"Dolly"                                                                  by Bob Gunner The child's mother had left the seven-year-old to fend for herself, and now the girl found herself all alone once again. Her ungrateful mother found her comfort in negotiating casual sex for a crack rock rather than practicing motherhood. The girl knew she might not hear from or see her mom for days at a time, she had unselfishly become accustomed to this and learned to cope with it. 'Dolly', as her father had christened her before his selfish decision to give up and desert the two of them for a younger sexier woman a few years before, was a particularly sensitive, emotional and precious child. Now, as she often did, she stood terrified in the darkened shadows of the living room of the home that seem to be rotting and falling down all around her even as the sunlight faded away outside. She was petite and frail, a tender innocent young flower with big blue wide eyes and long straight goldenblond hair that flowed to the middle of her back, tied back neatly with a piece of worn and tattered red velvet ribbon. She had found the ribbon in the cemetery that was built years ago next to the house. This place had become her only playground in the past six months. The house had no electricity, so there were no lights. There had been none for many months, no running water, and no telephone. Piles of smelly scattered trash cluttered the unkempt wooden floors all the way through the deteriorating structure, in some places five to six feet high. Broken and cracked sheet rock and dampened rotting insulation hung down from the ceilings. And when it rained, the roof would leak, and hungry agitated rats would scurry along inside the walls and attic. Thumping and bumping and scurrying in hidden secret places. And the noise they made would scare Dolly, because she just knew they might try to attack or eat her if they ever got a chance to do so. Unbeknownst to sad and frustrated little Dolly, her mommy would not ever be coming home again. The mutilated body of the woman had been found earlier in the evening in a half-filled dumpster in the slum area near town were all of the drug users hung out. The police had questioned some of their local informants and had come to the assumption the victim most probably had been murdered by an area pimp. She had been working in his main whore's personal territory. Because she had no identification on her and no one had reported her missing, she had become just another "Jane Doe" in the crowded cities' cluttered and filthy morgue. Dolly was hungry and her stomach hurt, her last meal had been about two days earlier when her mom had brought her a "Happy Meal" from the local McDonald's and a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola. She still had a box of cookies left in her colorful cardboard clown box, and it looked as though those sweet vanilla jewels were going to be her only dinner for this evening. She went into her dark bedroom, lit only by the dim glow of a full moon through it's only window (there was no curtain or shade) and sat in her halfsize rocking chair, talking softly to her 'dollies'. These were her only companions and friends for the night and she felt they would protect her from all the bad things in her little world hid away from the one that everyone else lived in just outside the front door of her crumbling home. They would never leave her alone like her mother had done. Dolly sat on the floor and hugged tenderly her newest doll carefully wrapped in a clean patchwork baby quilt, singing a lullaby her mother once had often sung to her. "Baby young, baby sweet, baby mine, please don't weep. Momma loves you don't you cry, I'll always be here 'til you die," she sang in her tiny and raspy innocent whisper. Then she snuggled her doll even tighter, gently swaying back and forth. There was suddenly a loud succession of knocks on the front door. Dolly thought it must be her mommy, so she hurried and lay her new doll into the small wooden baby crib her mother had given her last Christmas. She made sure the doll was covered and warm, and got up to answer the door. Her mother had taught her to be cautious, so before she unlocked the front door, she looked through the peek-hole and even though it was so dark, she could easily make out the outline of a woman. "Momma?" she said. "No, my name is Annie, and I'm a friend, are you Dolly?" the stranger questioned. "Yes, what do you want?" the little girl asked. "Dolly, I would just like to come in and ask you a few questions," the unfamiliar voice said, adding; "Dolly is your mother there with you?" Dolly thought about the question for a second, remembering her mom telling her to never speak with any strangers, warning her that if the child protective services ever found her alone that they would come and take her away from her forever. "Yes, but my mommy is asleep, she isn't feeling so good, so she's taking a nap," the girl lied. There was a few moments of silence, then the voice added; "Dolly, your mother isn't there, is she? Why don't you just let me in and we can talk about it? I'm here to help you honey." Dolly began to panic, she wanted to run, but she did not want to leave her dollies, they were all she had in the world. So she decided to try another lie, >"I'm sorry for not telling the truth lady, but my mommy told me to do that just in case someone came looking for us and she wasn't here," the girl said "My mommy just left a few minutes ago to run to the store and get us a few things for dinner, I wasn't feeling so good so she let me stay here," Dolly added. The woman, Annie, indeed had been sent from child protective services, she carefully pondered the words of the little girl and decided to use a little reverse psychology on the child. Annie had just