Марни Азарелли - Strange Girls - Women in Horror Anthology

To Jen there was something unnerving in the games Sophie played and in the intensity of her demeanor. But she made excuses for her niece, for she knew too the undercurrent of violence simmering in the family home. Her sister Alice, could never pick a good man.

“We don’t all settle for boring, like your Mark. Some of us want a bit of excitement in our marriage.” Her sister tossed this at her from behind a cut lip or black eye and a wine glass, on several occasions.

Jen had riposted, “Yeah right! He’s always drunk and when he is, he does that to you.”

She would drag her sister over to the kitchen mirror and face her with the reality. Alice would sob and promise to throw him out, but she never did.

Jen recalled her sister’s hysteria echoing down the phone line, when three years earlier, she had found the broken body of the new kitten lying in Sophie’s room near the doll’s house. Her sister had quietly disposed of the corpse, refusing to question Sophie.

There had been other incidents too, which she doubted her niece remembered. The little boy at nursery school who came for a rare play date, and tea, whose parents threatened to sue over the bite marks he went home with.

“It’s like Dracula bit him,” Alice sobbed down the phone, “that’s what they said. They called my lovely Sophie, Dracula!” Her voice rose to a shriek of despair.

“Did you ask her what happened, Alice?” Jen pressed.

“She said Fanny did it. That bloody doll! I’ve given up asking her anything.”

Sophie had moved to another nursery, which better suited her ‘special needs’ and where she would receive the right sort of help. Alan had shown, as usual, no interest at all in his daughter’s education.

Then there had been the girl who lived two doors down, who had tripped and fallen over in the back garden whilst playing in the sandpit, breaking both her wrists. She’d been in casts for months afterwards. The family put their house up for sale later that year and moved away.

“She shouldn’t have been burying the dolls.” Was all Sophie said, by way of explanation. “They didn’t like it.”

The grey lanes of motorway unfurled before Jen, as she motored towards home. Hers and Sophie’s home. It occurred to her that the doll’s house was another home within theirs too. A miniature universe with its own inhabitants. The idea bothered her but she wasn’t sure why. As children, she and Alice had argued over who would play with the doll’s house. Each had their own favorite doll, but Jen had never liked Fanny. The Victorian mater’s face was sour as lemons, it spooked her. Not so Alice, who merrily held tea parties and elaborate dances with Fanny in charge.

Jen’s mind looped deeper into the family’s history, recalling her own grandfather sitting at the kitchen dining table recounting vague stories of ‘goings on and lights, parties and disappearances, in the doll’s house,’ chuckling all the while and rolling his eyes.

Saying “Your grandma, well what tales she’d tell.”

Grandma had been dead at fifty of a thrombosis, so there was no way to ask her.

Jen glanced at her silent niece and noticed a droplet of blood on the curve of her right cheek. Her niece was oblivious to it. “Here take this tissue, Sophie darling. Your cheek’s bleeding.”

“Thank you, Aunty Jen.” Sophie answered in her blurred voice, which her aunt still found difficult to understand and still to her shame, disturbed her.

“Fanny made me bleed, you know. She can be very naughty sometimes, Aunty.”

Jen paused, unsure of what she’d heard. “Fanny did it? Is that what you said, darling?”

Sophie turned her smooth, otherwise unblemished face towards her aunt. She looks so much like Alice, t hought Jen. You can hardly see anything of her father. That’s a relief. She’s such a lovely girl. Everyone says so. Well nearly everyone.

Sophie nodded. “She likes to hurt me. She likes to hurt people.” She was concentrating hard in order to enunciate clearly. “She hurt Daddy.”

Jen let the car wheel slip away from her for a moment. The Audi slid to the left towards the hard shoulder. Jen glimpsed headlights behind her flash and tasted sour bile in her throat. She knew she couldn’t show her feelings. She had to get both herself and the car under control. It was vital. They still had twenty minutes of driving on motorway in near darkness, before they got back home. Somehow the darkness inside the car was worse though and harder to navigate.

“How did she hurt your Daddy?”

Sophie looked anxious. “She said Daddy was a bad man. She made him go away. Don’t worry, Aunty, we like it at your house. Fanny is happy and she wants to stay. She won’t do anything naughty, ever again. She promised me.”

Sophie turned her face away to the window, pressing it to the pane of glass. Staring out at the grey skies and bare trees.

Jen stared at the snaking tarmac unspooling, wondering about the power of family, the games children play and the stories they tell themselves.

In the living room Mark settled into the Conran sofa, hit up his usual porn site and plugged in his ear buds. Alone at last to do as he liked. Bliss.

Upstairs in his niece’s bedroom the dolls woke up, they’d been sleeping for hours, waiting for Sophie to come home. She belonged to them. Without her they were powerless, they needed her.

“Hurry home to us,” Fanny said and in the car Sophie murmured from the shallows of a light doze. “There is another bad man to take care of. I need you. We are as one, you and I. Family forever.”

Alyson Fayelives in West Yorkshire with her husband, teen son and 4 rescue animals. She has been a teacher, a carer, a road safety instructor and a lifetime film buff. Currently she teaches creative writing workshops and writes dark fiction, both short (flash) and long. Her short stories have appeared in print in the anthologies, Women in Horror Annual 2 , Stories from Stone , DeadCades:The Infernal Decimation , Coffin Bell Journal 1 and Crackers. Her debut flash fiction collection, Badlands , was published in January 2018 by indie publisher, Chapel Town Books and her own Trio of Terror – Supernatural Tales (all set in Yorkshire) came out in December 2018. Her flash fiction has appeared in several charity anthologies and can be heard on several podcasts. Her fiction has won, or been shortlisted in several competitions.

Her most recent E-book, Book 18 in the Short Sharp Shocks! series from Demain publishing, Night of the Rider , came out on May 10th and reached the top 10 Amazon kindle horror shorts best seller charts.

When not writing Alyson enjoys singing, swimming, crafting, time with her Labador, Roxy and eating chocolate, the darker the better.

Her blog can be found at www.alysonfayewordpress.wordpress.com.

Her amazon author is at https://www.amazon.co.uk/l/B01NBYSLRTand she’s on twitter as @AlysonFaye2.

Despite being a princess, one of the ways I was like many other little girls in the kingdom was that my mother and my grandmother used to bleach my hair once a week. They were too skillful to do it blonde; it made the new growth at the scalp too obvious, and it was too obvious anyway from the tone of my skin that that was not my true color, no matter how often they bathed me in milk or refused to let me see the sun without a veil. Instead they left the bleach in long enough to lighten it to brown and put in honey blonde highlights and streaks along the curl-paper ringlets to make the overall effect lighter still. When I was dressed for any public occasions, they skillfully powdered my face paler and dressed me in blue and green so that my eyes would reflect the colors.