Doll collecting is one of my hobbies.
I first learned about my taste for dolls when I was young. It was actually thanks to an exercise one of my therapists would give us that I came to really like them. My interest wasn’t just about getting a new toy or something to pass the time with, it was about the doll itself. I found them really pretty and captivating, but not completely perfect, at least not for what I considered perfect.
The dolls given to me for therapy actually helped determined one of the issues I struggled with the most, OCD. The dolls, although they were pretty, I still couldn’t find them quite perfect. It was because of this that I learned how to fix them. It didn’t really take much, really, a quick google search and I was able to find all kinds of different ways to fix the messy hair and ugly eyes.
I remember begging my daddy to buy me all the tools I needed to fix my dolls, from paint to brushes and other things that weren’t normally bought from the grocery store. He agreed to buy me everything if I was good when family was over or whenever he needed me to be a good kid and do whatever my therapist said. I, of course, agreed right away, as fixing these dolls have become my number one priority and nothing else.
He would buy me all kinds of dolls, from porcelain to barbies and even bratz. Every doll he bought became a project. It was like a blank canvas I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. It didn’t really come as a surprise when I became interested in art as well. It was soon enough that I started to take art classes and even though it wasn’t the same as fixing my dolls, it was still something that captivated me and made me feel like the world was at peace.
Every year of school came with a new year of art and I learned a lot of different techniques that I quickly tried to apply to my doll hobby. It was amazing how you could use pencils, pastels, acrylics, oils, and even watercolors to make the doll look more alive, or just have a different type of personality.
Every doll had a personality. It wasn’t just about doing a new project, but making them feel more human. One doll had to just love purple, that’s why their hair was dyed that color and their lips were a deep lavender. Another doll was grumpy and shy, so they had to show it through their outfits, hair, and makeup. Some dolls were even elves and orcs, fitting into whatever fantasy world I was thinking of at the moment.
It was a hobby that grew with me, but it was something I also just didn’t like to share. It was especially hard during high school when people wanted to come over and stay at my house. My daddy was usually out on business meetings and my siblings were already in college, so I was left alone a lot. It was a big house with a large projector, game room, a wet bar, and multiple rooms. In other words, it was the perfect house for high school kids to be their usual crazy selves.
It was just something I couldn’t get into. I was good at making friends, in general, I was good at getting along with people. It was honestly surprisingly easy and people often talked about how they found me fun to hang out with, I wasn’t sure how or why but I just didn’t think much about it. I never understood how people could have issues making friends or just blending in, I thought it was just something easy to do. But I still didn’t really like a lot of things, I just went along with it because it was easier.
I didn’t like parties. I didn’t want my hobby time to be interrupted. There was time for friends and school and then there was my me time, my doll time. It was a scheduled I followed every single day. It couldn’t get interrupted, and it wouldn’t get interrupted. I had to follow it, otherwise, I became moody and just not the nicest person to be around.
I also just didn’t want people to see what I was creating, it was too personal, too intimate. Inviting people over meant that there was a slim chance that they would come into my room and then they’ll see everything. The mere thought made me shiver back then. They couldn’t, no, they wouldn’t see my room.
I still wanted people to see what I was creating though, of course, I did, I was proud of it, but I did so with a username in Instagram and different forums. I never associate myself with my dollworld. It was about my work and my art, not whatever I was doing in high school. My IG was full of pictures of my dolls and the projects I was working on. I was honestly surprised whenever I gained a large following, enough that people started to ask me to do custom dolls for them. I wasn’t sure how to react to this but I still gave it a try.
Instead of getting a normal part-time job, I ended up working on dolls for other people. Sometimes they’ll send me whatever doll they wanted me to fix and other times I would buy the base and charge them extra. What I cared about the most was that I was making good money doing what I loved the most. I couldn’t believe it. I was a freshman in high school and I was already making a decent amount of money compared to regular part-time jobs. It was a dream come true.
One day a customer asked for a different kind of project, a doll I have never seen before in my life and she was beautiful. It was like no other doll I have ever seen before. The skin color looked very real, it wasn’t just the normal default colors most dolls had to let you know what race they were. No, not at all, this one looked human. The doll had very different features, a nicer nose and eyes, pretty ears and full lips.
But what was the most impressive was that this doll was hollow. It had tight strings that kept it together and made it so she could pose in all different kind of ways. It had no eyeballs, no hair, no nothing. It came completely blank for you to fix and make it your own.
I can still remember the first time I received it. The woman sent the whole doll to me to work on instead of just the head, and so I was able to hold one of those dolls for the first time. She was heavy and smooth. The doll had a very specific smell that I can still clearly remember. She was shown to me without eyes but the owner had included a pair for me to use while I worked on her. It took me a couple of minutes of figuring out how to open her head before I was able to set them in place.
It was as if she came to live when those eyes were on her.
Yet.
She was not perfect.
It took me a couple of weeks to finish this doll. I took extra time with this one. I had to rework her face paint a few times, and then her nails and the rest of her body. I just had to make sure she was flawless in any way I could. From every freckle to every line on her fingers. From the beauty mark on her upper lip to the perfect maroon eyeshadow. I just had to make sure she was stunning.
