Day Seven: Behold the Creepy Dolls

Daily Word Count: 4,368
Cumulative Words Written: 15,179
Total Words Discarded: 2,700
Total Chapters Drafted: 6
Time Spent Writing Today: 7.5 hours

I took one break from writing today, but I never expected to meet a bunch of creepy dolls.

Messejana’s Museu Etnografico is near the town center. Jen, the artist with whom I share this house, recommended I go. Mid-afternoon, I took a quick five-minute walk down the hill and let myself in the abandoned space.

The place was creepy right from the start.

A boom box wailed salsa music while I roamed the antiquity-strewn entryway. Roman relics mixed with fossils stirred with Moorish tablets shaken with medieval bits. Because every label was in Portuguese, I grew weary of typing phrases into Google Translate. Suffice it to say, the stuff was authentic, really old, and all found around here.

Then, the place gave way to an eccentric collection of stuff. Paintings smattered the walls, mostly resembling those horrors I used to make at wine-and-paint places. Stately models of the town church and other buildings I recognized. Even one rendering of a ruin in all its former glory.

I wasn’t prepared for what happened upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, I looked to my right and almost screamed. LOOK AT ALL THE CREEPY DOLLS. JUST LOOK AT THEM.

I mean, THE CLOWN, PEOPLE!!!

To my left, things weren’t much better. Is that really a bull skull? Did it die in a bullfight, and that’s what all the sparkly stuff means? And what’s with the horse head?

Of course, I stupidly went on.

A library with thousands of moldy books. A bedroom bedecked like a tomb. This doll doing embroidery and flashing its horror-show smile.

I hurried through the kitchen, because I was afraid a doll would fall from the cupboards wielding a knife, only to find myself in the classroom. Full of – guess what – MORE FREAKING DOLLS.

Well, dear reader, I ran from that room into the adjacent one and screamed.

I mean, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? WHY IS KEN SITTING IN THE CLOSET WITH THE DISEMBODIED HAND? WHAT IS GOING ON?

I scampered to the first open door I found, only to scream again. The wizened docent came to check on me. I have no idea what he said, but he was making fun of me. I could tell.

Forgetting my southern manners, I obrigada’d my way into the sunshine, only to run a gauntlet of hatches and hammers, pickaxes and saws. I was trapped in a mosh pit of torture devices.

Every new glance contained an object of death. I couldn’t find the way out.

Up stairs. Down stairs. Toward the pulse of that damn salsa beat. I found the entrance and huffed onto the street, convinced I avoided catastrophe.

Best Euro I ever spent.

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