— Doll Parts —
Author's Note: I'm gonna see if I can go ahead and finish this one. It's been lingering on here for way too long.
You were born in this town.
The rhythm of her heels striking the steel plates of the floor sounded natural to her ears. She wasn't sure how long she'd been walking, but it felt as though it could've been forever, as if she were born straight into that moment.
Maria looked around as her legs kept the steady beat of her heels, finding herself walking through the center of a large abandoned warehouse. The ceiling was perspiring with filthy water that seeped down the walls, making the layers of rust look fluid. It flowed down the suspending wires of the overhead lights, collecting in small pools within the lamps and casting dismal shades of brown across the building.
When her eyes adjusted to the dank light, she found rows of machinery flanking her on both sides. She saw an assembly line of small, pale, glistening body parts. She looked at a small head, its hair tangled and matted, weaving into a blond tumbleweed. Its eyes were hollow, just empty sockets forming wells brimming with darkness. Its face was varnished with moisture from the ceiling, drops sliding down its smooth plastic surface, almost looking as though those empty eyes were still able to cry.
Maria realized she was in a factory. A doll factory.
The machinery was so corroded, she couldn't tell the moving parts from the static ones. It seemed like it belonged to a civilization that was long dead.
But as she moved down the frozen assembly line, the doll parts grew larger, life sized. She stopped at a pair of mannequin legs. They looked more like glazed flesh than plastic.
Her eyes then wandered towards a point of bright, untainted light that easily tunneled through the darkness before her. She stepped away from the assembly line, continuing down her original path and towards that white beacon.
Maria squinted as she submerged into the white light. Everything before her became a blind haze, but her eyes were convinced there was a shape within that blur. It gradually took the form of a human silhouette, walking towards her.
"James?" she called out, but she already knew it wasn't him. That shadow in the tunnel of light was familiar, but it wasn't James. Maria started to run towards the unknown person, eager to leave her loneliness in the darkness. The figure before her seemed just as desperate, picking up Maria's pace and rushing to meet her.
They stopped with only a few feet between them and Maria's heart sank as the silhouette was given features by the light. All she saw was herself.
This is a dead end. There's nothing beyond here.
It was a reflection. She was staring into a mirror. Every move Maria made, her twin followed like a bright shadow. She reached her hand out and their palms joined together, only separated by a thin sheet of glass. But the surface of the mirror seemed unusually warm. That's when Maria realized it wasn't reflecting the world she was in.
The world opposite Maria was bright and animate, clean and modern. It was more like a look into what Maria's world could've been, or maybe once was. Even her reflection was false. Her twin was a strawberry blond, where as Maria's hair was distinctly separated into bleached strands with red tips. Her reflection wore white conservative clothing, while Maria's outfit was scarlet and followed the curves of her flesh closely.
"He'll never love you."
Maria pulled her hand away from the mirror and stepped back, looking at her polar twin, Mary. The her that wasn't her.
"You're not the one he wants," Mary continued as she broke the invisible strings that bound her to Maria's movements. She stood with a stiff posture and her hands locked politely in front of her. Prim and proper.
"You're not even a real person. You're just – flesh, nothing more. You're doll parts."
"He chose me over you," spoke Maria with less composure than her counterpart.
"No," Mary replied as a smile grew, mock pity brimming in her eyes. "He chose you over death and loneliness. He'll realize the mistake."
Mary leaned in close until it seemed she'd break through the barrier separating their two worlds.
"James will choose to die alone over a life with you," she spit at Maria.
"He left with me because I'm the woman he wished he had."
"You're a wet dream. Just a flash of heat."
"I'm what you could never be."
"You're nothing. Just a thief. Do you even know why you love him?"
Maria looked away, searching her thoughts, but could only find silence.
"You stole my life," Mary smiled, "and you don't even know what to do with it." Her eyes ran over Maria before she continued, "Look at you. There's nothing about you that reflects any of those memories in that head of yours. What's your name again? Maria?"
