creepyclothdoll

[creepyclothdoll]

There's this thrift store at the old strip mall up the highway.

You go to the earrings first. You love earrings, but you’re always losing them.

This place has most of them in a wicker basket up by the register, but there’s more on a rack nearby and some of the fancier stuff is behind the glass under the table. But who goes for the “fancy” stuff at a thrift store? Thrift is the point. These earrings, the ones in the wicker basket, are stuck through blank, white cardboard squares with neon price stickers. 

All of them are under $10, lots under $5. You rifle through them, registering at first only that the colors and styles are very pleasing to you. Your favorite colors. The right size. Then the familiarity sets in. You are struck by a weird, uncanny feeling, which you don’t immediately place. Your body reacts to the surprise before your brain even has a chance to register what it is.

These are your earrings. Not all of them, but lots of them. Here’s a pair you bought from a different thrift store during your first year of college, gaudy wooden hippie-ish disks with flowers painted on– old and tacky, but you felt like you were cool enough to make them work– which you lost when you moved out of your dorm. Here’s a pair you lost in your last apartment, which you didn’t even realize you hadn’t seen around for the last two years– two fairly pricey and elegant-looking sapphires that your parents got for your 30th birthday, when you got promoted to Marketing Specialist. Here’s a pair you forgot you ever owned until now– some dangly red stacked beads that you wore for one Florida vacation in 2011 and then never again. Because you probably left them on the plane. 

“These are all mine,” you say out loud. You can see your reflection in the slim mirror built into the rotating sunglasses display. The earrings you are wearing today are a completely different style– the sort that a Marketing Specialist wears on the weekends, still arty but much more subtle than the sort you wore back then. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t wear these dangly red things now. You just… don’t, really.  

“Oh, that’s interesting,” says the employee. She is short and dark-haired and named Beth. She is reading a paperback at the check-out and ignoring you. 

You look at the price tag for the sapphires. $15.99. That’s a steal. 

But they’re mine, you think. I shouldn’t have to pay fucking money for these. They’re mine.

Your eyes drift down under the mirror to the sunglasses rack. The first pair there is child-sized, with a blue frame that has a faded Little Mermaid logo on it. You recognize the sunglasses from a photograph of yourself when you were a child at Valley Fair that was pasted to your mom’s fridge for the longest time. They’re $2.99. 

In the “fancy things” area under the glass, you see an old, heavy camera. Could that be the one your grandma made you bring to high school for show-and-tell, the priceless antique World War II era camera, which went missing after you left it overnight? You got in so much trouble for losing that thing, even though you never wanted to bring it to begin with. It’s only $500. You have to buy it. There’s also a tote bag with your old work logo plastered on it which, you know, is packed full of cannabis. You decided to stock up during a trip to Canada because you didn’t know anyone who sold it while you were living in North Dakota, making ends meet while you tried (and failed) to get scholarships to animation schools. You never got to use any of it, though, because that bag got shoved under a seat in your car when you were crossing the border and you just sort of didn’t retrieve it for long enough that, eventually, you forgot you had it, and by the time you remembered, you couldn’t find it again. 

How did it get here?

There’s a deck of gen 1 Pokemon cards that you took to the park one day in 2000 and left on a slide. You’re sure you had some back then that would be really, really valuable now. 

“These are all mine,” you say. “Can I have them back? They were mine originally, I mean. I didn’t give them up on purpose and I don’t know how they got here.”

“You can’t just take things,” Beth says. “But yeah, if you want to buy them, you can have them.”

“But they’re mine. That’s my grandpa’s World War II camera. I lost it in ninth grade and I feel terrible about that.”

“It’s $500,” Beth says, pointing to the sign. You sigh and pull out my credit card. But then you see the rack of jackets. Among them, you see a terribly familiar jean jacket. 

“That’s my mom’s!” you shout excitedly. You run over to it and pull it off the rack. It’s a 1980’s Levi’s jean jacket that she saved up all her money to buy. She wore it everywhere, and kept it for decades until she could pass it on to her daughter. You had it for two months. You loved that jacket. It symbolized your mom’s trust in you. And it made you feel cool. You were in middle school, and being cool was very important, and you got a lot of compliments on it. Then one day, you went with your little brother to the park, and it was hot out, so you took it off and left it on a bench. When you went home, you weren’t wearing it anymore. But you didn’t realize it was gone until your mom asked why you hadn’t worn it in awhile. The fact that you were so careless as to lose something so important to her broke her heart. You used to search the closets in your house compulsively, hoping it might just turn up one day, and your mom would forgive you. But it never turned up. You checked that park bench, too, every time you went to that park for the rest of your life. The jacket never returned, of course. 

