An unfinished novella sketch of dysfunctional paper dolls.

dramatis personæ:

• a Daisy wilting in dissolution
• a young crone named Rose-on-the-Fur
• & some minor characters

7/1/19: Recoiled at this old writing & made minor corrections. 10/21/21: Added capitalizations & re-worked some of the text. 7/21/23: Saved & transferred text from WeHeartIt to Listography.

　 　 　Looking back on this, I think I ought to have written the third chapter as a completely different story. Oh well, had to get it out of my system anyway. The title image is an earlier draft from a self-published zine from which these chapters grew. It was inspired by the following free-write from long ago:

• 　 　 　 After all the bruisings she could take, hot-eyed Venus takes up a razor to slice at her hair. The clippings drop onto petaled cakes, her hair now shorn & pink. Deranged unicorns clamber over violet meadows. Gilt lilypads drip eyeless frogs into the glittering lake where severed limbs abound for delectation. This haunted house is haunted prose. Slim arms tie large bows on velvet dropwaist dresses. Breathe the fumes of sugar melting & popping in the cauldron, candles lit for the Virgin Mary grow ever taller, wax dripping upward into soulless saints’ eyes. Little girls blinded by their long braids walk towards their doppelgängers, fingers touching mirror images within mirror images within the hallways of Gothic castles. Roses strewn on this snow-dusted path. Magic caught her milking the sweetheart in her pearled collars. Seashells & silk sheets litter the floor, as well as bits of glass from a broken aquarium. Crystal shards rent the veiled mystery of her satin pearly finish, rubbing it off & dissolving it into effervescence.
• 　 　 　 Hot-eyed Venus takes a hammer to crack mirrors & dolls’ eyes, the cracks mirroring the veins in her own eyes. Hair tangled in potted plants. Cinematic intertitles spell quick silent interludes in between pictures loud with color. Plump lips, split. Elagabalus smothers you in roses. Oblivion light as feathers, cotton-mouthed puffy. Icing roses on a knifed pink cake. Close-ups of plump genteel hands clutching roses, devoid of context, devoid of picture frames. Marie Antoinette is reduced to a flower.