Not Our Problem

Killer Dolls Short Story

Martha had been volunteering at Sungale for the last three years since her husband Colin died. Work at the charity shop had become a way to pass what time she had left now that they wouldn’t be travelling the world together like they’d always dreamt. They’d even bought the tickets before he was diagnosed. One of life’s cruel ironies: working your whole life and then not getting to enjoy retirement.

Martha considered her story a sad one, but was surprised by how common it was. Jim, who also worked at the charity shop, had gone through the exact same thing. He and his wife Kathy had planned to take their camper van across the country, but it never left the driveway as she died in her sleep.

Martha had grown to both love and despise the small charity shop. She loved the company of the other retired volunteers and the conversations she could have with different members of the local community who popped in and out. She enjoyed seeing beautiful items going to new homes and fabulous clothes finding the customers who seemed destined to wear them. There was a kind of magic to all those things that made her heart swell and gave her some kind of belief that life could still contain small kindnesses.

Then there was the other side…

The customers who brought in all their shit. The ones who chucked all their dead parents’ crap into a broken box and brought it into the charity shop no matter the state. Chipped ornaments. Torn clothes. Electronics that didn’t work. Dirty underwear. Porn! She’d seen it all.

Other customers had openly told her, as they piled fifteen boxes of junk onto the counter, how they’d been on their way to the rubbish tip when they thankfully noticed Sungale.

It was said with such little self-awareness it made Martha want to leap over the counter and clout them across the ear, but she doubted it would do any good. These were the customers who made her heart shrink and reaffirmed her belief that cruelty and hatred were running rampant. That the best of life had passed by long ago. That maybe Colin was the lucky one.

Every day was a balancing act between finding the positives and the negatives. Reasons to keep going since Colin’s sudden and cruel departure. But Martha knew the second she saw the smartly dressed woman storm into the shop with her serious, uppity face and superior attitude that today was going to be one of those absolutely shit days.

She wasn’t wrong.

“You take porcelain dolls?” the woman shouted across the store long before she reached the counter. The extra few metres weren’t worth her time or effort.

Martha tried to explain how they didn’t really take them due to a lack of demand, but the woman wasn’t asking; she was telling. This wasn’t a negotiation, just a quick warning that they were already on the way. As far as the smartly dressed woman was concerned, and for that matter most others too, it was a charity shop. They were doing the shop a favour by giving it stuff in the first place, no matter what it was.

Her equally dapper husband entered the store moments later carrying a long see-through box crammed full of the eerie dolls. As he placed the heavy container down on the counter, Martha noticed fresh scratches covering both his hands. Apparently, their cat had the same opinion of the stuck-up couple Martha had already formed.

And with that, they were gone. Left as quickly as they arrived, minus a box full of garbage Martha knew the shop wouldn’t be able to sell. She had wanted to ask the husband if he could put the box out back in their sorting room as it looked far too heavy for Martha to lift, but they hadn’t given her the chance.

Darren, their only young volunteer, would start work in an hour, but she didn’t want the container sitting on the counter all that time. It looked untidy, plus it was full of creepy dolls. Martha was left with no choice but to empty the box a little at a time until it was manageable.

The large container was in poor condition. They always were. It didn’t matter how wealthy the customer was; the storage boxes were always the same. Grubby. Cracked. The plastic around the corner of this box was crumbling, with parts snapped off. The lid was bent inwards. It only stayed shut because it was wrapped in thick gaffer tape. It was covered in scratches too. Clearly, their cat had no respect for anything.

Through the filthy box, Martha could see the disturbing bisque dolls inside. There were maybe twelve in total. Each of them had that same vacant, uncanny-valley expression all those dolls had. Martha knew the expression well as her own grandma had been quite the collector back in the day. Both Martha and her mum had grown up with a rational hatred of them because of it.

If she thought about it hard enough, she could still picture them staring down at her from above the fireplace beside the carriage clock. Not all childhood memories were fond ones.

Martha reluctantly cut through the gaffer tape and pried open the bent lid, ready to transport the dolls into smaller, more manageable boxes. Without the stained plastic distorting them, somehow the dolls looked even more demonic.

“Creepy fuckers,” Martha said aloud, as there was no one else in the shop.

“You ain’t much to look at yourself, you old hag,” a doll with a screwed-up face and matted hazelnut hair replied.

