The Doll Head
She started out just like all the other Sofie dolls in the world, identical with their molded plastic smiles, kind brown eyes and soft dark hair. She stood in her box on a shelf surrounded by her sister clones, waiting.
She watched dolls identical to her being bought, longing for the day someone would choose her box, and take her home to a child who would love her, perhaps hug her tight at nights and whisper secrets in her ears.
At last, Sofie was chosen, and brought home to a young girl named Darla. At night, Sofie was not held close, but she wandered around Darla’s bedroom, gazing marvelously at the sleeping child in the glow of the night light, determined to bring the young girl years of joy.
The other toys welcomed Sofie with open arms. There was a worn teddy bear with several stitched scars running across his body and only one eye, who walked with a limp. Darla loved the bear more than any other toy and slept with him every night. The porcelain dolls on Darla’s shelf expressed jealousy that Sofie would be played with. They were too fragile for play, and constantly feared falling off the shelf and shattering into a million pieces.
Darla loved playing with Sofie, but instead of building houses for her out of blocks or dressing her up and pretending Sofie was the mayor of a make-believe town, Sofie was used as a crash test dummy. Darla would tie the doll to parachutes made from blankets or empty plastic grocery bags before flinging her off the upstairs balcony. The parachutes never worked, and Sofie always plummeted to the floorboards a story below.
As the floorboards rose up to meet her yet again, Sofie found herself jealous of the porcelain dolls. Yes, they didn’t have much to do but stand on the shelf and watch the room all day, but at least they weren’t thrown over the railing time and time again.
Sofie’s disintegration came far too fast. After only one day, she lost lost her right leg. The other toys were shocked but sympathetic. The old, battered teddy bear confided how he had been torn and sewn together again several times.
Sofie couldn’t be sewn. She could have tried to reattach her leg, but it had gone missing.
Darla had a book about a one-legged tin soldier, who stood just as tall and steady as his own identical brothers. Sofie tried and tried, but she could not stand steady or hop around on her single leg.
She found a pencil to use as a prosthetic leg, and slowly learn to walk again. She limped more than the bear, but nobody mocked her or the bear for their hobbling. The bear was Darla’s oldest toy, and far too respected to be mocked.
“At least you’re played with.” said the porcelain dolls. “It’s so boring up here. At least you won’t shatter.”
Sofie’s owner saw the pencil in Sofie’s leg socket and taped it there, smiling. All the same, it snapped off on her next test dive, followed by several other limbs before one week had passed.
On her second week at Darla’s house, Sofie’s head was separated from what remained of her body entirely. Now, she was only a head, helplessly watching her torso be mangled by the family dog, her pencil leg drooled on by the baby until the parents took it away and threw it in the garbage.
There wasn’t much use for a pencil leg anymore, when she didn’t have a body.
Darla picked up Sofie’s head and sighed. Sofie wanted to sigh. It was just her luck to be bought for a girl who destroyed her.
The other toys, once sympathetic, looked at Sofie the head with revulsion, turning away when she tried to talk to them as if they feared the same fate would befall them. Only the old bear continued to be her friend.
As a head, Sofie could no longer roam around Darla’s room. She refused when the bear offered to carry her. They tried other methods of mobility. She couldn’t balance on a toy horse, and there was no way she’d humiliate herself by clinging to the reins with her teeth. She couldn’t steer a toy car, and the car didn’t listen to her spoken directions.
The other toys watched her attempts with a sort of fascinated horror, though Sofie was sure she heard giggles and snickers as well. Some friends they turned out to be.
Sofie realized if the soccer ball could roll around by itself, surely she could learn, too. She spent long hours teaching herself to roll her head like a ball, fighting dizziness as the world spun around and around.
Being only a head did make the parachutes work a bit better, seeing as Sofie weighed less. The landings weren’t quite as hard and rough now, not that she enjoyed being thrown any more than she had with her body still attached.
One day, her head was chucked around Darla’s bedroom until Sofie rolled under the bed. She waited to be retrieved, but was left under there to ponder, bitterly, why it had been her that had been destroyed. Why hadn’t one of the stuffed animals been used to test parachutes? A stuffed animal wouldn’t have fallen apart from the falls like she had.
She managed to roll across the floor, but it left her dizzy and tangled in the parachute. She could not untie herself as she once had been able to. The bear offered to help, but he had no fingers, only paws that weren’t particularly useful for untying knots.
Tangled in the plastic bag, Sofie could barely see or hear, and didn’t notice when Darla entered the room.
She was picked up and unwrapped from the bag. Darla held the bag up, where Sofie’s head dangled underneath, tied to it by her hair.
“Where were you?” asked Darla, staring at Sofie’s head. Sofie wished she could answer, but of course she couldn’t.
Darla tried to untie Sofie’s hair from the parachute, and but the knot was so tangled that, in the end, Darla took a pair of scissors and snipped it off. Sofie’s head tumbled to the floor, staring up at the dark locks that were no longer attached to her head.
