A Porcelain Doll Now Haunts Me. But That’s Often the Way Things Begin—the makings of a Story.

If you’ll remember, dear reader . . .

Just kidding. I’ll never be that formal with you, unless I’m doing so tongue-in-cheek. Okay, maybe I will. Thinking about it, you are dear to me. How could you not be? Look at yourself. How could you not be dear to all those around you? And you’re reading, so you are technically a reader. I love all readers. And you’re reading my words. So okay, of course I like you. I’m not quite sure how I dropped from “love,” to “like,” here—maybe love just seems a bit too squishy at this point. Let’s just say I’m definitely interested in you. I want to know what you like to read, what you think about various books and stories. And, well . . .

Ok, I’m trying to work my way (and not doing a very good job of it) to that dark alley at the end of the last post. Do you remember standing there in the shadows with your back pressed against the wall? Remember the darkness, the grit and grime?

Well, at the time, I was just “riffing.” I was just writing whatever popped into my mind, the sights and sounds . . .

But there were a couple of things that passed through my mind that I didn’t put in the scene. The first of those things was a porcelain doll. It was there, in that narrow dark alley. It was there among the weeds and broken cobblestones. There was a small face, porcelain-white, glinting in the moonlight, the painted lips, the blush on the cheeks, the eyes staring upward. Only the head was porcelain, the body cloth, stuffed with cotton or whatever (some research of Victorian era dolls might be required here). The head is cracked down the front, the jagged crack running down the face, just off center. Perhaps half, or at least a third, of the face is missing. Or maybe just a chunk from above the brow, but on the left side (the doll’s left side).

So anyway, you are standing there and you see this doll. The small pale face catches your eye as the moonlight glances off of the whiteness. The flash of white, just a quick glimpse of something as your eyes adjust to the darkness. The doll is muddy and streaked with grime and dirt, but you only see the flash, just for a second. The thought doesn’t quite form that it could be a small human child, a baby, and yet it is there in your subconscious. But you then get distracted by something else. And the thing laying there is, in fact, only a doll.

And when do you notice it? Do you notice it just before the baby cries and the woman hums, just before she opens the window above?

Where do I put it? Where do I fit it into the scene?

Actually, none of these questions passed through my mind at the time. I just caught the glimpse, the flash. Normally I would have just slipped the image in naturally, somewhere, as I wrote. But I decided not to put it in because I was just finishing out the post and trying to keep things basic.

But that’s how it starts, the process. That is how a story begins. No more than a glimpse of something, an image, flashing through my mind. It is far too easy for me to slip into story mode. If you’ve read many of my other posts you already know this.

And there are sounds as well as sights . . .

The second thing I left out is the sound of an abandoned chamber pot as it careens into and bounces off the wall that you had just been leaning against. What set the pot in motion? You did. You tripped over the pot, kicking it, knocking it against the wall. That happened when you were running out of the alley.

And what prompted you to run? What caused the panic? What did you see around that corner? What was it there in the courtyard? There was a wall, perhaps chest high, at the end of that alley, blocking the way. That wall was not so high that you couldn’t peer over it, nor high enough that whoever was committing the murder in that courtyard to the right couldn’t scale it to come after you. Was it a murder? What did you see? Or maybe you simply took off when the woman asked who was there. Maybe she screamed for some reason. . .Maybe the murderer came flying around the corner after you. Who knows?

So, I chose to leave the porcelain doll and the chamber pot out. No big deal. Or so I thought.

That doll, the image of it lying there with the moonlight glancing off of the cracked face keeps haunting me. It has been with me the last couple of days. That image just won’t go away. It keeps popping up in my mind; and so too, the sound of the chamber pot hitting the wall. But mostly it’s the doll, that image, that won’t go away.

So I’ll have to use the doll in a story, of course. How could I not? The image I suspect will haunt me until I do use it somewhere. Or maybe the fact that I am setting the image down here will free me.

The thing has haunted me the past couple of days, leading to other thoughts. Is this thing searching for a story?

And what are these other thoughts?

Where have I seen a human with porcelain like skin?

Ten or fifteen years ago, maybe twenty, I attended a party for a Mexican daughter of a friend of mine. It wasn’t a birthday. I forget what it was, something traditional and significant, however. In any case, another friend was there with her daughters. One of her small daughters was like a small porcelain doll, a beautiful child. I remember commenting (using those exact words) to a photographer friend of mine that she should consider the child for a photo shoot. Nothing ever came of it.

