I'd had this doll for quite a while now.
It was a beautiful porcelain doll. You know, the way most porcelain dolls look. It was just like that. Wavy blonde curls. Black eyes. A beautiful pink and white dress with a typical headband with lace around the edges. It was a doll I'd revived from my mother at an early age. At that age, I'd always thought it was such a pretty doll - a perfect look. My grandmother had almost 50 dolls of that kind. All of them beautiful, perfect porcelain dolls. But this one in particular, the blonde with the red dress, I will always remember.
Because this is the one that would be the death of me.
I've lived alone for quite a while now. I had just gotten into college, seeing my whole life lay in front of me and all I had to do was to just go and pick out what I wanted. Easy as that. I was aiming for Psychology - a subject I had started to respect and enjoy over the past 3 years. Seeing as my mother was a nurse and my dad was a therapist, it was an obvious choice for me. But moving so far away from all my friends and family wasn't as easy as I thought.
Sure, my roommate was a nice person, but maybe not as chatty as I'd hoped. I wasn't a person who just sat quietly in my room and only spoke when I had to. I enjoyed getting out, seeing friends... But I didn't have and time or friends around. No one would talk to me unless I wanted help from my teacher in school or my roommate had forgotten to buy milk. It was lonely to say the least.
Homework was the only thing to keep me distracted from feeling lonely. I didn't even have time to try to make friends. Friends were a silly thing after all. I didn't have time to go and party. It was worthless, and my dad would skin me alive if I didn't focus on my schoolwork.
The only thing I had brought from home to remind me of my family was that doll. The girlish you was displayed on the desk in from of my bed, smiling against me when I needed someone to talk to or just watch over me as I slept. It was me and that doll the whole time. That fucking ugly doll.
As time went on, I started to pull myself more and more away from human contact. The schoolwork was getting over my head, and the regret of going here set in. But I couldn't quit now and go home, not after my parents had paid for my college and car to get here. I just had to stay and make the best out of it. I really tried hard. But with each day the hatred of other people took hold of me, and I would need hours alone, just sitting in my room to calm down. It was getting harder to get out each day. My roommate despised me, I could tell. But I didn't blame her. I was acting like a jerk. I refused to take my share of daily chores. But I couldn't do it. I was being pulled into a dark hole.
And with the loneliness came the paranoia.
At first I accepted being lonely. But it had reached the point were I had started to notice my dumb behavior, trying to reach out to people, to tell them I wasn't feeling right. There was only stress, and nobody had time to talk to a stupid college student. It was only the nerves. I hoped it was. I locked myself in my room and I couldn't go out anymore. I had to send to my teachers to cancel the classes, day after day. But it didn't matter. They didn't send anything in search for me. So I just kept spinning in my room, week in and week out. It was an evil circle I couldn't get out of.
Then it happened, my room had been my cage. I wouldn't eat, I couldn't. It even reach the point were my roommate would knock on my door to check on me. But I didn't open up. I just yelled back for her to go away. She did.
She didn't care enough to make a second attempt. She never knocked on my door again. It was just me. Me and my doll, watching over me, every breath I took.
Then there was that night.
This night actually.
It was a night that I was supposed to be spending alone. I didn't bother trying to turn on the lights as I stepped up from my bed and pulled on a sweater and a pair of untied converse before I made my way out of my room for the first time in so many days. I needed fresh air and my window was broken, unable to open up. It was the middle of the night, maybe even morning. It was still dark outside so I just assumed it was night, even though I hadn't checked the time yet. I couldn't care less.
Anyway, it was a pain in the ass to come out of the room and not wake up my stupid roommate. All I needed was to get out for a minute or two, gather some air, maybe go out and buy some cigarettes. I had promised myself to stop smoking but lately, that was the only thing is been doing. Smoking. I'd only sneak out late at night to go and get some new cigs. It was a bad thing, I knew. But it was the only thing to keep me going, and it kept me awake and safe.
But that particular night, there was something strange. Someone had unlocked the gate out to the street. It hadn't opened before, and I thought the landlord held a hard hand to keep it locked at all times. Didn't bother. I just pushed the little red box out of my pocket and started smoking. The good thing about that night was that no one was around, no one to another me with their stupid voices. It was quiet, maybe just a car driving by. But then, no more than that. It was peaceful.
A few minutes after gaining some cold on my warm skin and some smoke inside my lungs, I decided to go back inside and maybe try watching some television. Nothing good aired at night, but it was always worth a try.
I stepped back into the building and shrugged that last bit of unwanted cold off, making myself ready to sneak back into my room. But as soon as I came to the staircase, there was something in the way. Or someone. Someone was standing on the stairs.
I had to admit, it did scare me to some point, but a second later, I was back in my 'not give a single fuck' state and tried to walk up the stairs without confronting the person standing in the way. At first I thought it was my roommate, but the shadow of the person was too...manly. Too big to be my roommate.