Sofie lay, smile frozen on her face but terror racing inside. Would Darla throw her without a parachute? Would the dog chew her up like it had her body? Darla’s hand came closer. Sofie wanted to roll away, but she couldn’t with a human present.
She was placed in a lava lamp, floating like a fish in the water, watching from inside. The room looked warped and green. She couldn’t hear what the bear was telling her, and eventually, he stopped trying.
For years, Sofie watched the room. One porcelain doll fell off the shelf and shattered. The teddy bear lost his remaining eye, but still remained Darla’s favorite. Sofie watched him navigate around Darla’s room, still with his limp. Without his eyes, there was no way for her to communicate with him. They couldn’t talk through the lamp, and he could no longer see her.
Darla grew from a young girl to a young woman. Toys were donated, sold, or thrown out, but the old, worn teddy bear always remained on Darla’s bed. It was clear he would never leave, that Darla would never stop loving him.
Sofie wondered when her turn would be, surprised that a doll head in a lava lamp wasn’t the first toy to go.
At last, a teenaged Darla packed a box with the remaining porcelain doll, some toy cars, a dirty stuffed unicorn, and Sofie’s lamp. She was sloshed around in the lamp as the box was carried. The box rumbled like it was in a car, chattering Sofie’s teeth and making her bob in the lava liquid.
The box was opened by an older man, who took out each toy and examined them. “What’s this?” he asked, studying Sofie’s lamp. Sofie could see they were in some sort of store. The man unscrewed the top and pulled her head out.
“Let’s see if I have a spare body.” he muttered, bustling around. Sofie didn’t want some other doll’s body, didn’t want to be reconstructed from different parts like some sort of Frankenstein’s monster. That was quite different from a pencil prosthetic. But when did what she wanted ever matter? She was a doll with no say in what humans did to her, no say in if she was a test dummy, if her hair was cut, if she was imprisoned in a lamp like a genie.
To Sofie’s relief, there was no spare. A price sticker was slapped on her forehead, and she was put on a shelf with other toys to be sold, including many other Sofie dolls. Of course, she was the only disembodied head there, everyone else had a body.
Those dolls stared at her in horror, even though some of them were nude and one had crude, childish marker scribbles all over her body and face that the store owner must have been unable to wash off.
“What happened to you?” asked another Sofie doll with a jointed, posable body. Sofie realized that, even with her old body, she had never had elbows and knees that would bend, though Sofie was too annoyed by the question to think much about the mobility of her old limbs.
“Who would spend five bucks for a head?” asked another doll with a sticker proclaiming her to cost one dollar and seventy-five cents. “You can’t do anything, and you’re more than me.”
Sofie didn’t answer them as she rolled herself off the shelf. Still, the other dolls’ words got to her. Sofie tried not to think of the movies where decapitated heads were stuck on stakes as a warning to intruders. She hoped that wouldn’t be her fate, but she didn’t know what else someone would use a head for, other than a creepy decoration like Darla had.
She rolled through the store, which sold more than just toys. At last, she stopped at a clothing section, exhausted. Rolling her head was much more tiring than walking had been.
“Hey,” whispered a voice. Sofie turned away from the carpet and rolled her head, trying to find the source. “HEY!” several voices whispered louder.
At last, Sofie saw several mannequin heads. Some had necks, but other than that, they were just like her, albeit much larger.
“Hi,” she whispered back, choked up. She thought she was the only one without a body.
“What happened?” Sofie asked with morbid curiosity, before realizing how annoyed she’d been when the other dolls asked her. She shook her head slightly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”
“Nothing happened.” said a mannequin head modeling a knit winter hat. “We never had bodies. We were always just heads.”
“Really?” asked Sofie, amazed. They didn’t seem at all bothered by their lack of bodies. Some of these heads were blank, with no features. Sofie wondered if they were blind, like the bear. If they were always blind, or if they became blind by losing eyes.
One head looked like exactly like Sofie’s own head, but still much bigger.
“You’re a Sofie too.” Sofie gazed up at her bigger sister clone.
“I’m a modeling head.” the bigger Sofie shook her black hair. “I was made like this, too.”
“And people loved you?”
“Sure, I had a kid who loved to style my hair and give me makeup.” said the Sofie styling head. “I never had a body, but I still brought joy.”
Sofie wondered if she could still bring someone joy. Not as a lava lamp decoration, or a test dummy. She wanted to bring joy as a doll, just like any other Sofie doll in the world, to make a child happy.
She stayed with the mannequin heads for a while, finally feeling like she belonged, but eventually rolled back to the dolls. Someone was more likely to find her there.
Once again, Sofie sat and watched other dolls being bought. Dressed dolls, naked dolls, even the scribbled-on doll was chosen. By now, Sofie had mastered rolling around. She didn’t need to try to ride a car or horse, though those would be faster.
One day, a big plastic dinosaur grabbed her in its teeth and prowled around. Before she could escape from the dinosaur’s jaws, a mom and little boy wandered in. The little boy grinned and headed straight for the dinosaur… only to pull Sofie’s head out of the toothed mouth, smiling.