She was sent back to her owner after I was done and the woman couldn’t express how happy she was with my work. I was grateful too. She taught me about new dolls.
The next time I saw my daddy I begged him for one of those dolls. I could have used my own money but instead, I decided to see if I could get it as a present. I was only allowed to get it if I could finish my school year with high grades and of course, I made sure I did.
If seeing that woman’s doll had me amazed, it didn’t compare at all to the time I first got one of my own.
I can’t remember how many pictures and videos I took, but I’m sure at some point I was ready to cry.
The doll was perfect, just like in the pictures I saw. Even though she was a blank canvas, with no eyes, no hair, no nothing, she was already perfect. I was going to make her flawless. She was going to be my favorite.
I worked on that doll during my whole summer break. I went to a few summer classes and hung out with friends but I only truly enjoyed my time when I was working on that doll.
By the time I was done, I was already itching to start a new project. There were so many companies making these dolls and on top of that, they were all so very different.
I wasn’t only getting girl dolls anymore, but also boy dolls that looked just as beautiful. It was a whole new experience. These dolls were so expensive though, and I just couldn’t ask daddy for every single one. I had to work extra hard on other people’s dolls to buy my own and I also had to get a part-time job to be able to afford everything I wanted.
My grades stayed high or else I wouldn’t get a new doll on my birthday or Christmas. I was forced to compete in different art competitions and I somehow managed to be an honorable mention every year or have some of my art displayed and sold in auction for the school. It was something fairly normal, and I was for sure not the only art student doing it. It didn’t feel as special as when I was working on my dolls.
High school Graduation came and as a present, my dad got me a new doll, this one was the most expensive I have ever gotten, her feet were so delicate and her legs were so long. She looked like a runway model, with her unique features and slim body. She was just asking to be turned into art, just begging to become something more.
College was a rough time for me. I had to move away from home and live in college dorms. A college that was specific for art should have given me some confidence about showcasing my hobby but I still just wasn’t prepared for it. I had to leave all of my dolls at home and only bring some of the smaller ones to work on whenever my roommate was away.
My roommate was quite different from me. Maybe we were just raised differently. My daddy was very strict when it came to manners and behavior. He insisted in always showing a polite attitude and pushed for elegance. He wanted a well-educated kid, that looked nice and was also well behaved. But my roommate was the complete opposite. It was hard living with them, they always wanted to invite people over and enjoyed being loud and obnoxious. If it wasn’t a party, it was a large study group, if it wasn’t that it was a group project or something of the like. It was impossible to find peace and quiet in my own living space, something I never struggled with before.
They were quite pretty though, I especially couldn’t deny how their eyes looked like big emeralds that only shone brighter when they were laughing.
I quite liked that color, so I used it on one of my dolls.
The life it gave them was something that still makes my chest warm.
I didn’t have the same roommate after though, it was quite a shame.
Summer breaks and winter breaks were the only times when I truly could find peace. It was the only time I could go home and truly enjoy my life again, especially now that I had found a new way to make my dolls feel more alive and well. I reworked almost all of my dolls doing this. The eyes needed to be changed, and the hair too. I needed to apply my new technique to every single one, and maybe leave a few to work on during school.
College was a bore, but I got it done and earned myself an internship in one of the museums near the city I was thinking of moving to after getting enough money. My art degree was not something my daddy truly approve of but I knew very well what I wanted to do since the beginning. My internship wasn’t as a receptionist or some guide, not at all. I was going to be working under very talented people, whose job was to restore art pieces. Paintings and carvings that have been done hundreds of years ago needed to be taken care of. They needed to be preserved to stay alive.
Touching, or just getting near those pieces and helping those colors become brighter was something I had been aiming for since the very beginning.
It made me feel connected to someone, it made me feel connected to these artists and their thoughts. The passion and love they had for their craft and also, their legacy. They were remembered after so many years, and their work was still loved and appreciated.
I just helped to keep their pieces as they should, perfect.
I was hired by the museum after my internship was done. I became quick friends with my mentors and also some of my co-workers. It wasn’t really that much of a struggle, it still baffles me how people could ever have issues talking to someone else when it was so easy to get along with them and read them well.
I moved out of my family home, and I remember my daddy crying and hugging me tighter than ever that night. I couldn’t understand why he was so sad, or maybe he was scared.
My first apartment was industrial. I needed to have a large living area to work on art pieces and also my dolls. Just like with my dolls I ended up uploading my restoration work online, and not before long people reached out to me to restore paintings they had, some of them quite valuable and some other just being family heirlooms.
By then my doll hobby had also evolved, as I found new dolls to work on. It made working a lot more enjoyable as these dolls were quite pricey. Most of the dolls came from South Korea, Japan, and Europe but not before long I ended up finding a few local places that did the same kind of dolls for me.
Everything was going well, everything seemed to be going well.
It wasn’t until I got a new doll that things changed quite a bit.
