Marley

There once was a small girl, a long, long, time ago. The small girls name was Daphelia, she was 8 at the time and living in the heart of England. Daphelia’s father was a traveling trades-man. He traveled to India and to many other foreign lands to trade his items mostly textiles and the occasional Antique.
###On a steel gray morning, Daphelia sat were she usually sat in the morning, the dock. Today Daphelia sat half submerged its chilly English fog, with her blue eyes looking longingly out at the sea for her father and his ship the black moon. To Daphelia’s great astonishment, piercing the murk a needy-of-repair looking ship crawled up to the dock. ###
The words black moon were scratched into the side of the dilapidated ship.
###“ Father!” cried Daphelia. As she peered into the ship, she realized her father was no were to be seen. “Father were are you?” once again called Daphelia. Slowly she crept into the steering room of the ship. Calling out again, knowing that sometimes he was engrossed in last minute docking and receiving forms. Daphelia turned the old leather chair around. In horror she starred at empty chair. All that lay there was a small doll slightly disfigured. The doll looked up at her with one rather large eye loosely stitched and one quite small in comparison more of a dot really. A jagged mouth ran across the face, giving Daphelia a mangled smile. The dolls head could have very nearly been a turnip. Daphelia slowly picked up the doll it sat in her palm. Its faded Indian clothing reminded her of her father’s attire before he left on his latest trip. Looking around Daphelia slipped the doll into the pocket of her dress and left the ship without a sound.
###Daphelia’s mother had been a drunk, and shortly after Daphelia’s birth she had passed away falling down the steep stairs from there flat on the way to fetch some more of her “medicine”. Now Daphelia and her father lived above a carpentry shop where the smell of wood chips and the Zzzzzz Zzzzzzz Zzzzzzz of the hand hewn timber rested. Daphelia ran up the creaky aging steps to the freezing apartment. She fell onto her cot, weeping. Slowly she pulled the doll out of her pocket starring at the uneven eyes and jagged mouth.
###“ Father is that you?” whispered Daphelia. The tiny turnip head doll nodded. Shocked Daphelia hugged the doll; a slip of yellowed paper fell out the back of the doll. Cautiously she picked up the paper and read aloud.
###“ Dearest Daphelia, I am writing this letter with hope that you will read it, if not I’m am ever so sorry that you don’t know what happened to your old father. Well if you do get this letter I will tell you, I was kidnapped by bandits in India, they do not know I am writing, so my dearest I will not be arriving home, doing my best to escape, Fath…” the last two letters absent. Daphelia too shocked to understand exactly, but well enough to know her father would not be coming home. Ran to the window facing out toward the London street and open waters flung herself out.
The doll fluttered out of her hand as she fell, landing on a crate going to New York.
###Long after Daphelia’s death the little doll had journeyed to the Bronx, passed around from little hands to a shelf stuffed in a corner and lived there for a long, long time, until the doll was covered in enough cobwebs to knit a sweater. Eventually he was taken with a bunch of other teenager’s abandoned toys, to Salvation Army. The doll bought and sold a few more times then lastly discarded to a tiny thrift shop that now resided in what was once a old furniture makers work shop off of 3rd avenue and 22st. in New York City. There the turnip head doll was carelessly jammed in the back of a shelf with other rejects such as, a green ceramic frog, a robot picture frame and a purple and orange scarf. But there he sat, A jagged mouth One large eye staring the other like a period forever thinking of a little girl’s death and sea captains note.