Doll Face

13

Danielle’s world felt compressed.

It was tight and suffocating like a small black box. It consisted of these streets and buildings, thoroughfares and houses, all the little details that made up a town called Stokes that she knew existed only in nightmares and perhaps at the very perimeter of hell itself.

She was suffocating.

Waiting there, up against the window of some nameless shop, she was suffocating. Creep was standing there, nervous, agitated, moving this way and that, unable to sit still. Lex and Soo-Lee were in the street, glancing fearfully behind them at the darkened diner. They had gone in and then came out. They must have turned off the lights after they left.

Danielle realized that she had to use her entire body to draw in a breath.

She had to actually lift herself with the motion of her diaphragm to get any air in her lungs. When she tried to tell Creep that, her voice simply would not come because there was not enough oxygen to power it.

There was something wrong here.

Something bad.

The air was gone. She had to find a place where there was air or she was going to asphyxiate. She started walking, stumbling along really in the direction they had come from.

“Hey,” Creep said. “What are you doing?”

He reached out to grab her and she shrugged him aside and then she started running. Gasping for breath, seeking air she could breathe, she ran down the street and around the corner and the faster she went, the better the air was until she was no longer gasping.

Creep was running after her, calling out her name, demanding to know what in the hell it was she thought she was doing and, oh, had there been the time, she would have told him and then he would have understood.

She came around another corner and there was somebody standing there.

It was a man. A big man.

He moved with a clicking, whirring sound of gears and cogs.

Danielle skidded to a halt inches from him, backing up frantically. The moonlight showed her that he was not really a man, but another doll that only looked like a man. He was grinning at her and she saw that he had teeth.

“Is that you, doll-face?” he asked.

And then there was a silvery flash as he swung something at her.

She had enough time to let out a small cry as something thudded against her head, the impact driving her to her knees and then to the sidewalk, where she knew no more.