by Shirley Delsignore

Created on: April 18, 2008   Last Updated: June 28, 2009

Isabel
I don't remember when Isabel came into my life, one day she was there. Her faded rosy cheeks cracked with age, and the green eyes, green like emeralds, they would burn a hole through me. They watched me constantly. I knew Isabel was nothing more than a doll, but those eyes, they were alive. Isabel has fiery red hair and green eyes. She would watch me at night. There on my shelf, sitting silently with her legs crossed, with her sun bonnet and matching red checkered dress, and smug look. I used to think that she looked like she is draped in an Italian restaurants tablecloth. But those eyes, always watching, or at least I thought they were. She would talk to me, and she would tell me things. Things so bizarre I dare not repeat. Things, that when I think back on, make me sick. She would only talk to me in my dreams. Dreams? More like nightmares. Isabel was the reason I did not sleep much at night, she frightened me. At night before I would go to bed I would throw a towel over her, only to awake and find the towel neatly folded next to her. I stopped doing that, I was more afraid to wake and find the folded towel than to have her staring at me. She is real, she talks, she informs, she tells me what to do, and worse of all she knows my thoughts. She controls my every movement. She is why I am.

The first ten years of my life were uneventful. I was a normal kid. Mom and Dad both educated professionals, Mom an accountant and Dad a physical therapist. One sister and two brothers all younger than myself. I shared a room with my sister, we were not close, and five years separated us. We lived in the suburbs, nice house, two car garage, and backyard with garden, a dog and a cat.

The day Isabel moved in was the last day my cat would come into my room. Wanda would sit outside the bedroom door and hiss. I thought my sister had done something to her, hurt her maybe? But Wanda would still curl up in my sister's lap while she was watching TV. So it wasn't my sister, then it had to be the room. I never occurred to me that it was Isabel.

When I told my mom and dad about Isabel, they looked at each other smiled and told me, that I always had a great imagination and that Isabel was nothing more than a doll. That she had belonged to my great grandmother (who coincidentally killed herself, something my parents kept from me, only my loud mouth cousin 5 years older than me had felt compelled to tell me about her untimely demise). I knew Isabel had something to do with her death. And she would be the death of me.

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