But now, here it is, on this rack. 

If you’re going to take anything back from this place, you know it should be this. 

And then you see grandma’s quilt. 

It’s draped and pinched with clothespins on a different rack, with the tablecloths and scrap fabric. 

Your grandma made you this quilt when you graduated college. It has her handwriting on the corner and the year she made it– 2014. She spent months making this in your favorite colors, picking out fabrics she thought you would like. She knew you really well. You loved that quilt. 

Three years ago, you took it to the laundromat. You set it on a table while you did the rest of your laundry first, so you could cold-wash it separately. But then, a crazy guy came in, yelling and acting all erratic, and it was night and you were the only other person in there, and he kept asking to buy your hair, and you rushed out of there with your wet laundry dripping. You forgot about the quilt until the rest of your blankets finished drying on your apartment banister two days later. You called the laundromat and they didn’t have it. Last winter, your grandma passed. 

You grab the jean jacket and beeline for the quilt, adding it to your pile. 

Two of your old pillowcases are on the rack too— you didn’t even realize those had been folded up with the quilt the day you lost it.

In the children’s toy section, you see your favorite stuffed raccoon, Dorothy. You haven’t seen her for years. She used to go on lots of adventures with you and your brother. You don’t remember losing her, but now you realize that yes, she– and all these other stuffed animals– are lost. Somewhere along the line, you saw them for the last time. 

A scarf you wore in tenth grade. A pair of pants that don’t fit you anymore. A snowglobe with a picture of your middle school friends in it. A nice sports bra you got from a hiking gear store when you thought you were going to get fit four years ago. A piggy bank shaped like Spongebob. Dozens of Goosebumps books. A decorative halloween skeleton. A purple sweater that you forgot was your favorite.

You grab all these things and add them to the growing pile in your arms. 

What am I gonna do with this piggy bank? You ask yourself. But then you remind yourself that it’s yours. It doesn’t matter what you do with it! It’s just supposed to be yours!

The worst thing is that you don’t remember the loss of most of these things. You never grieved them. They mostly just slipped away quietly, and you moved on. You stopped buying scarves that looked like that because your favorite color changed and you sort of realized you didn’t really like scarves that much. But that doesn’t mean you don’t want it back. 

That scarf reminds you of the time you wore it to homecoming. A crisp autumn day that was made better by a good hot dog and worse by Rachel and Drew making out on the bleachers in front of you. You were happy that day. Not about homecoming– you lost the game, not that you cared much, but because of the weather, and your friends, and the hot dog, and because you didn’t know to be depressed yet. 

You want it back. 

You want it all back.

You take the scarf. You take the toys. You take everything. You take the christmas ornaments and the ukulele and rope strings of necklaces over your arms and purses over your shoulders. You take printed mugs, good water bottles, old halloween masks, trophies you won in elementary school, your second prom dress (the one with the glitter), happy birthday cards from relatives who died when you were little (they loved the little you! You were so loveable), a jello mould in the shape of a chicken you bought as a joke with your first real girlfriend (wish it ended different), a pair of ladybug-print rain boots you left outside when you were three, VHS family movies from the late 90’s, a phone you dropped in a lake, an old tamagotchi you also dropped in a lake, a book of self-portraits you did as a series in college (you look nothing like her now but you still want it), your old journal filled with comics (remember when you wanted to be a cartoonist?), your old skateboard (remember how you used to play?).

It’s the little trinkets, the things you don’t even think you liked very much, but which maybe you could have made better use of, that you want back the most. You aren’t done with those things. Unfinished, all of them. 

In a stack of blue bins against a wall are a thousand little things you drew or wrote over the course of your childhood– gifts to your parents, homework you never turned in, little stories about your friends, drawings of your grandma. Some of it is still pretty funny (remember when you wanted to be a comedian?). Animation cells that you made and stored away in the basement when you were telling yourself your scholarship hunt was just “on pause” (these ideas are still good, you can still use them!) What the hell are these things doing here? How dare these people?

“Excuse me, ma’m,” Beth says, only now looking up from her paperback– which you now realize is also yours– with a mix of irritation and deep concern. You spin around, covered head-to-toe in your things. 

