Alice

Based on a true story, and only slightly embellished. The names have not been changed.

The moment she saw the baby doll, Ingrid fell in love with her. She loved her musty old house smell, the crazing and cracking on her composition finish, her frayed red cotton dress, and even the voice box that sounded more like a death rattle. The doll was older than her grandmother. Mama wouldn't tell her where she got it. It didn't matter. Ingrid named her Alice and she loved her dearly. She swaddled Alice in a fabric scrap that mama gave her and supported her neck so her head wouldn't fall off.

Her big sister, Bea, on the other hand, would not go near Alice. She smelled like the creepy basement, she looked dead, possibly evil. Where Ingrid saw a loving gaze in Alice's hand painted eyes, Bea saw malice--towards her. "Keep that thing away from me!" cried Bea when Ingrid held Alice up to her to adore. "She's scary!"

At last, Ingrid had something that Bea didn't want. She had something that kept Bea away from her. Ingrid loved Alice, and Alice loved Ingrid. She didn't even notice that the cats hissed at the baby doll. Alice was special. By the end of the day, Ingrid and Alice were inseparable. Mama tucked both Ingrid and Alice into Ingrid's toddler bed. Ingrid snuggled up to her old new friend, and whispered secrets in her ear.

That night, something startled Bea awake. Something lurked in her room, and it wasn't a cat. Something crept up on to her bed. Something hard and cold touched her foot. She turned on the light. There sat Alice at the foot of her bed staring at Bea with those dead painted eyes.

I Scared My Daughter!

This is a picture of one of my scary doll project dolls. I got another one today, and four more are on their way. That will be all for now. I asked my mom to send me the doll I was originally afraid of, but she couldn't find it. It wasn't where I last left it when I visited them!

So when Bea came home today from school--Proud mama moment: Bea rode her bike to and from school. I just happened to be getting the mail when she cruised up with her little black corduroy messenger bag, in her black yoga pants, on her black Electra bike with the pink flames details. Bea is just so much cooler than I ever was in school. I mean, at eight years old she's got more cool in her dirty little finger nails than I did in my size 9 1/2 army surplus combat boots that I wore with my cheerleading uniform my senior year of high school. Even better, she's so cool, she's not embarrassed that she's wicked smart. And not only that, she's cool, smart, and disturbingly beautiful. Chris and I have our work cut out for us in 5 or so years. And it won't let up, because Ingrid follows in her sister's skateboard tracks.

Anyway, so I just happened to be getting the mail when she cruised up on her bike, and there was a package on the porch. "Oooh It's another scary doll!" I said.
"You mean, like a Living Dead Doll?" Bea asked. She was fishing to see if it was for her.
"No, it's an old creepy looking doll I'm using for a project."
"Can I see it?"
So I spent the next 10 minutes trying to open the damn package. (I'm not really cool in action.) All the while, I explained to Bea why I wanted scary dolls, where the other scary dolls were, and did she want to see them?
"NO!" She yelled. "I'm scared!"
"I can show you pictures..."
She settled on pictures on the computer. She would not let me bring the dolls upstairs, or even pick up the bag. After she saw the pictures (and was sufficiently freaked out), she asked me over and over again where I left the dolls, because she wanted to go downstairs and get a snack. HA! I scared my "I collect Living Dead Dolls, I love to wear black, scary movies don't bother me, so why can't I stay up late and watch them with you and papa" daughter. A small but significant victory.

I'll post more photos of my new acquisitions very soon.

In the works!

I'm working on a supplement to Steal Away Jordan which will be set in Brazil, where the PC's will attempt to escape to Quilombo de Palmares. It will be the uplifting sequel. But I'm brainstorming another game. This one's a little more fun, horrific, and unnerving, but in the fictional could-never-happen-or-could-it way. Today I started jotting down ideas for Doll: Tales of Love and Horror. I've mentioned it a few times here, I love dolls. And I've had some scary ones in my life. So this game will be a love and horror story to ti-bonanj (or petit bon ange, New Orleans style), the smirking Barbie, the bubbly Kewpie, that lives in our room or toybox, whom we love and fear, and to whom we reveal our deepest darkest secrets. And these dolls love us, keep our confidences, and hold nasty grudges because we are children and treat them like toys and don't give them the respect they deserve.

So each player will create a two characters: a child and a doll. The child has a secret, something she's done or has been done to her. It can be truly horrible, even to adults, or truly horrible as perceived by a child. Stats I'm playing with are secret, age, imagination, and fear (Child's stats). But each player also creates a a doll character, with the stats, love, malice, life, loyalty, and movement. So the players look at the doll characters and each one chooses one as her very own. The person who created the doll, plays that doll to the player's child who chose it. The child confesses the secret to the doll, and so play begins.

I'm trying to go for scary, intimate, and deliciously terrible. At first I wanted it to be pure scary story telling with no allegory of relationships, but I realize that's inevitable. Que sera sera. I want the game to be like children sitting around a camp fire or at a slumber party, telling each other horror stories, trying to out-scare each other, trying to decipher what was real and what was not real in the story.

I have in mind a complimentary project for this game, though. I'm scouring ebay for old dolls in disrepair (like the one you see above. I'm bidding on it, for sure!) to fashion into nightmareish looking dolls for artwork for the finished project.

Anyone want to join me in the Scary Doll Project? Gather your old dolls, and make them evil looking, send me a photo. Here are some examples and inspiration:

Cute Little Threat
Demon Kidz (kinda like Living Dead Dolls) I'm really going for a more subtle, organic look, but I can certainly appreciate a scary doll, as can Bea, my little punk rock/goth chick in training. (She's certainly one of my muses for this game!)
Yikes!
Creepy Dolls!

How about "born okay the first time" dolls?

I love dolls, almost all types of dolls. I even like Barbie dolls (not so much the Bratz Dolls, but that's another blog entry for another day) I don't collect dolls per se. I'm big into the tactile experience of doll play, and keeping a doll in it's box until it might be worth some money is cool and all, but just won't work in a house with two girls who both share mama's thing for dolls (whether they share my thing about tattoos remains to be seen.)
My favorite dolls growing up were my three Sasha dolls. If I had kept them in the box and never enjoyed them, I'm sure they'd be worth a whole lotta money. Instead, they're worth a whole lotta memories, and Bea loves to play with them when we visit my parents.
My least favorite doll was a beautiful and elaborately clothed doll in traditional Chinese dress. I got her at a tag sale on my street. I don't know what it was about her, but I was afraid of her until I was about 14 and I packed her up and we moved to Memphis. Maybe she carried some baggage from her old house. Maybe she was mad because I never gave her a name.
When I last saw her, she was up on a high shelf in one of the closets at my folks house. I never displayed her when we moved to Memphis, but I did at least take her out of the box. Why didn't I pack her up sooner? Because she was part of my doll family. She was sort of like a scary Auntie Mame to the rest of the dolls. The fashion dolls wanted to dress like her, the baby dolls wanted to be baby sat by her, and only the rag dolls and stuffed animals sensed something was up with her. Next time I visit my folks, I'm going to look for her again, give her a name, and see if she scares my kids as well.
I was all interested in reborn dolls and thought about learning to make them until Meg made a reference to one in our game last night. And now I'm afraid of them, too.

That's what I love about dolls. You can love them, hate them, and fear them. And now you know why I'm okay with my daughter's affinity for Living Dead Dolls. I hope she loves playing with them, and I hope she plays with them so well that they scare her. Because we all know how fun being scared can be.