The Red Doll

From fiery heaven, or cold hell, Dhetar, the angel with horns, had been watching over her. He chose this specific young woman as his god-child because he, a fan of romance, saw how sickly obsessed she was with men. So obsessed, she often found herself lost in the darkness. Dhetar, the great leader of angels in his department, commander of beating hearts and broken promises, took it upon himself to not assign a colleague to this young woman, but rather take her in himself. He wanted to show his pupils that anyone can return from darkness. Even the most lost of souls. 

A year into his venture with the young woman, Dhetar’s pupils seemed to respectfully doubt his work. Nobody dared say it out loud, but he could clearly tell they thought the young woman was a lost cause. Perfect projects aren’t made in one day, my fellow angels. You have no space to judge, for you are not an angel and demon at once. For you lack a whole world of perspective. These are the words he repeated time and time again. 

One of Dhetar's ugliest servants was the unfortunate soul to receive a special task in Dhetar’s latest feat. A task so arduous to the young angel, so hateful, and so anger inducing, his hands must have caused a curse on the poor product of his one chore. He was to make something Dhetar requested. In due time, and rightfully so because of the fear of failing Dhetar, he came to Dhetar's quarters and got down on one knee before him. 

"Master, she is finished," the servant mustered up, feeling relief and dread at the same time, obviously not proud of his work. 

The servant was a less than average angel. All his features were smaller than the usual angel. Everything from his wings and the hair on his head, to his intelligence and his range of thought was small. His tiny hands were perfect for this task. He hated that he was chosen for this, as his task was to make the most beautiful doll he could make. 

Finally, in his hands she sat. A porcelain doll that Dhetar could not rock in his arms, for she was so small. With a weight of 5.9 pounds, the most Dhetar could do was hold her in both palms of his hands. He looked at her, mesmerized at the servant's work.

"Beautiful," he told the servant, "this is exactly what I needed. Amazing job." 

The doll had curly brown hair, small brown eyes, and but the slightest curve to her figure. She wore a simple red dress with a nice outward skirt, red makeup and a red bow. Such a dainty little thing. 

"Master, may I ask something personal?" The servant said. 

"Go ahead," Dhetar answered, eyes glued to the doll. 

"Why do you need a porcelain doll? And why did you choose me to make it? I'm your ugliest servant. I know nothing of beauty." 

"Oh, but you know most of beauty, my dear," Dhetar told the servant, "see, you don't focus on what everyone else focuses on. You don't focus on hips, height, or weight. Look at how you sculpted her face. Look at how you sculpted her body. A natural body on porcelain. Real talent, my boy. I need her for my godchild. She is lost again." 

After admiring the doll a bit further, and sensing a doubtful tension from the servant, Dhetar appeared from fiery heaven down to Earth in the form of an old woman at an antique store, where the young woman looked around in curiosity. 

"Looking for anything specific, child?" Dhetar asked, hiding in his disguise. "Just resting my mind," the young woman said. 

"A rest from the overwhelms of life?" Dhetar, the old woman asked. "A rest from the overwhelms of myself," the young woman responded crudely. "Ah. What has been bothering you, child?" 

"Sometimes, it hurts to look in the mirror. Sometimes, the person in the mirror wants to attack me. It feels like she rips my heart and my soul. The person in the mirror can't handle the sight. She wants to throw up, and she can't make it out of the hole of despair she's gotten herself into," the young woman paused, hesitating, "but the hole is full of more mirrors, and all the people stare back at her. Judging her every inch. They say it's the reason she can't find love. Not even within herself."

"I got exactly what you need," Dhetar said, prancing about the store looking for something. Out from a corner he pulled the porcelain doll. It looked exactly like the young woman, "Protect her. For she is fragile." 

"This looks like me!" The young woman exclaimed in anger, "How is this supposed to help me at all?" 

Dhetar was not surprised. He didn't expect the young woman to care about protecting her doll. So he simply walked into a corner, and disappeared into thin air. 

"Can I help you, young woman?" Said a man, walking in from the back of the store, "Are you looking to sell that doll?" 

"No, I don't think so," the young woman said, staring into the porcelain doll's glowy eyes, “I don’t want to sell it.” 

