Zannalee

The doll was the creepiest, weirdest, ugliest thing Olivia had ever seen. Of course she loved it instantly.

It had probably started life as one of those expensive, upscale playthings for suburban kids, Becky's First Status Symbol or something like that. But somewhere between the bright pink world of the original store and the dingy, poorly lit confines of the Fulton Street Flea Market, someone had taken the doll and kitbashed it into something absolutely deranged. The long, flowing brown hair had been chopped and dyed and hot-glued into bright green spikes, the chipper little smile had been carved into a lewd and lascivious grin. The lips had been painted blood red, little rivulets of color dripping down here and there to contrast the doll's light brown biracial skin tones. It looked so much like Olivia that she felt an almost narcissistic twinge of fascination with it.

But it was the eyes that really caught Olivia's attention. The irises had been repainted with some sort of reflective coating that caught the light so well that they almost seemed to have an inhuman glow to them, making it seem somehow that the doll's stare was following Olivia around the room. The left eye was decorated with a Venus symbol in black paint, the right with a Mars symbol, as though the doll had just finished putting on its mascara for a night at the clubs.

It had on a pair of ripped, faded jeans that were so detailed they looked almost real, and a fishnet top that didn't hide the pair of nipples the unknown customizer had added to the doll somewhere along the way. Looking at it, Olivia felt the old familiar childhood urge to pull off all her dolly's clothes and parade it around her bedroom naked, this time combined with a fascinated curiosity to see what other kind of anatomical customization had been done. She found herself slowly moving across the room as though the toy had a hidden magnet pulling her closer.

She was just looking for a price tag when Heather caught up with her. "Why am I not surprised?" her friend said, smiling indulgently at Olivia's new find. "Trust you to walk into a whole tent full of vintage toys and immediately go straight for the single creepiest thing in the room. You know that thing is probably cursed, right?"

Olivia huffed disdainfully. "Her name is Zannalee," she said, pointing to one of the doll's many painted-on tattoos, "and she says that anyone calling her 'cursed' is going to be the first person she goes after once the witching hour strikes." She tried to hold her stern, ominous expression, but it only lasted a few seconds before her hazel eyes widened in excitement and her green lipsticked mouth broke into a wide grin. "Seriously, Heather, isn't she just the absolute fucking coolest?"

Heather winced at the doll, her pink cheeks dimpling in uncertainty. "I mean... it does look a lot like you on a Saturday night, I admit. And it's probably going to fit right in with the Shelf of Weird. But... it stays in your bedroom, okay? I don't want to find it sitting on the couch watching creepy horror movies with you at three in the morning or something." She folded her arms, pretending to take a tough line, but Olivia knew that her friend understood. Even if Heather was the exact opposite of Olivia's goth aesthetic, with long blonde hair and subtle, understated makeup, she knew what Olivia loved. And she loved to see her friends happy.

Olivia scooped the doll up off the shelf, barely even glancing at the price tag. "I'll make sure Zannalee's very well behaved," she said excitedly, squeezing the toy in her arms in sudden, possessive pride. "You definitely won't find her perched on your headboard in the morning whispering to you in dead languages, and that's a promise." She giggled as Heather shuddered and swatted lightly at her, avoiding the half-hearted assault by sprinting over to the cash register.

A few hours later, laden down with shopping bags full of vintage clothes and curios, Heather and Olivia finally returned to their modest off-campus apartment and dumped their bargains unceremoniously in the front hallway. Almost immediately, Olivia dug through her bags to pull out Zannalee. "I'm just going to go put her on the Shelf, okay?" she said, her eyes bright with anticipation. "I'll be out in a few minutes." Heather smirked in amusement, stepping aside to let Olivia through to her bedroom.

It took a few minutes of rearranging to give Zannalee pride of place on the Shelf of Weird, forcing Olivia to reposition the half-melted Precious Moments figurines and the commemorative plate of Bible scenes that someone had painted C'thulhu into and the Barbie doll with the head of a spider. But it was totally worth it when she stepped back and saw the doll's luminous red eyes staring down onto her bed hungrily, catching the dying rays of the afternoon sun like a vampire just waiting for night to fall. "Welcome home, Zannalee," Olivia whispered, before going back out to the living room to model her new clothes for Heather.