graduated from college a few months before, and she was still full of energy, enthusiasm and cleverness as far as her job was concerned. She had not yet lost her drive and ambition to help those who needed some family counseling and direction. She was nothing like the others in her agency who had been driven to burn-out by too many cases for one person to handle and too little hours in the day in which to do so. "Baby, if you would just let me in for a few minutes, I promise I will just ask you a few questions, then I'll go away if you want me too," Annie said. Dolly was beginning to become paranoid and confused, she wondered what her mommy would want her to tell the woman, then she answered; "If I let you in, you promise you'll ask me your questions and then go before my mommy gets back?" "Sure Dolly, if that's what you would like honey, I'll just ask you a few quick questions, then I'll leave before your mommy gets back," Annie promised. "You know my mommy would get really mad at me if she found out I let a stranger into the house when she was gone, don't you?" Dolly asked. "I know honey, but I also know your mother would understand that I was just being sure that you were o.k. I think she would understand and not be mad at you," Annie replied. Dolly took her time and undid the three locks on the door. She cracked the door just a bit, but did not undo the chain-latch. Annie saw the precious child's golden hair and big blue eyes for the first time. "Hi Dolly, well you are certainly a very pretty little girl, now I understand why your mother is so protective of you," Annie said. Dolly stared deeply into the woman's kind eyes, and she thought to herself how honest looking and sincere the woman Annie seemed to be. "Well baby, are you going to let me in so we can talk?" the woman questioned. Dolly slipped off the chain latch and opened the door fully and the woman stepped into the entrance, "Honey it sure is kind of dark in here, can we turn on a light so we can see?" Annie asked. "I'm sorry," Dolly said, adding; "we don't have any electricity right now, my mommy couldn't pay the bill." The woman looked sadly at the child and said; "That's okay baby, I'm sure your mommy tried to get the money to pay the bill, we'll just have to make due without the lights." The wide-eyed little girl replied in her polite and timid manner; " Thank you Miss Annie, thank you for understanding." Annie could barely see the face of the child in front of her, but she could tell from the tone of the girl's voice that she had begun crying now, and suddenly she was reflecting back on her own childhood. Back when she was about the same age as Dolly, and she had had been in the same situation as the little girl. And how the events of that fateful day had been the inspiration for her choosing the position she now held with child protective services. How her past had become the reason why she felt the need to help other little girls. Annie's mother had taken her own life back then when things got too hard to take. Her father, much like Dolly's, had left her and her mother to fend for them selves. One cold winter morning shortly thereafter, Annie awaked from a deep nights slumber to find her mother's body in the bath tub, she had slit her wrists and lay slumped over in the crimson tinted waters of the tub with her eyes wide open and a slight wrinkled smile on her dead face. Annie had lost her sanity at that moment and it did not come back until a week later when the landlord had come to check the apartment because he had not seen the woman or child in a few days and was concerned. They found Annie sitting on the floor next to the tub holding tightly to her mother's blood stained hand. The girl was almost comatose and did not really come totally cognitive to reality until about three months later. Annie spent those lost and hazy months in a local sanitarium where several child psychiatrists were paid for by county charity funds for her lengthily and costly rehabilitation. When Annie finally did come around, she was passed from one foster family to another. But none of her foster parents seem to take to her or care enough for the relationship to become permanent. Finally, she was sent back to the county orphanage where she stayed until she graduated from high school with a full scholarship to college. By then her place in life had become clearer, and she knew in order to pay back society for her care during the sad and tragic childhood she had experienced, she must pursue a career in child psychology. Annie was offered the position with child protective services the day after she graduated from college, and she was exceptionally thankful for the opportunity to finally be able to support as well as to start her adult life on her own. Annie's thoughts came back to the present, and her attention was once again directed at Dolly rather than at her lurid and disturbing past. She carefully took notice of the deteriorating conditions of the housing around her, and noted this was no place for any human of any age to reside. "Dolly honey, your mother hasn't been around a lot lately has she dear?" she asked of the girl. "Yes she has," Dolly quickly replied through her big tears as they slid down her blushed cheeks and splashed down to the cluttered floors. "How long has she been gone baby? Two, maybe three days?" Annie asked. "Like I told you, she just went to the store to get us some dinner," Dolly said, "she wanted us to have a really special dinner tonight," Dolly added. "How is your mother going to cook for you Dolly? Since there's no electricity for the stove or refrigerator, how will she cook the food?" Annie questioned. "She's gonna cook on the barbecue pit in the back yard," Dolly answered, "Yeah, she's gonna grill us up a big feast on that grill out there." Annie