This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Wild-Tea-9242 on 2024-10-06 20:32:03+00:00.
When I was 11 years old, my life was a lot more bleak than it is now. This happened in the early 2000’s. After my dad left my mom and wanted nothing to do with our family, my mom spiraled into alcoholism and spent most of her time at the bottom of a bottle when she wasn't at work. It's a story I'm sure a lot of people can relate to, losing a parent to addiction, and depression. We were poor, she could barely afford my school lunch and would shove the whole week's worth in my hands when she got her check to prevent herself from spontaneously blowing it on cigarettes and beer.
I had to learn to be more self-sufficient, cooking my own meals and doing my own laundry. A lot of the times, that included taking myself home after school. It was mom's responsibility to pick me up from school since a school bus didn't go to our district of the city. Usually, she did, concerningly either a little tipsy or with a pounding hangover, but sometimes she would be too deep in a drunken stupor or dead asleep after a long day at the club partying like the 20-something she wasn't.
Whenever this happened, I took the public bus home to our little inner city apartment. This was another one of those days. I was standing outside the school building at the end of the day and watching the students pile into the bright yellow buses or their parents’ cars before being driven away. Eventually, the teachers left too, except for Mrs. Hartman, my sweet Spanish teacher who I could tell was absolutely sick of my mother forgetting me. I still remember the gray, overcast sky which reflected my mood at the time.
“I'm just gonna take the bus.” I finally told her with a sigh.
“Well, if you don't mind me taking a few stops on the way there to pick up my kids from daycare and finish some errands, I can take you home, Liv.” Mrs. Hartman smiled at me. “We don't mind, right Sydney?”
I glanced over at her daughter who was my age, and she shot me a mean side eye before continuing to play her Nintendo DS while sitting in the shade. Sydney was Mrs. Hartman's bratty daughter who didn't like me for some stupid reason. Mrs. Hartman was a lovely woman but also a bit naive and ditzy, so she didn’t quite realize that her kid was one of the mean popular girls in class that made fun of shy, timid kids like me. Sydney made fun of me for being poor and wearing the same clothes often, and she absolutely hated having to linger after class because her mom wanted to stay and make sure I was okay. Being stuck in a car with her was out of the question, I already had to look forward to teasing tomorrow because of mom forgetting to pick me up again.
“No, thank you.” I politely told Mrs. Hartman. “I'm used to it.”
“Oh, but, it's going to rain really hard soon, where's your umbrella?” Mrs. Hartman asked.
“Can she afford one?” Sydney mumbled something to that effect under her breath, low enough for her mom not to hear.
“I'll be fine.” I didn't look back as I started to walk away from school property. I would, in fact, not be fine, because not only did I not have an umbrella but I didn't even have a jacket. I didn't know just how hard it would rain. Everyone else's parents watched the morning news and made sure their kids had raincoats or umbrellas just in case. Not my mom. That's just another thing I had to do on my own I guess, watch the forecast myself.
I needed to take two buses to get home. During the first long bus ride, it began to rain profusely. I got off at the usual dilapidated looking stop that didn't even have a shelter or a bench, just a sign, on a street that hardly ever seemed to have traffic or any pedestrians. I tried to go into a nearby convenience store to take refuge from the rain but when I came back out, I had missed my bus, and knew it wouldn't come for another hour.
Frustrated, I decided to try and walk the rest of the way home, based on the foggy memory of the appearance of the streets between my home and my school during car rides with my mom and city bus rides. This only lasted for 20 minutes before I had to try and take shelter again. The rain came down even harder and I remember the already few people on the street were running indoors. I was starting to become nervous because I wasn't entirely sure where I was going. I turned a corner and expected to see a familiar street but I couldn't tell if I'd seen it before or not.
Uncertainly, I speed walked down the sidewalk, thinking maybe the next street would be familiar. This one seemed to be lined with abandoned, empty stores or very niche tiny mom and pop shops that looked like they didn't get many customers. The rain was absolutely pouring now, creating streams on the road, the sewer grates only able to drain so much of the water.
