(AFI - Love Like Winter)

“Here she is, the Beau.”

Before I begin, I’d like to proclaim my utmost dislike towards my neighbour:

“Can you please keep your dolls within the confines of your own house?!”

My weird neighbour has this habit of displaying his newly-collected dolls along the corridor near to the staircase. But there’s nothing new about these dolls and they aren’t really the pretty types — they’re mostly dolls that babies love to play with: those that can eeriely close and open their eyes when you move them. I’m not sure where he collected these plastics, but their ragged and messed-up looks suggest they could’ve probably been left in the dump for quite a while before this ‘thoughtful’ neighbour adopted them and allowed them to reside here along this corridor of ours.

What would you do if late one night after you’ve climbed up the stairs dead and tired and for the most part had your eyes fixed at the neverending steps thinking of absolutely nothing but your bed, when you finally reach the final flight you look up only to be greeted by a pair of stupid dolls sitting just beyond the last step in a chair and worse still facing in your direction — like they’ve been expecting your arrival?!

What would you do if you come across these two stupid dolls that weren’t even there earlier when you left the house?

Easy. Your heart will get stuck in your throat, your body will shake, and your immediate response will be to let out an expletive or expletives depending on how well you’ve been juggling your vocabulary.

I was thinking of snapping a photo of that stupid doll but its eyes appeared too real to be plastic. So for now, I won’t disturb it too much.

Stupid dolls. Stupid neighbour.

Anyways, my cousins are mostly married and all of them have their little ones already. Here’s one of the little ones whom I only got to know last week after all these years: