It was a beautiful porcelain doll. You know, the way that most porcelain doll looks like. I was just like that. Wavy, long blonde curls. Black eyes. A beautiful pink and red dress with a typical headband with lace around the edges. It was a doll I received from my mother at an early age. At that age I always thought it was such a pretty doll - A perfect look. My grandmother had almost fifty dolls of that kind. All of them beautiful, perfect porcelain dolls. But this one in particular, the blonde with the red dress, I will always remember.
Because this is the one that would be the death of me.
I lived alone for quite awhile, had now. I had just gotten into college, seeing my whole life lay in front of me and all I had to do was to just go and pick out what I wanted. Easy as that. I was aiming for Psychology - A subject I had started to respect and enjoy the last three years. Seeing as my mother was a nurse and my dad a therapist, It was an obvious choice for me. But moving so far away from all my friends and family wasn't as easy as I thought.
Sure, My roommate was a nice person, but maybe not as chatty as I had hoped to. I wasn't a person to just sit quiet in my room and never speak until I had to. I enjoyed getting out, see friends…But I didn't have any time or friends around. No one would talk to me unless I wanted help from my teacher in school or my roommate had forgotten to buy milk. It was lonely to say the least.
Homework was the only thing to keep me distracted from feeling lonely. I didn't had time to try to even make friends. Friends was a silly thing after all. I didn't had time to go and party, maybe find somebody. It was worthless either way and my dad would skin me alive if I didn't keep my focus on the schoolwork.
The only thing I had brought from home to remind me of my family was that doll. The girlish toy was displayed on the desk in front of my bed, smiling against me when I needed someone to talk to or just watch over me as I slept. It was me and that doll the whole time. That fucking ugly doll.
As time went on, I started to pull myself more and more away from any human contact as possible. The schoolwork was getting over my head and the regret of going here began filling my head. But I couldn't quit now and go home, not after my parents had paid everything for my college and car to get here. I just had to stay and make the best out of it. I really tried hard. But with each day the hatred of other people took the hold of me and I would need hours alone, just sitting in my room to cool off. It was getting harder to get out each day. My roommate despised me, I could tell. But I didn't blame her. I was acting like a jerk. I refused to take my share of the daily chores - wiping the floors, taking out the trash…But I couldn't do it. I was being pulled into a dark hole.
And with the loneliness came the paranoia.
At first I accepted being lonely. But it had reached that point where I started to realize my dumb behavior, trying to reach out to people among to tell them I wasn't feeling alright. There was only stress and nobody had time to talk to a stupid college student. It was only the nerves. I hoped it was. I locked myself in my room and I couldn't go out anymore. I had to send in to my teachers and cancel the classes, day after day. But it didn't matter. They didn't send anything in search for me. So I just kept spinning in my room, week out and week in. It was an evil circle I couldn't get out of.
Then it happened. My room had been my cage. I wouldn't eat; I couldn't. It even reached that point where my roommate would come and knock on my door to see everything was ok. But I didn't open it up. I just yelled back in reply that she would go away. She did.
She didn't care enough to make a second attempt. She never knocked on my door again. It was just me. Me and my doll watching over me and every breath I took.
Then there was that night.
This night, actually.
It was a night that I was so used to spending. Alone. I didn't even bother trying to turn on the lights as I stepped up from my bed and pulled on sweater and a pair of untied converse before I made my way out of my room in so many days. I needed fresh air and my window was broken, unable to open it up. It was in the middle of the night, maybe even morning. It was still dark outside so I just assumed it was still night even though I hadn't checked the time yet. Couldn't care less.
Anyway, It was a pain in the ass to come out of the room to not wake my stupid roommate up. All I needed was to get out for a minute or two to gather some air, maybe go out and buy some cigarettes. I had promised myself to stop smoking but lately, that was the only thing I had been doing. Smoking. I only snuck out late at night to go and get me some new cigs. It was a bad thing, I knew. But it was the only thing to keep me going and kept me awake and safe.
But that particular night, there was something strange. Someone had unlocked the gate out to the street. It hadn't happened before and I thought the landlord held a hard hand to keep it locked at all times. Didn't bother. I just pushed the little red box out of the pocket and started smoking. The good thing about the night was that no one was around, no one to annoy me with their stupid voices. It was quiet, maybe just a car driving by. But then, no more than that. It was peaceful.