Before Martha could even comprehend that one of the freaky dolls had spoken, several more of the unruly porcelain demons sprang from their plastic prison and began to scratch and bite the pensioner.

Martha shrieked and tried to brush the little bastards off her, but they were relentless. Biting at her hands and arms. Clawing at her legs as they fell. She tripped over one of the little shits as she frantically made it around the counter onto the shop floor. She screamed for help but was all alone for another hour unless a customer arrived.

She considered trying for the phone, but the dolls had blocked her route out back. Instead, from her fallen position on the floor, Martha tried crawling for the front door. Every movement was met with maniacal laughs and bite marks. Rude insults and scratches. Tiny punches and kicks that bruised her frail body. They seemed hell-bent on killing her.

Martha continued to bat them aside. Toss them away. Break one of their arms. She even managed to slam one against the jewellery cabinet, cracking its tiny head. But they kept coming back, unperturbed by her feeble resistance.

Martha made a final scramble to the door as two female dolls tried to bend her swollen fingers back. As she opened the door, she saw the rich couple still parked outside. They looked in her direction without a shred of sympathy and drove off as the dolls dragged Martha back inside, leaving a bloody handprint on the charity shop door.

✯✯✯

The smartly dressed man and woman were Mr and Mrs Mowbray. They’d been doing well in life thanks to a pair of high-paying jobs and a successful insurance claim but had hit the jackpot recently when Mrs Mowbray’s mum died and left her only child a beautiful home and large bank account.

Even with the unfair inheritance tax, which they both bemoaned, the Mowbrays upgraded from rich to filthy rich at the expense of one mum, whom Mrs Mowbray rarely saw nowadays anyway.

She had cared about her mum and briefly mourned her, but she cared about getting the house a whole hell of a lot more. The stately property was a little old-fashioned and cluttered in that way most old people's homes were, but structurally and in terms of space, it was a magnificent building whose value was only increasing.

They moved in immediately and began the process of clearing out all the old woman’s stuff, as there were decades’ worth of mess and boxes. Mrs Mowbray’s mum had been quite the hoarder. During the mass clear-out, they not only discovered the creepy bisque dolls but also realised the horrible things were alive.

The majority of the dolls were already boxed up, but one had been left out. She was a handful. At first, they’d tried to get the lively doll into the box with the others, but it had put up too much of a fight. It had clawed and scratched Mr Mowbray like some rabid cat. It would have been foaming at the mouth if it had been capable of such things. Mrs Mowbray had been screaming at first about how impossible it was for the doll to fight back, but was soon dragged into the fray herself.

Eventually, they threw the damn thing in the fireplace and watched it burn, ignoring the doll's horrible cries for help as its face cracked and charred under the flames. The other dolls trapped in the box seemed to mourn the disgusting thing's passing; the Mowbrays did not.

They were going to dump the rest of the unruly dolls at the rubbish tip, or at the bottom of a canyon, but had noticed the charity shop en route. Mr Mowbray thought it was cruel to offload the troublesome dolls on the shop, but Mrs Mowbray didn’t give a shit what he thought. She just wanted them out of her sight. Once they got rid of them, they wouldn’t be their problem anymore.

✯✯✯

Martha had learned all this as she drove the twelve porcelain dolls back to the Mowbrays’ new home while they sat in the back seat. After their tussle back at the charity shop, they’d spent the rest of the day getting on famously. It turned out the dolls’ hatred of the Mowbrays was even greater than Martha’s. They despised what the spoilt couple were doing to their beloved home and weren’t at all impressed to be dumped at a charity shop. They wanted revenge, and Martha wanted to give it to them.

After they’d helped patch her up, and she’d fixed a couple of the arms and legs she’d broken off during the kerfuffle, Martha agreed to take them back to their home so they could kill the Mowbrays. Normally, Martha didn’t agree with violence… but fuck the Mowbrays.

Once she took the dolls back to their home, it wasn’t her problem anymore.

The matted, hazelnut-haired doll called Ricky apologised for calling Martha an ugly bitch when he left the car. In turn, she wished them luck and apologised herself for calling them creepy fuckers.

She watched as the evil little dolls crossed the lawn and climbed through the letterbox. A minute later, Martha heard the first satisfying screams and witnessed Mrs Mowbray’s perfectly made-up face smashing against the window.

Martha gave her a little wave and headed home. It had been a weird day, and she was missing her shows.