I tried to pass the odd stranger and just slightly bumped my elbow into his. But he didn't move or speak. He just stood there. It was creeping me out. The scenario was too creepy. But of course, there were other students in this apartment building just waiting to scare the shit out of some poor first year student. But I wasn't the one to be fooled.
I didn't stop until I heard a sound. It was one of those sounds that just caused your concentration to break. It was...distracting. Scaring. Unnerving. I couldn't continue on, so I just froze in the position and tried to turn around to face him.
At first there was a cracking sound - the sound that had startled me. Then there was sobbing. A young man's voice of sobbing. But it wasn't human. Yeah, maybe to some degree. But the voice was pitching up, like it was breaking through a bad static television screen. I stood only a few steps away from the man in the shadow. I wanted to break away from my sudden frozen state of mind, but I couldn't. I was stuck, like my feet had been nailed to the stairs.
I was trying to speak, but he spoke before I had the chance to. It was getting clearer to see now, since spending more time in the dark helped the vision clear up. He was wearing some kind of jacket, black. Everything black. A sewn cap, with string falling out the hole in the back. Also black. His hair was torn but long, like he hadn't been able to cut it for a while, or shower it.
His appearance etching inside my mind, but his voice appeared like a dagger in my ears. When he spoke, he made off another static noise, like a broken radio. But he spoke in words. He tried to calm me down, but I was already too scared to relax.
"You're alone here, aren't you?"
I swallowed hard. The thought of somebody spying on me this entire time was filling my head like urging vomit, feeling disgusted by this man and his voice. I just shook my head. No response. I couldn't give him a reply. I should have. Maybe it would have changed this whole situation for the better. Maybe I wouldn't have been here now, scared for my life. But I was. And I knew he knew I was.
But when I didn't give him the answer he'd expected, he turned to me. And his sight was one of the most horrifying yet fascinating faces I had ever seen. He wasn't scarred or wounded in anyway to make me feel uncomfortable by his appearance.
But his eyes. And his mouth. There was a weird glow. A golden, orange glow. It filled both his eyeballs and mouth, his teeth shining through in a bright yellow light. It glowed in the dark and it casts a light across us. On the stairs, the floor... On me. And I could see the smirk on his gray painted face. That's when I snapped.
It wasn't human. And I just had to get away from there.
I broke through the invisible bonds and threw myself up the stairs, running up quickly as my untied shoes slammed against the floor. I fled to my room without a second thought. Hoping, my roommate that I'd ignored for so many weeks, would hear me and call the cops.
I closed the door after me and locked it, my stumbling feet knocking me into a desk, throwing my precious family doll down on the floor. The porcelain broke, and I gasped in panic, trying to recollect my thoughts. There was no more noise after I had slammed the door to my room. No roommate coming after me, no weird glowing man in the stairwell. Just me and my broken doll, laying on the floor. I tried to cry. It wasn't real. I'd become too crazy, insane. After spending so many months just being alone, this is what had happened. I was laying on the floor, broken and shattered to pieces. I didn't know what to believe.
I didn't sleep. I sat on the floor, pacing back and forth by crawling the best I could. The cigarette from before now just sat like a needle in my throat. I was thirsty but I couldn't move out to the kitchen to drink anything. Maybe he was there. Still waiting for me to come out. But I didn't move. I never did.
But after an hour of complete silence in the room, I began to down and stand. There was still that feeling of being watched. And I knew that felling all too well. The feeling of being paranoid and lonely all came down to this. A breakdown.
Once I remembered the doll being broken, I immediately started trying to fix it. It was like the only thing I could focus on. My best friend. The doll. I managed to get a needle and thread in my room and some glue to get the doll back to its former glory. But it wasn't easy. No matter how hard I tried, the doll just wouldn't fall back together. It became an endless attempt of nothing. I tried again and again, but it just fell back apart.
My only friend.
I became too tired of the sudden panicking and fixing of the doll, I just passed out on my bed. I curled up into a ball, with a blanket over my head. All I wanted to do was sleep.
I didn't know he would come back.
This time, it was different. This time, I welcomed it. I was tired of running and would rather die in my sleep than face another day of being lonely. And now that my only friend was broken, what was a supposed to do?
It was tiring, the way he approached me this time. It was like I was asleep, but I could still control my body. Like a lucid dream. I wouldn't dare to step into another day. Tonight, it would end. Just like I'd been afraid it would. But I didn't care anymore. Didn't bother. I just wanted to have a long sleep and never wake again. Never face the loneliness again.
He came back to me. With his hands guiding me up from my bed, he wrapped his mind around my own, as I tried to see. But the only thing I could still see were his gray hands, holding mine tight. Then, there was a sensation I wasn't sure I could feel. Of floating.
Like a puppet, he cut two holes in my wrists. But it wasn't...across. More like it was from the center of my arm and down. He reached for something. Muscles. Something to peel out and hang onto. The bad thing was, I allowed him to do it. My struggle had become too much to bear. With long pieces of muscle hanging out of the cuts, he started pulling at them. He pulled at them like he wanted to control my body and arms.
Yet, there was no pain. No pain that filled my heart or body, just another piece of my mind staying at ease again. It was a wonderful feeling.
It was like nothing else mattered.
And as he began to cut me open, he began singing.