Dhetar noticed the young woman looked for him, for the old woman, but she had turned into the very dust in the antique store. The young woman returned to her path, where she walked lonely. Where on the sides of the path, was a darkness that seemed to want to consume her all the time. With all the times she’s failed at love, she wondered if she would ever find something real. Dhetar could see the young woman was lost. So lost, in fact, that she turned to the darkness. And from within the darkness rose a young man. A bald, short man. His teeth, sharper than that of a normal man. His nails, longer, made the young woman bleed with his every touch. His skin, as coarse as a reptile’s. He smiled. 

“What a nice doll,” he said, stretching his arms out to grab it. The young woman held back, hesitant, “May I touch it?” 

The young woman remembered back when she had hit her face against the ground and bled out at the feet of a previous young man. She remembered her suffering, her pain, and all the tears. Yet after all this careful thinking, the young woman looked into the new young man’s cat eyes, and said, “yes.” 

“No!” Dhetar screamed into her ears, not believing a thing he was seeing, “Protect the doll. You don’t even know this man.” 

Dhetar didn’t have time to manifest himself in between them to help her once again, and she gave the poor porcelain doll to the new young man. At first, the young

man carried it around gently, while grabbing on to the young woman’s hand with care. He said nice things to her, 

But, 

Strange, 

His tongue was that of a snake, and it went into the doll’s ears every time he spoke. It made her ears wet, her hearing was muffled and she couldn’t hear the difference in between “love” and “sex”. Dhetar found himself nearly panicking. He knew the young woman thought nothing of it, but he also knew the young woman would live to regret this. After making the doll's ears wet enough, the young man moved on to the rest of her body. He repeated his question again: 

“May I touch it?” He smiled with his sharp teeth, caressed the doll with his dirty long nails, and wetted her ears with his long, hissy tongue. 

“Yes,” the young woman said, noticing she was in the dark woods, far off her path. 

Then the young man dug in. He dug a nail in the doll’s stomach, but the young woman was the one who reacted to the pain. She smiled lightly, and asked that he not do that again, as she saw that a crack had formed on the doll’s torso. The young man, with a sly smile, broke the doll's leg. 

“No, wait,” the young woman said, panicking. 

The young man threw the leg to the side and sprinted further into the woods. As he ran, he kept tearing bits and pieces out of the poor porcelain doll. The young woman couldn’t recover all her pieces, or she would lose the young man. She begged him to stop. She screamed and she cried, but he wouldn’t stop and everything around her was getting dark the further inside the woods they ran. 

Until he disappeared into the darkness. The only thing left of the red porcelain doll was her severed head and her naked torso lying on the ground. Her vagina was bleeding and the red dress lay a couple feet away. The young man had used the doll until it was degraded to nothing. The young woman didn’t realize it until now and Dhetar wasn’t able to manifest himself yet. So he suffered from cold hell, watching as his god child sat on her knees and spilled tears of regret on to her doll’s bloody torso.

Not long after she cried her eyes out, she heard something scurrying in the bushes. The young woman looked towards where she heard the sound. Seconds later, a right leg popped out of the darkness, making a light thud on the ground. The young woman looked at the leg, shocked. The doll had lost her right leg miles back. Had someone been collecting the pieces for her? The young woman popped the leg into the doll, and the more she looked at the porcelain doll, the more warmth she felt in her own heart. 

“I’ll get you back together. I’ll protect you,” the young woman said in a shaky voice. 

The person in the shadow scurried further down a dark path in front of the young woman. Down the path, an arm popped out. The young woman stood up, cheeks red in pain and tears, and walked toward the arm. She picked it up, and popped it back into the doll. The shadow put more body parts along the path, and little by little, the young woman realized this shadow was leading her into the path of light once again. The more body parts she collected and popped back in, the more the doll smiled, and the more the young woman found herself liking the way it looked. The young woman wanted to know who the shadow was. But she was afraid of it. What if it takes the doll from her and rips it apart just like the young bald man had done? What if it makes the fragile doll bleed again after she’s worked so hard to put it back together? She still doubted the shadow even though it was the one who helped the young woman put the porcelain doll back together again. After eighty days working together on the doll, the sun shone bright on it and she smiled wide and beautifully. The young woman loved the doll, and all she wanted to do was keep the smile on its face. She turned to the bushes. 

“Thank you,” she said to the shadow, “Can you show yourself?” 

“I hope we meet again someday," he replied, ignoring the question and disappearing into the woods, "But I want to see you here, in the path of light."