Dolls scare me. I may have been a big fan of Barbie back in the day but most dolls creep me out. My parents insisted on buying dolls as souvenirs for me from their worldwide travels and they had a rack custom made to display their purchases. Ignoring my protests, my parents hung the display rack directly across from my bed. Every night I had to stare at that weird Japanese doll wearing a kimono and holding up a bucket in each hand. I could swear her arms wavered slightly. Then there was that innocuous-looking Dutch doll with her long blonde braids and eyes that could open and close. Did she wink at me? A baby doll from some unknown country scared me so much; I turned her around every night. I knew, just knew, that some morning I would wake up with her freaky smile facing forward again.

The dolls hung prominently in my room until the night I watched "Trilogy of Terror" with Karen Black. My older sister thought the T.V. movie was too funny but I watched it in wide-eyed horror. Something about that little voodoo doll running through Karen Black's apartment with a knife the size of its body and gnashing its overly large, sharp teeth made me shiver against the couch. The doll rack came down that very night and I checked under my bed before I went to sleep for the next three years. No lie. After watching Bride of Chucky, I got over my fear of glass-eyed stares (let's face it, even I had to see the humor in watching two dolls have sex). My fear, however, must have been genetic because my sister gave my daughter a life-size plastic doll one holiday season. We named her Penny. Penny was as big as my daughter. I knew something was dreadfully wrong the day I came into my daughter's room and saw Penny sitting amid a shrine of play food, fake flowers, and lots of comfortable pillows.

"What's the deal?" I asked my daughter.

She pulled me out of the room (so Penny couldn't hear) and whispered, "I have to keep her happy because I think she's going to kill me when I go to sleep." She began to cry. Oh, Geez... Penny had to go. I had to admit that when we both walked into the room and approached Penny's shrine, my daughter and I looked at each other. We were both afraid to throw her away. We shared visions of her lifting her plastic arm from trashcan and climbing out. We both knew we would open our eyes one night and see a ragged-haired, large-eyed plastic girl leaning over us, poised with a weapon. So, we did the only thing possible. We put my son on the job. Young boys have a knack for destruction and my son made an effective doll assassin. I think a hammer was involved. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking this woman's kids are as weird as she is. Well, what do you expect? Their mother writes about psychological torment, murder, and police investigation. Blame the baby doll.

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