faces or hands, no sign of any tears or fading in the clothing that they were wearing. Who might have thrown these away? Then it occurred to me that they may have been stolen from a neighbor’s house and thrown here to discard the evidence. I took some pictures of the dolls and posted them on the lost and found website in our area and waited for a response. In the meantime the dolls were made comfortable on the shelf of the curio cabinet in the study to await their return to their proper owner.
I awoke later that night to the sound of breaking glass and laughter coming from the study. The laughter was the sound as being made by small children although I didn’t understand how that could be because there had not been any children in this house for many years now. I went to the study to investigate the sounds and felt something sharp jab me in my foot. There on the floor below my left foot was a pile of broken glass that had once belonged in the picture frame on the wall entering the study. The cut was not very deep and would not require stitching up, but it did need some anti-biotic cream and a bandage. I cleaned up the mess and returned to my room and waited for sleep to find me once again.
The following morning I woke to the sound of a rooster making its daily announcement to the world that it was once again time to rise and meet the day. This was the first time that I had not woke before the crow of the rooster in years and I wondered why it was that I had slept so long. The pain in my left foot began to throb its way into my life and became a constant annoyance to me for the entire day. I once again checked out things in the study and found everything to be in order, nothing out of place not even the dolls.
I checked my email accounts to see if there had been any replies to the notice concerning the found dolls; there were none and so I began my regular daily tasks that took up the good portion of the day. There were people to contact about houses to be bought and sold, there was the great task of arranging meetings between collectable and their collectors, and then there was the hardest task of them all; finding time in-between to nap in the hammock in the back yard. I had retired from full time work years ago and now I earned a living selling whatever I could through the internet. That is when it struck me that I could sell these two dolls to the highest bidder and make a small fortune while giving them a good home.
Two weeks had gone by since the day that I found Fiona and Emily living in my garbage can. Whether these were their actual names I do not know, but they seemed fitting for the pair and so that is what I call them. The two ladies have become a part of my regular routine and I shall miss them when they are gone. Each morning I greet them with a cheery “good morning” and when I retire for the night it is not without telling each one “good night” and then I leave the room singing the chorus of “Good Night Ladies.”
Tuesday morning I went into the study and found something strange that I could not quite explain. Fiona was on the shelf where Emily had been the night before and Emily was in the place that Fiona had been. Not only that, but there were three tea cups sitting on the table instead of the solitary one that I had used; and all of the tea in the teapot was gone (I know that there had to have been at least two more cups remaining) as well as most of the sugar cubes in the dish.
Two weeks after the tea episode I took some more pictures of the dolls and noticed that upon comparing these sets of pictures to the ones that I had first taken there was another strange thing concerning these two dolls? It was odd but the dress that Fiona had been wearing was now the dress that Emily was wearing and it was the reverse for Emily. I thought that perhaps some visitor that had been to my house had been switching them around. Except that the movement to different shelves had always taken place at night after I went to bed and there was no one else in the house but me. The dolls were of different sizes also, Fiona was the larger of the two, while Emily was the smallest. Yet, the dresses fit exactly as they should. Something here was very odd and I could not place my finger upon it.
One Saturday evening I had taken the two dolls down from their shelves and placed them on opposite corners of the desk in my study. I had decided that these two were much too beautiful to sell and that I would keep them for myself. “Fiona, you are the prettiest one of the two here and Emily you are the quietest, if there were only some way that you two could be real then I would have to make the choice as to which of you would be my wife.” The next morning I came into the study to greet my two ladies and found that Fiona was still on my desk, but in the center of the desk and not the left corner where I had left her. Emily on the other hand was back on the shelf on top of the curio cabinet. “Fisk, you have been working much too hard and things are getting weirder every passing day.”
I began to wonder as the day went by which of these two dolls would make me a good wife and that is what my mission for this time in my life was to be. I sat and looked intently at Fiona, almost staring into her eyes and wondering just what she would be like if she were real. Did the artist that created these dolls put something of each ones personality into them as he made them, or were they just made in some doll factory somewhere and had no personality?
I picked up Fiona and looked her over carefully, the artists name was engraved on the plate on the bottom but could not be made out for it was too faded; however, I could see that it had been made in Italy. I stroked the skin of her arms and face and imagined that she was real and for a moment I thought that I saw a sparkle in her eyes and a smile cross her mouth.
The phone rang and interrupted my fantasy session, so I placed Fiona back on the desk and went out to tend to some urgent business. Later that evening I returned and went back to the study to continue where I had left off that morning. Most of the day had consisted of my mind wandering back to my encounter with my Italian lady. Is it odd for an old man to wonder what could happen if he were to fall in love with a beautiful Italian lady, even if she were only made of porcelain?
Fiona was not where I had left her on my desk, but now was back on the top of the curio cabinet and there in her place stood the lovely Emily; and so as I had done earlier with Fiona, I did the same with Emily. I observed all of her unique qualities that would be something that I could fall in love with and came to the conclusion that each one had qualities that I loved about them, and to choose one would be a hard thing to do. It was a good thing that they were only dolls and not real, so this old man didn’t have to worry about that choice. Rather, it would be which one of them would choose him, now that would be an interesting debate.
Before going to bed I decided that I would put the two dolls on the desk together and compare them side by side to see which doll I would choose for a wife. After looking and thinking for hours I settled upon Fiona as my best choice for a mate. Then I posed this question to the ladies; “I have chosen Fiona as my bride but, which of you two would choose me? I will go to bed now and let you two fight it out.”
The sound of breaking glass and screaming woke me at about 03:00am and I went downstairs to the study to investigate. All of the glass in the curio cabinets had been broken, the cabinets turned over, and the papers on my desk scattered all over the floor. There in the middle of my desk stood Emily but I did not see Fiona anywhere. I cleaned up the broken glass, stood the cabinets up and went back to bed. Had I bothered to wonder why the window was open or even looked outside I would have seen Fiona lying on the ground, broken into pieces.
The light in my room came on at 04:00am, and I heard a voice calling to me in a quiet feminine voice, “Fisk, I choose you because I love you.” There in full size real life was Emily, I couldn’t believe it, was it a dream? Then I saw the blood, she was covered in it from head to toe. “Don’t you worry about the blood, Fiona won’t need it now.”
Some people marry out of love, some people marry out of desire for position or money, I got married out of fear.
Peaceful Orbs
The wall was covered with them; how they got there he didn’t know. That was not even the main concern traveling through his brain, what wa
s driving him crazy was the fact that they were perfect circles. Truman Terry had lived in this town for over forty years and had never seen anything so strange as this. He had taken this job as a part time job when the mill shut down and now he spent his days chasing bugs and rodents. Rats, mice, roaches and other pests were his specialty but never in the five years that he had been doing this had he encountered raisins. I know that this sounds odd but I am telling you the story just as he told it to me. My name is Karl Sooner and I am a freelance writer. I make a living telling other peoples stories; some that sound plain and ordinary to the wild and extreme. I think that the story of Truman Terry is on the extreme end of the scale, but then I am not paid to decide whether it is true or not; I am paid to write it down.
It all began one day when I got a call from a Mr. Truman Terry. “Mr. Sooner I have a story that I want you to write down for the public to read and I will pay you a great sum of money to do so.” I agreed to do it and didn’t let on that I was so broke that I would have written it for a dollar and a donut. He began by telling me that he had worked at the mill for