Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (best time to read books txt) 📕

This is just what human beings do—turn objects into people, people into objects.

Nobody's saying it's the county team that screwed up. Screwed up big-time.

The Breather Betty dummy, it's no surprise Cora took it home. Rinsed out its lungs, somehow. Washed and set its red glamour-girl hair. Cora bought a new dress for its armless, legless torso. A string of fake pearls for around its neck. Anything that helpless, Cora could never just toss in the garbage. She put lipstick on its blue lips. Mascara on its long eyelashes. Blush. Perfume—a lot of perfume, to cover the smell. Some nice clip-on earrings. It would amaze nobody to find out she spent every night sitting on the sofa in her apartment, watching the television and chatting at it.

Just Cora and Betty. Chatting in French.

Still, nobody's calling Cora Reynolds a crackpot. Maybe just a soft touch.

County policy says they should've bagged the old dummy in black plastic and heaved it onto a top shelf in the evidence room. Forgetting her there. Betty, not Cora. Abandoned. Fermenting. Ignored with the numbered bags of dope and coke. The vials of crack and heroin balloons. All the guns and knives waiting to appear in some courtroom. All the seized baggies and balloons shrinking, getting smaller and smaller, until there's just enough left for a felony conviction. All those objects, used.

But, no, they broke the rules. They let Cora take the old dummy home.

Nobody wanted her to grow old alone.

Cora. She was the kind of person, she couldn't buy just one stuffed animal. Part of her job description was to buy a stuffed toy for each kid who came in to give a statement. Each kid taken into custody by the court. Any kid pulled for neglect and placed in a foster home. At the toy store, Cora would take one little plush monkey out of a bin full of animals . . . but it would look so alone in her shopping cart. So she'd choose a furry giraffe to keep it company. Then a stuffed elephant. A hippo. An owl. At some point, there would be more animals in her shopping cart than in the display bin. And the animals left behind each had an eye missing, an ear frayed, a seam split open. Stuffing poked out. These were the animals no one would want.

Nobody felt how Cora's heart dropped off a cliff at that moment. That long fall from the tip-top of the world's tallest rollercoaster, that feeling left Cora just skin. Just a skin tube with a tight hole at each end. An object.

Those little tigers smudged with dirt, trailing loose threads. The stuffed reindeers crushed flat. They filled her apartment, those torn pandas and stained little owls and Breather Betty. Just a different type of evidence room.

It's what human beings do . . .

But poor, poor Cora. Now she's trying to cut off people's tongues. To infect them with parasites. Obstruct justice. She's stealing public property. Nobody's talking about misappropriation of office supplies: pens, staplers, copy paper.

It's Cora who orders the office supplies. She collects everyone's time card on Friday. She hands out the paychecks on Tuesday. Submits all the expense reports to Accounting for reimbursement. Answers the phone: “Child and Family Case Services.” She gets a cake and sends a card around the department when it's somebody's birthday. That's her job.

Nobody had a problem with Cora Reynolds before the little girl and boy arrived from Russia. Really, the problem was, Cora never sees a little kid, a freckle-faced, pigtailed little girl, unless somebody's fucked her.

Every rapscallion little boy, every scamp in bib overalls with a slingshot stuck in his back pocket, Cora's only meeting him because he's been forced to suck cock. Every kid's gap-toothed smile, here it's a mask. Every grass-stained knee, a clue. Every bruise, an indicator. Every wink or squeal or giggle, there's a blank to check for it on the victim-intake form. It's Cora's job, keeping track of those interview forms. Keeping track of the kids, each case file, any ongoing investigation. Until what happened, Cora Reynolds was the best office manager ever.

Still, what happens here is just damage control. You can't unfuck a kid. Once you bang a kid, there's no getting that genii out of the bottle. That kid's pretty much wrecked for good.

No, most kids come in here quiet. Stretch-marked. Already middle-aged. Not smiling.

Kids come here, and the first step is the evaluation interview with an anatomically detailed doll. This is different from an anatomically correct doll, but plenty of folks get them confused. Cora did. Got them confused.

Your typical anatomically detailed doll is made of cloth, sewn like a stuffed animal. It has strands of yarn for hair. The big difference between it and Raggedy Ann is the details: A floppy stuffed penis and balls. Or a lacy cloth vagina. A drawstring pulled tight in back to make a puckered anus. Two buttons sewn to the chest for nipples. These dolls are something the intake kids can use to play-act. To demonstrate what Mommy or Daddy or Mommy's new boyfriend did.

The kids stick their fingers in the dolls. Drag the dolls by their yarn hair. Hold the dolls by the neck and shake them until their stuffed heads flop. They hit and lick and bite and suck the dolls, and it's Cora's job to sew the nipples back on. Cora will find two new marbles when the little felt scrotum gets yanked too hard.

Everything done to the kids gets done to those dolls.

Nobody just stumbles into this line of work.

Threads come loose from too many molested children molesting the dolls. Too many diddled little boys suck that same pink felt penis. Too many little girls have forced a finger, two fingers, three fingers into that same satin-lined vagina. Ripping it at the top and bottom. Little hernias of cotton batting were bulging out. Under their clothes, the dolls were smudged and dirty. Sticky and smelling bad. The fabric was rubbed into pills and