Charlotte

I watched his automobile fade into the distance through one of the windows he had fixed. It had been broken for so long it was nearly etched into my memory as always having been broken. Perhaps it was petty of me, but I was annoyed that he was making changes to my house without consulting me, even if they were positive changes.

Tonight though, nothing could sour my mood, not even these things. I had gotten what I really wanted, that necklace. I didn't know where May had gotten the earrings from, perhaps they were a gift from a secret admirer? She had always been far more charming than I was- so it wouldn't surprise me if that were true.

I chuckled and shook those thoughts out of my mind. Even if it was so, there was no use thinking about it now.

Part of me did wonder- why was it that I had trusted that man so easily with that necklace? I was always hesitant to trust anyone when it came to the house, which is why I had chased them all away. But even if I didn't like him, and he had the worst sense of fashion ever, he also seemed like a reliable man who kept his word. Somehow, I knew that he wouldn't steal that necklace, regardless of his tenuous financial status.

The only thing that was left was to ponder the mystery of this strange book. I dusted it off, but the text and drawings made little sense to me no matter how I looked at them. There was no way that May would buy something like this.

Unable to decipher it any further, I just left it in the corner of the room which also housed my display case.

The case was clean now- because I always cleaned it whenever I was active, though I had no idea who had put it there. Probably the same person who had trapped me in this doll's body somehow, in other words, someone I didn't know at all. I had woken up one day, aware of my new body, and of the case around me, and that had been all.

I now gazed at my reflection in the window, wondering if I really wanted what I was going to ask him for.

Charlie

By this point, I had more or less acclimatized to the night shift, and it showed in how much easier things went that night.

Matt found me, and funnily enough began asking about the house. "So... how are things there?"

"Oh," I said. "Well, it turns out that it was really nothing after all. Nothing wrong was going on, I guess I just uh... misplaced some things."

He seemed rather confused - probably thinking that I would have some kind of ghost story to tell him or that there was another break-in, but I didn't relent and pretended that things were all normal.

"But... someone broke into your house, right?"

"No, I think it was just a huge misunderstanding now that I look back at it," I told him. I deflected everything he asked me, so much so that he eventually gave up and looked for something else to do. I could tell that he was a bit disappointed, but I couldn’t confide in what had happened to him. I did not feel like I could trust him to keep his mouth shut.

I hadn't had time to get the necklace polished, but the next night, she was there, eagerness shining through her eyes. She had been right - not a speck of dust was on either her or her dress now.

"So, there was something you wanted?" I asked her.

"Yes!" she said. "I wanted you to buy me a pack of cigarettes!"

"..."

"..."

"...what!?" I shouted incredulously, not being able to believe what I was hearing.

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"You heard me right," she said, quite cheerfully. "I wanted to try something I hadn't done before- and something I couldn't do, so I wanted to smoke."

"I uh, don't think that's a good idea," I told her. "And where did this thought come from anyway?"

"Oh, I always thought that smokers looked quite dashing," she said. "Even Sherlock Holmes is always smoking a pipe!"

If I remembered correctly, he also had a habit of abusing morphine and other drugs in his stories - I sincerely hoped that she wouldn't ask for something like that next. While I could find cigarettes, I had no idea where I would try to get cocaine or heroin if she asked for that.

Come to think of it, some of my old patients might've known, but I very well couldn't have called them.

"But-" she continued. "-I was never allowed to do so! I was always told it was unladylike - and even May had never been able to sneak one in. But, now.... I think I want to try it!"

I suppressed the desire to hold my head in my hands. "Ah, is there any way I can talk you out of this?"

"You said you would do something for me, so why are you backing out of it right now?" she asked.

"Well, it's not that I don't want to make things up to you..." I said. "But... my conscience wouldn't sit right with me if this was how I did it..."

If a friend of mine, or even someone I even vaguely cared about wanted to start smoking, I would definitely give them a very stern lecture. I had seen too many people suffer serious consequences not just limited to lung cancer - having limbs amputated, strokes, heart attacks - all due to chronic smoking. And I knew it was extremely addicting, which is why I had never touched it. I had a patient with a tracheostomy (a tube placed in your neck through which you breathe directly through) who tried to inhale the smoke through it! After seeing that I would absolutely say that it was a mistake to start smoking.

I went ahead and told her all of this, going on for ten minutes about how harmful it could be. It also occurred to me in the middle of that conversation that she likely hadn't been made aware of the risks of smoking. From what she told me, smoking in public was also acceptable when she had been alive. It was quite a different environment from today. I still remembered the numerous signs around each hospital I worked at that forbade smoking and also detailed the fines one would incur if you were to even smoke near the premises.

And so, I tried every single tactic that I knew to try to convince her, but in the end, she kept insisting.

"Didn't you die of tuberculosis?" I asked her, not wanting to play this card but feeling that I had to. "What if it hurts your lungs more?"

"The lungs of this body are fine," she said. "I've never gotten sick!"

"How can you know that for sure?"

"Whatever- I just want to try it!"

She was very insistent, and though I didn't agree with it, I eventually relented.

"Alright, hop in the car, let's go," I told her.

"Huh?" she said.

"Don't you want to come along with me?"

"I can't come along with you," she said. "Going out of the house is like the sun coming up. I can't leave."

"Wait- are you serious?" I asked her. I assumed she was always in the house because she was so protective of it - but this was news to me.

"Yes," she said. "I once walked outside, and then I became lifeless again. I was there, lying outside the door, in the mud, unable to move for days on end- whether it was day or night. And then thankfully someone picked me back up and threw me back into the house. If they had thrown me out with the trash..." she shuddered as she started taking in deep breaths. She almost looked like she was having PTSD thinking about the memory.

"Sorry, sorry," I said. "But... don't you want to maybe try it once? I'll be with you, and if something happens, I'll bring you back inside."

"...promise?"

"Gentlemen's honor," I said. We went towards the door, and hesitantly, Charlotte stepped outside the house.

Immediately as she crossed the threshold, before her foot even touched the ground outside, she suddenly became limp and lifeless, like a puppet whose string had been cut, and collapsed to the ground the moment her body was completely out of the doorframe. It was so sudden that I was unable to catch her in time and she fell to the ground.

I picked her up and put her back inside the house, after which she immediately regained her former consciousness and chastised me for not catching her, with me apologizing all the way.

I finally ended up agreeing to grab her some cigarettes and told her I would be back with them the next night, not wanting to annoy her any further. As I drove away, I couldn't help but think what a miserable existence it was to be shut in that house forever. Perhaps she didn't mind given how attached she was to it, but to never be able to go beyond its boundaries - I couldn't imagine how she lived with that.

Maybe that was why she wanted to smoke - she couldn't get them outside the house, and it was possibly one of the few things she had wanted to do while alive.

Once again, my mind turned to what exactly had happened in the first place to change her into... well, what she was now. Had it just been something spontaneous - like her wanting to stay on in the world and stay in the house had led to her manifesting like that somehow? Or had someone done that to her? If so, I couldn't help but think that if someone had done this to her - they must've been punishing her for something, because I couldn't think of any reason why you would wish something like that on someone you cared about. Yes, it was definitely some kind of curse.