Dolls

by Simon Ericson

with the pellets being pumped into the doll. Her face, that now looked like carved stone though it still moved like a girls, was pockmarked with cracks and gouges put there by the flying metal pellets. One of her eyes was cracked and the nose ended in a rough stump instead of a point. Her ripped dress and slowly disappearing mask of life made her seem more like some long dead thing come back than the real girl she was supposed to be or even the man made facsimile she was.

  Unfortunately the damage did not seem to do anything to slow her down and she launched at him again, this time zigzagging back and forth as she closed the distance. Obviously she had learned her lesson about charging straight in.

  Morgans next shot missed her entirely, taking a chunk out of the concrete floor. She was not as fast as Mei-mei or the other Doll, but was still far quicker than she should have been. He racked the shotgun again, slipping another round into the chamber too late as the Doll launched forward, slamming a small hard shoulder into his chest with jarring force.

  The hit forced the air from his lungs making his chest burn. He tried desperately to breathe, but his lungs refused to draw in air and in a panicked moment he thought they may have collapsed. The Doll stepped over him, straddling him and looking down with her broken face triumphant. Morgan pushed at her trying to get her off of him but without air he couldn't move himself and he was coming to understand that she probably weighed even more than he did. Horror did nothing to fill his lungs as it flooded his chest watching the Doll raise the metal bat over its head with both hands.

  A meteor slammed into the Doll. With a grunt of effort Arthur's cloth wrapped sledgehammer, now set alight smashed into the stone girls chest with all the force he could muster making a dull metal thunk. The Doll cried out in surprise as she fell, the hammer setting her hair a blaze and another dull thud sounding out as her body hit the concrete.

  Morgan didn't waste any time, and flipped over to crawl to his shotgun. His lungs had started to work again, though slowly. By the time he had gotten over to the weapon he had enough air in him to flip over again and while half sitting up, aim and fire.

  His shot took the Doll in her knee as she was pulling herself from the ground, blasting off a large chunk of stone. Horrifyingly the battered Doll, face broken, leg missing part of the knee and what remained of her hair still smouldering continued to get up. She fixed her good eye on Morgan again and took a step, but a grinding sound came from the leg as she put weight on it and dust sifted out from the broken joint making her stop and look down.

  “Hurry and find the heart!” Arthur shouted into Morgan's ear while hauling him to his feet. “Shes too heavy to move quickly on that leg!”

  The two of them bolted to and then up the metal stairs. Morgan clung onto the shotgun as the other man half dragged him up the stairs. The sound of grinding rocks and heavy footsteps on the grated metal stairs started below just before they threw themselves into the room, luckily left unlocked. Arthur threw himself desperately against the door the moment it was closed.

  “What the heck is the heart!?” Morgan demanded, mostly recovered he glanced around the room for the Doll's heart while ramming shells into the empty shotgun. Arthur threw the sledgehammer, cloth now completely burned off, over by Morgan's feet making him jump.

  “Just smash anything that clicks, thumps or twitches too regularly!” Arthur shouted, bracing himself against the door as something heavy thumped into it.

  Morgan began frantically tearing open drawers on the desk which was one of the only pieces of furniture in there. Nothing was moving, ticking, clicking or tapping. Wood crunched behind him and looking over he saw the metal bat being extracted from the hole it had just punched through the wooden door.

  He pulled all the old papers out from a cabinet in the desk, letting them fly about the room. Drawers soared as he pulled them free from the desk and panic threatened to overwhelm his rational thought. Then, in the last drawer in the desk was an aged silver pocket watch. It was worn and tarnished and probably an antique, but when Morgan popped it open a slow consistent twitch of hands was steadily ticking the seconds away.

  The door crunched again and Morgan panicked throwing the watch onto the top of the desk he picked up the sledgehammer, letting the shotgun drop. He brought the hammer up and swung hard making the desk crunch as it crushed the sturdy wood, completely missing the watch.

  “Good lord man you aren't taking down a wall just hit it!” Arthur screamed in panic, his voice rising to a feminine pitch as the door splintered again.

