The Ragdoll Circus

1 | The Rag Doll Circus

Her tongue once caressed her lips at the thought of the ecstasy that would come with the treat, peppermints. The colors that would swirl and melt on her tongue. Red and white. White and red. Her fists now clenched, a trembling almost overflowing window of water slid over her eyes and a paralysis took over her body at the very thought. 

She had done a sin for sweets, just candy, peppermints.

A sin. Well intentioned however fatal.

She had created a world in which love was the most important thing.

The little girl's name is irrelevant. 

This broken and beautiful's is. The rag doll's name is. It is Rag Doll Emmalee.

...

The costume designer bit her lip many a time. Her eyes were narrowed, her heart and fists were clenched. Her aura's color was shown through her appearance. Crimson lipstick. High high red heels. Auburn hair tautly pulled back into a high ponytail. A rose gold necklace and earrings. Scarlett denim jacket and jeans. Magenta polish on her nails. A tight t-shirt is faintly tainted with a hue that resembles blood. 

Yesterday, just yesterday she had everything. She loved and was loved. In her world bound by the swirling kaleidoscope of red and white cloth, the skin of a circus and the importance of the three guidelines, it was far from paradise. 

To love, is nothing. If you love, you are and have nothing. 

To be loved, is something. If you are loved, you are and have something. 

To love and be loved, is everything. If you love and are loved, you are and have everything. 

Her lover, an adorable scarecrow, had given her a wilted, decayed and dried rose. He had not just given her and their relationship that. He had delivered the strangling hands of mortality to their relationship. Ten moons of dates, kisses and promises had faltered by just one moment. Her nails embedded, digging to reach the well of bright pain and paint, of blood in her hands. 

She sucked in her cheeks, squeezing her eyes shut. She pounded on the table, a white landscape stretching over her eyes, not accepting any color of a certain emotion. Her heart clenched and roiled, continuously pricked by Fate's pencils, writing a story. One she did not care for. Yet, there was nothing to be done. 

Except, go on with her life, make more rag dolls, ahem, no, citizens and wait to be loved. 

Her spine gave out and settled into a slouch. Her lips trembled and her eyes were wide. The banshee in her screeched its death cry, her death cry, ''why? Why?!'' It dissolved into solemn and quiet tears. The costume designer held her hand over her heart, as if without it there, she would not know whether her heart was still beating, still alive. She had to know. 

Her left hand seemed to know what to do. The ragdoll's eyebrows furrowed however she waited. Simply sat. Simply stared. Her pencil holding the coarse yellow skin of the pencil and if drawing were music with staccato, it made rough disconnected strokes. Jumping here and there as if there was a person billowing out from the seas of her mind and onto the paper, instead of just a rag doll, instead of just a character. 

The white sheet tumbled to the floor. Oh, no. Father Time's hourglass must have been tilted, each grain's fall delayed, pulling everything into slow motion. The creator plunged. Hands outstretched for it. So close. The drawing skimmed her hand, cutting over the cuts of her nails. Her nails pinned it  to the inner curve of her fists. Her lips tugged into a smile, her shoulders relax. She sighs. 

Time became normal once again. She fell. She groaned, the ground smashing against her. There was still a ringing in her bones however she had the prize, things were alright. She rolled over slowly, clumsily. Her arms stretched out, sweeping the floor in a wide semi circle before holding up the design. 

A simple but beautiful doll. Foreign. Foreign in how familiar it was to her, how she related. 

The creator's mouth was agape, her eyes wider, her hand fell on her heart again. She smiled as she said, ''Em-Emmalee.'' Red curls of yarn served as hair, resting on her shoulders. It had pale ivory skin. Dressed in a pink, burgundy and white plaid dress with buttons instead of ribbons for the corset like vest. Long red and white stockings. Dark red shoes encased her feet in a hard fine but simple skin. 

Her eyes were the most peculiar. They were not buttons or glass eyes. They were made of cloth. Plaid lopsided different sized hearts for eyes. 

They stuck out to her.

The costume designer gasped as she realizes it.

It was her in a way.

Her to play and perform in another story, in the same world, the Rag Doll Circus.

Could she really submit this doll through what she went through? Give her into suffering and surviving instead of living? Yes...She could. She had to. 

Rag Doll Emmalee came to life that night.

~