Ms. Figly’s exterior was innocent. Her small face was wrinkled and sweet. The elasticity of her eighty four year old face had worn out, and it sagged, giving her a head with wispy, almost clear, hair, and a face like a wrinkled, stretched-out sweater with calluses and liver spots.
Ms. LaVerne Figly had been living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for as long as anyone cared to admit remembering. It was a small, quaint town. The place was filled with smiling children with dappled, rosy cheeks. They had been visiting Ms. Figly for the last 24 years as far as anyone was concerned.
Ms. Figly sighed. This last generation had been only too wonderful, but now there was a new generation of hens to be plucked, of corn to be harvested. Of dolls to be made.
Ms. Figly looked up at her collection of dolls. There were one hundred and eighteen in counting. They were all small children. One of each child that had ever disappeared in Cedar Rapids.
These dolls were Ms. Figly’s darkest secret. Maggie O’Donnell was Ms. Figly’s next door neighbor 12 years ago. She would have been eighteen this year. Would have been. Ms. Figly looked up at the second shelf, at a rosy-cheeked, red-haired girl with a red and white checked smock on over a denim skirt. She had been a small thing. Until she had disappeared. Mr. Figly looked at the doll diagonal from Maggie. Little Timmy had only been four when his blond little head and light brown eyes had disappeared from sight.
Ms. Figly sighed and grinned slyly. She walked to the front door, gazing out at the darkening street. The small children had gone inside; the parents were now reading them stories or flipping off the lights.
Ms. Figly stalked to her bedroom. She glanced around, then grabbed the bust of Marie Antoinette, flipped off her head, and pushed the button below. One of her walls creaked open to reveal a small opening into a deep chasm. She gazed down into the depths, seeing four squatting children. “Ooh, I am running frightfully low.” She muttered. “I shall turn these four tonight, then collect some more tomorrow. Come up, little Billy, small Henry, fair Clair, and tiny Robert.” She cackled grabbing a thick spool of thread and a colossal needle. The children shivered as they came up using a ladder Ms. Figly had thrown down.
She clutched the needle closer as she grabbed Billy and thrust him into a boiling vat of white fluid. She stirred him in until his skin was as hard as porcelain. She repeated the process with the other children until they were all miniature, porcelain versions of themselves. Hmm. Their faces are all twisted with fear.” She noticed. “Well this will never do.” She tutted, with a sinisterly sweet note in her high-pitched voice.
She grabbed her high-strength stitch remover, positioned it by Billy’s mouth, and pulled. The mouth came off, and the look of horror upon his face lessened. She smoothed his wrinkled face, so that the only thing that looked out of place was that he didn’t have a mouth. That malady was easily fixed when Ms. Figly forced the thick thread through his tough skin. His mouth was now fixed in a blissfully unaware smile. His limbs flopped like a ragdoll’s, and his fingers were removed. His ragged, torn t-shirt was replaced with a neat, clean polo. His scrapped jeans were replaced with corduroy pants.
The dark brown hair was arranged, and the cheeks had to be rosied. Ms. Figly’s first creation of the week was complete. She put him on the bottom shelf in the Room of Dolls. She began on the other three children, humming a cheerful song about rats.
Ms. Figly finished her project around one o’clock in the morning. All of the dolls had gone according to plan except for little Claire. As Ms. Figly had ripped off her nose, a side seam had split and a million little blood-red beads had dropped out of her to the floor with a clatter. Ms. Figly knew she would have a huge scar, but she grabbed some sterile gloves and toiled away, trying to save Clair. But she was too late.
* * * *
Peeking through the blinds, Ms. Figly saw a young mother walking her children; a “miniscule girl with light bow in her hair, and a tiny boy with a mushroom nose. The mother fumbled with her keys, and dropped them. She bent to get them and when she stood up, the two children, Marcs and Lizzie, were gone. Their stroller was empty. The young woman shrieked and looked behind her blue suburban. They were gone!
From inside her flowery bedroom, Ms. Figly was cackling. She had forgotten how easy this was. Marcus and Lizzie, who, of course, trusted Ms. Figly as the sweet little lady she appeared to be, were laughing with her. “Quiet, you brats!” she snapped. Their tiny smiles faltered. “You’ll get to live as children for a couple days while I stock up, but once you’re completed, you’ll be grotesque, unmoving, gnarled works of art! Hehehe!” She cackled again. Now their faces were filled with horror. “Oh yes, you can think. You’ll even age. But, as your exterior won’t be changing, your self will be trapped inside you for eternity! Eternal life of an unmoving state…” She sighed, trailing off.