walked over to the back patio door and looked outside at the barbecue pit in the overgrown yard, it appeared to be corroded and rusted out and had not been fired up for some time. And she knew the child was definitely not telling the truth. "Dolly dear when was the last time you had anything to eat?" Annie asked. The little girl really started to bawl then because she just knew she was being taken away forever. Someplace where no one knew her or anything about the things she liked, or the food she liked to eat. "Dolly, I want you to know you can tell me everything, I will listen to you baby and I promise no one will be mean or take you away to some place you don't want to go," Annie told the girl. "I'll even let you come to stay with me Dolly, I promise, and I'll take really good care of you sweetie, you can count on that," Annie said. "But what about my mommy? Can my mommy come and stay with you too?" Dolly asked. "Why of course Dolly," Annie answered, "Both you and your mommy can come and stay with me," she said smiling at the little girl with true unexaggerated concern for her welfare. "Well, I don't think my mommy will get mad if I were to go with you, but would you write her a note so she can find us when she gets home?" asked Dolly. "Why of course baby, we'll write her a note together so she'll know exactly where to find us," Annie said. The two sat on the floor together and wrote the note. When they had finished with that task and tacked the note to the door where Dolly's mom could find it, Annie wanted to leave the depressing structure behind them. "Dolly, why don't you get a change of clothing and your pajamas, and we'll go get a big cheeseburger and a chocolate shake and fries, then I'll show you my video game collection," Annie said. "You have video games?" the girl asked. "Oh yes sweetie, I have all of the new ones, and I have cable television and a bunch of movies on DVD too," Annie replied. "Alright, but can I take my dollies too?" Dolly questioned. "Why of course baby, you can definitely bring your dollies too," Annie answered. Annie could tell the girl was excited about going with her now, and she felt sure her supervisor would understand her taking the girl home with her for the night rather than calling for the police to pick her up and take her to a lock up or to a temporary foster family for the evening. It was against policy of course, but she just couldn't face the girl being subjected to more disappointment or uncertainty. Dolly turned in the dark and ran to her bedroom, Annie a few steps behind her. She followed the girl to the room and stood in the doorway waiting for her as Dolly rummaged through the drawers of her dresser, pulling out articles of clothing and putting them into a big brown paper grocery sack she picked up from the floor. "Are you finding everything you need Dolly?" Annie questioned. "Yes Mam," the girl replied, as she continued to gather things. "I'll probably just need a little help getting my dollies," Dolly said, handing the woman the sack of clothes and then feeling around in the dark for her dolls. "I tell you what Dolly, I'll take this bag and put it into the car and then you can get your dollies and meet me there," Annie said, feeling her way through the darkened house out through the front door and into the cold night air as she made her way to the car, starting it and switching on the heater for warmth. A few moments later, Dolly came to the car and she was carrying her two dollies all wrapped up in their quilts, and put one in the back seat where the bag was sitting, and closed the back door, and then opened the front door of the car, easing into the passenger seat as she held the other. Dolly pulled the car door closed, and held tightly to her doll, as Annie looked over at the sweet child and brushed the soft hair out of her eyes. "Well, that must be your favorite doll, is it honey?" Annie inquired. The child answered; "Yes Mam, this is my newest dolly, I had others besides these two, but they all broke," the child said. "Well, the good thing about dollies, is that when they get broken, they can be replaced very easily," Annie said adding, "do you mind if I have a look at her?" Dolly seemed to hesitate for a moment, but realizing that this nice lady was being so kind to her, she complied. "Not at all," said pretty young Dolly, slowly uncovering the doll's little face from beneath the fluffy patchwork quilt. The older woman gasped as she saw what was wrapped inside, and almost vomited as she realized it was the smelly and deteriorating corpse of a newborn infant… Annie browsed over into the back seat, and cradled there too in the folds of the other quilt, there was another baby's corpse on the seat back there too. Annie realized she was seeing evidence of two well-publicized grave robberies that had taken place at the cemetery next to the house only the week before, and she recalled reading about it in the local morning paper, "yes, that's right Annie," Dolly replied in agreement, "the dollies can always be replaced very easily…" (This story is from "Under a Veil of Darkness, the short fiction of Bob Gunner" copyright 2003, available for purchase at Shocklines.com or at http://my.lulu.com/cyberpulpbooks .) About the Author... Bob Gunner resides in Spring , Texas, with his wife Liz, daughter Molly Rose and son Bobby, and is protected from the evils of darkness by three mean-ass cats (Pony boy, Sodapop and Momo).  He is presently at work on two novels, "The Dark has Teeth" a tale of a mutant monster in the forest of East Texas, and "House of Tears" about a haunted house in the suburbs.  You can find his most recent published work at Shocklines.com and at http://my.lulu.com/cyberpulpbooks , as well as at most online book store sites. His website is http://www.bobgunner.com .