Penelope woke with a start, confusion flooding her consciousness. She had napped the kind of nap that was deep and intense. The kind that make you lose all sense of time and place. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs and regains her sense of balance and time.
How long had she slept? An hour, two? She couldn't shake an uneasy feeling that something undetectable had brought her crashing back from her all encompassing slumber. She checked her bedside clock to realize she had only drifted off for about 30 minutes. "How is that possible", she wondered? It felt like so much longer.
Just then she noticed a dull pinprick of pain on her cheek. She rolled over to her other bedside table to grab the hand mirror when she was startled by the ominous presence of Hans sitting on the table staring at her with the inanimate intensity only a doll can. She distinctly remembered placing him in the closet....didn't she? She slowly reached for the mirror sitting next to Hans and just as she reached for the clam-shell silver handle Hans fell forward! She let out a blood curdling shriek and then caught her breath as she realized the folly in her actions. "Boy, I've got to stop napping in the day", she chuckled to herself. She turned the mirror over and then her blood ran cold as she detected a perfect laceration on her right cheek as pinpoints of her crimson life source welled around the edges of the incision. "What could have done that in my sleep?", she wondered.
She placed her attention back on Hans who still sat slumped over on her night stand. She reached for him and then paused. Was one of his white-gloved hands tinted with a slight rouge? She gingerly picked the doll up to inspect the reddish tinge a bit closer. Her mind began to reel at the possibility that the doll could have cut her. She peered intently into it's glass eyes. She pulled him closer and closer to see if their was any change in his frozen stare. She tilted her head slight to the side to see if she could perceive any noise coming from the wooden shell. Suddenly she felt a warm breath on her cheek! As she snapped her head back towards the doll a sharp, tearing pain erupted through her ear and neckline. The doll's countenance had changed to demonic horror as the gloved hands tore the cartridge of her ear from the skull and then down through the soft flesh and tough tendons of her neck, ever so slightly nicking her jugular vein.
She slung the doll with all her might and clasped her hands around the red tide flowing from her neck soaking through her t shirt and into her sheets. Her legs flailed and kicked as she tried to gain traction on the bed to move to the exit of the door and freedom from this evil.
It was at this moment she noticed the door of the closet slowly open and she could her the scurrying of dozens of feet along the hardwood floors. The sheet at the foot of her bed became taught and she could only stare in frozen horror as a sea of doll hands begin to appear over the end of the bed grasping the sheet and climbing forward to her. The maniacal, twisted smiles of her dolls burned an image into her terrified brain as she was frozen hopeless as the made their way up to her feet and legs. She quietly thanked God for the oncoming unconsciousness creeping into her field of vision due to the massive blood loss. She would at least have peace before the real pain of their diabolical attack would begin. Her hands relaxed and the last of her essence waned forth to the abyss and the dolls sated their vengeance.
Welcome back @papacrusher!
In this passage you were able to build up the suspense with real mastery. I appreciated your fine horror ending!
Thanks for the compliment and I'm glad to be back! Sorry I missed so many weeks but life in the real world is too time consuming...lol.
Yes, life is life consuming 😛 it's good to read you and come always when you feel!
Them some wicked dolls.
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