Maria didn't respond, but quietly clenched her fist and bit down into her tongue, hoping that Mary would taste the blood.
"Maria," Mary continued, "Sounds like Mary – but it isn't. Where did you even get that name? I had a mother and a father. Who named you?"
Maria's white-knuckles smashed into the mirror, planting a seed that sprouted cracks through the surface. She tried to hide her pain beneath an angry scowl, pulling her limp hand back to her side.
Mary laughed, "Did you really think you could take my life without bringing me with it?"
"It's not your life anymore," Maria grumbled from the shadows of her brow.
"It's not yours either." Mary looked down to Maria's waist, spotting her tattoo. "A butterfly – I guess that fits. You're nothing more than something pretty to look at. And most butterflies only live for a week, maybe two."
"He's happy now. Just let him have that."
"A butterfly's just as pretty dead, pinned to a wall, as it is alive and fluttering its wings," Mary spoke, not even acknowledging Maria's words.
Maria's glare drifted from Mary to the blood trickling down the mirror from the indentation she created with her fist. As the blood flowed down, the cracks moved up. But Mary's words lured her attention back.
"He's going to kill you, but you don't even have a life to give him."
Maria just gazed in silence as she thought of whom Mary was referring to.
"The butterfly collector," Mary whispered in a voice that wasn't her own.
"Mary?" His voice grabbed Maria's eyes and she spotted him just over Mary's shoulder within the fractured mirror.
"James!" Maria gasped from a desperate smile that pleaded for him to save her from this dark reflection. But her smile left when she turned around and her eyes met with whom was standing behind her.
The moisture drizzled down the grooves and bumps of the rusted surface of his pointed helmet, gathering in beads that hung on desperately to the lip of that metal triangle swallowing his head. The shadow of his jutting helmet stained the front of his tainted white robes and his fingers were wrapped around an erect spear, its tip as sharp as the point of his moist and rigid metallic head.
Maria heard a heavy grunt echoing from within that helmet as she felt the pain penetrating her abdomen. He thrust the stiff spear into her soft flesh, forcing her butterfly tattoo to blossom into a gush of crimson red. She moaned as the sensation rippled beneath her skin. As he lifted her body off the ground, she could feel the blood trickling down her legs.
Maria woke up, her head nearly hitting the dashboard as her stomach contracted from a fit of coughs.
"You carry on cause it's all you know,
You can't light a fire, you can't cook or sew,"
She coughed until her throat was stripped raw, violently forcing the breath from her lungs until they felt as though they'd turned inside-out. A whimper wedged between her tightly sealed lips as she cradled herself in her arms and rocked back and forth in the passenger's seat, trying to focus on the music coming from the speakers as she waited for the pain in her torso to pass.
"You get from day to day by filling your head,
But you surely must know the thrill between your legs has worn off."
She breathed carefully, slowly exhaling with the pace of a deflating tire, each breath she expelled carrying a piece of her pain with it.
"And I don't care about morals.
Because the world's insane and we're all to blame anyway."
Even as the pain faded, Maria kept herself cradled in her arms, her skin trembling to shake off the damp cold.
"And I don't feel any sorrow,
Towards the kings and queens of the butterfly collectors."
She looked at her reflection in the vanity mirror, fixing her hair and gazing deep into her own eyes, searching for what was lurking within them.
"There's tarts and whores but you're much more,
You're a different kind 'cause you want their minds,
And you just don't care 'cause you've got no brains,
It's just a face on your pillowcase that thrills you."
She found herself in the passenger's seat of James' car. A thick gray mist had latched upon the windshield, salivating moisture across the glass as it leeched the heat from within the car.
But as Maria looked around, she realized she wasn't shaking from the cold. Her flesh was quivering at the realization that James was gone. She was alone.
"And I don't feel any sorrow towards the kings and queens of the butterfly collectors."
*Song: "The Butterfly Collector" by The Jam