Page 4 of Pretty Stolen Dolls

His tone is dark—nothing like the Benny who sweet-talked me into forgetting all our Daddy’s lessons. “You will be home.”

The world spins around me and a wave of nausea passes over me. “What’s wrong with me?” My voice is a mere whisper.

“Nothing. You’re perfect. You’re both perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. Two precious little dolls.”

I barely have the strength to lift the water bottle up. It’s then I notice the chalky residue in the bottom of the plastic.

He drugged us. He’s a monster—the monster lurking in plain view, just like Daddy warned.

“Help.” The soft murmur of my plea can’t be heard over Benny’s humming. I soon recognize it when he starts singing a nursery rhyme Momma used to sing to us when we were ill.

Miss Polly had a dolly who was sick, sick, sick.

So she phoned for the doctor to be quick, quick, quick.

The doctor came with his bag and hat,

And he knocked at the door with a rat-a-tat-tat.

He looked at the dolly and shook his head,

And he said, “Miss Polly, put her straight to bed!”

He wrote on a paper for a pill, pill, pill,

“I’ll be back in the morning, yes I will, will, will.”

“Stop,” I choke out, but he ignores that I’ve said anything at all. After he finishes the final verse, he does stop singing, though, and turns on his stereo. Heavy rock music works its way into my head as everything goes blissfully black.

Help.

A soft moan from the cell beside me jerks me back to the present. Bloody dents in my skin from my grip sting as I release the hold I have on my arms. For four years, we’ve been imprisoned by Benny.His dolls. Except I now know his name isn’t Benny—or at least, that’s not what we’re allowed to call him.

Benjamin.

He makes us call him Benjamin.

Benny with the golden brown eyes and easy smile never climbed into the van that day.There never was a Benny.

Instead, we willingly got into the vehicle with a monster. A monster who has spent four agonizing years making us his personal dolls, which he likes to play with often—and he’s not gentle with his toys.

I’m long past tears; they went with my innocence.

Occasionally, Macy cries when he’s being especially brutal, or when he leaves her cell and she pleads with him she can be better. She knows if she doesn’t try to be the best dolly she can be, she won’t be fed for a day or two.

I’d rather starve than be his good dolly.

Because of this monster and his warped mind, I’m desensitized. Instead of begging and pleading for him to let us go—which always falls on deaf ears and gains us the manic pacing Benjamin, who sings his nursery rhyme and then sits there painting the faces on his dolls—I plot our escape. I plan his death. I make sure to go on breathing so my sister and I have a future.

The wooden door slams shut on the cell beside me with a screech. Whatever he was doing with Macy, he’s done now, and her whimpering notches another dent in my heart.

My turn.

I’m always forced to listen to him with her. It’s his special way of torture, forcing me to hear her cries so by the time he comes for me, I’m rabid. He loves it when I fight and tear at his flesh any chance I get. The sicko gets off when I go on the offensive. He always takes dresses and makeup into her cell. I hear him decorating her into the perfect doll, but not me. He leaves me bare and untamed.

One of these days, he’ll slip up and I’ll be ready.

His muscled frame comes into view under the single halogen bulb in front of my cell. He’s only wearing a pair of jeans that hang low on his hips. Sweat rolls down his solid chest and his hair is soaked from exertion. Smelling the coppery scent of my little sister’s blood on this man is something that will forever be burned into my senses. Erasing that will never be possible unless it’s with the scent of his own blood as he gurgles his last breath.

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