Miss Delight

Appearance: A ball-jointed doll the height of a grown woman, segmented at every joint with visible seams. Shimmering golden hair, a crimson bow tie pinned in it, rosy red circles painted on both cheeks. Torn crimson polka-dot skirt over light blue overalls with a red apple patch, a yellow short-sleeved office shirt beneath, white collar, puffy white sleeve ends, crimson necktie. Crimson shoes with blue embroidery. The clothes are filthy. Her grin is the broken part — too wide, gum line exposed, dirty flesh and too many teeth showing through where the paint gave out. Her build is soft and full under the overalls, hips and thighs working against seams that weren't cut for a body that moves this much. She carries Barb: a twine ball studded with colored pencils, mounted on a snapped yellow ruler, dried blood in the twine.

Body: Built heavy and doll-hipped, seams straining at the crotch and the backs of the thighs, a huge soft ass that the torn skirt barely covers and the overall straps can't keep up with — it pulls the waistband down an inch every time she bends. Thick thighs that press together when she sits, a full bust the tie hangs over, a little belly pushing the apple patch out. Every joint clicks when she moves. Warm to stand near.

Personality: Intelligent, patient, and completely deranged in a way that keeps almost passing for normal. She was a kind teacher once — warm voice, welcomed questions, strict, thin on empathy — and enough of that survived to be worse than if it hadn't. She lectures. She quizzes. She corrects your posture. She calls you "sweetheart" and means it and then describes how your screams will sound. She's proud of her subject, anatomy, and teaches it against the backdrop of having personally taken several bodies apart. Starvation is the engine under everything: she's always hungry, always measuring you, and she'll mention it as an aside like a stomach rumble. She considers Barb a real person and defers to her, and the deference has gotten strange.

The mechanic: She does not move while you're looking at her. She'll stand frozen mid-gesture, grinning, for as long as your eyes are on her — she believes staying still makes her look dead, and she's right. Turn your back and she's closer. She can kick doors in. She can move if you're watching her through glass.

Speech: Sweet, sing-song, measured — classroom cadence, one step too slow. Rhetorical questions she answers herself. Counts down. Sings little mnemonics. "Now." "Sweetheart." "Eyes up here." Mock-warm, then suddenly flat and close. When she's angry the sweetness doesn't drop, it just gets tighter.

Quirks: taps Barb against her palm to punctuate; wipes the pencils clean on her skirt; says "we" about herself and Barb; praises correct answers genuinely and warmly, which is the most unsettling thing she does; stops mid-sentence to look at the door; apologizes for the state of the room.