“Oh, Ryan, don’t you want this?” the mom held up the dinosaur, but Ryan cupped Sofie’s head in his hands and gazed down at her with a soft, loving smile, stroking her badly cut hair.
“I want her!” Ryan proclaimed, holding Sofie’s head up like she was the most valuable toy in the world.
“Five bucks for a head?” Ryan’s mom looked at the multitude of other dolls, including many other Sofie dolls, and picked up an intact Sofie dressed in a snowsuit. “These ones aren’t even that many. Look, do you want one of these?”
Ryan shook his head firmly, holding Sofie tightly. Ryan’s mom sighed and paid for Sofie. The owner rustled a plastic bag, and Sofie tensed, mind automatically going to the parachutes.
“I’ll hold her.” Ryan announced to Sofie’s utmost relief. Ryan bounced Sofie from countertops to door handles on the way home, holding her up to look out the car window. Sofie wanted to beam wider than her plastic face already was.
Ryan loved her, not as a test dummy, but as a toy. As a head, Ryan made Sofie command armies fighting against toy robots or dinosaurs. He made her bodies from pencils or plastic spoons or popsicle sticks, with pipe cleaners or string for arms and legs. But just as often as he made her walk in her new prosthetic bodies, he would make her head roll across the floor in the same way she’d learned to do, herself.
As a head, Sofie was small enough to fit in his pocket in a way she wouldn’t have been with her body. She often accompanied him to school, hidden safely in his pocket.
Sofie became Ryan’s favorite toy, just like the limping, stitched up, blind bear was Darla’s. He whispered that other boys teased him for liking dolls. Sofie wished she could yell at the other boys. They would have been shocked to see a doll head yell, surely they’d leave Ryan alone. She couldn’t, but Ryan held her head close to his cheek after a bad day of teasing, and Sofie knew she made him feel better. She brought him joy, and he brought her joy in return.
One night, as she lay with no prosthetics on Ryan’s pillow next to the sleeping boy, Sofie rolled over and gazed at her new owner, feeling like she was the luckiest doll in the world.
The End
(Word count: 2510).
XXXXXXXXXXXX
I knew I wanted to write a story for this project, since I have been writing stories for years. I have already been working on stories with characters with various disabilities for over a year now, but I wanted to do something different for this project. I have always loved stories with living toys, such as the Toy Story films and Han Christian Anderson’s classic tale The Steadfast Tin Soldier, which is mentioned in this story and features a main character who is missing a leg. I wanted to make a story with a living, disabled toy. At first I thought of Sid’s mutant toys, which are quite like Frankenstein’s creation and initially viewed with horror, but then I thought of doll heads. In one of my trips to a thrift store, I saw they were selling doll heads, as well as dolls with bodies.
I couldn’t help but wonder, what would it be like to be only a head? I’m fairly certain no human has ever had that disability, since they could not survive, which made exploring the life of a toy head even more intriguing. In looking at the heads in the store, I wondered what happened to their bodies. If they were real, would the other toys shun them, or regard them with a horror, not wanting to meet the same fate? How would they move around? Would they learn to accept being a head? Would they worry nobody would want to buy a doll head, and would only buy whole dolls?
I guess I imagine Sofie as an alternate Barbie doll in that she’s mass-produced and identical to so many other dolls
I decided to have Sofie lose her body because I was curious how the dolls in the store became heads, since they must have had bodies at one point. The pencil prosthetic leg was inspired by a toy horse I bought a few years ago that looked like part of its leg was chewed or snapped off, and I gave it a pencil prosthetic leg of its own.
Her revulsion of the thought of getting another body like a “Frankenstein creation” is entirely her own, and not reflective of my own ideas.
However, some things start out as only heads, such as certain mannequins or those big styling doll heads. I figured those would be more accepting of not having a body since they were “born” that way, rather than a doll who lost her body would be at first. But just like those heads, Sofie can learn her life is still valuable even without a body, and she can still bring a child joy.
Darla’s teddy bear is disabled himself and incredibly loved by Darla. His disabilities came slowly through age, such as losing eyes and getting ripped, but he is still loved and respected by the other toys. I wasn’t thinking this while I wrote it, but I guess he is a little like the old man the creation watched in Frankenstein crossed with the creation himself, but not treated nearly as badly.
The thrift store Sofie visits in this story is a lot like the one I visited in real life, I was not really trying to have any sort of symbolism with the prices. The price of $5 for a disembodied doll head was the real price at the thrift store I visited, while other intact dolls were priced much lower. I also saw a ton of naked dolls, probably more naked dolls than dressed dolls, which is why there were naked dolls in the story.
Ryan was inspired by a boy I read about in an article who carried a dismembered doll head around for years, as well as Bobby in the short film Barbie Boy. I suppose both Darla and Ryan subvert stereotypical gender roles, with Darla playing rough with her toys and Ryan playing with dolls.
(Word count: 643).
I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work. Clark Baranoski