That's when I saw it, the doll shop which had a name long forgotten by me. All I cared about at the time was that it was the only building on the block which had an awning. Feeling like I was at a waterpark, I ducked under the little green roof jutting out over the single glass door. I didn't look at the shop at first, I simply shivered, looking like a miserable wet cat, and staring at the sheets of rain streaking down and creating a cold mist.
Absolutely no one was around, I could distantly hear traffic in busier streets but this part of the city felt totally dead. The wind blew, making everything even worse, so the raindrops fell at a slanted angle and pelted me like bullets even under the awning. I know it sounds like I'm being dramatic, but at that rate, I was gonna have a horrible cold.
I turned and noticed the old looking OPEN sign on the door and quickly pushed it open. Water dripped from me and I left wet footprints everywhere like I'd just been swimming. It was dusty inside, not to mention dark, with only a small table lamp on the counter and a standing lamp in another corner. It did not look like a very modern store, not even for the early 2000’s, the walls and floor were dark brown wood, the floorboards creaked with every step and cobwebs were in the ceiling corners.
However, the weirdest thing about it was the wares. Dolls, all creepy but beautiful, lined the shelves and sat on displays. Porcelain dolls, ragdolls, wooden dolls, ball jointed dolls, cloth dolls… Nothing modern, like Barbie or Bratz, the type of toys you'd see at your grandparents’ house. There was also the occasional stuffed animal, designed like they were from the 80’s with big dopey smiles and large eyes. Some people would find this creepy, but as a sheltered child who didn't watch horror movies and didn't have many toys, I thought it was cool.
The next thing I noticed was how quiet and empty the place was. It was pretty small, just having a singular room, with a hallway by the counter which was covered with drapes and thus made me think it was off limits to customers. No one was behind the desk, but there was a card sign that had ‘out to lunch’ written on it in ink, next to a little service bell.
“Hello?” I called, thinking an employee was in a break room somewhere and wanting to make my presence known. Maybe I could get directions. No one answered, the emptiness and the shadows pooling in the dim corners swallowed my voice. It felt lonely in there, it made me feel more sad than scared, sad for the poor owners who clearly didn't make much of a profit from their little business. I thought as much because of how outdated and slightly dirty everything looked.
I glanced back at the single shop front window to the left of the door, seeing that it was still raining cats and dogs. I did not want to go back out there, the shop was peaceful compared to the weather, so I decided to wait out the rain. In the meantime, I browsed their selection of toys. The dolls, with their glass eyes and pretty painted faces, stared out into space. Some of them had pretty Victorian era dresses, but I remember my favorite one was the clown doll.
I know you might think that sounds crazy, but at the time it wasn't scary, it was a ball jointed doll made to look like a little girl dressed as a clown, her head the size of a basketball and her height ending just above my knee. She had orange curly hair in pigtails, and a sad looking but beautiful face painted with clown makeup. She wore a onesie with three buttons, the top one in the shape of a star, the middle in the shape of a heart, and the last in a normal circular shape. Her outfit was yellow with thin red stripes and the buttons were blue, she had big wet looking glass eyes and a small pink mouth made to look like a sad pout. I thought she looked cute, and wished I had the money to buy her.
Time ticked away, and I felt more uncomfortable with being there, since the clerk hadn't returned from lunch yet, making me wonder if the sign was actually meant to say OPEN at all. But if it was closed it would surely be locked, right? I desperately wanted to sit down, I was soaking wet and tired, so I went over to a display in the corner by the entrance where a doll that looked like a medieval queen wearing a long dress was sitting. I removed the doll gently and set her against the wall, under the window, and sat in the rocking chair she had been perched in. I was kind of afraid I'd get in trouble if the clerk returned, so I made up a lie in my head that I found it this way in case they did come back.
A clerk never showed up and I was getting antsy. Was my mom looking for me? How long was it going to rain like this? Would I be able to find my way home...
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