Red-Thread Doll

Flashfiction. 415 words. With dolls. And hearts. And red-thread.

Her legs burned in protest as she forced them stiffly forward.  She couldn’t stop, not until she was done. Her hands brushed over the rough wool to the soft hair before finally finding the stitch that held them together. She caressed it.  It was strange that something so simple had transferred her pain to him.  Of course, there had been more stitches.  Red thread stitched across the dolls eyes.  Red thread stitched across the dolls lips.  Red thread stitched in the dolls hands, shoulders, and feet that she’d pulled and pulled and pulled until the doll’s gentle insides began to spill out.  There was one red thread she’d left untouched, however.

She stumbled, and her hand slipped off the doll.  The house was around the next street, she remembered though she had not been there in some time.  It wouldn’t be long before they discovered the body.  She had to hurry.  

The doors were locked, but the window was open, inviting in the cool breeze before the sweltering Lousiana heat set in.  Her hands shook as she pulled herself through the window.  Master Jenkins bedroom was at the top of the stairs.  When she was a maid she would’ve taken the back stairs, but today she didn’t bother.  Her legs shook as she took the first step. Air lacerated its way up and down her throat by the time she arrived but it didn't matter.  She'd made it. 

He was lying on his bed, exactly as she pictured.  He might’ve looked like he was sleeping.  His chest was rising and falling in a normal rhythm.  He was still alive, just like she’d planned.  She pulled out the doll and placed it next to him.  She was glad she’d chosen to use red thread, it gave him and the doll similarities that were almost poetic.  Red could be the color of love, or blood.  It was double-edged, two-faced, traitorous.  It suited him perfectly.

Of course, there was one more final touch.  She placed her hand on his chest, feeling it quicken underneath her fingertips.  He knew what was coming, she was sure.  With the other hand she took the last red thread and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, until the red heart she’d planted in the middle of the doll was pulled free, broken and bloody and twisted, like her own.

It was done.

The red thread fell out of her hand as she crumbled, warm blood trickling out of her nostril. The end was coming faster than she imagined.  Slowly her hand reached into her pocket for the other doll, while the other reached for the needle.  Fate demanded a hefty price for the dark magic she conjured, but she was prepared to pay it.  Just not in the way fate intended.

The doll fell from her hand as she collapsed, a needle in its chest.

Both doll and girl were smiling as they lay dead in the late Howard Jenkin’s bedroom.