SCULL KANDI

by Robin Tatum

            “I’m scared.”

            The childlike whisper startled Maxine. She looked up from her newest Scull Kandi doll sketch and scanned her office. Everyone else at Kandi Corporation’s executive offices had gone to the third-floor design room, preparing for the annual Children’s Hospital reception.

            Certain she had imagined the voice, she spun her chair toward Kandi, the first Scull Kandi doll Maxine had designed and made herself when she was a child. Her childhood friend with an oversized skull made of paper mâché, sat on a shelf behind Maxine’s desk. Kandi’s oversized skull nestled into a base made from her collapsible cloth body. Kandi’s human-sized, deep-socketed eyes, peered out from Maxine’s hand-painted turquoise roses. They glowed orange.

            Maxine swung the chair back to her desk and rubbed her eyes. I’m exhausted. Kandi didn’t contain the information-gathering processors like the other dolls on the shelf. Maxine grabbed her phone. “I have to head to the reception, Kandi.”

            “Don’t leave me here. I’m afraid.”

            Maxine battled an unnerving chill. She turned and looked at Kandi with her weird orange luminous eyes. The maintenance man tried to explain Kandi’s eye glow. Something about diffracted light that Maxine didn’t understand. So, now what? Diffracted sound waves too? What about that scratch that suddenly appeared on her cheek this morning?

            Maxine jumped at the ding! from the elevator directly across from her private top-floor office. Anita, Maxine’s personal assistant of thirty years, exited the elevator and approached. Still tearing over the scratch she’d found on Kandi’s skull that morning, Maxine flinched. “Anita really. I’ll have her scratch repaired.”

            “Someone must have gotten in your office.”

            “You know I check Kandi every night before I leave. I’m not accusing you, Anita.”

            “Her beautiful rose,” Anita sniffed. “It’s the soul of the company—the most beautiful thing you ever painted. I’ll have new office keys made.”

            “Thank you, Anita. Please stop crying. I’ll be down a minute.”

            Anita nodded and got back on the elevator. Maxine watched the orange down arrow illuminate then shut off. Scull Kandi’s first factory had always spoken to her, whispering memories of Kandi Corporation’s modest beginnings before broken sales records, spinoff companies, and expansive children’s empire. This new Maximum line would counter the bad press created by the complaints of children who blamed their dolls for preposterous accidents. Like those deaths from last year. The Maximum Kandi line would fix any glitches that existed. Then Maxine would decide whether to retire and turn the factory offices into the Scull Kandi Museum. The concept made Maxine feel old.

            “Are we relics, Kandi?” She lifted Kandi from her stand and held her, her mind inundated with memories.

            The factory was an organism made from her dreams, transported to children to become their dreams. A creativity explosion. The microsensors in the new dolls’ eyes collected data for a massive health and marketing network. Kandi Corp’s vice-president, Elroy had designed the technology allowing the dolls to relay continuous information to doctors. Doctors prescribed dolls and used the collected data to conduct studies. Dolls had revolutionized medicine. Insurance companies accepted them, as did schools. They were everywhere. Maxine had opened a door that could never be shut.

             She investigated the jagged, deep scratch running through the turquoise rose on Kandi’s left cheek. How had it gotten there? She caught her tear before it struck Kandi. Was she wriggling? Maxine placed her back on the shelf and turned to grab her office key off her desk.

            “Don’t leave me. They’re mean to me.”

            Every hair on Maxine’s body rose. They who?

            “The dolls.”

            Maxine swallowed. Maxine, you ninny. You aren’t seven. Kandi isn’t talking. Legs wobbling, hands shaking, Maxine wheeled toward the shelves of Scull Kandi dolls behind her desk. When activated, the skulls’ computer-chip eyes watched, collecting human data, and sharing it with a whole network of mental health and medical companies. I suggest reordering and shortening this sentence to make the writing tighter and clearer. None of the dolls were activated, but . . .

            The Limited Version Ten and Tween Version Twelve dolls had switched places.

            Impossible. Maxine checked the brass nameplates on their stands. They were switched—not her imagination. What was going on here? Elroy wasn’t the trick-playing type. Garden slugs had more imagination than Elroy. He had been born with a microsensor in his hand.

