Member-only story
The Dolls
“Where have you been, Erica?”
“Oh, you see, I came back for you, Angela.”
I looked at her pretty face, one not smeared with the wax and the ointment. She could not move, of course, and her legs and arms were laid near her torso. She did not seem to be the pathetic creature they had described to me. Angela preferred to spend her days in the case they had made specially for her. I was always away when they came and could not thank them as I should.
“They told me that you had died.”
“I believed them.”
Angela was the most innocent doll I had ever met. She never complained, asked questions or challenged anything they told her as if it were absolute truth.
Many, many miles separated us since the last pilgrimage we did together. And an infinite distance separated us in a spiritual way.
Angela said in a soft voice that seemed to be the voice of the great Afterlife,
“But today, my dear Erica, we are seated in this room next to them, finally together.”
She had that strange smile I had seen once on her face.
She was right. We were in the case, arranged like dolls seating on a broken seat.
Finally, she whispered, so they would not hear her.
“And you, my dear Erica, you have not changed a bit since I last saw you at my funeral.”
