They looked at him strangely - the old man pushing a doll around and talking it like it was alive. He neither noticed nor cared. He'd spend hours just sitting on his favourite park bench with the doll at his side, a bag of bread on its lap like it was feeding the ducks with him and when he thought no one was looking he'd push little bits of bread between the doll's lips.
They pitied him and whispered to their spouses that he needed to go to a Home but nobody had the heart to make that call. Instead they watched from a distance as he treated a piece of porcelain like his own child, not noticing that the doll had a tendency to move and ignoring the playground stories that it blinked and breathed all by itself.
This continued up until the old man fell over in the park and was taken to hospital. He begged the paramedics to take his doll with them and screamed when they picked it up by one arm. Needless to say he ended up staying in the ward for a lot longer than anyone anticipated. Long after his physical injuries had healed.
As he slept a curious nurse picked up the doll to examine it, see what made it so special to the old man. She expected it to smell utterly vile after all the little scraps of food he would feed it but it smelled more like a newborn than a bin.
Nobody believed her when she said it narrowed its eyes at her and started to wriggled like an uncooperative infant. They said she was just freaked out and tired when she told them it was as alive as any of them were and she could prove it.
She chose her moment well - making sure there were plenty of visitors in the ward and plenty of staff when she accidentally knocked the doll from the side table. It hit the floor with a dull thud that was drowned out by the old man's screaming.
Nobody expected the doll to bleed.
They pitied him and whispered to their spouses that he needed to go to a Home but nobody had the heart to make that call. Instead they watched from a distance as he treated a piece of porcelain like his own child, not noticing that the doll had a tendency to move and ignoring the playground stories that it blinked and breathed all by itself.
This continued up until the old man fell over in the park and was taken to hospital. He begged the paramedics to take his doll with them and screamed when they picked it up by one arm. Needless to say he ended up staying in the ward for a lot longer than anyone anticipated. Long after his physical injuries had healed.
As he slept a curious nurse picked up the doll to examine it, see what made it so special to the old man. She expected it to smell utterly vile after all the little scraps of food he would feed it but it smelled more like a newborn than a bin.
Nobody believed her when she said it narrowed its eyes at her and started to wriggled like an uncooperative infant. They said she was just freaked out and tired when she told them it was as alive as any of them were and she could prove it.
She chose her moment well - making sure there were plenty of visitors in the ward and plenty of staff when she accidentally knocked the doll from the side table. It hit the floor with a dull thud that was drowned out by the old man's screaming.
Nobody expected the doll to bleed.
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