The next time I saw someone with the milky white sheen of porcelain looking skin was in Morocco. It was a hot afternoon and there was a throng of tourists at a palace, or mosque that happened to be an attraction. I had been inside and observing things, but wandered out onto a wide-open area near the entrance. There were people everywhere and I’m a people watcher. People from all over the world were milling about. Some of the women had scarves covering their faces, in the Moslem tradition, and there were some that wore western dress. Some wore a mix of the two. There was a group of three or four girls standing together, a couple of young children. I took them to be several sisters and perhaps a friend of one of the older girls. One of them, a young lady who could have been fifteen or twenty, or somewhere in between. Her skin was a pure, milky-white sheen of what I would imagine a porcelain figure come to life would look like. Her hair was pure black, and so too, her brows. Her eyes were like black shiny marbles that calmly danced. My mind went immediately to tales of the Arabian Nights, and the beauty therein described. I suddenly knew what that beauty was. Don’t get me wrong—no lewd thoughts entered my head. I was simply awestruck at the sheer beauty of the creature in the distance. I had to force myself to look away. It was the stark contrast of the colors, and I appreciated the view as a painter would (or so I imagine). The paleness of the skin was not a sickly pale, but had a softly glowing vibrance, a milky white. And the black of the hair and eye was a pure black, vibrant as well. Porcelain, I thought, the skin. Her skin reminds me of what porcelain would look like if the porcelain were flesh.

And so, I thought of that today.

And now, I thought, is there a story there? The young woman could drop dead, right there in the sunlight, her younger sister standing on a concrete, or bright plaster bench, just as she was that day. The younger sister could reach out, searching for balance by placing a hand on her older sister’s shoulder. But the girl’s reach misses. Why? Because her sister has collapsed in a heap. The death of beauty. . . What sinister thing had just happened?

And other thoughts entered my mind. Perhaps there is a young man watching her, a very young man, a twelve-year old maybe. He notices the girl’s beauty. He is enchanted, intrigued. Perhaps he even knows her, or has seen her before. What’s more, he thinks he has an idea who might have just done something to the girl. He follows the man as this man leaves the scene. Now, our young friend is simply a street urchin of sorts. He is a pickpocket. It is a matter of survival.

Cut to the next scene: In this scene our young friend follows the man through the Medina. Is the young man that the boy follows really guilty? What had the boy noticed? Was it simply the young (older than our young friend, but still young, perhaps seventeen) man’s behavior when the girl collapsed? Maybe our young friend had seen the two arguing earlier in the day, in another location. Had the girl imbibed some sort of drug in her cup of mint tea, earlier; or maybe her plate of couscous was poisoned. I suddenly have an image of her eating a pomegranate a few minutes prior. Perhaps something had been injected into the fruit

Well, I guess there could be a story there, most definitely, something intriguing perhaps, but nothing that pertains directly to the doll from the alley.

And besides, hadn’t I written something similar in the story, “Esmirana’s Trunk?” The story of a woman collapsing, not quite the same, but still. . .

So back to the doll.

I was going to try and describe the doll, the size of it, as being perhaps six to eight inches in length or maybe smaller. The head, in my mind would be the size of a large orange, or a small grapefruit. Okay, no, I wouldn’t describe it that way, because then you would think of the color orange and I don’t want that. You shouldn’t see orange. You should see the glaring white of the moonlight glancing off of the porcelain face. Perhaps there could be a bit of orange peel near the doll, but the night was too dark, you wouldn’t be able to see the bit of peel. And besides, to me, for some reason an orange peel brings a school parking lot to mind. Bright sunlight on a school parking lot. There are bits of orange peel, and perhaps part of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with flies buzzing about and ants crawling all over the remnants.

And then the flies buzz away and off to a body, just around the side of the school building. The body is half in shadow. A high school student, a boy, dead. There are certainly flies. Not many people come around the side of the building. Unless, of course, a couple of students are sneaking off to smoke something. And then, well, yes, they discover the body. And there is a bit of orange peel here too, and a butter knife. And now we have a murder mystery. Can the orange peel beside the body be connected to the other bits of orange on the far side of the lot? Would someone make the connection, a detective? I guess we’ll find out once the boy’s stomach contents are examined. Was it murder? Or maybe the boy had committed suicide? And yes, we have a story, but again nothing related directly to the doll in the alley. I’ve gotten off track.

Doll . . . Doll . . . and then, ah-ha, isn’t there something about dolls, a place where dolls are hanging? Yes, Mexico, the Isla de las Munecas (The island of the dolls). But is it a real place? Is the story behind the Isla de las Munecas real?

The story goes something like this:

A man found a little girl’s body floating in a river, drowned. Later he found a doll, also floating, which he assumed had been the little girl’s doll. He hung the doll in a tree to comfort the girl’s spirit or soul. And later he began hanging more dolls. And people started coming from miles around, bringing dolls to hang in the trees. And the site then became a tourist attraction. Is it real? Is there such a place? I believe so.

I guess I could do research, and write a story about a young couple who travels to the Isla de las Munecas. And perhaps the young woman is pregnant. Maybe this young couple lost their first child. And of course, they would be bringing a doll to hang in the trees. Why else would they be coming to the Island of the Dolls? And so, what happens to them along the way? What happens to this young couple? Now there’s a story. Yes, it certainly is. But what does that story have to do with the doll in the alley? Nothing.

Well, perhaps I could use the scene in the alley, with the doll, in a story that I wrote called “It’s Something Like Russian Roulette.” It’s a Victorian era story, kind of, and I had to cut it short at the time. I had been planning on continuing it, expanding it into a novella. Yes, I could use the doll there. Of course, I could.

