From tonygirl33@worldnet.att.net Thu Apr 29 01:47:08 1999 Date: Sun, 05 Oct 1997 01:33:40 GMT From: Leonora the KittenLady Newsgroups: alt.gothic Subject: House Of Dolls [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] She accepted everything he gave her with a shy smile and put it on a shelf. There cobwebs would grow over them, giving the impression that they were covered in a natural lace, woven by time after sitting there for endless days. In the beginning when someone would ask about her little collection she would lead them to her room. The air was so light and frilly near the door that people half expected a storm of butterflies would float out when it was opened. When they stepped inside and took a look at her shelf, her visitors had to squint to distinguish one object from another. The spider webs covered them almost completely. Here and there a sliver of color poked out from beneath the fragile blanket. A black ear from a porcelain cat figurine, the orange neck of a giraffe puppet. She loved her toys, so she hid them away in her room to protect them. Nobody could hurt them if they were away from people. They couldn't be stolen or broken on her shelf. They couldn't be misplaced if they couldn't be moved. People began to think she was crazy. She held discussions with her toys, sometimes even when people were over. Word got around. People started to talk. Who converses with playthings? Who thinks they talk back? No one with any shred of sanity, they thought. As time went on, she spent more and more time alone with her toys. Separating herself from everyone else. Maybe, as people thought, Separating herself from her sanity also. He tried to hold on to her, but she was constantly pushing him away. Except, of course, when he gave her another little gift. He wondered, if he gave her his heart, would she put that on the shelf too? Let it decay under layers of frothy cobwebs until its space was as empty as the chamber in his chest where it had once resided. Sometimes he was tempted to find out. She started to feel as though she no longer needed his company at any time. She would spend nights in her room, alone with her precious "playthings". He would try to join her, but she would just lock him out of her room. Leaving him to sleep on the couch, if anywhere. As the months went by she became even more of a recluse. Constantly hiding from him, as though he was going to separate her from the toys, never thinking once that he was the reason she had them. He tried to stay, and would plead with her to talk to him, face to face. He would pound on her door and cry. He was beyond dignity, he saw his love dying. He had to stop the process, but he couldn't. Both of them stopped going out, and people began to wonder where they were. So, occasionally someone would knock on their door. He would answer it, thinking maybe this person would help. But the minute the person at the door saw his sickly features where a vital face had once been, he or she (depending on the occasion) would turn about face and swiftly make their way to the elevator. He would wonder why these people were so afraid of him. Weren't they supposed to be friends? One day after trying so hard to make everything right again, he packed up his clothes and left. Leaving her apartment forever. Crying for his lost love and her only recently frozen heart. With no one to hide from in her own living space any longer, she opened the door to her private room once more. She walked out into the living room but never went any further. She never left her apartment anymore, never called anyone. When someone rang the doorbell, she ignored it. She wanted to get away from everything so much that she went so far as to unplug her phone (which she never answered anymore anyway). After all the food she had was finished, she went into her room and sat cross legged in front of her shelf. She closed her eyes and just stayed that way. As the cobwebs grew over her, her breathing slowed. Weeks later, the building's super came up to her apartment to inspect the pipes and such. He knocked on her door, and waited, and when she didn't answer herself, he used his set of keys to make his way in. He found her, completely covered in spider webs, still sitting in front of her toy shelf. She looked almost like an extension of it. The super reached down to clear the cobwebs away from her face, and realized there were no signs of decay. He touched what should have been flesh, thinking she was still alive, and instead his hand brushed up against a porcelain surface. The super took one more look at the phone he was about to use to call the police (the proper thing to do in this situation of course), set it down on the receiver, and quietly walked out of the he lonely apartment. © by Leonora Unser-Schutz and the Paw Print Press 1997 -- * _ OfficialPigCarryingKittenLadyWenchGothOfThenNYRangers ->meow<- * *(\o/) Alt.Gothic.A.B Feline Margravine of Treachery - A.G.Crown.Princess* * /_\ http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/4751 -- * * ~ ~ http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/4751/goffhockey/ NOTE NEW URL*