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CHAPTER THIRTEEN valley of the dolls
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
TOO MANY STORIES start with once upon a time. Here's another one.
Once upon a time, there was a little doll who lived in Dijon, France. She was nearly flawless, with long, golden hair, eyes the colour of the ocean at rest, a painted-on smile that warmed you up inside. But there was still a flaw to her manufacturing. If you looked too closely into her eyes, you could see it—there was a darkness there, dark and deep, as if the ocean had been caught in a fierce storm. If you lifted her delicate hands, you found they were actually callused, marked by violence. Knuckles split open like flowers in bloom, and blood dripped in the soft spaces between her fingers. They were rough, almost like sandpaper—something a doll's hands shouldn't be. This little doll was one you wanted to keep in the box.
Once upon a time, the little doll grew up, which real dolls, of course, don't do. She accumulated more scars—above her eyebrow, on her cheek, on her bicep, on her shoulder—until she stopped resembling a doll at all. At least, a doll that any sane person would buy. But it didn't matter, because perhaps the doll didn't want to be a doll. Perhaps she wasn't interested in sitting on dusty shelves and being forgotten. She wanted to live, to breathe, to be someone, even if she didn't quite know who that someone was yet.
Once upon a time, the doll got her wish, but only temporarily. She almost managed to convince herself she wasn't a flawed model. But then she got herself caught in the spiderweb of a plot too dangerous for her, and like a fly, she couldn't wriggle out of it. The little doll—the broken doll—returned. Her eyes reverted back to those swollen black holes. Her hands—those delicate hands—were soaked in blood.
You ought to have guessed by now who the doll was. But if you haven't, here's another hint: she was currently stumbling through the streets of Dallas, Texas, 1963, looking as if she'd been in a butcher shop.
Nadine tried not to think of the blood clinging to her—which, of course, made sure it was the only thing she could think of. It slid over her knuckles, settling into the cracks of her palms. It sunk into the front of her dress, darkening the pink fabric. Flecks of it clung to her face.
There was a difference, she was finding out now, between a fight for your life and a quest for vengeance. It should've been obvious, but it wasn't. When Nadine had been fighting Hazel and Cha-Cha at the Umbrella Academy, or the masked gunmen in the bowling alley, she'd been thinking of nothing but survival. Adrenaline had coursed through her bloodstream, keeping her on her feet, always moving, always alive.
Pinning down someone with the weight of your body and beating them until they fell unconscious was a whole different story.
The funny thing was that Nadine didn't regret it. She didn't regret crumbling the cartilage on the police officer's nose, or knocking out his tooth, or swelling both eyes into a puffy mess. Because it wasn't like he'd been innocent. Nadine wasn't stupid. It was obvious what he was trying to do. He was an attempted rapist, and he deserved what he'd got.
