Wendy

For the next installment of the Dark Dolls Tales, I give you Wendy.  

Both she and Alice were essentially created together and subsequently share something in the way of a(n) history. It would be terribly romantic if they went off together in the sunset, but this is the same person speaking who, at the age of 6 or 7 or whatever, felt it was the height of injustice to separate Ginger’s (my sweet dog from many years ago) litter of the most adorable puppies (and puppy breath!!, my god). I mean, dogs grow up and there’s no way in hell we all would have fit in the same house together, but I mean if you’d ask, I’m sure I would have swore on my life that I would be happy to sleep in the doghouse. 

Anyway, Sure, that would be a fine ending, but I don’t mind either way. 

Life goes on and people meet other people, friends separate, dolls separate, meet new dolls etc. It’s the circle of goddamn life. 

Great. On with the show. Her story follows below....not in the sewers, just keep reading.

It’s Wendy!! She’s a scream!!  **Sold**

 May your days be cloudy and your nights rowdy. 

 Love, 

 -J 

Wendy

There is no birth record for Wendy, though this was not an uncommon practice of the destitute. For a family who scarcely saw a regular meal as it stood, raising an infant stole that which they had naught to give. Babies were found on windowsills and doorsteps, and sometimes seen floating peacefully down the river. Seen, but rarely heard, it may be said. Perhaps she was intended to float away unnoticed but someone, or something, took great pity on baby Wendy, and provided her with something of a childhood. There are no written documents that shed light on this matter and so here our curiosity forever remains unquenched. 

She only seems to have appeared in adulthood, making her way from street urchin to actress with occasional parts as courtesan, but only if she could not get a paying role as a leading or supporting character. Mostly she would be in work all the year round. On many occasions, a play would be written with solely her in mind, and often ended with her character very much dead; the monster conquered and the world at peace again. 

On one unique occasion, the creator decided to inject a little romance between a character Wendy played - in part; a young and beautiful princess named Griselda and the Queen’s husband. 

The theme of the play essentially revolved around an afternoon tryst between the two after he had spotted her in the forest dilly-dallying over some plants or herbs or something. He approached her and they walked together. Over the course of the afternoon he became madly in love with her and she fell madly in love with his attentiveness. It should be highlighted that during this act the character Griselda was played by an actress called Lucia, who was a total prima donna and a self-absorbed twat. The end of Act 1 depicted Griselda and the Queen’s husband intertwined in mad passionate lovemaking and the stage went black. 

Act II began with the Queen’s husband in a state of fear and unsure of what to do and how to account for his whereabouts of the previous night, he confesses his sins to his wife. He does this in a slightly modified statement saying Griselda had made improper advances upon him and being in a weakened state, was not able to defend himself. The Queen went into a fury and through a spell of magic, made Griselda into a wicked mute hag. At this point Wendy played the part of Griselda and when met with the Queen’s husband, he repelled from her. Many were astonished at how well the actor playing the part of the Queen’s husband performed this. In truth, there was no acting involved, he was very much sickened by the sight of her and he refused to look at her until that very moment on stage. 

The final act was something of a tragedy. Having been outcast by her peers, being made ugly, and discovering the Queen’s husband’s shallow desire, Griselda wrote a letter to the Queen which gave her true account of the incident in the forest and asked for forgiveness. The letter was sealed and delivered the following day. Having read this letter, the Queen went straight to the princess’s chambers but she was nowhere to be seen. It was too late.

Out of her need to be cleansed and self-pity, Griselda stuck a sword through her heart at the very spot in the forest she had her first and, indeed, her last night of passion. The Queen felt great sorrow for Griselda and immediately reversed the spell. So when her body was found, she retained the beauty of before and gleamed in her casket of the purest crystal. It is here that Wendy’s participation in the play ended. The Queen’s husband was enamored by her beautiful corpse and kissed her cold lips. He felt a brief sense of guilt and knew next time he definitely would not be telling his Queen. Having been spied by her from behind a tapestry, the Queen knew Griselda’s letter contained the honest truth and the Queen’s husband would never again chance his luck messing around in the undergarments of a young princess. The Queen poisoned him the very next day. 

By way of clearing any suspicion against herself, she immediately made accusations against her dissenters and promptly had them all beheaded, all of who were members of the Queen’s husband’s family. 

Though wildly popular, there was no clear moral tale. Despite this it ran for 68 weeks solid in almost all sold out shows until Lucia caught a bought of cholera and promptly died. This was most unusual as there was no particular plague of this sort making its way around town. 

Wendy was out of work for the next ten months but her residual maintained a decent standard of living for a while. She was also very frugal with her money. For all she lacked in her looks, her mind very much made up for and this was the glue that would ultimately seal the friendship between her and Alice forever. 

Even Wendy’s money mindfulness was unable to stave away the desperation she would soon experience. The market was evolving; people were seeking new forms of escape. A lot of this was down to the changing political climate of the day. Horror acting was becoming second rate to the real horror beginning to unfold with a chance to witness it on an almost daily basis at a cut rate. 

