The bed was strewn with the woolen fibers of the thin​ ​shredded blanket, the only thing she had left before the dark night​ t​hat had appeared beyond her front door. The stone tiles hung as drab​, jagged blades, cutting into her brisk skin​ u​ntil she felt no more of it.​ ​The girl had cried herself to sleep​ ​as the blanket that could hardly be called one​ ​shed layers like locks of wretched hair. Hours were shed just like the layers of thin fibers​ ​until the clock rung midnight​. J​ust as it rang, she woke, her legs tangled in the thin measly blanket, her only possession. The girl kicked her legs free and stood up, the surroundings around her were just a dingy black, Covered in layers of ash, gathered upon these neglected years. She froze despite how bleak her toes were​, ​for a sound sounded a floor beneath her. Who was it? What was it? The girl fell on her bottom on the cold floor as the reverberating sound echoed, but sounded clearly in front of her door. Who was it? What was it? The girl found herself unable to run, unable to back any further than the wall that separated her and freedom.​ ​The world then was silent as the crows that were once cawing from the thick, gnarly boughs of the willow that stood outside her microscopic window. Who was it? What was it? She took the frosted handle of the iron door and flung it wide open.​ ​There was nothing.​ ​Just a doll. A doll. She stepped outside the doorframe and peered at the doll.​ ​It hadn’t moved, but its eyes blinked and shuddered.​ ​The girl stepped swiftly pass it, for it was midnight and dark.​ ​Goosebumps formed on the girl’s slim, delicate arms as she stepped into the small living room, all cloaked in a translucent haze from her family’s death. Who was it? What was it? It was the doll.​ ​And it was there, positioned on top of the great grandfather clock her mother had once owned. The girl bent low and placed herself gingerly on the broken couch, sprains groaning as she yielded her whole weight in the center. It sagged. The doll stared at her with unblinking pupils, seeming to survey, curious of her every movement. The girl stared right back. She felt her eyelids growing heavy, as she yielded to the night sky outside the window. The stars were heavy just like her dreams and mind worn from years of abrasion. The moon was sticky and sweet, but unable to move any farther just as she was. As the girl’s eyelids closed, she propped her legs on the handle of the couch, seeming to forget about the doll, still watching her as an unwelcome guest atop the great grandfather clock. And nobody but the doll knew that her victim would not be alive the next morning, her blood shed on the dull, drab couch. Who was it? What was it? It was the doll, and years later, the girl’s body still lay preserved on the translucent couch she had met her fate on.