The Blank Doll
This one is a little odd because it is actually just a memory thingy I wrote on my family/personal blog. So I’ll give you some context the mookie is like a raggy doll, I made one for my youngest out of socks. It is something made by you or for you or belongs in some way to you – that’s a bit odd or special – normally female. You mook! Comes from this – I have no idea how wide spread these phrases are or aren’t. Obv. there are posts on my other blog that explain this, I think everything else is explained within – it is also lit. a flow of thought as I am regaining memories vividly after the head injury – I thought this one is kind of a story in and of itself so I am sharing it as such!
The Blank Doll
I have wondered about sharing this before but it is a silly memory really… it’s about a rag doll, sort of, not a mookie made from scraps of old cloths and not a rag doll like my Jack and Jill/Gamima – no this was another sort.
It was stuffed with sand, made of a coarsish cotton but not hessian, it was off white or at least that’s how it started. It was never a fine linen. It ended up frayed, and mottled, I think it maybe in this house if not possibly still at my parents.
I sadly lost the accompanying bag long long ago, it was filled with amulets or totems or my treasures – fossil shell, pink iridescent turtle bead, blue plastic mermaid, a red stone, an acorn cup stains with a circle of elderberry juice from the school field – you get the idea. The doll would nestle in these things and I’d carry the bag around.
My nan gave it to me, my nan made it, I was being bullied… badly, I’d been very ill… very (as in blood transfusion going wrong), and so on… one nan tried to stop the nightmares with lavender; the other gave me the blank doll. It had a circular head and segmented arms and legs, a shapeless, featureless thing.
“It can be anybody you want it to be” she told me. It had no eyes, no mouth, no nose – nothing. It scared me, it was a vulnerable, powerful thing. It was mine, it belonged to no one but itself. It was kind of flat and 2D.
It was me, it was my enemy, it was everyone, or so I decided. If it could be anyone then why not everyone… and so I cared for it and looked after it and put it in the bag of things that were special. In the way of a powerless child as all children are – I attempted to make the world a better place.
Using a blank doll my nan had made me. Sometimes I sprayed it with lavender so it would not have nightmares or be eaten by monsters or I got lucky heather from the gypsies in Romford Market – they would never let me pay for it, those ladies in their black long skirts and crinkled eyes.
The Blank Doll who had no other name seemed to move about – a quirk of memory or childhood or both – it was rarely where I’d left it. But I lived no horror movie, there were no blood stains, only coffee splotches turning it a brown in places. It yellowed with age. I did not draw on it, to do so would have somehow defined it, imprisoned it, make it something and nothing rather than nothing and everything.
It scares me and I love it. The Blank Doll filled with sand that my nan gave me.
When I was sick with Jean’s pregnancy a lady in at the same time asked me if I believed in voodoo, I hesitated and I could not answer – she thought I was maybe the victim of voodoo, with the problems I was having, she had many scary stories of women over Ilford way having their unborns stolen from their bellies. I thought of my blank doll, I think my dad found it for me – and I felt better, it’s hard to admit with the science background but when I am emotionally stressed I fall back on the old superstitions and the comforts and so if there was voodoo I had my blank doll and it could be counteracted because my blank doll is me, it is my enemy, it is everybody and I love it and I care for it and that is a shield and a net.
I told you it was silly, just a little memory that got sparked by something today and I thought… I should share this before I lose it again.
Posted: Friday, July 15th, 2016 @ 10:41 am
Categories: Flash Fiction, Story.
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