Genre: YA Gothic

Title: RAGDOLL

Word Count: 53,000

Song: Hurt by Johnny Cash

Pitch:

Sixteen-year-old Jasmyn Rayne isn’t the only one writing in her diary. Her dolls are, too. Maybe. A loving slave doll and bitter porcelain doll who crave two very different endings for the girl they haunt.

First 250:

Friday, October 31^st

Listen, diary dear, and listen well.

I fear my antique dolls. How they come to life in the shattered moonlight, creep across my bedroom floor, and whisper aged-torn secrets meant to stay buried. They slip up walls and bang, bang, bang their heads on my metal bed frame. I cover my ears to drown their terrible sounds, but their sounds come from within me—sorrowful, loud, and mocking.

Damn. Your pages sliced my fingers, diary dear. Don’t you understand? I’m bleeding everywhere. And—oh, god—I’m not feeling…too…good.

ragdoll
i crinkle to life when her blood spills.
i move in red and breath.
she don’t see me as i truly am and she don’t know that i see,
everything.
i am her childhood doll.
i’ve seen since we first found each otha’.
she was four.
that be twelve years ago.
i been ‘round lots longer.
i don’t know how long.
i only remember the smell of smoke and turpentine,
the taste of oiled cinnamon,
the feel of hard straw and needle pinch as it sewed on each stitch of mouth and coarse yarn hair.
i didn’t have to see to know it flamed red.
it was a long and painful process.
creation always is.
the nimble strength and rough tenderness in my maker’s hands taught me everything
i needed to know
‘bout love.
my button eyes were sewn on last.
i saw my maker.
old and weathered, battered by time, her skin dark chocolate, and her eyes rheumatic.