Carrie Esposito
iGillian J.
Yesterday at 10:00 PM
$5 … Gowanus, Brooklyn
(Could be haunted) Stuffed Boy Doll
My mother was cleaning out her attic and mailed me this doll (pics below). My brother used to carry it around with him everywhere, gripping its wrist which is still indented by his little thumb. Anyways, I don’t think it’s really haunted, ha ha. It just creeps me out the way its perpetually wide black button eyes stare from its cotton face. The way the right foot in these green shoes is twisted like it’s about to fall off but can’t figure out how to fully let go of its body. The brown hair my brother scribbled with marker onto the bald head. The outfit from another century imprinted onto the fabric—a blue button-down coat, black and gray checked pants. And then the mouth. Its manic toothless grin, the lips once bright, now a faded, desperate red. It smells like mothballs and cinnamon and stale air. I’m sure you could wash it right out!! But maybe you like things to smell like the places they’ve been hiding. I do, but I feel like it’s watching me, to be honest. Like my brother sent it, even though that’s impossible, to remind me what I’d done. I know that all sounds nuts, but really, I’m not. Before the virus, I was a normal almost-thirty-year-old with a job and a boyfriend. I went to parties and dinners, dinner parties. I wore fun dresses from thrift shops and dyed my hair a different color every few months just to keep things interesting. Turns out all of that can be done from home. You can create your own world. But then other people don’t want to live in it anymore. My boyfriend left two months in to have Zoom sex with strangers. Anyways, if you want the doll, pick up only (obviously). Will leave in box on front stoop. PM if interested.
Comments:
Zach M.
I’d have Zoom sex with you. And the doll.
Reply from Gillian J.
Ew, who are you? get a life.
The Doll
I AM watching you.
Reply from Gillian J.
Emilie, is that you? You’re not funny. And no this isn’t a good way to get me to come to your boyfriend’s pop your social bubble party.
Emilie K.
R u alright? Babe I’m calling u now.
The Doll
See.
Gillian J.
Yesterday at 11:00 PM
FREE … Gowanus, Brooklyn
(Most likely haunted) Stuffed Boy Doll
If you’re the idiot posing as THE DOLL, why don’t you show yourself and come take it? Maybe you live too far away. Over oceans and mountains. Maybe you couldn’t come here anyway because you also haven’t left your place in a year. Holy shit. I think the doll just moved its eyes. Or I’m pretty sure. Blink, and you’d miss it. Lately it feels like a blink is all the sleep I need. What if it isn’t “haunted” but HAUNTED? What if my brother’s ghost is inside it? I’m shaking now. Not because my brother was scary. But what if he wants to punish me? What if he says the things to me I don’t want to hear? Will it matter if I confess now? Here? I got it in my head that his leukemia could infect me, the way we both got chicken pox and had to take baths together with oatmeal paste. So at the end, I abandoned my baby brother who for the seventeen years he lived I always guarded and shielded from harm, like he did with the doll.
Comments:
Remmla S.
!Do not ignore messages from the dead! Visit my website at www.speakingfrombelow.com to set up an appointment. Available 24/7 virtually.
The Doll
I don’t want to punish you.
Zach M.
I want to punish you.
Emilie K.
I know u’re seeing my messages! Pick up your phone girl. This is next level, even for you.
Betsy C.
That doll is SO cute. I had one like it when I was little. Is that a stain on the cheek or just a bad picture? PM me.
Laura L.
NIL.
Gillian J.
Today at 12:00 AM
AVAILABLE ONLY TO THE RIGHT OWNER … Gowanus, Brooklyn
(DEFINITELY haunted) Stuffed Boy Doll
I put the doll in the window so it can see what I see during the long and sleepless nights where I’ve been staying vigilant. For what, I’ve lost track. The doll and I are looking together onto the dark and glistening pavement where I like to bore my eyes until sparks blur and become white stars and the sky and the ground are both places I can dream of coasting.
Comments:
Gillian J.
I’m outside now, pacing on my stoop, barefoot. It leapt backwards like it wanted me to catch it in my arms. Instead, I fled. But now it sits poised again in the window, placid, backlit by the lamp I left on. He’s made the safe place unsafe. Or maybe it was never the safe place. But out here isn’t safe either. There isn’t a safe place. THERE ISN’T A SAFE PLACE.
The Doll
Now you know. So walk. No, run. Find the moonlight until it becomes the sun. The cracks in the sidewalk like the bottoms of your feet. Go and I’ll be there too.
Gillian J.
Today at 12:05 AM
Gowanus, Brooklyn
Stuffed Boy Doll
This item has been marked as sold.
Carrie Esposito’s fiction has been published in The Georgia Review Ruminate Magazine, The MacGuffin, King Ludd’s Rag by Malarkey Books, Pif Magazine, Everyday Fiction, and Mused. When she’s not at an NYC high school as an Educational Consultant for Teaching Matters, she’s working on her novels and short stories. Follow her on Twitter @CarrieBEsposito or check out her website www.carrieesposito.com.