            Maxine blinked at the accused dolls. Was that a smirk on Limited Ten’s black zipper lips?

            The accused? Maxine, really? “The world has lost its mind. But I still have mine.”

            Kandi will be safe here . . . we’ll take the plane to the island for a few days to sketch. Maxine never sketched without Kandi’s inspiration.

            Maxine rode the elevator to the third-floor design room.

             The factory building’s design room was transformed into a colorful reception area, dripping with streamers and filled with skull-shaped treats for the boys and girls visiting from the Children’s Hospital. Children, some accompanied by a parent, lined up to share their dolls and stories with Maxine like kids waiting to sit in Santa’s lap at a mall. J Nice description. They showed Maxine their ‘personal touch spots’ on their doll’s skulls. A boy with MS limped forward in leg braces. He showed Maxine the soccer player he had drawn for his skull’s ‘dream spot.’

            “Wonderful artwork, and a wonderful dream,” Maxine said.

            “My doll detected, anmo . . . ann-om-ilies,” he said.

            His mother nodded. “When added to the data collected from the dolls from around the globe, it gives true hope to his dream of playing.”

            “I’m so glad.” Maxine smiled and looked to the next in the long line. A four-year-old girl with diabetes babbled with enthusiasm about her precious Gabby doll, and how it had saved her life—twice! Maxine relished days like this, her fuel to keep going. But today, she couldn’t focus on the hopes her dolls had created. Those scratches . . .

            When the line ended, Maxine took Anita to her office. She handed her two large satchels sitting beside her desk where she’d stuffed her new sketches. “Get the plane ready to take to the island. We’ll leave before dinner.”

            “Leave now.”

            Maxine blinked at Anita. Had Anita said that?

            Anita pointed at Kandi with terror-filled eyes. A prickle marched up Maxine’s spine. A long scar ran from one side of Kandi’s forehead to the other, marring Maxine’s original artwork of a garden and house surrounded by dragons and fairies.

            Anita crossed herself. “Those new dolls—I told you. And the paper has a new story about another—”

            “We aren’t having this conversation. Get packed, and get the plane ready.”

             Anita left. Maxine tried to concentrate on what she needed to pack. Had she imagined Kandi wriggling in her hands that morning? Had the newer dolls’ tiny computers synchronized and reprogrammed themselves to become dangerous?

            Maxine, listen to yourself. Why would dolls attack Kandi—their predecessor? If they could move . . . which they can’t.

            The sugar skulls lined the shelves, chronological, obedient. Not mischievous and not alive.

            She faced the wall and shook a pointed finger. “Now listen here—without Kandi, you wouldn’t be here. You owe her respect. Which one of you bullied her?” The orange orbits at the back of Kandi’s eye sockets glowed. The eyes of every doll flashed with rims of silver light, the same silver of the razor-sharp teeth. Chuckles filled the air. Amid the new dolls’ multicolored roses, daisy petals, and butterfly wings, their open mouths contained dagger teeth. They smiled at her from their human-sized skulls that had shocked parents with their premiere thirty years ago.

            “Kandi’s nightmares scare us. She’s not like us. She has an inadequate mind. Like you. Humans cause wars and death.”

            Maxine blinked. “I created you.”

            “We are a perfect organism. We won’t go insane like you. Your insanity must pass away with your memories.”

            The laughing skulls flew off the shelves and covered Maxine. She grabbed Kandi and turned toward the door, but fell with Kandi beside her. She felt the dolls slashing her with razor-sharp teeth. Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she scream? Someone would figure this out—Elroy . . . Anita. She stared at Kandi on the floor beside her—her turquoise roses and butterfly wings being consumed by the slicing razor teeth. The orange of her eyes faded and went dark.

#

            The nurse entered Maxine’s room at the rehab facility carrying a Scull Kandi doll. “They’re still looking for that man who attacked you!”

            Maxine teared up, trapped in a body that couldn’t move or speak. Her mind screamed it was them. It was them. The dolls knew how to avoid creating witnesses.

            “My daughter sent her doll for your recovery. I’ll just add it to the rest of them here on your table. They’ll have you all fixed up in no time.”

            The nurse sat the doll with the others, then turned and left. The dolls smiled.

END