A few minutes after gaining some cold on my warm skin and some smoke inside of my lungs, I decided to go back in and maybe try to watch some television. Nothing good aired at night, but it was always worth a try.
I stepped back into the building and shrugged the last bit of unwanted cold off, making myself ready to sneak back into my room. But as soon as I came to the staircase, there was something in the way. Or, someone. Someone was standing in the stairs.
I had to admit, it did scare me to some point but a second later, I was back in my 'not give a single fuck' state and tried to walk up the stairs without confronting the person standing in the way. At first I thought it was my roommate, but the shadow of the person was too…manly. Too big to be the petite roommate that I knew.
I tried to pass the odd stranger and just slightly bumped my elbow into his. But he didn't move or spoke. He just stood there. It was creeping me out. The scenario was too freaky. But of course, there was other students in this apartment building just waiting to scare the shit out of some other poor first year student. But I wasn't the one to be fooled.
But I didn't stop until I heard a sound. It was one of those sounds where it just caused your concentration to break shut. It was…distracting. Scaring. Unnerving. I couldn't continue on, so I just froze in position and tried to turn around to face him.
At first, there was a cracking sound - the sound that had startled me. Then there was sobbing. A young man's voice of sobbing. But it wasn't human. Yeah, Maybe to some degree. But the voice was pitching up; Like it was breaking through a bad static television screen. I stood only a few steps away from the man in the shadow. I wanted to break away from my sudden frozen state of mind - But I couldn't. I was stuck, like my feet had been nailed to the stairs.
I was trying to speak, but he spoke before I had the chance to. It was getting clearer to see now, since spending some more time in the darkness helped the vision to clear up. He was wearing some kind of jacket, black. Everything black. A sewn cap, with strings falling out from a hole in the back. Also black. His hair was torn but long; Like he hadn't been able to cut it for a while...Or showered it.
His appearance was etching inside of my mind, but his voice appeared like a dagger in my ears. When he spoke, he made off another static noise, like a broken radio. But he spoke in words. Tried to calm me down. But I was already too scared to try to bring myself to relax.
"You're alone here, Aren't you?"
I swallowed hard. The thought of somebody spying on me this entire time was filling my head like urging vomit, feeling disgusted by this man and his voice. I just shook my head. No response. I couldn't give him a reply. I should have. Maybe it had changed this whole situation for the better. Maybe I hadn't been here now, scared for my life. But I was. And I knew he knew that as well.
But when I didn't give him the answer he expected, he turned to me. And his sight was one of the most terrifying yet fascinating faces I had ever seen. He wasn't scarred or wounded in anyway to make me feel uncomfortable by his appearance.
But his eyes. And his mouth. There was a weird glow. A golden, orange glow. It filled both of his eyeballs and mouth, his teeth shining through in a bright yellow light. It glowed in the dark and it casted a light across us. On the stairs, the floor…On me. And I could see his smirk on his greypained face. That's when I snapped.
It wasn't human. And I had to get away from there.
I broke through the invisible bonds and threw myself up the stairs, running up quickly as my untied shoes slammed against the wooden floor. I fled to my room without any other second thought. Hopefully, My roommate that I had been ignoring for so many weeks would hear me. And call the police.
I closed the door after me and I locked the door, my stumbling feet bringing me across the floor and into the desk; knocking my precious family doll down on the floor. The porcelain broke and I gasped in panic, trying to recollect myself and my thoughts. There was no more noise after I had slammed the door to my room. No roommate coming after me, No weird glowing man in the stairwell. Just me and my broken doll; laying on the floor. I tried to scream or cry, call for any help at all. It wasn't real. I had become too crazy. Insane. After spending so many months just being alone, this is what had happened. I was laying on the floor, broken and shattered in pieces. I didn't knew what to believe.
I didn't sleep. I sat on the floor, pacing back and forth by crawling the best I could. The cigarette from before now just sat like a needle in my throat now. I was thirsty but I couldn't move out to the kitchen to drink anything. Maybe he was there. Still waiting for me to come out. But I wasn't moving out of my spot. I never did.
