Discoloured Eyes

“I love your discoloured eyes,” he said, avoiding her questions. “The cracks in your paint, the spiders in your hair…”
“I’ve sat here so many years,” she said, her faded rosebud lips unmoving. “And nobody’s ever bothered to come and see me, or to comb my hair.”
Her expression suddenly soured, despite the fact none of her features had made the slightest change. “Why didn’t you ever come to visit me?”

His sidestep was murmured, “We need a change of scenery.” Sensing a million doll’s eyes concentrated on him, searing him. A million sweet little doll’s faces. A million chipped smiles.

Filtering through the white curtain, a soft glow of light lapped against the baby pink of the walls. It surrounded him.

“That’s where you met me,” she said, her painted-on eyes unblinking. “You took me down from the shelf and brushed the dust from my dress, pulled the cobwebs from my hair…”

He discovered that she had shrunk when he finally held her. The child’s dress was ill fitting. In his grasp her frame had altered. She was the size of a canary.