All Dolled Up!

Charlie

Quite frankly, I just wanted to see if this would work, and if the test would even return anything.

"That raises a question though," I asked her. "What is the last time period you remember?"

"Oh, I think the last one I remember exactly... hm... it was a few years after World War II ended," she said.

"That was over seventy years ago," I said, realizing that she really was a lady out of time, and there was quite a lot she had to catch up on if she wanted to live in the modern day. "Okay, but what were you doing for all that time?"

"When I'm not doing anything else, I go to sleep," she said.

"You take a nap?"

"No, not that kind of sleep," she told me. "I can… well, I'm always awake in a sense and I don't need to actually sleep, even when it's daylight... but... I can sort of turn my mind 'off' if that makes sense... like a light switch... and then I just sit there for as long as possible unless something wakes me up."

That sounded terrible to me - the idea of sitting in a glass case for eternity, barely aware of what was going on around you.

"Hey! What's with that pitiful look you're giving me!?"

"I just," I said, "I think it's kind of depressing that you had to go through that. When you were alive... what would you do to pass the time?" If it was me, I'd spend my nights watching videos and playing video games, though I could see how that would definitely get boring after a few months. I might even slip into 'hibernation' like she had - I think that was a better way of describing it rather than 'sleep' as she called it.

"I would usually spend my time reading, or with my friends," Charlotte said. "There was Evelyn and Dahlia and... I can't remember the other names, but there were people... but they're all gone now..." She shrugged. "Thank you very much for the book though- even if I had read them before, it was great to see them again."

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," I told her.

"So, if this is your day off, what are you going to do?" she asked.

"Well, first, I'm going to have breakfast," I told her. "Then, there are a few more things around the house that I think I can work on... I haven't forgotten about keeping lillies on May's gravesite, don't worry, but I'll go when it's light out - otherwise I think I'll be kicked out of the cemetery."

"Thank you for that," Charlotte said. "And I understand, I just wish I could pay her a visit myself one day..."

"Maybe you will," I said, while pouring myself a bowl of milk. "Maybe one day we'll find a way to turn you back."

"What are you making?"

"Cereal."

"Like wheat?"

"No, no, breakfast cereal," I said, opening a box and pouring it into the bowl before placing it in the microwave to heat it up. I held up the box for her. "Want to...." I was going to say 'try some' but then I realized I didn't know if she could eat or not. "...eat some if you can?"

"I can eat, actually," she said. "As long as it's not too much, because if I eat too much I'll end up vomiting it out. But, in the morning, it resets again." It seemed she didn't need to use the bathroom at all. Again, I wanted so badly to know how she worked and put her under some kind of scanner. "I don't have to though, and I never feel hungry. It always seemed like a bother to try and eat anything, and it wasn't like I could cook anything in the house because I couldn't go outside to order things. What is that box though?"

"It's a microwave, it can heat some things up," I said. She watched me all through making breakfast- come to think of it, this was the first day off that I was sharing with her after I realized who she was, and when she wasn't trying to scare me off. Come to think of it, we would have the rest of the day- or night, that is, together. "Here - you press the buttons here, and then it gets warmed up."

She watched in fascination as the bowl spun around and the microwave made the odd beeping noises it does. I offered her a piece of cereal if she'd want to try it, which she did, then scrunched up her face the moment she ate it.

"You didn't like it?"

"It's very sweet," she complained. "Almost too sweet. It's so sweet it's actually bad." She didn't ask for any more.

"Yeah, we put too much sugar into everything nowadays, honestly. Maybe I"ll get you some Cheerio's though- they usually don't have that much sugar and you can try that out. To be fair though, most breakfast cereal doesn't happen to taste all that good anyways."

The microwave beeped as my meal was done, and once I was done scarfing my cereal down, I decided to go upstairs to check out the display case she was in.

"What are you looking for?" she asked, trailing behind me. It was somewhat endearing - like having a puppy following you around the house. It was also kind of awkward - but I didn't feel like saying that to her face. She must've been really bored if she thought that my morning routine was something that was worth watching, and given what she usually had to do, I supposed it was.

"I wanted to see the display case," I told her. "So, one day you just woke up in this case, right? This very same case?"

"Yes," she said. "I wonder..." I trailed off as I began taking a close look at it. I was looking to see if there was a manufacturing number, or a label, or an ID, or really anything that would give me an idea as to who had made it. But I didn't - it was just a glass case. "No, I can't find anything. Charlotte, when do you remember first waking up as a doll?"

She crossed her arms and tapped her feet, deep in contemplation. "I'm really not sure. It's been so long... and some things I just don't remember. I remember hearing the radio a few times though... so maybe before televisions were everywhere?" That really didn't narrow anything down - so she wasn't sure herself.

Well, it looked like we weren't going anywhere with this, so I set on working on some other projects around the house.

First off was the fact that some of the older windows needed to be cleaned. Charlotte was surprisingly helpful with this, going to refill the bucket of water I carried around and doing other small tasks which freed up my hands. It was like having a tiny assistant with me walking around the house. She could also hold tools and hand them to me while I was fixing the floorboards.

In a way, it was a good thing that we lived in such a secluded area. If not, I would be making too much noise and I'd definitely end up getting noise complaints from the neighbors that I was banging things at eleven at night and that they were trying to sleep. Here though, I was almost as close to being completely alone as one person could be while still being near a reasonably sized town. I had to say that I liked it quite well, it suited me.

"I think that's enough for now," I said. I had only done roughly a fourth of the amount that needed to be done, but I felt like taking it easy after the hell that was last week. As it was, it wasn't like I needed to be in a rush to do anything - I had set up the house so that I was comfortable in the areas I lived in, in other words, the areas that mattered.. The main issue now was the roof in the East Wing, otherwise, it was not too bad.

What to do next, though? I just wanted to unwind, maybe with a beer in hand and watch something to take my mind off of recent events. For a moment, I thought about maybe watching one of those horror movies with actual cursed dolls along with Charlotte just because I thought it'd be funny - but then thought that might be a little cruel. Instead, since she was with me, I decided that live-action Sherlock Holmes would be better. I didn't pick any of the recent 're-imagining' kind of series because I was sure that she wouldn't understand them, instead I picked a much older (at least by my standards) one which was a more faithful adaptation given the time period, the 1985 series 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.'

I had made popcorn, and this was at least slightly agreeable to Charlotte unlike the cereal earlier. We ran through the first few episodes in quick succession, and I told her that there was some stuff that I wanted to get done in the morning, as well as the fact that I wanted to visit May's grave as well, so I would be taking a short nap. Before that though, I remembered to hand her another little present I had gotten her.