“What?!” You snap. You are wrapped in the quilt, draped in ribbons and purses and medals and sweaters and scarves of all shades from all eras of your life. You look like a giant slug made of closet debris. 

“There’s no way you’re gonna buy all that,” Beth says. 

“Like hell I am!” You shout. “I shouldn’t have to buy any of it! It’s all mine, and I want it back!”

A little orange plastic treasure chest with two of your baby teeth inside– you used to be so little, so innocent. Your Girl Scout sash– you had so many friends. The orange yo-yo you got at a carnival when you were one– the first thing you consciously remember losing, remember how sad you were? A note you wrote to yourself with a funny song lyric on it last thursday (you might record it someday). A Mickey Mouse photo frame of you with your best friend Anna in elementary school (you loved her so much, why don’t you talk to her anymore?). 

“I want it all back,” you say again and again. 

There was a version of you who wore the red bead earrings. There was a version of you who played with the stuffed raccoon with your brother. There was a version of you who appreciated those nice sapphires. There was a version of you who was happy in a scarf at homecoming. There were versions of you with more friends, versions with fewer troubles, versions that were thinner and stronger and healthier and younger, versions that had all sorts of dreams and visions for the future, versions that strived for completely different things than you strive for now.

You can still have them back.

You pull the sunglasses display over, grabbing every pair and stuffing them into your many bags. You grab the hat rack that used to sit in your childhood bedroom and start dragging it toward the door. 

“Ma’am, I’m going to call the police if you don’t stop,” Beth says. You do stop– just long enough to walk back to her and take the paperback murder mystery out of her hands, which still has your library info as the last check-out glued inside the cover. 

“See?” You laugh bitterly, pointing at it. “Me!”

The nest of stuff has swelled around you, trailing behind you like the tail of a huge worm. 

Beth is already calling 911. You move very slowly toward the door, exerting tremendous effort to lug all of your precious memories toward the glass pane between you and the outside. You tell yourself that you can already feel the feelings coming back to you– all those other versions of yourself, just by proximity, are waking up again inside of you. The young woman who believed she was going to be something different, the child who was happy in the rain, the future artist before the future evaporated– all of them are coming back now. 

You don’t fit through the door. Beth is talking fast to the operator. In a small town like this, they’ll be here soon. Breathing heavy, you back up and slam into the open door frame, wedging yourself firmly inside. The little mermaid sunglasses shatter. Something crunches. You grunt and scream, pushing with all your might. Something rips. Something scrapes. 

“She’s trying to take everything,” Beth explains hurriedly. “You will? That’s great. As fast as you can.”

You have one last hail mary– you leap forward, letting yourself– and everything you’re wearing– fall to the ground. The enormous mass of things around you crunch down around you, crushing the air out of your lungs, pinning you to the cement. But you’re out. You did it. You took it all back. It’s yours. Yours again. 

By the time the police arrive, you’re gone– lumbering up the freeway, backward through traffic, a massive snakey worm made of tangled fabric and papers and trinkets. The “you” that walked into the thrift store is only a tiny piece of what you are now– a YOU freed from the burden of forgetting. Cars swerve around you to avoid hitting you or any of the things dangling from your massive, hulking form. 

Where are you going? To be everything you meant to be. To fulfill every possible future. It’s not too late. Not now that you have all of it back. 

You march forward like time.

[creepyclothdoll]

Artist: Lindsey Marie

[creepyclothdoll]

Fish from World of Warcraft

[creepyclothdoll]

show you’re obsessed with + text posts ...a household staple dare I say

[creepyclothdoll]

@cryptotheism My sister & cousin wrote a fanfic when they were 9 about Plumpy having Lord Licorice's baby. I think about it all the time

Did you know?

The Candy land board game is based on real events? It's true. All of that things happened.

Did you know that Lord Licorice is my homie in real life and we hang out?

[creepyclothdoll]

me drowning in a lake while my friend, 11th century french rabbi and prolific scriptural commentator Schlomo "Rashi" Yitzchaki (zy"a) stands nearby: help im drowing help me rashi

Schlomo "Rashi" Yitzchaki (zy"a): "drowing" is likely a scribal error for "drowning." "im drow[n]ing" is to say: my lungs have become filled with water, and i am struggling to breathe. "help" once followed by "help me" a second time: the first [help] is directed to the Holy One, blessed be He, and means: "may He help us by swiftly delivering the World to Come;" the second (i.e., "help me") is to invoke direct assistance in this world, spoken as if to a personal friend. the meaning of "rashi" here is unclear.

