#195: Doll's face

Peter scraped flecks of dirt from the porcelain using his fingernail. What was emerging was the face of a doll. A quarter of the face was missing, and the void where the eyes had once been only gave the doll’s face a sinister horror-movie feel.

He placed it on the small shelf above his bar fridge. He felt the weight of history beneath his feet. One hundred years ago, a girl, about the age Matilda was now, lost her precious doll. Time progressed around her. She grew up, married, birthed children, aged before dying.

Peter imagined her on her deathbed recalling the long-lost doll of her youth. She’d have wondered what had happened to it. Did it still exist in the backyard of her childhood home?

Years later, a man completely unknown to the girl would dig a hole and find her doll. He would clean its face and allow it to see life continue on its pointless trajectory.

Peter sat in his tiny shed, segregated from his family, and wondered what was the point of life. Time flew by, oblivious to his pain and his loneliness. This tiny doll’s face was a testament that none of it really mattered. The girl who once loved her doll was no longer alive, and yet the doll continued to exist, oblivious that she ever existed.