This little rag doll girl and boy the whole world gets to abuse.
And of course, Cora did what she could to keep them clean. She stitched them back together. But one day she went on the Internet to find another pair. A new pair.
Somewhere were women who made their career stitching tiny pocket-shaped vaginas or coin-purse scrotums. These kids, the women dressed in flowered calico dresses and bib overalls. But this time, Cora wanted something durable. She got on the Internet. She ordered a new pair, from some maker she'd never heard about before. This time, she confused anatomically detailed with correct.
Anatomically correct, she asked for, boy and girl dolls. Lowest price possible. Durable. Easy to clean.
A search engine offered her two dolls. Made in the former Soviet Union. With flexible arms and legs. Anatomically correct. Because these were the lowest-priced, and because that was the county purchasing policy, she placed the order.
Later, nobody ever asked why she ordered those dolls. When the box arrived, brown cardboard and big as a four-drawer file cabinet, when the delivery guy wheeled it up on a cart and left it next to her desk, when he made her sign his clipboard, then it was Cora first figured this might be a mistake.
The moment they opened the box, when they saw what was inside, it was too late.
It was Cora and a county detective, pulling the metal staples and then digging through the mats of bubble wrap, digging until they found a foot. A pink child's foot, five perfect toes poking up, out of the Styrofoam pellets and bubble wrap.
The detective wiggled one of the toes. He looked at Cora.
“These were the cheapest,” Cora said. She said, “You don't get a lot of choice.”
The foot was pink rubber, finished with clear, hard toenails. The skin smooth, without a freckle or mole or vein. At this, the detective put a hand around the ankle and lifted it to show a smooth pink knee. Then a pink thigh. Then a shower of white packing peanuts. Bubble wrap popping and falling away. And a naked pink little girl hung from the detective's fist near the ceiling. Her blond hair fell in curls, brushing the floor. Her bare arms hung down at either side of her head. Her mouth hung open, a silent gasp, showing white teeth small as pearls, and the smooth pink roof of her mouth. A little girl the age for Easter-egg hunts and First Communion and Santa's lap.
With one ankle in the detective's hand, the girl's other leg sagged, bent at the knee. Between her legs, spread there, not just anatomically correct but . . . perfect, was the girl's pink vagina. The darker pink lips of it, curving inside.
Still in the box, looking up at her, looking up at them all, was a naked little boy.
A printed brochure fluttered to the floor.
Then Cora's arms were around the girl, hugging her pillow softness, clutching for a sheet of wrapping paper to put around the little body.
The detective smiled, shaking his head, squeezing his eyes shut, and saying, “Great job at procurement, Cora.”
Cora held the girl, one hand cupped to hide the pink buttocks. One hand cupped to hold the blond head to Cora's chest, and she said, “This is a mistake.”
The brochure said the dolls were soft molded silicone, the kind used for breast implants. They could be left under an electric blanket and would hold the heat for hours of pleasure. Their skin covered a skeleton of fiberglass with steel joints. Their hair was inserted, strand by strand, planted into the skin of their scalp. They had no pubic hair. The male doll had an optional foreskin that you could roll onto the head of its penis. The girl doll had a replaceable plastic hymen you could send away for. Both dolls, the brochure said, had deep tight throats and rectums, for vigorous oral or anal entry.
The silicone had a memory and would return to its original shape, no matter what you did. Their nipples could be tugged to five times their original length without tearing. The labia, scrotums, rectums could be stretched to accommodate almost any desire. The dolls, the brochure said, could take years of violent, strenuous enjoyment.
For clean-up, you just used soap and water.
Leaving the dolls in direct sunlight might fade their eyes and lips, the brochure said in French, Spanish, English, Italian, and what looked like Chinese.
The silicone was guaranteed odorless and tasteless.
At lunch, Cora went out to buy a little dress and a little pair of pants and shirt. When she got back to her desk, the box was empty. Styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap popped under her every step. The dolls were gone.
In the ward room, she asked the dispatcher if he knew anything. The dispatcher shrugged. In the break room, a detective said that maybe someone needed them for a case. He shrugged and said, “That is what they're for . . .”
Outside, in the hallway, she asked another detective if he'd seen them.
She asked, where were they, the kid dolls?
Her teeth were edged together. The spot between her eyes ached from her brows bunching in the middle. Her ears felt blood-hot. Melting, glowing hot.
She found the dolls in the director's office. Sitting on the sofa. Smiling and naked. Freckle-faced and ashamed of nothing.
Director Sedlak was tugging at a nipple on the boy's chest. With her fingers, her thumb and index finger, just the dark-red fingernails, the director twisted and pulled at the pink nipple. With her other hand, the director trailed her fingertips up and down between the girl's legs, saying, “Damn, that feels real.”
To the director, Cora said she was sorry. She leaned down to brush some hair off the boy's forehead, and said she had no idea. She crossed the girl's arms across her pink nipples. Then, she crossed her plastic legs at the knee. She put both the boy's hands spread open in his lap. Both
