on her long black lashes. This was a gift of the grand little white farmhouse that she was brought to eons ago and given to the little girl that rushed to the door by the mother who sits in the urn on the mantle who’d gotten it from the busy father that sits on the porch that had purchased from the dollmaker in the grave.
A farmhouse that sits wrecked around her.
She is missing a hand. This was torn off by the little girl who’d gotten it from the mother that had sewn the dress, from the father that bought the shoes from the dollmaker that had sewn her, one day, many years later, when she was trying to change her dress and pulled too hard.
A girl that lays crying up in her room as a woman.
She has cracks that scar her delicate porcelain face. These were given to her by the boy across the street that had shown up at the doorstep of the girl that had rushed to the door who had received the doll from the mother that had sewn the dress who had gotten her from the father that bought the shoes from the dollmaker that sits in the yard when he had knocked her over.
A boy that is slumped over in the basement around his gleaming hoard of bottles as an excuse for an American man.
She has the most beautiful eyes. These were a gift from a glassmaker more than a century ago—a curse from the universe. The glimmering gems made similar to diamonds in her long immortal life above the china cabinet. They have stored a million stories and, with it a million things.
The house that’s wrecked around her, the father on the porch, the mother in the urn, the doll maker in the yard, all ignorant to the girl up in the room sobbing and the boy down in the basement drinking.
The shattered glass sitting around her china cabinet that she has lived atop for years. The turned-over table in the corner. The ripped-up marital license on the floor in the kitchen. The stack of caramel-colored beer bottles glittering in the sun covering the kitchen counter.
The bruise planted in the face of the little girl that ran to the door so many years before blooming like a flower.
She can see it all.
And it makes me wonder what happened. What happened in this house.
She can remember a time when the house was happy, and dresses were sewn, and shoes were bought, and the lonesome mahogany door saw many people.
A terrible thing.
That’s what she would say.
A terrible, terrible thing.
Sadly,
She can’t.