It wasn't until hours later, when she finally crawled into bed and turned out the light, that Olivia found out that Zannalee had saved the best surprise for last-the paint wasn't just reflective, it was genuinely luminous. When Olivia switched off the lamp on her bedside table, she could still see those bright red eyes staring back at her in the darkness. Watching her all night long. It gave Olivia the most delicious creepy shiver, and she settled into sleep dreaming of vampiric dollies drinking her blood.

She wasn't exactly sure if she woke up from one of those dreams in the middle of the night, or if it was just another fantasy spun out by her slumbering brain when she found herself suddenly staring right back into Zannalee's glowing crimson gaze. It didn't feel like a dream; Olivia felt like her eyes had really snapped open, as if she'd suddenly woken from a sound sleep to find herself watching her new doll with rapt fascination.

But at the same time, nothing seemed exactly real, either. She didn't feel like she was really slipping out from between the covers, her bare feet padding across the carpet to carry her over to the shelf on the far wall. She didn't feel like it was really her hands, reaching out to pick up the doll and cuddle it to her naked chest, Zannalee's mouth somehow perfectly sized to fit her nipple into. She didn't feel like it was really her voice whispering, "You're home now, Zannalee. Just like I promised. No one's ever going to take me away from you."

It must have been a dream, Olivia told herself the next morning. Just one too many movies about cursed dolls and vampires, running together in her subconscious and tangling with Heather's earlier comments until her befuddled brain strung together a surreal narrative of carrying her new doll back to bed with her like it was nursing from her pert, slender breasts. It seemed more vivid than most dreams, certainly. Olivia remembered every word she murmured in her sleepy voice, recalled herself saying, "That's it, Zannalee. Drink nice and deep. Take as much as you need. I just want you to be happy." But it didn't make sense. That was how she could tell it was a dream.

And if it was just a dream, then Olivia didn't need to think about why her fingers found their way down to nestle between her thighs, slipping between her labia to find her pussy suddenly and inexplicably wet. That was just the way dreams went; you didn't need to explain why it was so hot to growl out, "You... you can take it all, pretty dolly, I don't mind," while you rubbed a doll's head against your tits and furiously churned your cunt into a soaked, frothing mess. It didn't mean anything, it was just a dream. Just a random collection of thoughts and images and impressions.

If Olivia squirmed and whimpered, moaning, "F-fuck, yes, feels so good..." as she felt something inchoate and ineffable draining out of her nipple into Zannalee's hungry mouth, that didn't mean she really had a fetish for sex with vampire dolls or something. It just meant she was having a dream. It was the dream Olivia that rubbed her tingling clit until she bit back a scream of ecstatic release, the dream Olivia who gushed out her pleasure onto her fingers so hard she soaked her mattress with it. That wasn't real. That wasn't really her. She didn't need to wonder what turned her on so much about it. She didn't need to think about it at all.

Of course... if it was a dream, then Olivia did have to wonder why she woke up lying next to Zannalee, the doll's plastic arm digging into her ribs as she finally stirred to find the morning sunlight streaming through her bedroom window. But there was probably a good explanation for that.

*****

Olivia didn't want to admit how relieved she was when she found the shop again. It was an absurd, irrational feeling, a tension that she didn't even know she was carrying suddenly unwinding in her chest as she saw the faded 'CURIOSITIES' sign in the back corner of the marketplace, and she was suddenly very glad no one was with her to notice the sigh that escaped her violet-painted lips. Of course the store was still there. Of course it had an independent existence and didn't just pop into space and time one day just long enough for Olivia to walk in and buy her new doll. Of course it hadn't faded away, leaving only a faint memory and an impossible gap in the geometry of the universe. Anything else would be absurd. The kind of thing they did in cheesy direct-to-video movies. Spooky bullshit, as Heather derisively put it.

Even so, Olivia walked to the register as quickly as possible. Just in case she didn't have much time to talk.

"Hi, um, say, do you remember me?" she asked, flagging down the shopkeeper with an insistent wave that felt a little too urgent, as though she was trying to get a strict teacher's attention in hopes of being allowed to visit the bathroom. "I was here last week, I bought an old customized doll, and I was just wondering if you, um, if you knew anything about the person who sold it to... you..." Olivia's voice trailed off, her breath catching in her chest as the shopkeeper turned to look at her with eyes so thickly coated with cataracts that Olivia couldn't even tell what color they'd once been.