The newest party in seat was taking strides to cleanse the city of harmful ideas manifested primarily through the opposition’s supporters which led to a massive intake of prisoners. When the prisons were on the brink of collapsing under the weight, they had to come up with a new strategy. Rather than incorporating greater leniency or offering a three-strike “Yur Aught!” offence system, the criteria to meet the requirements for capital punishment was revised so under new laws the scope of crimes that befit this end widened substantially. 

That was all well and good but the old methods of execution were deemed very inadequate to handle the influx of criminals and the prisons were not getting any smaller. A great deal of money was invested into engineering new and more efficient ways of decapitation, limb extraction, intestinal pulls, automated impaling machines - which could thoroughly probe ten subjects in a quarter of an hour, along with various other methods to peel the skin from the unhappy prisoner whilst they writhed and squirmed on a table. Many of these instruments were, in fact, ingenious displays of the human brain and the capacity to design an effective apparatus limiting the need for human or horse muscle. Many felt the equine mind could not handle the task to any great extent and thought they should not have to suffer through the mental torture of dismantling a human. Others were sub average and only really looked spectacular but at the crux were mere re-imaginings of already established methods. Incidentally, many of the creators of these machines, the good and the bad, strangely ended up becoming the first test on their designs. This was simply because they stood to earn the vast share of the investment dowry, promised to them only after the completion and successful trial of their respective ideas. It should be said this in no way reduced the number of volunteers. 

In consequence to any government-funded scheme, there was the inevitable flash of realization to charge a nominal fee to attend one of these executions. At first, there was uncertainty in the prospective customer base but it turned out to be a great success. Soon it was discovered a higher fee could be charged for greater pleasures. The higher the profile or the more prolonged torture and subsequent agony, a higher seat price could be commanded. As the gutters in the squares overflowed in blood and guts, so too did the pockets. 

This very much led to an absolute shutdown of the horror theatre, and almost theatre in general if it wasn’t for the sake of a few innovative playwrights and daring producers. Still, the auditoriums and houses never regained the sold out status they once enjoyed. 

All of this is of no consequence to us, suffice it to say, poor Wendy was out of work. Her popularity had fallen and on a few occasions, as so many had seen her face in a disfavoring light, they mistook her for one of the damned or simply assumed she was in cahoots with the others and they promptly reported her. After many interrogations by the city police, they concluded she had no affiliation with Daphauctdis (the shadow seat), mostly because of her inability to speak and thus preach the dangerous rhetoric they abhorred so vehemently. They advised her to go into hiding. After the 17th accusation and subsequent arrest, she finally heeded their suggestion and removed herself from her quarters. Conceding the following month’s rent (down to the landlady forever being down at the square and selling bites to the crowds), Wendy gathered only that which she could carry, her last remaining 30SCU (which equates to .00000087SC of our money today) and drifted out into the streets in search of safety and shelter. 

As a brewing storm clawed her heels and exhausted from the day, loathe to carry on, she found a bar to rest her weary feet within and she pushed herself up each step. A gust of wind forced the door open and immediately all music, conversation, pouring, fighting, and pissing stopped at once. In the doorway stood a tall thin figure in an absurd floral affair, albino blonde locks completely concealing a face. Lightning struck near by and a crash rang through shattering glasses, blinding a barmaid for the rest of her life. As the barmaid screamed, Wendy was parting her hair. Another bolt of lightning crashed again, this time blinding almost everyone in the palace. 

Wendy walked into the room, shutting the door behind her. There was a dead silence as everyone adjusted their sight to the once again darkened gas light room. After a moment passed, the room set their gaze upon Wendy. All at once there was chaos. More screams could be heard, an instrument was smashed over a table, some men fainted, the barmaid collapsed onto another one, those who were fighting began to hit themselves and the two men who had been urinating in a corner carrying on a conversation about a recently discovered planet both jumped through a glazed window onto the street, severing their genitalia. Completely unaware, they rose from the street and ran until they came upon a river. One man dove in while the other waved goodbye. 

Back in the gin dive, things were calming down, or rather the joint was emptying out. Wendy stood in front of the door as hoards of people ran past her to escape into the deluge outside. The only remnants of the crowd included those who were still lying unconscious or dead and Alice with her trio of assistants who had been waiting for this day to come. Alice and Wendy locked eyes, mostly because no other soul had ever looked Wendy in the eyes before and they instantly felt a connection. Wendy sat her bag down by the door and according to eyewitnesses, hovered to where Alice sat. There they remained staring at each other for many hours, neither one uttered a word. I could have said parted their lips, but for Wendy that would have been a downright lie. On account of her unnaturally large teeth, Wendy couldn’t do anything BUT part her lips, never mind speaking, that was out of the question. 

If people had taken the time to think about Wendy, to consider her, at some stage they might have given some thought as to how she was able to sustain herself with food or drink. If she wasn’t so hideous, yet invisible to everyone, they might have wondered how she was able to intake of any liquid or bite of any morsel. They might notice how her jaw extended to the point of dislocating from the pressure her teeth put on her upper and lower mouth, and how as a result she continually produced saliva that ran down her cheek. If anyone was ever to query this, it may have led to many other suspicions over her legitimacy as a creature of god. It may have also led to some connectivity to certain mutilations found in certain sandy deposits when the tide was low, not terribly far from her dwellings. But if they had done that, then we wouldn’t find ourselves here, and everything that happens here is all for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

To be continued as and when I feel like it...