The Tale of the Black Doll

This is for Secret Santa

Alice Liddy had everything a typical sixteen-year old American girl could want. A loving boyfriend, a spot on her school's cheer-leading squad, and lead pitcher in the softball team. Alice's parents loved to dote on their daughter due to her many achievements both on and off her respective sports fields, giving her everything she could ever want or ask for. However, there was one problem with Alice; she didn't appreciate her parents at all, and she was going to learn how much that could cost her.

"What do you mean I have to take out the trash tonight, Mom!" Alice yelled from the upstairs bathroom as she ran a hairbrush through her shoulder-length blonde hair. "You told me that I could go out with Brad tonight after my birthday party since I managed to get the game-winning run at last Tuesday's game. I can't exactly spend time with my boyfriend if I'm stuck at home doing stupid chores that you'd give to a five-year old. Besides, do you really want me to risk tearing my ACL or something as I haul the garbage can to the curb. That would totally wreck my chances of getting the MVP award if I'm stuck on the bench because of some pointless injury." The young girl's tirade was punctuated only by the act of her grabbing her embroidered lettermen's jacket off the bathroom hook and putting it on. Alice quickly perused herself in the mirror, scrutinizing her appearance.

Her bright-emerald eyes glistened in the mirror's reflection and matched her bright-green camisole perfectly. The remainder of her outfit consisted of slimming blue-jeans and a loose pink shirt that barely covered her camisole. Alice quickly applied hot-pink lipstick to her lips and black eye-liner above her eyes and started to head downstairs. As she descended, she looked over to her right and saw her mom working hard in the kitchen, preparing food for Alice's sweet-sixteen birthday party. As Alice's feet reached the bottom of the stairway, her mom turned to her.

"You know, Alice," Jean Liddy mumbled exasperatingly as she stirred in mayonnaise for the custom chip dip for Alice's party, while simultaneously trying desperately to try to keep her long, neatly-curled blonde hair clean from all of her cooking, "your father and I have worked quite hard for your party today. You know he took off the last three days from work just to make sure everything would be ready so you could have fun with your friends. He was called into an emergency board meeting this morning but he'll be home when he can." She sighed and continued to address her daughter. "You know, I don't think asking you to do one little favor will cut your night out with Brad short." As she finished speaking she quickly turned around and began to slice several dozen potatoes to make her mother's famous cajun potato chip recipe. Jean Liddy looked quite similar to her daughter, however where her daughter had perfect skin brought about by the latest cosmetics, Liddy's face showed signs of her impending march towards her forties.

Alice huffed as her mother turned her back on her and crossed her arms. "Whatever, I guess I'll take out the garbage for you and daddy but you owe me; so you better let me be out until midnight!" Frustrated, the younger Liddy walked towards the living room which was a stone's throw from the kitchen and sat on her favorite couch, determined to watch TV and put her feet up until her party began. The party moved like a whirlwind for Alice. Dozens of her friends from school were invited, from both the cheer-leading squad and her softball teammates. Brad of course made an appearance, sweeping the young girl off of her feet and surprising her with a bouquet of flowers. The birthday-girl blushed when she saw the flowers, and quickly placed them on the large fold-out present table that already seemed to be over-flowing with gifts. The only interruption to all of the loud pop music and dancing was the sound of a piercing horn that came from Alice's front yard. "Hey, pause the music!" She yelled, as pulled her jacket around her and exited her house.

Alice saw a large bright-green car parked in the driveway with a large green bow on top. At first, the girl couldn't figure out what the car was doing there until she saw her father exit the car with keys in hand.
Stephen Liddy worked forty hours a week at a local law-firm in order to provide his family with the best that society could buy, and he always loved to see his only-child smile. He chuckled as he walked towards his daughter with his hand outstretched. "Your Mother and I have been planning this for at least six months, so I hope you like the car. It's all yours, dear, paid in full." The man dropped the keys into his daughter's hand and waited for her joy-filled reaction. Stephen would be disappointed, however, as Alice's reaction was quite different than what he expected.

