I first noticed her when I was a child. I was crossing the footbridge connecting Rocky Island to the mainland. I always wondered how she came to be there.
Now, on the same small bridge, I watch her watch me. Unable to move, her doll’s body secured around her middle with a rope and a stone to the small driftwood bench she sits on, tied together with green and brown ropes used for fishing crates. She and the bench have been hoisted into the air between the island and the mainland, the ropes from either end looped over a rusted red pipe. She swings silently with the salt air coming in over the sea from her perch above the rocks. Her dress is the colour of seawater blue, seaweed green, and seafoam white regurgitated onto the shoreline with sand spittle. A floppy sun hat shields her face from the sun, long hair cascading from beneath in shades of pink and blonde over her shoulders to her waist. Her glassy eyes stare upwards towards where I stand, her rosy cheeks rounding out and highlighting the smile painted where a mouth should be. Her sisters play there too. I can see them on the side of the cliffs a little further along at the mouth of the inlet.
Issue 11
LOW LIGHT
Emily Fletcher is a writer from the North East of England currently completing a masters degree in English Literature with an interest in the Gothic. Her favourite Gothic novels turned TV shows are The Haunting of Hill House and The Turn of the Screw.