Ok, sure....you asked for it....
[story begins]
There was a time once, when Alice could remember what it was like to sleep....to go to sleep, feel herself slip away under her blankets, under her breathing, slower, more steady in the calm quiet of the night....
But that was so long ago, it felt like years sometimes, sometimes like days, it was just so hard to tell....
All she knew was, one night, she had gone to bed having a body, feeling its weight, feeling warm and heavy....and when she woke up the next day, she was cool, airy and weightless...and didn't know why. Her body wasn't in her bed anymore.
Where could it be? Where could her body have gone off to?
She's already looked high and low, top and bottom, all over the house and the streets outside and the shops....
Is it here in the school.....?
No, that was just an old wrestling dummy, over in the high school's gym, collecting dust in the locker room....
Is it here at the mall, where they now sell clothes...?
No....body and body and body alike, all standing here waiting...all sleek and shiny and plastic. Too hard, too sleek, too smooth. They felt good....grown-up. But too good, too pretty and distracting, the glossy plastic skin too bright, too sleek and delicate, every little breeze and mote of dust leaving shivers and trails of pressure like the breath of small insects leaving minute puffs of vapor fading unseen upon the glass.
Is it here in the toy store....?
No....plenty of bodies here, none of them quite right:
--Warm fluffy soft bodies with teddy bear and puppy dog noses,
--Cool solid bodies of porcelain glaze, wrapped in full, frothy dresses of lace and velvet,
--Tightly wound bodies, loaded on springs and batteries,
--Sleek plastic bodies, only slightly less hard and rigid in their perfection than the china dolls,
--Puppet bodies of all shapes and sizes, all sorts of happy, smiling faces....all of them hollow and cold inside.
Lots of bodies....and none of them fit.
And poor Alice was so cold, tired, lonely. She cried, and nobody heard her. She screamed, and nobody cared.
All she wanted was to be warm and heavy and safe under her blankets again....so she could get some sleep and dream again....but if she tried to lay down on the ground, without a body, it would try to suck her in, drown her like water in an endless ocean....
So she drifted on and on, crying, moaning, hurting, all alone because nobody cared, nobody listened.
Until one night....she was half-crazy, needing somewhere, *anywhere* to rest....she wandered into an old attic in a house far away from her home....she saw a young lady, sitting at a desk, eating....ice cream? From a bowl?
"It's been FOREVER since I have had *ICE CREAM*!!" Alice screamed to herself, sure that nobody would hear a thing, as usual...the young lady shivered a bit, and left the room.
And when that happened....Alice walked over, and hit the bowl of ice cream, knocking it to the floor. It was mean, but it was all she could do...she had tried reaching out to candies and such before, and nothing worked, it slipped through her hands. So she just stood there, seething in anger, staring at the melting ice cream with hate...
Until the young lady came back, saw what happened, groaned and cleaned up the mess.
This would happen again.....
Alice would see the young lady come into this room, sit bowls of food on her desk, right dead in the middle of her desk sometimes....and Alice would knock the bowls over.
The young lady, with the body....was getting annoyed. Or scared, or something. Like Alice cared anymore....
Until one night. The young lady prepared herself to go to bed, in a room in the same attic, it was like a tiny apartment there....
The bed itself was an old, metal-framed, ornate affair.....but that wasn't the attraction.
The attraction was a very *large* lifesized doll, fully jointed and everything....dressed in full, frilly night-clothes just like what Alice used to sleep in herself. And so....the lights went out...Alice drifted into the doll....and....
as the doll's jointed eyelids opened...the first thing they saw was the young woman's face....she was awake, and right there....*seeing her*.
"My name's Rebecca....what's yours?" And with that, Alice felt a slight tug somewhere unseen at the side of her neck.
"Alice...." the voice came back, old, squeaky, scratchy, "who are you...?"
"Rebecca," the young woman said again, "I live here. What are you doing here?" Again, the tug....
"Making messes....I'm mad here. You can eat, have *ice cream*....so long since I've had *ice cream*..." the voice said, on the edge of sobbing before the pull-string cut her off.
"Aww...poor thing." Rebecca said, "Shhh, shh...it's ok, it's ok....you can stay here, sleep here if you like." Again the tug.
"Nooo, not right body....not mine....it's a toy....can't sleep here, can't sleep outside, will sink into ground, drown....can't sleep...." Alice moaned....
And for the next hour or so, they talked....
****************
It had been three weeks. Alice had gotten used to being mainly in the doll's body, with Rebecca....trying to sleep with her in the bed, and not succeeding....
Though other things were more successful. Rebecca played at feeding the doll's body some ice cream and things....and oddly enough, it worked at Alice's end, and she couldn't understand why....
So one day, when the tug hit...she asked.
"Why can you pretend to feed me, and it feels like I'm *doing it*?" She asked.
Rebecca replied, "Well...it's a bit weird, but mainly it's because you're dead. Somehow, you died, lost your body, and became a ghost."
And for the first time in a long time....everything made sense to Alice.
"So I'm...dead. What do I do now?"
"Find a way to sleep maybe?" Rebecca answered. "Your body's likely in the ground somewhere, or at least should be...I've been checking records at the libraries and with the local newspapers....I've not found a lot."
"But if I sleep on the ground....it's gonna pull me in," Alice groaned, glass eyes rolling slightly in her doll's face as she said this.
"Well, I hate to say this, I'm not trying to be mean here," Rebecca said gently, but firmly, "but maybe that's the point. Maybe I'm not supposed to find where you went. Maybe you are....even if it scares you."
And with that, Alice wanted to shriek and scream and cry out....but the tug wasn't there. Rebecca knew better than to pull the string when all she'd get was a tantrum back....
So....the waiting game lasted three hours, before the tug finally came.
"Have you calmed down?" Rebecca asked.
"Yes...I still hate you for this. You don't know how scary this is. You don't...." Alice moaned.
"But I do," Rebecca said, "I've had to go to my parent's funerals, see them both buried when *I* was just a young girl....and I've had to see my own daughter, my *only* child, buried as well....I know. I know it hurts, and I can pretty well imagine what it means to feel like you're buried alive."
"And....it's gonna happen anyway." Alice said, flatly.
"Eventually, yeah...I can't keep you here forever." Rebecca stated, "Aside from it not being right, you can't stay sane living in this 'body' forever."
"Do it then.....tonight. Bury me in this body, quickly. Say goodbye, and get it done," Alice said....as the string reeled back in, in silence, one last time.....
****************
Alice woke up in a field of flowers....in a meadow, where she likes to wake up, where she's awakened every day since she left. Yes, there was a time of suffocating darkness....but it was so long ago, and now, she's here, back, together if not really as alive as she once was.
And there are others here.....here in this valley, one of many where children come to play for a while before climbing over the mountains and facing Eternity. So many....and so many who have gone....
But this day was different....one of the children came back.
It was Marie....and she had come back, with her mommy Rebecca, who was now small, now a little girl in spirit...
"Would you like to play a while? It's the least I can do for you...." Alice asked.
And the smiles on their faces said yes....as they played, for days on end, in a field where the sun shined, where the wind was gentle and where the flowers stayed sweet forever and always....
[end story]
I hope this helps....sweet dreams. ^_^
2007-12-03 17:18:43
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answer #10
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answered by Bradley P 7
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