The young woman looked on in disgust as she looked at her father and the car, and she started to yell shrilly. "Daddy, you got me the wrong color car! My eyes are emerald-green, and this monstrosity that you got me is clearly neon-green. You said both of you planned this together...does that mean that neither one of you even knows the color of your own daughter's eyes? Take this horrible car back to whatever junk-heap you got it from and get me the proper color!" She started to mutter to herself as she turned around and walked back into the house, with the gaggle of girls and her boyfriend right on her heels.

Stephen looked dejectedly towards his wife, who was still standing in the open doorway and noticed her rolling her eyes at Alice's latest outburst. While neither parent enjoyed having their daughter behave in such a way, no punishment, nor technique nor discussion had ever gotten Alice to change her ways since her rebellion began at the age of thirteen. The pair had simply given in, trying to make her happy whatever way possible to keep things civil in the household. The man slowly got back into the car and peeled out of the driveway, using his phone to plot a course towards the car dealership. 'At least I still have all the paperwork,' he thought as he sighed and carried out his daughter's demand.

The rest of the party proceeded pretty smoothly, with guests leaving at roughly four in the afternoon so Alice and her mother had time to open all of her daughter's presents before Brad returned at eight for their date. Alice's presents consisted mostly of new clothes, makeup and a new Iphone from her mother. As the pile of presents began to dwindle, Alice noticed a small, rectangular-shaped package that was wrapped in dark-grey wrapping paper.

Jean briefly left the room to stow the latest cache of gifts, leaving her daughter to open the rest of the presents herself. Picking the box up, the young girl examined it and tried to discern its contents as well as the gift-giver. "I don't remember anyone walking in here with a gift like this." She sighed and began to play with the wrapping. "Oh well, I might as well open it. For all I know it's something the neighbor dropped off that my mom forgot to mention. Maybe she actually spelled my name right this year on the card, as well as giving me more than a $20."

As she tore off the wrapping paper, she saw an old and weathered wooden box with a removable lid. Alice pulled off the lid, and saw a small, Gothic-looking doll resting in black tissue paper. The young girl pondered, 'what is this thing Anyone who knows me should know that I don't play with dolls anymore.' She lifted up the doll and started to examine it in more detail.

The doll's body was mostly black, with black stubby legs and arms. At the midsection there was a white diamond pattern that encircled around its entire body. There was a large, white similarly-shaped bow on the front of the doll's neck and a pair of white bows that would be where a human's ears would normally be. The doll's face was a pale shade of purple, and there was a black clump of material that stuck straight up from her forehead. On the front of its face were two large white eyes with eye-lashes on the far side of each eye. Deep blue irises rested within the white eyes, and it had a small, red mouth that seemed to be sealed closed.

Alice's attention on the doll wavered as she heard her mother returning to the room. She quickly turned around holding the doll out towards her Jean. "Mom,' the young woman asked inquisitively, "do you know who got me this doll? It's really creepy and I don't think anyone I know would actually get me this. The only people that I can think of would be the neighbors or Grandma Liddy since they always get me the wrong kind of presents."

Mrs. Liddy took the doll from her daughter and looked over the doll and the box that it came in. "No return address so it wasn't mailed here. There's no card or anything either, so I don't know dear. I don't remember being given this by anyone either." As Jean placed the box back down on the table, the bottom layer of tissue paper in the box fell out, revealing a small, brown piece of paper at the bottom of the box. "Alice, did you see this piece of paper here? Maybe it says who gave this to you." The woman turned and handed the aged paper to her daughter.

"No, mother, if I had seen that paper I wouldn't have been asking you about it. Give that to me." The young girl took the paper into her hands and looked at the paper. There was a few sentences written on the note, in cursive that began to read the paper aloud. "May this doll make you ever-grateful for everything that you have in life. Failure to appreciate what you have could cause you to lose everything that you hold most dear." As Alice finished reading the words written on the page she began to bust up in laughter. "What is this," she managed to utter between loud laughs, "some kind of Chinese fortune doll? Someone sure has a stupid sense of taste." She crumpled up the piece of parchment into a ball and threw it into a large garbage bag that the pair had been using for wrapping paper and other garbage. "Mom, can I just throw this silly doll in along with the paper? You know this isn't exactly my style and I don't want Brad to see this and think I still play with a child's toy." As the young girl moved to add the doll to the trash, her mother put her hand over the bag, stopping Alice from throwing it away.