But an hour of complete silence in the room, I began to calm down and stand up to try to calm myself down. There was still that feeling of being watched. And I knew the feeling too well. The feeling of being paranoid and lonely all came down to this. A breakdown.
Once I remembered the doll being broken; I immediately started to try to patch it together. It was like the only thing I had in focus; My best friend. The doll. I managed to get a needle and thread in my room and some glue to get the doll back to it's former glory. But it wasn't easy. No matter how hard I tried, the doll just would fall back together. It became an endless attempt of nothing. I tried again and again. But it just would fall in pieces.
My only friend.
I became too tired of the sudden panicking and the fixing of the doll; I just passed out on my bed. But I curled up together in a ball with the blanket over my head, somehow imagining that no monster under the bed could reach me now. All I wanted was too sleep.
I didn't knew he would come back.
This time it was different, however. This time, I welcomed it. I was tired of running all the time and I would rather die in my sleep than face another day being lonely again. And now with my only friend broken, what was I supposed to do?
It was tiring, the way he approached me this time. It was like I was asleep but still I could control my body. Like a lucid dream. I wouldn't dare to step into another day. Tonight, it would end. Just like I had been afraid that it would. But I didn't care anymore. Didn't bother. I just wanted to have a long sleep and never wake up again. Never face the loneliness again.
He came back to me. With his hands guiding me up from my bed, He wrapped his mind around mine as I tried to see. But the only thing I could still see was his grey hands, holding mine tight. But suddenly there was a sensation I wasn't sure I could feel. Of floating.
Alike a puppet, he cut two open cuts on my wrists. But it wasn't…across. More like it was from the center of my arm and down. he reached for something. Muscles. Something to peel out and hang unto. The bad thing was; I allowed him to do it. My struggle had become too much to bear with. And with the long pieces of muscles hanging out of the cuts on my wrists, he started to pull at them. He pulled at them like he wanted to control my body and arms, how it all came together in reaction to my nerve system and skeleton. He knew how it worked.
Yet, there was no pain. No pain that filled my heart or body, just another piece of my mind staying at ease again. It was a wonderful feeling.
It was like nothing else mattered.
And as he continued to cut me open, he began singing.
They call me the Puppeteer
My fingers are thin and my hands are stained with my tears
For the puppets I steer
with my strings and dreams.
Now I could see him clearer. The man who I had just hated with all of my might, I now welcomed to finish off my endless suffering. Maybe it had been he who had forced me into this thinking? Maybe he was the one to blame for everything I had done to myself? Was this all in my head - Or was it real?
They call me the Puppeteer
I had no friends, alike you.
For nobody saw the value of my friendship
But in the end they call became my friends
With my strings and dreams.
It took me only a minute to loose every sense of my touch. My nerve system had been crushed under the hand of this man - This thing, breaking every bone in my body. I could feel he twisting my ribs and twisting the hip bones. All for it to make it easier for him to turn him into what he saw me fitting to be. It was like the long pieces of torn muscles was strings; Controlling my limbs and my head flailing from side to side. All I could see was his smile, So I smiled back.
They call me the Puppeteer,
My body dark and my eyes hunger of gold.
In my eyes, No one is alone.
And with my strings and dreams,
You shall be my friend too.
The last feeling I could feel was his hand tugging hard around my neck. Then. Snap. At first, I was afraid to see death approaching me this way. I had never thought of it this way. I would have said no and refused, if I could have decided it all on my own. But I didn't.
I said yes.
With a broken neck, Death was just half a second away. Then there was nothing but a golden smile and his warm hands, holding my strings up as my body fell.
Early the other morning, My roommate found me. Dead. I had committed suicide by hanging myself in the fan in the ceiling, assuring my death. I had jumped from the bed. Besides me, was that doll. The broken porcelain doll with the red dress and lovely blonde hair. You may be wondering how I'm writing this to you right now, or how I found my way to contact you. I found it necessary to write down my story before I passed on.
This is my legacy, This is what I'm leaving behind.
I couldn't stand the loneliness anymore. I couldn't stand facing the problems on my own. It took so long. Too long.
