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Plastic Dolls

Topper Barnes

    Do you think I am pretty? Am I likable? I am not looking for a friend; I just want people to love me. Envy me. Paint their walls with images of me. I do not care about many things. I only want to be famous. Luminous lights glittering across my body, thousands of tear-swelled eyes crawling over me, hands reaching out in yearning, the flash of cameras... There is nothing worthwhile in life besides fame. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.
    I pleasure myself while looking in the mirror. I am so beautiful. It does not take long when visual stimulation like that is provided. In the shower I serenade myself with my golden laced vocal cords, a divine gift that no one has recognized yet, and ponder over the profoundly genius words that I myself wrote. I do not understand how people have not recognized my talent for singing. Maybe because I only sing in the shower, but still I have neighbors and I sing loud enough for the whole building to hear. If not for singing, then surely my looks will grant me fame.
    I browse through a scrapbook of photos that span from the year I was born to the present. It is of cutouts of the most important part of the pictures: me. Even as a child I knew I was meant to be worshipped, to be praised for my natural and effortless grace. In one of the cutouts there is an arm wrapped around my shoulder, my brother’s arm, and I am reminded of how I will never forgive that weasel-faced, showboating scumbag for the torment he put me through. I am five years older than him and as soon as he was born my parents found it necessary to give him half of their attention. The day they brought him home from the hospital I looked down at his grubby, little face and asked if it was possible to return him. My parents should have known that I was too important to have a brother.
    It drives me insane watching these talentless hacks explode on social media. I spend hours each day perfecting my pages, typing witty bios, photoshopping pictures, scrounging for likes, but none of it works. I have over five hundred posts and less than sixty likes in total. The number of followers I have is such a shame that I will not even utter the digits. These plastic faced bastards with thousands upon thousands of fans have nothing that I do not also have. I love long walks in nature, dogs and living life like there is no tomorrow. Traveling is my passion too and I refuse to live in a mold created by another person. They are replicas of me, shoddy clones that by some twist of fate got what is rightfully mine, and I do not understand what people see in them. None of them are original. People should know that.
    After working on my online presence, I go to the mall to pose with mannequins so that people will look at me. It is actually much harder than it sounds. There are five malls in town, one for each day of the week, and I have to go to a new one each day or else I run the risk of being caught. I make my rounds week after week and never seem to get anywhere. One of these days my sights will land square on the bullseye. I know it.
    I dress plain when going in, there is no need to look flashy, and swipe an outfit off the shelves of M & H clothing. I cannot use the dressing rooms anymore, all of the attendants know me, so I am forced to sneak into a corner and swap my clothes out there. I leave my street clothes in a neat, folded pile hidden under a shirt rack. Nobody has noticed me so far and I have a good chance of getting a flat hour in before I am kicked out. I rush my way up to the podium, that glorious piece of furniture that was made with me specifically in mind, and jump on top. Joy floods my body in waves of orgasmic delight. They are looking. Everyone is looking. I am on the front lines of stardom and the world would not be the same without me. Each glance that scans the clothes on my body is like a drug sedating all of my negative thoughts and replacing them with pure euphoria. I have made it and no one can take this away from me.
    I steal a quick tweak of the neck to see how many people are flocking around me to get a view of my beauty. There is not a soul in sight. A few older women stare at a female mannequin chatting with each other and pointing at the clothes on display. The female mannequins always get all the attention. Though I hate to admit it, this is something I have always known, and I learned it at an early age. My mother used to dress me up like a girl before my brother was born and praise would be showered upon me. Every adult we passed would stop and compliment my mother on her stunningly beautiful daughter. I smiled nonchalantly, knowing that what they said was true, and even though I felt odd wearing girl’s clothes I was happy to be noticed by so many people. Once my mother even tried to enter me into a beauty pageant but we were denied once the interviewers saw me. They knew right away that I was a boy, but from what my mother said they denied my entry due to the fact that they knew I would win.
    A herd of teenage girls rumble by and stop for a moment to admire the pretty clothes they cannot buy. They giggle and snort and twist their heels into the tile floor. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. I pause as still as can be and put on an elegant face for them. A pair of soft green eyes, emeralds of light, place their gaze on me. I become flushed with ecstasy. They see me. I crane my eyes towards her without turning my head and see this blank, frightened face looking up at me. She taps one of her friends on the elbow, they both look at me with curious eyes, and then burst out in laughter. They point and heckle me unmercifully. An ice cube drops down my throat, barrels its way down and lands in my gut where it doubles in size. A nervous electricity runs through my veins as the girl’s laughter rises and rises until into peaks in a mind popping crescendo. I turn rapidly from my statue stature and scream at the girls. You think it is so easy, well it is not, standing like this all day. No one gives me a dime for my work and still, still, the fake women get all the attention.
    They pause their laughter during my rant, but as soon as I am done, they resume right where they left off. I leave my post, knowing I will never be as good as the mannequins, and go back to collect my clothes. On my way out I gaze at the mannequins with passionate envy. How could I ever be as talented as them? They are real, and I am fake. They do this for a living, and I am an invader.
    At home I take a personality test online. The computer tells me that I am eighty percent likable, fifteen percent talented and five percent intelligent. It says that there are great things waiting for me and that all I have to do is be patient. The test costs eight dollars but makes me feel a lot better.
    I flip through my scrapbook before bed and see my brothers amputated arm dangling around my neck. It has been years since I last saw him and I wonder what his life looks like now. A wife? A career? Kids? Maybe I could look him up and get ahold of him. We could talk about what is going wrong in our lives and I could vent to him about how horrible everything ended up for me. We could become friends for the first time in our lives; dinner on weekends, visits to the beach on holidays and presents on birthdays. We could get the family back together. But, then again, I could not stand it if he was doing better than I am and I would rather suffer alone in my illusion than find out.

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