[creepyclothdoll]

[creepyclothdoll]

[creepyclothdoll]

ADHD mega-nightmare.

the real challenge of adulthood that no one tells you about in advance is how many goddamn pieces of paper you have to keep up with that are never important until they are suddenly VERY important

[creepyclothdoll]

Pit

I have a friend who lives in a tar pit. 

I love them. But if you hang out with them a lot, the tar gets on you and you can’t get it off for the longest time. It’s really easy to get stuck to them and fall into the pit if you’re not careful. But most people are. Most people avoid the pit entirely. That’s why my friend is lonely most of the time.

When I first met them, they were about waist-deep in the tar. You’d never know it, but under that black sticky mess was a pair of the most cutsey socks you ever saw. White fluffy pomeranians crocheted on. That’s what they said to me, anyway. All I could ever make out were the beady eyes of little black creatures clinging to their legs, slicked with viscous, heavy liquid.

They made some jokes about the tar pit, and we laughed. It was harder to pry them out than you’d think. It took all five of us, days of patience, and several contraptions. They sat down on the edge of the granite ledge overlooking the tar pit, their lower half covered in hot black ooze which stuck to the dirt and accumulated dead leaves and sand. 

They wrinkled their nose at this.

“How come this isn’t happening to you?” they said, looking at our blue jeans and dusty hiking boots, which were mostly clear of tar. 

“It is,” I said, showing them the tarry mess on my hands and elbows, coated with debris. 

“Only because you touched me,” they replied, staring at the dirt and tar on themselves with growing disgust.  “I think I would have died if you hadn’t come,” they said to me. When we started to leave, they started to cry. “You are abandoning me now? After saving me?” They asked. 

“Obviously we want you to come with us,” I said. 

“It’s because I’m made of tar,” they spat. 

We told them they were not made of tar. But nothing we said could convince them. We tried to scrape the tar off of them, but they only panicked when our hands came away blackened again. 

“We have to leave,” my other friends said to me after a long long time. “We can’t stay here forever, waiting for them to be ready. No one can survive here.”

They were right. The tar pit stank. The tar gurgled and sucked and emitted foul-smelling gasses. Nothing grew around here, and nothing could live long in this place. 

My friends left us. I was the only one who stayed.

“I will prove to you that the tar comes off,” I promised. “I will prove to you that you belong in the world.”

Every day, we took a little walk further and further from the tar pit. My friend saw things that delighted them. They heard birdsong. They tasted crabapples and raspberries and wild leeks. But sometimes, insects would get stuck to the tar on their legs, and would die from the effort of escaping. And my friend would believe they were horrible again. Every day, we scraped a little more of the tar away. But my friend would see new tar on their fingers and mine and believe the stain was only spreading.

When I needed to go home to sleep, to see my family, and eat something that didn’t taste like smoke and oil and petroleum, my friend would weep.

“I know you like them more than me,” they’d cry. “You only feel sorry for me. You’re tired of all this tar. I’m noxious, I’m poison.”

One day, when I came back to visit them, I didn’t see them at their usual resting place near the edge of the tar pit. I walked to the ledge and looked down, and there they were, ankle-deep in the tar again, among the animal bones and the boiling toxic fumes. 

This time, their excuse was that they’d left their favorite watch somewhere in the tar, and they wanted it back. Their arms were sticky up to their elbows, searching for it. I can’t remember if they found it or not. Not that it matters. 

They had a lot of excuses over the years. They’d scream for help and someone– sometimes me, sometimes other passing folks– would hear and come lift them out of the pit. And each time, there would be fresh, hot, sticky tar on their skin, and anything that touched them would stick to them and die there or come away stained. 

We tried soaps and creams and pumice stones. Sometimes, these things worked. But as the tar started to come off, so too would the dead mice and luna moths and spiders, the dead white flowers preserved in the black, the suffocated frogs and trampled baby snakes and those allegedly pretty crocheted socks and layers of skin. And it hurt. And it disgusted them. And then the next day I’d find them back in the tar pit again.

I visit them every now and then, of course. I bring them snacks and little things I think they’ll like. 

I’m not the only one. Once, I saw them pull another would-be-rescuer deep into the tar with them. He screamed and strained to get away from the tar pit, but my friend clung to him, desperate and grateful, dragging him deeper and deeper into the thick, viscous, stinking mass. He only barely escaped, spitting and crying and swearing to me that he’d never return to this place. 

