Hello, my Freaky Darlings!

I wrote a new short story this week, and I hope you enjoy it.

*

She used to sit on the bed while he marvelled at his masterpiece. He’d been merciless in the final deconstruction. There wasn’t anything left of who she once was. If she was honest, she stopped recognising herself in the mirror a long time ago. Over time, he’d found fault in everything that made her unique, that made her who she was. He’d started slowly at first, just the odd criticism now and again. He said he was trying to help her be a better version of herself. She didn’t understand what was so wrong with who she was until he showed her. He kept showing her until she didn’t want to see herself anymore.

After his first alterations, it didn’t take long for her friends from before him to notice the changes he’d made with his scalpel. They tried to be supportive, but they couldn’t help their well-meaning criticism of her new self. They wanted her to be the person they wanted or needed her to be for them. They pulled at her from every angle until she was too tired to fight. She retreated into herself where it was safe, where she was still whole. He told her they were bad for her, and she agreed. She stopped taking their calls, and then the phone stopped ringing, and the messages stopped coming; even the stupid jokes they sent so regularly stopped. She was left alone with only him. He became her everything, and he revelled in it.

She became his living doll. He fed her, did her hair, her makeup. He dressed her, and then at night, when the world was dark and silent, he cut into her flesh. He remade her into his ideal in every way. He made her silent when he removed her voice. She had no need to speak, for he became her voice. He then took her womb. Why would a doll need a child? He was her everything, after all. A child would only distract her from their love. He took her breasts and gave her new and improved ones. They were bigger and filled his hands the way breasts should. He did the same to her butt. He made her rear firmer and rounder, so he was more comfortable when he mounted her from behind. She missed her old boobs, though. The new ones were heavier and hurt her back. She also had trouble sitting on the new implants. When she tried to tell him they hurt her by writing a note, he broke her fingers and remade her hands so they would always be placed politely in her lap. She had no need to write her thoughts down. He already knew everything, and she did not need to think.

He cut her face and made her look like she was always smiling. He said he hated it when she looked sad or angry. Now she would never look anything but happy. When she cried, her tears slowly trickled down her cheeks; he smiled and gently wiped them away. He said they were tears of joy. He must be right since she’d stopped feeling much of anything except what he told her to feel. After all, her emotions were as broken as she was, and he gave her pills to fix that.

He smiled down at her with pride and patted her head. He said his friends would be so jealous of him. They would want their wives to be as perfect as she. His friends prodded at her when they visited, but soon they stopped coming. They got bored, and so did he. He said she wasn’t a good hostess and couldn’t carry a witty conversation. She was dumb in every way, so he left her alone in the dark when he went out with his friends. He was soon gone every night and only came home in the early hours of the morning.

He stopped feeding and washing her. Her hair lost its lustre and got dirty and tangled. Her tears were no longer tears of joy. He stopped giving her the pills that corrected her emotions. She no longer felt any love for him. He’d killed the woman who had loved him and replaced her with a doll that only felt anger.

She heard him come home. He wasn’t alone. She could hear them laughing from her seat in the dusty corner of the basement where he’d left her to whither away, forgotten and neglected. But while he had been out with his friends all those lonely nights, she practised flexing and stretching the muscles he had cut and shortened. Over time she could move her fingers again. She learned to stand and walk on her own. She fed herself in the dead of night while he slept in what had once been their bed but now shared with others. She walked his house in silence like a ghost.

The latest of his conquests laughed the way she once had. The new one stopped laughing, however, when she saw the broken doll. He stopped laughing too when he saw the knife. If she could have, the broken doll would have laughed, but she smiled the smile he had given her. She smiled that perfect smile when she stabbed the new screaming doll and then turned her smile and the knife on her creator. She carried on smiling when his blood stained the dress he made her wear. Her smile was still perfect when she left his house. She was no longer his broken and discarded doll; she belonged only to herself and, in that moment, was made whole. No one would ever be able to break her again, and woe betide any man who tried for they would face the same fate as her creator.

*

So … what did you think?

That’s it for this week; as always, thank you for being a Freaky Darling!