Ms. Figly gasped. One of her precious dolls was lying, broken, upon the floor, his flame-red hair covering the head of his cracked face. “Oh, tut-tut.” She said, smacking her lips. The head was a foot from his body, red beads spilling out over the floor. “Oh, I must save poor little Rory,” she smirked at Marcus and Lizzie. “We might have to do some emergency procedures.” She said, trying not to giggle. Ms. Figly suddenly reached out and grabbed Lizzie’s hands. “Yes, nice, groomed, girlish hands. These will do nicely to replace Rory’s.” She clutched Lizzie’s hands hard, until they cracked at the wrist. She pulled them off, leaving a stunned Lizzie behind. Ms. Ms. Figly pulled the dying Rory into her arms, cooing to it as she stitched Lizzie’s hands onto his tiny wrists. “Yes, those hands of his were getting old and frayed, but now I must repair his vitals before his being escapes his presence.” She approached Marcus, who was crouching over his twitching, handless sister. He looked up at Ms. Figly. Ms. Figly grasped his head below his ears and pushed to the left, to the right. A loud cracking noise resounded in the room, announcing the severing of his head from his neck. Ms. Figly quickly sewed Marcus’s head on Rory’s neck.
“Ah, oh my. We’ll need to keep wee Rory in the doll infirmary while we give him blood transfusions from those worthless Good Samaritan dolls like Lucy and Beverly, and take some blood by force from the trouble brutes, like Kimmie and Brayden. Oh, not to mention, Marisol! No, we can’t forget Marisol!” she said, smacking her lips as she remembered.
Ms. Figly ran down the hall with her patient on a doll stretcher to the infirmary. After she’d made sure Rory was going to live, Ms. Figly strolled down the hall to the doll dental recovery area. “How are you, Brianna and Emmaline? Ooh, I see you need new teeth. I’ll just go and collect them then. Taw!” She waved good bye as she fastened a traveling cloak around her neck. Ms. Figly got in her gremlin car, driving around town and collecting the teeth of children who were sleeping happily, expecting the tooth fairy.
When she arrived back at the house, she rushed to the Doll Dental Recovery Area, where she prepped the two dolls for surgery. “Not, not to alarm you, but you’ll both be awake during the surgery. Now, to make sure you’re not frightened, I’ll explain it to you. Now, we’ll begin by gouging the bone out of the way of these teeth and use this instrument here, called the blonski.” She said, indicated an electrical rod with wire down the sides. “Then we’ll screw these teeth in using an ordinary drill. And then we’ll sew you up, and you’ll be in recovery for eight weeks. Jolly good? Let’s begin.”
Emmaline was heavily bandaged when it was over, but Brianna’s jaw gouging hadn’t gone according to plan. Her skull had been fractured, and she would have to spend four months in the infirmary recovery room, then have the surgery redone, followed with the original eight weeks of recovery.
Ms. Figly peered out her window at the house across the street. There were new neighbors. The father, Scott, and mother, Linda, were both morbidly obese. They each weighed upwards of five hundred pounds, and, possibly because of these genes, their nine-year old daughters were Siamese. Annie and Poppie were attached by their noses, so they always had to be walking sideways. At age five, they had both had to receive laser eye surgery, since they couldn’t wear glasses.
Mrs. Figly watched Linda and Scott, as they toddled to the kitchen for some Doritos. When they looked behind them, they expected to see Poppie and Annie, but they couldn’t find them anywhere. Scott sat down on the patented extra big Stair lift and went upstairs. Sometimes Annie liked to play with the bed lifting machine. Linda stumbled over her obstructed feet as she checked downstairs. She didn’t see where she was going, and accidentally stepped on the talking scale, which yelped “warranty voided!” before cracking to pieces.
The thundering footsteps covered the natural thunder that had started when the heavy rain started falling.
The children were thrown down into the secret chamber, a huge thud sounding as they hit the bottom with a “squelch!”
Poppie and Annie were in a pile of bones. There were skeletons in the midst of reading books, drawing pictures, screaming, and one picking his nose.
Ms. Figly giggled and hummed as she prepared the potion. “Some Fig Newtons, and a dash of rosemary!” she said brightly.