"Alice, you should at least keep the doll for a while. I know it's not exactly normal but if your grandma did send the doll I don't want to have to explain to her why it isn't in your room when she visits next. You know how she likes to display porcelain dolls and dummies around her house. She may just be trying to get you into the same hobby. Put it in your room for a bit, for her at least." Alice seemed to relent for a moment and Jean decided to take the opportunity to close up the garbage back and carried it to the front door so her daughter could dispose of it later.

"Fine, Mother," Alice seethed, "I'll keep Grandma's or whoever's stupid doll for a month or two and then it's on a one-way trip to the dumpster. Brad's gonna be here any minute, you know." The young birthday-girl ran upstairs to her room and threw the doll onto one of her shelves, causing it to land face-down. She then double-checked herself in the upstairs bathroom and waited until she heard a knock at the door. She ran to the door and flung it open, revealing her boyfriend dressed in a blue button-up shirt and black jeans. He had let his brown hair fall in front of his face to give contrast to his grey-colored eyes. Brad quickly greeted Alice with a hug and a kiss. He grabbed her hand and the two of them began to walk to the car together.

As Jean heard the door open, she yelled to her daughter "Alice, remember to take out the trash, ok honey?" As the door slammed less than ten seconds later she peeked her head out of the kitchen to see that the garbage bag was still sitting next to the door where she had left it earlier. "Or I can just do it myself, I guess..." She huffed as she left the kitchen to perform her daughter's task for her.

Alice's evening with Brad went excellently, as they enjoyed multiple rounds of bowling, an hour of indoor mini-golf, and finally ending the night with a romantic movie. As the young girl arrived home and said goodbye to her boyfriend, she started to feel a cold chill in the air. Dismissing it as just the weather, she went inside and quickly hurried to her room. When she opened the door to the bedroom, she immediately noticed something was off as her eyes drifted to her shelf. The doll from the black box was sitting proper and up-right, as if it was purposefully posed to look out towards her bed. 'Creepy,' Alice thought as she changed into her night clothes. 'I wonder if my mom decided to come in here and clean my room or something. I know I didn't leave that ugly monstrosity in that position.' After she had changed, Alice threw herself casually onto the bed and wrapped herself up in her bed-covers.

Suddenly, the young girl found herself in a room that was covered completely in darkness. She was no longer in her bed, and it didn't seem that she was even in her own home. A strange and strained voice came wafting across the air in a high-tone. "Alice....Alice," the voice repeated over and over again, the sound seeming to draw closer and louder with each utterance. Alice looked around, feeling terrified and exposed.

"Who's there," she cried out, trying to feel around in the darkness to get some semblance of her surroundings. 'Where am I?' The young girl thought, 'this can't be anywhere normal. I must be dreaming or something. Yeah, this is a dream. I just have to like pinch myself or something and I'll wake-up.' Feeling assured by this realization, Alice pinched her right arm hard, and pain shot through her body.

"This isn't a dream Alice, and you can't just escape," the eerie voice whispered, now seeming to be within inches of the girl. "You're in my world now, and now you're under my control!" With a flash, the darkness of the realm was replaced with pure white. Alice could now see the small, black doll standing directly in front of her, lips moving as she spoke and a bright purple aura surrounding the doll's body.

The young girl looked down at her arm, and saw what appeared to be a red cotton-like substance coming out from where she pinched herself. "This..this can't be real," she wailed. "Come on, I need to wake-up already so I can get out of bed and end this stupid nightmare." She began to feel as if she was falling downward although she could not see the ground nor make out any dimensions of where she was. Within a minute, her eyes flashed open and she found herself in her bed, drenched in sweat. 'That seemed so real,' Alice thought as she got out of bed to change clothes. As she passed by the strange black doll she threw it onto the ground with a swift push of her hand. 'That takes care of that nightmare fuel,' she mused as she re-dressed and got back into bed. The rest of the night passed by without incident, but the next morning brought about its own mystery.

