But I've been promising myself that every time that i run I will take some pictures so here they are.
And I need to make something for 8.Here's a bit that's been going through my head for a serparte story then anything I've talked about. I don't think I've told anyone about it really and if anybody likes it I can post more.
Excerpt from Paper Doll
Rose Marie had one foot on the door and one of the lip of the sink as she slumped on the toilet. Spine is pacing on the opposite side of the door.
“Let me do it! I made her,” he says and worms an arm through to the bathroom before Rosie presses harder and traps it. He doesn’t shout but struggles and his hand flexes like something wild.
“She said we were going to let her do it, so we are going to let her do it,” says Rosie as she pops a glance to the doll. The Doll is sitting on the opposite side of the sink bowl on the flat of the marble top, legs almost kicking the shower curtain. She’s leaned forward like she might get ready to slip off at any moment and run somewhere, maybe through Spine.
The trapped arm stops fighting and slinks back through the gap and Rosie claps the door shut. There is no lock so she presses harder and crosses her arms, batting a smile at the blank face of the Doll, who cocks her head and spins a old ink marker in between her finger tips. Rosie releases a positioned hand for a moment and waves with her fingers to move, mouthing the words, “Go at it,” at her. The doll slides off the lip and turns to face the near wall-filling mirror.
“I just think that I should be allowed to you know?” Spine is not aggressive; he talks like a man that has not been fighting to get into the small bathroom for the past ten minutes. He is pacing again and now there is a crinkle of loose paper. “Just don’t let her start yet, all right? I have some suggestions.”
Rosie chances her sight to the Doll as she takes the top of the marker off with a pop that seems to echo off the tub behind her. She ghosts the lines over the spot where a right eye would be, where there is only blank space now and waves the chemical scent around to mix with the dry woody potpourri at the windowsill. There is a scritch-scratch of work outside of the door and Spine mumbles which something clenched in her teeth, “Make her wait, make her wait. I have a suggestion for her.”
The Doll does not wait though, and takes the first powerful stroke to make her right eye, horizontal and tapering outward to designate the upper eye, then one thinner in parallel. Folding at the waist she got closer to the mirror. With slow precision she finds two perfect circles, and colors one in black. Rosie would later suggest an eye color but the doll would disregard it, for the white of her iris’ seemed a perfect fit. In completion the doll sketched an eye of medium size and shape, but seemed to look through you or just past you. The eyelid came down enough to look caring and possibly bored, but in a way that was playful. When she finished the last line her free hand waved the air to dry.
“You’re too late she’s already doing it,” say Rosie. She sounds excited, more so than ever before with the Doll.
The scritch-scratch stops, “Who gave her a marker? She’s not supposed to have one.” And Spine is agitated through the door.
“I found one on your desk and gave it to her, it doesn’t have the finest of tips so she’s being very careful,” Rose stops to bop another giddy glance at the Doll who is now finishing the final movements of the marker for the left eye. In the mirror she can see them completed as the Doll turns her head back and forth, making sure her job was clean and it was. The left eye is near perfect to the right, with the same sloping brow and sleepy gaze, but this one has the eyelid slightly more down as to not create freakish symmetry.
“I promise she’ll put it back when she’s done.” Rosie let’s her foot fall from the sink first, then the door. She knows Spine is done fighting, its already started, the Doll has already marked herself.
Then there is a flutter of paper as a sheet of onion leaf paper glides to just past Rosie’s right boot. Spine taps with his pointer finger twice on the thin wood of the door. “Just a suggestion. Let her see it, please. Can you allow me that?”
The Doll spins a white leg in the direction of the paper and with the first time points her gaze to Rosie and Rosie feels a wave of gooseflesh roll around on her arms. It feels like she doesn’t have a floor beneath her for a moment and she’ll ride the grungy toilet into the neighbor’s living room below. But the warmth in her boots returns and she gestures with a tilt of her head for the Doll to pick up the paper.
Setting the maker down on the counter, she folds at the knees and squats over the onion sheet before picking it up in her thick fingers. On the sheet is a sketch of a petite face, with inward-sloped cheekbones and a soft jaw line. The eyes are smiling, almost dewy and the nose seems pert and small. The doll studies before handing it to Rosie, who unlocks her arms and takes it. She sucks at her teeth and then holds it with pointer fingers and thumbs as if to tear it but the doll waves her off, the gaze seeming less sleepy, now knowing, and she raises the pointer finger of her left and waves the appendage at the wrist. She gestures with tight snaps the ripping of paper into bits and then waggles her hand again. Rosie gets the hint and studies it again.
“I don’t think she liked it,” Rosie says, but its not giddy, the giddiness disappeared when that gaze fell on her, “But she told me not to rip up the paper, so ‘Thank you, but no thank you’”. The doll folds at the waist again and makes a slight movement that might have been a nod as she pops the cap off the marker and finishes with her face. Unlike Spine’s rendering she makes her chin angular, not sharp but pronounced and her nose is broader, Slavic in nature. The mouth is wide and if it were to have color it would be a tawny pink, and many would comment later that they swore the Doll had worn a certain shade of lipstick. And she gives herself three freckles under each eye before capping the marker once more and setting it down.
The Doll uses both hands to fan her face dry as Rosie gets up and pops the door open to Spine’s hands shooting to the shoulders of the doll. And the face is the perfect reception to Spine’s scrutiny, the smile barely there, the gaze unafraid, no emotion to wary. His tongue rolls around the entirety of his mouth as he fumbles with an exclamation to make with the small gap of his open mouth.
“It’s not what I would have chosen.” Is what he settles for and the Doll taps his upper arms to let him go and he does.
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