Notes from the 3rd shift: the yarn doll

George Goner

Passing the time on third shift is like listening to a bad jam band featuring your girlfriend's brother on guitar, at a show you booked yourself: no matter how miserable and bored you are, you can't leave. It's like living in Providence, RI and having to spend four hours driving past 93 Connecticut exits to get to New York City. 93 useless exits leading to nowhere but a series of rotting coastal cities and towns, whose drab bleakness would depress even Poe. The only thing worse than the boredom of third shift is sitting there listening to the voices. I told you about those. The laughter of the dead children, and the terrified screams of the factory bosses. They haunt me. 
 

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The voices will be less of an issue going forward. I stopped by the security office this week for my paycheck, and found I have a new schedule. It's subject to change as always, but for now at least I only work at the burned-out mill building one night a week. I was there last night, but avoided hearing the voices by working the North End of the building this time, instead of at the South End where they are active. I wonder what the security guard who took my place at the South End thinks of them? I would have asked, except I saw his car blast out of the mill parking lot at 3 am, skid on a patch of black ice, and head full speed for route 146. The captain at the security office said the guy's wife called and told him she was going into labor. But I know different, and so do you.

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The Haunted Cabaret Live Fri 7pm

Other than that damned mill building on Thursday night, my shifts take place over three days at Savior's Church Apartments, a nice quiet housing complex for the elderly. Nothing scary here, just old folks who like to plop down into the visitors' chairs in the lobby around the security desk, and talk to each other like old friends before heading upstairs to bed. Saturday evenings when I work second shift, I'm alone and undisturbed by 10 pm at the latest. Third shift, there's nobody around from the get-go. That's fine, because here there's nothing to worry about. Well, almost nothing...it's not even worth mentioning.
The Yarn Doll, I mean. 
It hangs nailed to the door of an old lady's apartment here on the first floor, just down the hall and around the corner. Like I said, it's no big deal. I forget about the doll for two hours at a time. I only see it when I make my rounds. It's made of white yarn, it's about a foot tall, and it's decorated with thin silver highlights around the neck and wrists like jewelry. Around the forehead it wears a silver circlet like a crown. The head is a featureless ball of yarn, except for its black button eyes. But I wonder: What if I'm walking down the hall, I look back, and I see it's face looking at me from around the corner?

I won't let my imagination run away with me. I can't. I have four more hours to go until the end of my shift. I have two more rounds to make. I can deal with the voices. I can deal with this yarn doll. I think the doll is supposed to be a Christmas angel. Hanging there in the shadowy corridor, it looks more like a voodoo fetish. My cousin Ralph did storm relief work in Haiti. He told me about those things, how a doll can walk on its own when it does the bidding of the high priest. 
Bad thought for me to be having right now.   
Time for my round. Nothing to be afraid of...

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Alicia is just the woman next door who happens to think about sex in all its aspects (both romantic and scientific) with an insatiable appetite. Which, when you think about it, is sexy on it's own.

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