I ALWAYS WANTED A DOLLIE

{Maxine courtesy of the genius of Leonora Roy}

Some characters take on a life of their own with readers. 

They plead for more adventures of the characters who supported the major ones in your novels. 

Maxine, the Goblin Princess for example.

Christine Rains:
http://christinerains-writer.blogspot.com/

wanted to see another story of Maxine, the Goblin Princess, from END OF DAYS.

So, Christine, here is Maxine shopping in a Toy Store of the Damned in the haunted French Quarter:

I ALWAYS WANTED A DOLLIE (400 words):

Genesis backwards: first light, now darkness. It sprang at me like a nebulous panther. I dropped the coffee mug I was going to buy.

A hollow tinny laughter echoed from all around me. Though it was August in New Orleans, winter visited my blood.

A demon child giggled to my left. Swift movement. My cell phone was snatched off my belt. I snarled as it was flung back into my face.

I caught it in mid-air. The battery was missing. Something didn’t want me calling for help.

As if.

The demon girl’s voice tittered from the toy shelves above me. “Aren’t you big to be visiting the doll section?”

A human would have been blind. I saw the fragments of the mug. It had read: I RATHER BE BARBIE.

I wanted to buy it. I was going to tell Higgins, Trish, Becca, and Alice I bought it as a joke. But the joke was on me. I would have given the soul I did not have to be Barbie.

“I always wanted a dollie,” I murmured, pulling the unlit candle from under my belt.

The demon girl’s voice now came to my left. “Aw, Mommie wouldn’t buy you one?”

“Mother took one look at me at birth, saw I looked like Father, and deserted the both of us.”

Demon Girl was right behind me. “Daddy that ugly?”

I flowed forward in the Parkour roll Victor taught me. The razor swipe would have sheared off a lock of my hair if my head weren’t shaved.

I laughed bitterly. “No, Father was that … human.”

The Victorian doll, with the deadly razor in its porcelain hand, stepped back in shock. “Human?”

I gathered the darkness to me like a lover. Now, Demon Girl was blind. I touched Mother’s spirit within the marrow of my bones. The candle started to melt at its end. I traced Mother’s symbol on the floor in melted wax.

No, not a pentagram. You’re thinking Hollywood. The doll slashed wildly this way and that. I grinned cold as my soul.

I always wanted a doll. If you are lonely enough, you can convince yourself the sparkling eyes hold real love, the painted lips smile in true friendship.

If you are lonely enough.

I watched the doll step on Mother’s symbol.

Snap went the trap.

I snatched her up. She was bound to me.

I smiled, “I’ll call you Malice.”