“He abandoned me,” my friend despaired. “He said he wanted me, but he left. He acted like I was disgusting.”

“That wasn’t nice of him,” I said, passing them the bottle of sticky-sweet honey mead, their favorite.

“It’s because I’m awful,” they said, taking a drink and passing it back.

It’s because you tried to drown him, I thought. 

“I want you to come out of the tar pit,” I said. I say this every time. “Come out and try again.”

But a long time ago, they stopped trying. 

“This is my home,” they say. “I’m made of tar.”

They get angry at me when I tell them they are not made of tar. They are made of blood and flesh and that’s why they hurt so much. That’s why they can’t survive. 

You don’t notice it creeping up on you, but at some point, when you hang out near the tar pit, when you spend so much of your time trying to save the person inside, you become aware that all of your things are stained with tar. You go to kiss someone and your fingers stick in her hair, and you have the sudden and terrible sense that you’re becoming tangled in some terrible trap you can never escape and you flinch away so hard that you rip her hairs out. 

“I’m sorry,” you say. “It doesn’t come off. I feel horrible.”

“You’re not horrible,” she says. “It’s just the tar.”

But it feels like the tar is a part of me now. 

“I love you,” I say to the person in the tar pit.

“I’m going to die here,” they cry up at me. Nowadays, they’ve sunk in up to their neck. Their pretty pink shirt has long been submerged in the burning black tar. Their hair is a sheet of slick black rubbery ooze. Their lips are close to the surface. 

“Please come out,” I say.

“I can’t,” they reply. “I’m trapped.”

“Take my hand,” I say.

“I can’t,” they reply. “It’s too far away.”

“I’ll throw down a rope,” I say.

“No. It’s too hard to raise my arms from the tar now. The tar is too thick and heavy.”

“Why aren’t you calling for help?”

“I’ll just drown them. There’s no point.”

“We can get lots of people. We can bring machines.”

“There’s no point,” they say. “I’ll just stain them. They’ll all be cruel to me anyway. No one wants a tar monster ruining them with their touch, spreading tar everywhere they go. And I hate them all for that.”

“The tar comes off,” I shout. 

“You know it doesn’t.”

“You have to try,” I plead.

“I’m going to die here,” they say.

“Let me help you. Let anyone help you. Come drink the mead you like. Come eat the cakes you like. Come get a new pair of fluffy socks. But you have to do something to save yourself. Please. You have to try.”

“I’m going to die here,” they say.

I’m sitting on the ledge now. I’m watching their eyes as their face sinks closer to the surface of the tar. 

“I love you,” I say again.

“No one loves me,” the sea of tar responds. “I am poison. I am rot. I will suffocate you.”

“I do love you,” I lie to the tar.

“I ruin everything. I am hate.”

“I love you,” I lie again to the tar. 

“Why are you lying?” It gurgles and hisses and steams. “All you have for me is pity and resentment. Touch me and I will drown you.”

I am lying because I still see my friend’s eyes peeking over the black oily pit. I can still see the color they dyed their hair on top– pink, their favorite. I can still see the bunny hair clip they like. 

They’re still in there. 

My friend lives in the tar pit. 

Only the tar speaks now. 

It will not let go of them. They will not let go of it.

[creepyclothdoll]

People (especially online) get really mad at you when you suggest that it's generally better to be patient and understanding in most difficult situations. They'll immediately jump to "OH SO IF SOMEONE IS LITERALLY CALLING FOR MY DEATH I SHOULD TRY AND EMPATHIZE WITH THEIR SIDE???? IF SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL MY CHILD WITH A HAMMER I SHOULD JUST GIVE THEM A HUG???? ITS WRONG TO BE RUDE TO MY LITERAL ACTUAL ABUSER????" like jesus christ no

phase 1 is 'being nice to people is good.' in some cases there is a phase 2, which is 'you don't have to be unconditionally accommodating and inoffensive - you have the right to stick up for yourself, too.' in some cases still there is a phase 3 which is 'there are situations in which showing a little understanding and patience will instantly defuse a conflict arising over a small fluke, rather than exacerbate it five million fold'

[creepyclothdoll]

[creepyclothdoll]

This is why crystal correspondence charts rarely line up with each other. It's mostly improv.

do you have any idea where neopagans and new agey witches get their color/crystal meaning associations from? it seems a bit random to me but i imagine there must ne a source? right??

Its literally Agrippa, and the rest is improv.