This doll, just like the others were delivered to me on time and at a specific place. I picked it up as always and took it to my place. By now I was living in a house, my old neighbors often complained about the noises when I was working, which I considered odd since all my dolls didn’t make noises but apparently my tools were less than quiet. I decided that moving was far easier than dealing with them and so I bought a house with nice open rooms.
I unwrapped my doll like I had done so many times before and was more than thrilled that I wasn’t going to have to change their hair. The deep black matched perfectly with what I had in mind. Photos never do many dolls justice, it isn’t until you see them in person that you know exactly what you have and what you want to do.
However, that night, something strange happened. I left my new doll in my basement, where I have all my other dolls. Sunlight isn’t too good for my dolls you see, and down there is cold and nice for them.
I left the doll sitting on a chair and the next morning the doll was at the foot of the stairs. I wondered if maybe I misplace it, or maybe it accidentally fell. I wasn’t sure how it made it all the way to the stairs though. But I brushed it off as an accident.
Dolls couldn’t move, I have lived with them for years and they couldn’t do anything.
This doll though, it was just different. I still had to finish a few projects before I could get started with it but odd things kept happening. Sometimes the doll’s hands would twitch, or so I thought. I wasn’t sure, I kept blaming it to my imagination or the chemicals I was using and also the fumes from paint.
Some other times the doll’s head was facing a completely different direction, and other times I could have sworn I saw the doll’s eyes moving. It would always happen when I wasn’t looking, or sometimes I could see it from the corner of my eye. It was starting to make me paranoid.
I was too paranoid really.
It just wasn’t supposed to be like this, right? I have worked in so many dolls before and had collected so many tools to make them my work. From eyes of different colors to hair and outfits, and this had never happened before.
I finally finished my other piece. I wasn’t sure why but boys usually took me longer to work with, probably because it was harder for me to find a personality for them, with how guy’s fashion can be so boring and their make up cannot be as flashy. The point was, that I could finally start working on my new doll.
I was scared at first, hell, I was afraid to even get started. What if I wasn’t being paranoid, what if there was truly something wrong with this doll.
I was afraid, but I also couldn’t help the need to start working on something new.
I think that was my last mistake. I was used to modding my dolls to fill whatever mold I wanted them to take, but this one didn’t like it. This one was made wrong.
The night after I worked on my new doll, I woke up in the middle of the night to loud noises in the basement. At first, I thought it could be someone that was trying to sneak in and rob me but that thought changed quickly when I checked the downstairs.
I watched from the door as the doll I was working on moved. It was walking, turning around as if they were lost. Their long and beautiful hands were trying to find something around them, and it wasn’t until I found myself gasping that the doll turned towards me.
The doll couldn’t see because it had no eyes yet, I had removed the ones it came with to replace them with new ones. But the doll could hear and feel what was around them, they knew where I was standing and in a matter of seconds the doll was running and tripping through the steps to get to me.
I closed the door and locked it. I even moved tables in front of it.
I was terrified. I had never seen something like that before.
I tried calling the people that sold the doll to me, but like always they said it wasn’t their issue and also how all sales were final.
But they did something wrong, they had to, this never happened before.
The doll was cursed, there was something wrong with it.
I could hear the doll banging on the door, I could feel it moving around in the basement and I could feel the desperation. It was going to get free, it was going to get free and it was going to come after me.
It was three days after that I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I was afraid of the doll following me if I just left my home, I was afraid it was going to find me and curse me for what I had done to her.
I did the only thing I could think of. I burned the doll. I had always liked my house but I couldn’t take the risk of this following me to the next one, and as much as it pained me to ruin the collection in my basement there was nothing else I could do.
I took all the dolls I had in my other rooms and the art pieces I was working on. I didn’t want to lose my whole collection after all. After that, I took the biggest risk. I moved the tables in front of the basement door and opened it. The doll was at the foot of the stairs again, waiting for me. The damned thing had ruined my peace, it had ruined everything.
I shoved the two cans of gasoline down the stairs and watched them fall and slowly pool on the floor. The thing must have known what was happening because it quickly tried to reach me again but I had my lighter ready. I dropped it and closed the door before locking it. I left my house without a second thought.
I watched my own house burn, I watched as the gas tank in the basement exploded and the different chemicals I kept there to preserve and work on my dolls. It took firefighters a while to get to my house. They looked stressed and worried at first until I told them I was the only one that lived there. They put out the fire and left, telling me how sorry they were for what happened.
I felt sorry too, sorry for not realizing my paranoia was real and not doing something about it. I was so used to pushing it back along with my OCD because of so many therapy sessions and exercises that I ignored my own instincts.
I knew better now though, I was going to have to start over with one of my collections, but this time I was going to do it right.
It was about time I started making my own dolls anyways, instead of buying the mold from someone else.
I just need to find one that can be perfect.
I hope it doesn’t take too long, my other dolls are getting lonely.
Submitted November 24, 2018 at 11:35PM by childishsadism https://ift.tt/2Bvu00F
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