They call me the Puppeteer
My fingers are thin and my hands are stained with my tears
For puppets I steer
with my strings and dreams.

Now I could see him clearer. The man who I'd just hated, I now welcomed to finish off this suffering. Maybe it had been he who'd forced me into this thinking? Maybe he was to blame for everything I'd done to myself? Was this all in my head? Or was it real?

They call me the Puppeteer
I had no friends, alike you.
For nobody saw the value of my friendship
But in the end they all became my friends
With my strings and dreams.

It took me only a minute to loose every sense of my touch. My nerve system had been crushed by this... this thing, breaking every bone in my body. I could feel him twisting my rib and hip bones. All to make it easier for him to turn me into what he saw me to be. It was like the long pieces of muscle were strings. Controlling my limbs, and my head flailing from side to side. All I could see was his smile, so I smiled back at him.

They call me the Puppeteer,
My body dark and my eyes hunger of gold.
In my eyes, no one is alone.
And with my strings and dreams,
You shall be my friend too.

The last thing I felt, was his hand tugging hard around my neck. Snap. At first, I was afraid to see death approaching me this way. I had never thought of it this way. I would have said no and refused, if I could've decided it on my own. But I didn't.
I said yes.
With a broken neck, death is just half a second away. Then there is nothing but a golden smile, and his warm hands holding my strings up as my body fell.
Early the next morning, my roommate found me. Dead. I'd hung myself by the fan in the ceiling. I'd jumped from the bed. Beside me, was that doll. The broken porcelain doll with the red dress and blonde hair. You may be wondering how I'm writing this right now, or how I found my way to contact you. I decided to write down my story before I passed on.
This is my legacy. This is what I'm leaving behind.
I couldn't stand the loneliness anymore.
Dear mom and dad,
I'm so sorry.