Creepypasta Origin stories

Betsy the doll

I snapped then. I screamed in indignant rage and I threw the bottle as hard as I could at the bed. It hit Betsy on her forehead and she fell on the floor. Good. I picked up the bottle and I hit her again and again. I thought I heard her laugh and I hit her harder. Then I laughed. When my rage was spent, I dragged Betsy to my toy chest and threw her in. I slammed it shut and kicked the chest against the wall; I never wanted to see Betsy again – ever.

I never owned another doll after Betsy. About a week later the police came and two nice ladies took me to live in a new home in a new state, with food and toys and no drugs. The trunk went into storage and the wagon disappeared. I never saw my mother again. As I got older, my foster parents admitted she was in jail, doing 25 years. That was fine with me; I felt nothing for her anyway. I still had nightmares because of my life with that woman. But then slowly, I began to heal. I focused on doing well in school and I ignored my mother's letters from prison. She reached out to me several times in my 20's, as well, but I always declined her calls.

That is, until this morning. I'm 30 now, with my own children and a loving, honest husband. I have a beautiful house, two dogs and a career as a social worker trying to make a difference for kids who had it bad like me. I'm happy, I'm steady, and I'm content. So when I got a voicemail from my mother informing me she had been paroled and that she wished to speak, decided to let her say her piece.

Since the kids were home from school I went out into our shed in the backyard to return my mother's call. The shed was the children's domain and they used it to play in the summer. I sat on my old toy chest which was currently being used as tea party table and dialed the number she had left me.

Three rings.

"Hello? Laura?"

"Hello, mother. How are you?"

"Oh Laura, thank you for speaking to me. I know you have your own life now and a family. I would love to meet them someday! I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am. For everything."

"Mother, you are not meeting my kids – ever. And since you called me, I am going to what I have needed to say for years. The opium, the heroin, they destroyed you. And the worst of it is that you almost took me down with you. I was five. That was no home for a child. Honestly, I'm surprised it took you so long to get caught."

"Laura, I know how it seems, but I honestly know nothing! Look, it hardly matters and I do understand why you would feel that way. Why you would hate me and not want me to meet your little ones. I learned a lot about forgiveness while I was away and just...oh Laura, I am so sorry about Betsy."

"Betsy?" I paused, confused. "Why would you care about her?"

"I know, Laura, believe me I do. It was all my fault, the drugs, the partying. And Betsy, oh God, if I had only paid attention, if I had only known. She's gone and it's because of me."

As my mother began to cry, I tapped my fingers on the toy box, impatiently. The drugs had clearly fried her brain.

"Mother," I sighed. "Why are you talking about Betsy? And why do you even care? I know where Betsy is." Right underneath me.

"What are you talking about, Laura? Oh God, where is she?!"

I shifted uncomfortably. "Well...Betsy's in the trunk, where she's always been."

There was a beat of stunning silence.

"What do you mean your sister's in the trunk?"

"Sister? What the hell are you talking about? Back on drugs so soon? That's a record, even for you. Betsy is a goddamn doll. I locked her in my toy box a few days before you got arrested for possession."

"Laura.. oh God, no...no... Laura, what have you done? I wasn't arrested because of the drugs, Laura, I was arrested because of Betsy's disappearance! You always called her your little doll, but we thought you knew! Oh God. We thought you knew. Laura, no, what have you done to my baby?!"

My mind had gone blank and with no emotion I set the phone down next to me and stood up. I could hear the muffled sound of my mother's anguished cries and feel the dark clutch of possibility in my own chest. Memories were stirring in the back of my mind, threatening to flood forward into my consciousness. They pushed against a door in my mind that had been locked so tightly for so long that I had forgotten it was even there.

Was it even possible? Could the trauma and the opium have really led me to believe that a small child was actually doll? Begging for food and utensils to eat with, asking me to protect her from the bad man?

No...

I slowly turned around and brought my eyes down the makeshift tea party table. Surely, it was too small; you couldn't fit a person in there. You couldn't. But then, what about a very small, starving, emaciated child? What about her, would she fit? Would an investigator even bother looking for a person in this chest? I knew I wouldn't. It was just too small. And I was sure we had opened the toy box at some point over the years, hadn't we? Or had something swimming in the dark recesses of my memories always stopped me? I couldn't remember ever seeing it open. I knelt down to the ground and opened the clasps. It would be better to not look. After all that I had overcome, this new life that I had earned for myself. It could all be undone by opening this toy box. I shouldn't open it. I should throw it in a landfill and forget it ever existed. I should not look inside...

I opened the chest.

I never had a doll. My mother never could afford to buy me one. I never had a wagon either, for that matter. But I did have a toy box; a pretty, blue and white toy box. And when I was five, I beat my little sister to death and put her in it. And now my life is over.