A mass-produced hunk of plastic, shaped vaguely like a human woman, but the proportions all wrong, the painted-on smile too wide, the dead eyes too big. It shouldn’t have a soul, and yet she does. She is meant to be played with, to be loved. A gift for an eight-year-old, soon to be nine. But she languishes forgotten in the closet of the woman who purchased her, a birthday long cancelled.
She hears their sobs, hears them talking about a serial killer, hears the wails when her body is found. The child she was meant to belong to will never receive her.
Months pass alone, but when the woman unearths her again, she bursts into tears, and the doll wants to cry too, but the plastic of her face will only allow a rictus smile.
To her surprise, though, she isn’t abandoned to the lonely closet again. The woman and her husband bring her to the car and drive her away, probably to be sold or donated.
But they surprise her again when she is taken to a field covered in stones. They walk to one and leave her there, alone and nestled among the flowers. When the sun sets, she sees the children laughing and playing, their translucent skin shimmering in the moonlight, and she knows she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be.