As Alice rose, she looked towards the wall-shelf and once again saw the black doll sitting on the shelf, exactly where it had been when she had entered her room the night before. 'No...that can't be there,' she thought shakily. 'I threw that onto the floor. I distinctly remember doing that after that horrible nightmare. How could it have gotten back up. Could..could it really be alive somehow?' Her mind preoccupied by such thoughts, she quickly threw clothes on not caring too much about her appearance.

As she entered the bathroom and looked in the mirror, she saw something that caused her to emit a shriek that caused her Jean to yell from downstairs asking if Alice was ok. Jean's words fell on deaf ears, as Alice's mind was transfixed completely by what she saw in the mirror. Both of Alice's eyes appeared to be now be deep-blue, a shade very similar to that of the Gothic doll's eyes. "What is going on," Alice sobbed as she slowly sunk to the floor unable to comprehend what had occurred. It was in this position that Jean saw her daughter as she came upstairs, having been worried by Alice's lack of response.

"What's wrong dear," the older woman asked. "Did something happen with Brad last night, did you two have a fight or something?" She got down on her knees and embraced the sobbing teen in her arms, hoping to calm the young girl and figure out what way she could help.
Alice slowly looked up towards her mother, finally realizing her presence in the room. "M-Mommy, look at my eyes. Don't you see something odd. Isn't there something wrong..with the color?" The younger women's gaze met her mother's and they simply stared at each other until Jean burst up in laughter.

"Is this your idea of a prank Alice? Your eyes look perfectly normal, the same shade of green that they always are." After a moment her voice tensed as she formed her next sentence. "Is this because of what happened with your father yesterday? You know he only got home an hour before you after all the trouble he had to go through to get you the right car. You should treat him with more respect, and me too. We do a lot for you, remember? Where would you be without us taking care of you?" Now looking slightly disgusted at the young girl, Jean rose to her feet and briskly left the room so she could begin her long list of errands and housework for the day.

Alice began to pull herself up after her mother left, using the counter to support her weight as she rose. A gaze into the bathroom mirror now revealed her trade-mark emerald eyes, and the young girl breathed a deep sigh of relief. 'I guess my mind was just playing tricks on me,' she thought. 'I really need to stop watching horror movies, they seem to be taking a toll.' As she went down the stairs and passed by the kitchen, she saw her father drinking a large cup of coffee, large bags hanging under his eyes. She went forward and smiled at her father, even going so far as to embrace him in a hug which he readily reciprocated. "Thank you Daddy for the car, I should have been more appreciative of you yesterday. Mama told me what you went through last night to get the right color."

Stephen smiled at his daughter and held her close. "It's ok sweetie. I know you really didn't mean it. We all just get frustrated sometimes and act out, even your mother and I." He chuckled as he released his daughter and gave her the new car keys. "You better head off to school now. I made sure to re-load your student ID last week so you have enough credit for breakfast and lunch for the rest of the year."

"Thanks Daddy, I really appreciate it," the young girl replied as she collected her backpack from the kitchen table and left the house. Alice's drive to her high school was uneventful, as she lived only five minutes from the building. After she parked and entered near the cafeteria, she noticed the large grey-tiled room relatively empty, barring a few tables of people she did not know and several people waiting in the breakfast lunch line. She quickly chose her standard meal of eggs, sausage and hash-browns and made her way to the checkout line. Directly in front of her was Cindy Lewis, a slightly unpopular girl that Alice felt was beneath her. Because of this, she always avoided Cindy if at all possible, even if they were assigned to sit next to each other in classes. As she slowly drew closer, hoping that Cindy would finish paying for her meal, Alice noticed that there seemed to be a problem.

