The thing about being the murdered doll collector is you set the plot in motion.

The children will cross on the other side of the street, call your place haunted, call it creepy, turn away from the dead little marble eyes meeting theirs through shade-drawn windows. The children will do dares to each other: touch the side of the house, now up to the porch, now turn the doorknob, now feel it giving, now hear the creaking inside, step inside, step inside, I dare you.

After your death, the dolls will go, one by one, porcelain-faced girls in rustling dresses, brittle little hands, darlings, your darlings, they’re like my children, you’d tell anyone who visited, their hand-stitched silken hair, their hand-painted bow-pink mouths.

Your dolls will go, row by row, shelf by shelf, stowed into shipping boxes laden with tissue, packing peanuts, every day for weeks, the woman that the Society hired pulling up to your door in her minivan, twist the key in the lock. Doll haven, she’ll think, doll heaven, she’s never seen so many dolls, she will stay for an hour at a time, go from room to room to room, dolls here, dolls there, she’ll think dolls everywhere, wrap their little faces first, whisper to them hush now, hush now, as they each go into their box. The children will be at school when the dolls go, at piano lessons, softball practice, the children will come home, glance at your open-eyed house, say it feels a bit lighter now, somehow it feels lighter.

The children will wait for the day when all the dolls are gone, finally gone, the children will turn the latches on their bedroom windows at night, see roaming shadows headlight-reflected from your house onto the street, dream of giants comprised of doll bodies walking on little porcelain feet, ghost-cracking through the neighborhood streets. The children will dream of you in your bed, piles of newspaper outside your door, mail falling through the slot, and they will wake crying as they haven’t done since they were small, bedspreads tucked up to their chins, help, scratch-voiced, tremble-voiced, help, help, help.

The parents will come rushing to their sides, spread cool washcloths over their children’s foreheads; the parents will say it’s all right now, you’re all right now.

They’ll say: Nothing can hurt you.

They’ll say: You’re safe.

The parents will wait for the steadying of the rise and fall of their children’s chests, for the softening of their breaths, the sleep-flicker of their eyelids. The parents will take away the cool washcloths, kiss their children’s cheeks, so soft, they’ll think, still so soft, quiet-close bedroom doors behind them as they go.

They’ll stand in dim-lit kitchens, sip chamomile tea, gaze out the window at street-dark night, gaze out to your house and its collection, they will think even he was afraid of the dolls, even he left the dolls, they will forgive themselves, try to forgive themselves, for leaving you all that time. They will stare, stare, stare out the window, and they will feel, in the night, like something is returning their gaze, like something is watching, and they will whisper, hand-clutching tea-hot mugs, again, you’re safe.

You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe.

Cathy Ulrich is the founding editor of Milk Candy Review, a journal of flash fiction. Her work has been published in various journals, including Black Warrior Review, Passages North, and Wigleaf and can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, Best Small Fictions 2019 and Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2017 and 2019. She is the author of the flash fiction collection Ghosts of You (Okay Donkey Press, 2019). She lives in Montana with her daughter and various small animals.