"Oh, you were the one that went home with Zannalee?" the woman said, her light brown cheeks wrinkling into a distant grin as she stared vacantly in Olivia's general direction. She moved slowly around the counter, her body seeming to move on autopilot as she closed the distance between herself and Olivia with a certain shambling inevitability that pinned the younger woman in place. "Oh, that was a very special piece. I put a lot of myself into that doll. It nearly broke my heart to put it up for sale, but... well, it was time, wasn't it? You can't keep your children at home forever." She reached out and patted Olivia's wrist with trembling, dry fingers. Olivia forced herself not to pull away.

"So you, um... you made Zannalee?" Olivia asked, trying to remind herself that it was rude and unfair to be creeped out by someone just because they were old and nearly blind. It wasn't the shopkeeper's fault that every third horror movie had a spooky elderly person in it somewhere, or a disability to provide the audience with a clear visual symbol of weirdness and abnormality. This woman was probably just a perfectly normal old lady with a kick-ass goth punk visual aesthetic and a gift for arts and crafts, and it was just Olivia who was the strange one. The one who had weird dreams every night about taking her new dolly and rubbing its textured plastic face against her clit until she shuddered in orgasm, the one who woke up sometimes with Zannalee's head buried between her labia. That was way more fucked up than just being blind.

Until the old lady laughed, a dry, dusty laugh that turned into a hacking cough about halfway through. "Oh, I don't know that anyone made Zannalee," she said, once the fit passed. "It was my hands, my tools, but not my dreams. I was the dreamer, but Zannalee dreamed herself through me until I could understand what it was that she really wanted. Until I could find a home for her in the world. It took a lot out of me, but I didn't mind. She was such a special girl. You understand, don't you, dear?"

Olivia's lips parted in stunned amazement, both at the old woman's rambling speech and at the comfortable affirmation that Olivia could feel on the tip of her tongue. She was about to agree that... what? That Zannalee was special? That she deserved to have a home? That she needed, needed offerings of some sort? It was just a doll. No matter how many times Olivia sleepwalked around the room and cradled it to her breast, no matter how many times she heard her own sleepy voice murmuring, 'Oh, fuck, yes, please just take it all away,' it was all just a series of creepy hallucinatory dreams. Coming here was a mistake. Asking questions was a mistake. She'd somehow thought that it would put her nightly delusions to rest, but the crazy old lady was only making them worse.

"It's okay," the old lady went on, patting Olivia's shoulder in what turned into a full, exhausted lean. "If you don't, you will. And once you do, she and you will be just perfect together. The way I could have been, I think, if making her hadn't... hadn't tired me so. You'll tell her it's alright, won't you? You'll tell her I understand that she had to take as much as she did?" Olivia nodded violently, desperate to end the conversation as quickly as she could. She hoped the old lady could see her. She hoped she was really an old lady. Olivia had a desperate urge to ask the woman's age, but the question stuck in her throat like a fishbone and wouldn't shake free.

"Thank you," the old woman said, and Olivia took it as an excuse to disengage herself from the dry, papery grip and flee the market. She went home on the bus, determined to take Zannalee off the Shelf of Weird and throw her directly into the trash and take the trash directly down to the dumpster and close the dumpster and never look back.

But when she got into her room and looked into Zannalee's glowing red eyes, that resolve slowly faded into fascinated arousal. "N-no," she whispered, imagining the doll's stare boring into her soul and capturing more of her resistance with every second. "No, you're right. It was silly to be scared. It's just a, a fantasy. I can have any kind of fantasies I want. I can pretend anything I want about you, Zannalee."

She imagined Zannalee responding, sending out waves of coaxing warmth and pleasure that told Olivia that everything was okay. She imagined Zannalee's luminous, hypnotic gaze telling her wordlessly that she didn't need to be afraid, that the hard part was over and someone else had paid the terrible price to make a space for her in the world. Olivia was going to be a good girl. Olivia was going to be a good girl forever, as long as she kept trusting in Zannalee.

