Snapping Bones - the shortest of short stories

Wednesday - Prose Day

(Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash)

Snapping Bones

With an extra hard tug the twisted bone finally snaps and pokes through the stretched skin. Mission accomplished. The glaring white edge peeps through the flesh coloured plastic and the toy is ruined. Yet another one confined to the bin, thankfully. The last one had it’s eyes poked out. That was relatively simple, a pencil and a hard poke and she was blind. Breaking the legs on these larger dolls takes effort, twisting the leg backward and forward beyond its natural limits again and again until, finally, plastic fatigue sets in, the crack is heard and the jagged bone commonly punctures through the flesh immediately. If not, it isn’t too much work to force the skin down over the fracture.

So there it is. A facile smiling doll with a compound fracture of the knees. I think this is the fifth or sixth doll I’ve tortured. Maybe now they will stop buying them for me. I don’t like dolls and I keep telling them so. I keep them naked, cut their hair, brand their faces with hot matchsticks, peel their plastic flesh and break their bones. With each new doll I discover more ways to maim and mutilate.

Tossing the despoiled body aside I rise, clean my filthy hands on my skirt, as if to wipe away the doll's blood, and head indoors. Mother is cross. She shouldn’t fuss really, I need the practise for when I use my skills on her. I really wouldn’t want to get it wrong.

My first prose piece for you. The shortest of short stories that I’ve written, I’m not even sure if it counts as such. But here it is. It has been shorter, it has been longer. Almost every time I read it I tinker with it in some way. But this is todays iteration.

Enjoy.

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