Or how about the short piece I wrote in an earlier post, where a young medical student had a body sit up on the autopsy table. Yes, I could definitely use the doll there, if I ever expand that snippet into a story. I almost went into a story in that post. I’ll have to find it. Did I categorize that post in the correct place?

Posts Containing My Creative Snippets. That’s where it should be.

Yes, the doll would fit in there.

I guess, the next time I flash on something as I’m writing a post, I should just go ahead and put whatever it is into the post. If I slide off into a story then so be it. That’s what writing is all about. That’s just the creative process.

Or, at least that is how my mind works. I’m not saying the process is the same for all writers.

In any case, perhaps I can rest easy now. Maybe the doll won’t continue to haunt me now that I have found a place for it.

And what about you? What happened as you ran out of that alley. Did you kick that chamber pot?

Here, c’mon, hurry. I’ve got a carriage waiting. Hop in and we can go to my flat. It is still Victorian era London, you know. You can tell me what happened as we ride, or wait until we are comfortably settled in at my place. We can start a fire and sit for a while. We can have a glass of sherry, or whatever you prefer. Perhaps I’ve even got a volume or two of stories written by a fellow named Arthur Conan Doyle. We can dip in and check on Holmes and Watson, see what case they are working on. I don’t think there is a story involving a porcelain doll. Though I believe there is one involving orange pips. But there could be just such a case of a doll in the future. Who knows?

I think I’ve got the porcelain doll settled, and I can rest easy, no longer haunted by the image.

But now there is another image. I’ve got the little boy pushing his way through the mass of shoppers and dealers in the medina. This is his territory, and he moves smoothly and swiftly through the crowd. He doesn’t even notice the sights and sounds swirling about him. We do, however. There is the sweet and pungent odor of the crowd, a mix of sweat and cologne. The colorful silk scarves and bright design of rugs are everywhere, flashing as the throng parts and reforms. The sea of people flows along, bodies pressed together, all moving in a multitude of directions, pushing, dodging, jostling each other, hands brushing, fingers grasping at small purses and sliding into pockets. There are necklaces hanging on stands, each showing a small hand hanging from a chain, palm facing outward, an eye in the center of the palm, watching. There are more rugs, pocketbooks, hand-carved chess sets, robes, tables of perfume, almond oils. There are bins of nuts and dates. There are the sounds of French and Arabic, murmurs, whispers and normal level calls of vendors peddling their wares. The sun sparkles down onto the throng, and the crowd shifts, showing bins of colorful spices. The heat rises, carrying the scent of varied spices, mingling this scent with the odor of sweating bodies. And still our young friend moves along, undeterred, not at all distracted. He is set on his mission.

Yes, there is a story here. Maybe I’ll pursue it at some point, now that I’ve quieted the porcelain doll image. That doll scene is put to rest. I hope. At least until I decide to take it up again in the midst of a story.

But wait, there is more. My mind jumps back to the high school. There are a couple of patrol cars now in the lot. An ambulance now sits waiting. There is a small crowd gathered around the corner of the building where the young boy’s body lies.

A brown sedan pulls into the lot and parks. A woman gets out of the sedan and moves across the lot. She is around forty, brunette, a little thicker than she was when she was younger. She had been the Homecoming Queen when she was younger, not at this school, but at the rival school across town. A certain beauty still lingers, one can see it. The crow’s feet are there at the corners of her eyes, and the eyes show a weariness. The eyes are alert, taking in the scene, not missing a thing. One can imagine her story, early marriage, a baby . . . And then something happened. Perhaps the baby had died, not violently, but quietly in sleep. The marriage fell apart. Her husband drank, had affairs. Or maybe it was her who did this. But now she is in control, in command of things. She’s the lead detective. Her name is Maddie Carson, perhaps, or Allie Bridges (though I’m thinking Allie might be her sister), or whatever. A name will float down and flutter softly onto her character eventually. Something will stick. The name will just feel right, or I will just become used to using it as I write. I’ll have to refer to her in some way. Perhaps another character, someone from her past, will surprise me and call her something, a nickname perhaps, and that will stick. Is there someone in the crowd, a friend that she recognizes from her school days? Maybe this friend will fill Maddie in on the general atmosphere at the school. Is there a clue somewhere in the mix?

Well, thank you, dear reader—or should I just call you friend? Thanks for joining me as I meander along the path of story writing. This is my process. There is no great secret to it all.

Images flash and sounds rise up. Characters move and speak. It all forms together in the end. I don’t worry, or give any of it a second thought. Well, unless an image haunts me, like the doll, but then I write it in somewhere, into some scene, and all is well.

And another image is sort of bugging me now. The butter knife next to the boy’s body at the school. I can’t explain where that came from, or whether it will mean anything at all in the grand scheme of things. I’m thinking not. For now, it is there. I wonder how it will look to the detective. I wonder what she will think of it, whether it will be significant in the case. I can’t see how it will. I honestly don’t have a clue. Maddie (or whatever her name becomes) will bring the experience and skills of a detective. I’m just along for the ride. That’s why writing is such a blast.

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And I’ve got a Goodreads Giveaway going in case you’re interested in entering.