31 Days of Halloween - Day 4: Creepy Dolls

When I was a child, my mother was obsessed with turning me into a little lady. She thought that all little girls should wear lace and crinoline, have pink bedrooms, and a large doll collection. She was woefully disappointed with me as a daughter. I'd frequently strip off the girly clothing and run around naked, detested pink as if it were a sign of oppression, and preferred my He-man toy collection to dolls (although I still played with Barbies. I liked making up soap operas with mine. In my Barbie stories, Ken was a man whore.) This was the result of having nothing but older brothers who used me as their WWE wrestling dummy and a father that refused to treat me like a dainty little girl. Nevertheless, my mother pressed on. She went too far when she bought me porcelain dolls.

Few things in this world evoked my wrath than the day she led me to a porcelain doll shop under false pretenses. She promised me we were going to buy some dolls. I thought she meant Barbies. When we walked into that porcelain doll shop, I nearly pissed my pants. The shop manager, an older lady, was aghast that a cute little girl would be so frightened of her "BEE-YOOOO-TIFUL" dolls. Imagine Paula Dean, only creepy and doll-obsessed. My mother had me pick the one I thought was the prettiest then we paid and left. I get home and she puts it on a high shelf FACING MY BED where the little bitch stood there staring me down and judging me. At night I would climb up on a chair and turn her around so she couldn't watch me while I'm sleeping. What caused my fear of creepy dolls? Child's Play. Fucking Chuckie and his sadistic ways.

Seriously? Way to ruin a child's relationship with his My Buddy doll!

My brothers used certain horror movies to scare me into complacency when I was little. Child's Play was one of them. Before my mother forced the porcelain doll on me, my brothers had bought me one of those baby dolls with the eyes that would follow you. You know what I'm talking about. You'd turn the doll to the side and the eyes would rotate. I hated that doll with a passion because I thought it was the black female version of Chuckie. The doll started giving me nightmares so I would put it in the hall closet or my mother's room. Anywhere just to get it away from me. Yet, somehow, that fucking doll would reappear in my bedroom! Finally, I tied it up with an old jump rope and threw it in the trashcan outside. That night, it was back on my bed smelling like laundry detergent. I'd had enough. I took the doll outside to our shed and hid it way in the back then locked the padlock on the shed. For a couple weeks, my bedroom stayed psycho doll-free. Then, one night, I pull back the covers to get into bed when I spy that doll underneath. COVERED IN SPIDERS AND STARING BACK AT ME! I ran into my mother's room screaming bloody murder. My stepdad killed all the spiders while my mother threw my linen and the doll into the washing machine. I refused to sleep in my room for days after that.

Up to that point, my whole family had been nonchalant at the constant reappearance of the doll every time I hid it or threw it away. After the spider incident, my stepdad spilled the beans: my brothers had been taking the doll and putting it back in my bed just to terrify me. My oldest brother found the doll in the shed when he was getting the lawn mower out and decided it would be funny to put the spider covered doll in my bed. My mother failed to see the humor in that considering the number of black widows lurking around at the time. That and a scared child clawing at you like a feral cat after waking you up from a nightmare can't be conducive to a good night's sleep.

To this day, I continue to hate dolls like that. I still have my porcelain dolls, which I only keep around for collection purposes (they're worth something apparently.) As for the Chuckie look-a-like that inflicted so much fear? That little "four-letter-word-starts-with-a-C-and-rhymes-with-bunt", is somewhere in the attic with all my old toys. As long as her ass stays there, we'll get along just fine.