Ms. Figly went about her business. She let the white, frothy liquid bubble and stew as she went to the room of dolls.
At times, LaVerne almost felt bad about taking people’s children from them. Taking the fatty’s children had reminded her, as it often did when she kidnapped tots, of little Marie….
The rain poured and the lightning clashed and the thunder pounded. LaVerne was sitting down to a cup of tea, thinking about the face on sweet little Marie’s face tomorrow when she saw the doll Ms Figly had gotten her. Mr. Figly had been missing for some time now, and Mr. Figly had never tried his recipe for “mortal life.” Sure, she had thought, “I bet it’s just ale with sugar.” But she decided to try it. She gathered all the ingredients listed except for the last, which she thought was a joke. “One dying or otherwise ailed child…” she murmered. “Oh, well.” The white liquid bubbled and foamed on the stove as Ms. Figly went to check on Marie. When she entered her room, though, Marie was sprawled on the floor, clutching at her heart. Ms. Figly sprinted over and kneeled next to her. Marie was still, and Ms. Figly could only hear the faintest of pulses. Then her maternal instincts kicked in; Ms. Figly picked up Marie, ran down the hall, and thrust her into the boiling pot of elixir. The potion glowed silver for a moment, and Marie bobbed to the surface, an expression of tranquility smoothing her features. Ms. Figly realized that Marie was still with her, in a state of living that is a half-life, a cursed and selfish life, but a life lived…
The room in which Marie had been found was now covered in shelves of dolls, and Marie was in a solid gold, lit cabinet. Ms. Figly had posed her arms and legs like she was skipping, and, though the doll was more than a hundred years old, the fourteen year old girl’s face was perfectly preserved. There were no cracks, chips, or even smudges. Her short red hair, with streaks of blond in it, fell just past her ear lobes. Her skirt puffed, strained due to the many petticoats beneath it. Marie’s shawl was tied around her shoulders, but fell to her waist. She had come within an inch of her life due to heart failure, but was still close to Ms. Figly.
Ms. Figly signed, then her face lit up with the manic glory of power. She strolled down the hall, picked up Annie and Poppie by their nose, and thrust them into the giant cauldron. The door banged open. Linda and Scott were standing there, looking curious. “We were wondering if you—“ Scott began, painting with the effort of talking, “Oh.” He said, seeing Annie and Poppie clutching at the edge of the basin. Linda and Scott toppled over, for apparently this was too much for their clogged arteries. Ms Figly kicked them out of the way, thinking to herself, “that was close—too close.”
She stepped outside while the children were stewed in the white, churning fluid in the kettle. The concoction was almost complete, but it wouldn’t be bad to get some fresh air for one—except that she chose this night to do it.
Outside, a mob of angry townspeople roared, their torches, clubs, and pitchforks sparkling threateningly in the darkness. Ms. Figly tried to turn back, to bolt the door, but she couldn’t hobble back fast enough on her arthritic knees. The townspeople grabbed her, and tied her to a stake in a bed of dry sticks. “Witch!” they cried out,” Burn the witch!”
Ms. Figly could hardly open her mouth to protest, (“But I’m just poor old Ms. Figly, the kind and innocent elder!”) and they had already lit the kindle beneath her.
“Oh, you’ll pay for this, you meddlesome fools!” she cackled, sounding happily sinister, “Yes, you’ll pay, through your eyes!” She said, beginning to chant “Ellacabousche, molakakaeizzz, Orikasco, Malafpheniibe! You’ll cry till your pupils are gone! HE HE HE!” She said as she shriveled up and became ash.
The mob cheered, but started to feel funny. They looked at each other in horror; their pupils were running down their cheeks like wet mascara! The Townspeople shrieked, and groped at their eye sockets. They were crying their pupils out somehow!
* * * *
Now let’s take a moment to consider this adventure of old Ms. Figly’s. The townspeople feared her, for the implications of the human race are that love and cheer make one human, but what if love and cheer start an addiction to the removal of these very components?
Alas, it is only the unknown we fear. By fearing it, we deprive ourselves of the very knowledge we seek, and we can never know the unknown. Perhaps if we lived through that which we fear, we could be better, more humane, more noble creatures, for only by living through the unknown can we learn to be that which is unknown to the human mind:
to be continued...
NOTE: THIS STORY WILL NOT ACTUALLY BE CONTINUED. THE SEQUEL WAS CANCELED, DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST. I AM SORRY.
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