Nothing gold can stay, and everything good must eventually expire in my arms. That’s just how it is. I really thought this would be different. I don’t know why. I suppose I just wanted to believe.

It hurts so much because my heart is breaking, and all the blood I’d ever had within me is pouring out.

I looked down at the knife in my chest through my tears, and wondered what I had ever done to deserve the pain. All I had offered her was Love. Is that so wrong? Is it a crime to adore someone?

I had lost everything. I had nothing left and nothing to give but the world still wanted more.

I don’t know how much I am expected to take.

If I couldn’t have her, then the world couldn’t have me. If I couldn’t have her, nobody could. If I couldn’t have her, I couldn’t go on. You get the idea.

It was real.

Don’t you understand? Don’t you get it? They called me sick. Fucked up. A mess. A monster.

I was just a woman in love.

My family has been torn apart. They took my little girl. They said she’d be better off in foster care, away from her silly Mummy. It’s okay. She’ll give that foster family hell, and she’ll come back to me.

She has to come back to me.

The trouble is, if she makes it back, I don’t know what there will be to come back to.

I think I might be dying.

That’s a shame.

Pumpkins is gone. They took him too. I didn’t love him, but I liked having him around. He was useful for doll making, and just for company.

God, I hate the quiet.

I miss my Marilyn.

She’s still here with me, but it’s not the same. She’s all broken. I tried to patch up her broken bits with other parts from my Dolls, but it’s just not the same. She’s just not the same. It’s all so broken.

I just wanted to be happy. Is it such a crime to be happy?

I hate the way she looks at me now. Her eyes are so cold. She’s tearing me apart, and soon, we will be nothing but spare parts, littering the sitting room.

Maybe it’s the blood loss talking, but… maybe I deserve this. It all hurts. It all feels like a blur.

There we were, a happy family, on a normal day, and then, it was all over. The police burst through the door. Violet was hysterical. Marilyn was in tears, and Pumpkins made a break for it through the window.

I was arrested. What was the charge? Making some dolls? Some succulent, sensational dolls? They were happy with me. I made them so beautiful. So perfect.

Murder, they called it. Several counts. Absolutely ridiculous. Utter rubbish. I was locked up for days. They enjoyed it. Dragging it out. Keeping me hostage.

Sick. Sick. Sick.

I’m not sick. Maybe this is me flourishing? Maybe everything will get better now? Before… before was just a dream. It was the most beautiful dream I’ve ever had, but it was just a dream. It could never last, but maybe now, maybe I’ll go somewhere that will last forever.

I have been a bird all my life, but this life has been clipping and chipping at my wings since the day I was born, and I can’t take it anymore.

Is it so wrong to say that?

I just wanted my freedom, but my idea of freedom is so intertwined with somebody else. My dolls. My baby girl. My lover. My imagined audience in the pages of this book that has been my only confidante.

Oh, my dearest, darling diary. What if there’s no coming back from this?

They let me keep my dolls and my Marilyn if I gave up Pumpkins. I don’t know what they wanted him for and I didn’t care, I just wanted to go home, so I made the deal. I tricked him. I watched them chase him down and I went home like my life hadn’t changed, but it had.

I just wanted my freedom. Freedom is being loved, but there’s nobody left to love me.

They took my little girl, and even if she shows her teeth to those well meaning people and runs away, she won’t come back here. She was never really mine.

My dolls can’t love me back. I know that. I’m not stupid. I don’t even know if I loved them. I just wanted them, for a little while, and then a little while became forever.

You’re just pages. I love to write in you, and tell you all my tales but you’re just pages.

Marilyn was all I had left in this world, but as soon as I stepped through the door, she tried to run.

I tried to calm her down. I tried to talk to her. I tried to hold her, like I used to. She didn’t want to be held. Even though there’s barely a thing inside her, there must still be a small slip of something left. She used to cower and stay calm when I had Pumpkins around, because he scared her to death, but when it was just the two of us, I had nothing.

She never loved me. I don’t know if I loved her, but my God, I wanted us to be in love so badly.

I cried like my whole world was ending, because it was. She can’t cry much anymore, not like she used to, but she looked at me with sorrowful eyes. I couldn’t get them out of my head, so I got them out of hers.

I couldn’t help it. She was broken so I took her to pieces and put her back together, but she was already gone.

My living doll is no more, and I don’t know that she ever was to begin with.

I don’t have my Marilyn. I don’t have a thing in this world, except my lonely heart, lost in isolation, and what good is that?

If I can’t have her, nobody can, and if she can’t have me, I’m not long for this world.

I want to tear this terror from my chest. My heart is pounding and pleading but I have nothing more I can do for her. I tried. This really is all that there is. There are no better days. My dreams are just dreams.

Maybe I’ll wake up in heaven, or hell, or maybe, I won’t wake up at all, and there will be nothing. I will feel nothing. I will be nothing. The aching will be over, at last.

It’s been hurting for such a long time. I can’t think straight with the pain and the pleading of my heart. I’ve never felt anything but the hunger, since I first set eyes on this world. I just wanted to be loved. I wanted to love. Is it so bad? Am I so bad?

I’m paying for it. Whether I’m good, bad or something entirely different, I am paying the price.

Knife through my chest in a rage, bleeding out on the floor, my lover’s heart in my hand as her body surrounds me, and these words, scrawled on the last few pages, in these last few seconds.

She was gone. Broken. Beyond me. I just wanted to run away but I had nowhere to go. The police let me go, but I knew they’d never let me make another doll again, and even if I could’ve, it wouldn’t be the same.

Maybe I can start over? Maybe it will be different when I wake up. I could come back as a shooting star or a butterfly, and everything would be so simple, and so special.

I’m not a good girl, but I sure was entertaining. I just wanted the world to fall in love with me. I just wanted to give all the love I had to the world. Is that so wrong?

My beautiful hands are browned with blood, but they’ve always been like that. Nobody could see it, but I knew.

I’ve always known, and you did too, my dearest, darling diary.

Love Forever,
The Puppet Mistress