[Fin!] And I Must Scream [Dark]

[Bee]

Her sister was playing with her dollies again. She always looked so happy and content when she was shoving the little plastic bodies around, babbling conversation between them, like they had their own little lives.

Milena herself had never gotten what the appeal was. She had tried playing with them before but she had quickly lost patience. Dolls didn’t feel anything. Their faces never changed. You couldn’t sneak up on them or talk to them. Their dead-eyed blank stares had a certain allure, mainly in that she tried to mimic it, but other than that, she thought they were boring. She had long since gotten rid of the one Papa had given her; she had dismembered it and scattered its limbs all over Capital City, dropping a leg here and an arm there whenever she went out.

She sat down next to Coralie and looked at her curiously.

“Dolls used to be people,” she told her, solemnly.

[Dark]

Coralie looked up from her dolls at the approach of her sister, experiencing a fleeting moment of temper at being disturbed—Fabio has just proposed to Yolanda, and it was a very touching, emotional, romantic moment—but she loved her sister, and quickly forgave the interruption.

“Milena!” she cried happily, glad for company. Maybe she could convince her sister to play with her—her brothers certainly wouldn’t—and it got lonely sometimes when Papa was working.

“…used to be?” Coralie stared at her sister in growing horror. Papa and Mama warned her that she shouldn’t believe anything Milena told her—but why would her sister lie to her—and it made so much sense.

Coralie stared at Fabio and Yolanda sadly. No wonder they had been so hesitant to get married! The life of a doll could be very restricting.

“It must be horrible for you!” she gasped, clutching the dolls to her chest.

[Bee]

“They become dolls when a witch puts an evil spell on them,” Milena explained, with a sage nod. She had in fact read quite a bit about curses and the like, though her level of reading comprehension was not yet to the point that she understood the particulars of what was going on. She got the basic effects, though, and she liked the pictures of people getting turned into newts and being forced to eat themselves.

Eventually she would learn to cast the magic that made people go boom in all the fun ways, and she would be happy. For now, reading and scaring would have to do.

“She takes away their voices and their ability to move, and they are trapped inside your toys.” She pointed to Fabio and Yolanda’s inert, smiling little faces. “And they scream and scream but they can never get out, and we can never hear them.”

[Dark]

It was horrible, and Coralie felt herself growing more and more upset as Milena continued to inform her about the dreadful curse laid on her beloved Yolanda and Fabio. Coralie thought about what it must be like, never being able to move or talk, and tears threatened to fall.

Coralie looked at her beloved dolls, whimpering softly; she had to save them! Yolanda and Fabio needed to be free, so they could love each other for real, and take long walks in the park, and talk over coffee (though Coralie hated coffee, drinking it was a very romantic thing to do).

There had to be some way to break the curse. There had to be. Coralie thought hard on this; who could help them?

Papa. Papa would know how to fix them; Papa knew everything.

“Papa!” she shrieked pitifully. Coralie went running off in search of her Papa, dolls clutches closely--and carefully; she didn’t want to hurt them anymore than the evil witch already had--to her chest. “Papa.”

[Bee]

Milena smiled as her sister sprinted off to find their father. Her work here was done. If she had played her cards right, Coralie would never be able to look at her dolls the same way again. Though Papa might ruin everything. As much as she was able to get her impressionable sister to believe things (and, she thought happily, she got Coralie to believe a lot), Papa was at the top of food chain when it came to convincing Coralie. It was possible that he could eradicate all doubt from her brain.

But suggestions like hers were sticky. Icky sticky. Coralie shouldn’t be able to shake them even with Papa’s help.

Hm. She would need to watch this. She trailed along after her sister, not nearly in the same kind of rush. Coralie of course made it to Papa’s work room before she did, and she hung around by the door, peering in curiously.

[Dark]

Rin had been in the middle of organizing his notes from the previous night’s stakeout--when would people started to realize that when they suspected their significant other of having an affair, they probably were, and asking was a lot cheaper than hiring someone to confirm what they already knew; though he supposed he shouldn’t quibble, since it was those sort of cases that fed him on a regular basis--when Coralie rushed in sobbing, convinced her dolls were really people, cursed to live as dolls for eternity.

Scooping her up in a hug, he asked in a rather resigned voice, “Did Milena tell you that?” Coralie hiccuped unhappily, and he sighed.

“Your dolls aren’t cursed people, Coralie,” he assured, and when she looked at him doubtfully, continued: “Do Yolanda and Fabio feel evil to you?” Coralie shook her head, eyes wide and clutching her dolls to her chest. “Cursed objects, or people, tend to give off an innate sense of wrongness and malevolence, so Yolanda and Fabio can’t be cursed.” Not the entire truth, but--true enough for the situation.

He would have reminded her again not to listen to her sister--Milena was notorious for lying, and unfortunately Coralie was very trusting--but it hadn’t done any good so far. He sighed.