  An angry, panicked scream ripped through the tattered door. The Doll with its one dark eye glowing with fear and anger peered though a hole. That face moved only to be replaced by tiny handy bursting through the door to rip it apart in chunks. Whatever made her look human had almost completely degraded with all the damage done to her and the well carved little fists and digits looked just like the stone they were made of as they ripped the door like paper.

  This time Morgan raised the sledgehammer just up to his eye level and with the strength of fear powering him, brought it down carefully onto the watch, twice. Everything went quiet, and Morgan picked up the watch to examine. Gears were bent and popped out, springs exposed and glass shattered, and nothing ticked or twitched on it.

  Arthur screamed and scrambled away as the tiny hands burst through the door again and in a flurry of movement finished pulling it apart. The door, which had taken far too much damage to bear that name anymore, was no more than a collection of splinters and chunks on the floor with the hinges desperately clinging onto a few larger pieces. Stone rage stepped into the room shaped like a broken little girl.

  “I smashed the watch why is she still moving?” Morgan demanded frantically.

  “Well obviously it wasn't her now was it!” Arthur spat back in a comically high, panic filled voice that would have been amusing if they weren't about to die.

  “Not really! Nothing about Dolls or being attacked by a killer lawn ornament is normal or obvious!” Morgan spat right back and then dived for the shotgun on the floor. A tiny foot smashed through the floorboards next to his head as he roll onto his back and brought the barrel of the gun up. The stone face he aimed it at was still surprisingly human to him despite the missing pieces, burnt hair and shattered eye. Everything slowed down as he watched her step forward, face bearing a twisted, predatory grin and her knee grinding out dust.

  She threw herself at the downed officer with outstretched arms and he rolled back and brought up his feet. His legs almost buckled and let her crush him as he caught the heavy Doll with his feet. She must have easily weighed at least two-fifty. His legs held however and he launched her back with all his strength and once again she was flying through the air, this time smashing into the wall behind her. She quickly managed to stagger to her feet and began limping towards him once again.

  Now however she was out of his shot.

  He had missed it completely until he had ended up on the ground with his shotgun. An old clock hung on the wall near the door. It was obviously broken, the small red hand ticking the same second away over and over again. Morgan squeezed the trigger and pellets ripped out of their package, bounced down the barrel, flew through the air and ripped into the old clock tearing it in two before it smashed to the ground.

  A small heartbreaking cry followed the boom of the shotgun and crash of the clock. It was a sound of surprise, fear and sadness and sounded very much like a sound a child would make. Morgan watched the Doll, feeling relief and fear being washed away by sadness as she clutched her chest with a hand, her eyes staring at nothing. She took one staggering step to nowhere, then a second onto her bad leg which finally cracked, bearing her to the ground, her eyes empty and her face as serene and unmoving as stone.

  Morgan sat there with his shotgun staring at the pile of rocks that was the remnants of the Doll. The battered officer found himself sad to see this Doll, following orders and likely quite innocent, collapse like that. She had died in such a human way.

  “I
never even saw the clock, never mind that it was still moving!” Arthur exclaimed as he picked himself out of the corner of the office. His voice had returned to its normal, more masculine, range.

  “It was broken. The seconds hand was barely moving.” Morgan replied blankly.

  “Huh” The Dollmaker replied with interest. “That is brilliant actually! Using a broken clock like that would be less reliable than a working one, but so easy to overlook. And it can be hidden in plain sight!”

  “She's dead” Morgan felt a little numb as he said the words. His own voice sounded odd. “It was like she had a heart attack. She was clutching her chest like her heart just stopped.”

  “Well it did," Arthur replied. "You stopped it.” It didn't help.

  Arthur squatted down beside his friend and placed a hand on his shoulder. “It has stopped moving Officer, but it was never really alive. It seemed to be, they all do if you are good. However they do not breathe, or sleep and they don't even understand what is wrong with killing or hurting.

  “Dolls do feel. Shallow feelings that only really relate to themselves. But they are just not really alive. They are constructs, trust me. You have had to hurt people in order to keep others safe right officer?”

  Morgan rolled his eyes and