It wasn't long before Olivia was playing with herself again, sliding the doll's thin plastic arm into her dripping cunt and rubbing her clit with it over and over until she whimpered and came. "Y-yes, Zannalee," she moaned, giving herself fully to the fantasy of being controlled by the strange, inhuman presence she imagined staring out at her from those glowing red eyes. It wasn't real. She knew it wasn't real. But it made her cum just thinking about it.

*****

"...the FUCK?" Heather's surprised shout made Olivia jump a full three inches off the living room couch, the paintbrush in her hand suddenly slashing a long line of pale blue paint along the pink cheeks of the doll on the coffee table. Hurriedly, Olivia reached for the cotton ball soaked in nail polish remover sitting on the coaster and began to dab at the mistake before it could dry.

"I, um... I thought Zannalee needed a girlfriend," she murmured sheepishly, concentrating carefully on her work and not at all avoiding her friend's interrogating glare. "I found a cheap doll at Goodwill, and it was the same size as Zannalee, so I thought it would be kind of cool to um, y'know. Try my hand at customizing something myself. Just for fun." She set down the cotton ball and picked up the paintbrush again, applying a layer of cool blue over the doll's lips that made it look ever so slightly zombified.

Heather stared at the doll, aghast, as Olivia applied a thin wash of translucent white paint over its cheeks to give them a pale, consumptive look. "...it looks like me, Liv," she said at last, her voice sounding almost hurt. "Your creepy doll's creepy girlfriend looks just like me." She glanced over at Zannalee, sitting next to Olivia on the couch with a smug grin on its plastic face. "Your creepy doll that looks just like you if you were, y'know... evil... has a creepy girlfriend and it looks just like me." She paused. "And didn't you say you were going to keep it in your bedroom?"

Olivia tilted her head slightly, looking quizzically at the new doll as she began to methodically coat its eyeballs with layer after layer of translucent white. "I'm not really seeing it," she said at last, staring contemplatively at the toy as its bright blue eyes slowly dulled. "I mean, I guess maybe a little in the hair, sure, but I didn't really notice a resemblance to you until you said something just now. I just thought, y'know, it'd be kind of fun to give Zannalee someone to hang out with when I'm not here."

Heather glanced over at Zannalee and shuddered. "Okay, so first off, you know that makes it a lot fucking creepier when you talk about it like that, right? It's a fucking doll, it's not an extra roommate or something. Unless it is, in which case it had damn well better get a job and start paying rent. And second, I can't help but notice that you didn't answer my question about the really specific promise you made that you were going to keep it in your bedroom that you really specifically haven't kept. I don't mind you having your weird shit, Liv, but that thing creeps me out and I don't like looking at it."

Olivia snorted in amusement. "What, are you afraid that it's going to steal your soul or something? Are you afraid that if you keep looking into its eyes, it's going to hypnotize you and drain your willpower until you sink to your knees and helplessly surrender to its dark power? Do you think that your pitiful human strength is no match for Zannalee's twisted, pitiless gaze and the implacable void in its heart, hmm?" She reached over and took another paintbrush, carefully drawing a thin dark line down the center of the pubic mound she'd sculpted onto the naked, kneeling doll in front of her.

"What? No!" Heather sounded genuinely bewildered now, as though she'd expected literally any other answer to her question than the one she'd received. "No, it's just fucking creepy, that's all. It's like, like looking at a weird little Mini-Me version of you or something. Can you just fucking put it away in your room like you told me you were going to do when you bought it? I try to be the cool roomie, I really do, but I'm drawing a line here. The doll stays in your room, or it goes in the trash."

Olivia winced. "Oh, I really wish you hadn't said that," she said softly, painting nipples onto the new doll's naked chest. "She's really not going to like being threatened like that, Heather. I thought that maybe I could convince her to let you be a partner like me, just skim a little bit off the top to make you more agreeable. But if she thinks you don't like her, well..." Olivia set down her paintbrush and looked directly at Heather. "She's going to take away as much as she has to. She doesn't like girls who misbehave."

Heather's eyes widened slowly in confused, dawning terror. "Okay, Liv, you really need to stop now because you're freaking me right the fuck out. 'Zannalee' is just a fucking doll, okay? I know you love the gothy shit, horror movies and photo sessions in graveyards and daydreaming about what your vampire name would be, but this is taking it way the fuck too far and you're scaring me. Joke's over, okay? Okay?"