"What do you mean there's no money left on my ID card?" Cindy asked, feeling slightly distressed. "I know I put the remainder of last week's allowance on yesterday so I should have at least ten dollars, if not more. I don't have any cash on me and my parent's won't cosign for a credit card." Tears began to swell in the young girl's eyes as she relayed her plight to the woman running the checkout counter.

Alice, feeling slightly annoyed by the delay, pulled out her wallet so she could retrieve her ID for when it was her turn. Her hands searched her wallet until her hands grazed passed a ten-dollar bill that was folded behind her school ID. The young girl looked towards Cindy and a thought popped into her head. 'I could always pay for her meal with my ten since I can only use my card for my own meals, but that new "Shakira" CD is coming out next week and I promised Josie that we'd listen to it the day it came out.' She paused as she evaluated her options. 'I don't want to break a promise to a friend, and it is Cindy's own fault if she can't keep track of her own money. Maybe this will teach her a lesson.' The popular girl laughed out loud as she stepped behind Cindy. "Can't pay for your meal Cindy? How about you get out of line then and stop holding up paying customers, you know; people who actually have money?"

The crying girl turned towards Alice, slowly wiping her eyes with a tissue. "Oh, hey Alice..." she weakly replied, running a hand through her black buzzed hair-cut. "I seem to be missing money on my card or something. It must be a computer glitch or something because I know I had money for today on there." Her voice trailed off as she looked towards the ground, her eyes focusing on her black sneakers and slowly began to get out of line.

Alice smiled slyly and walked forward, paying for her meal and then waiting at her usual table for Brad to show up with his morning bus. The rest of the day continued as usual, and at lunch Alice watched Cindy miserably eat peanut butter and jell;, the standard lunch meal for students who could not afford food. After school, Alice went straight home and went up to her room to start on her homework.

When she pushed on her bedroom door, she found it unable to budge, as if there were objects pressed up against the interior of her door. After several minutes of pressing her body against the door, she was finally able to open it, a loud crash sounding as she did so. She entered her room to find a proverbial wasteland. Clothes were strewn everywhere, her various trophies for both cheer-leading and softball lay around the floor, most in at least several pieces, and her mattress was leaned up against her bedroom wall.

"What..what the hell happened here!" she screamed. She quickly ran downstairs and called to her parents, but her pleas for help yielded only silence. As she looked in the kitchen, she noticed a small note taped onto the front of the refrigerator. Alice read the note aloud "Going shopping for dinner, will be back after your father gets home, love Mom". The young girl paused as her mind raced with possibilities. 'There's no way my mom would do something like that, and I doubt we were robbed. Nothing's been taken, and the only room to be ruined is mine.' As she continued to try to process the information, she heard a light laugh that sounded from upstairs.

Alice raced upstairs and ran into her room. Immediately she saw the black doll sitting on her bed. The room looked now looked perfectly normal, as if nothing was ever moved or disturbed. "What..how did you do this...you're a doll," the girl slowly asked, slowly approaching the bed.

"Wrong," the black doll replied, her mouth opening as words left her lips. "I'm not just a doll. Once I was like you, a girl...a girl who had everything she could ever want. Tri-County track athlete, lead scorer on the soccer team, more boys after me than I could have all at once..I had it all." As the doll continued to speak, a purple aura began to exude from her body. "But then, one day it all changed. I found a doll wrapped up in a black box at my high school graduation, and then strange things started to happen. The car my parents let me use was totaled overnight in our own driveway, my perfect boyfriend decided to find someone less self-centered. I came back home and found the doll, who was talking to me just like I am now to you. It told me that it too was a girl, and that I was being tested. By fate, God, she didn't know; only that the doll appears to young girls who treat those around them unfairly. If the girl is able to change her ways for twenty-four hours after receipt of the doll, she'd go back to her own real body and would find herself back when she first saw it." The doll stopped speaking for a moment and the aura grew brighter and expanded, now encompassing almost the entire bedroom. "However, I wasn't able to change, just like you weren't. I tried to use what power I had during this time of testing to scare you into changing, but it didn't work." The doll's voice trailed off as she looked towards the ground.

"So...you're a real person, trapped in a doll?" Alice asked, still barely being that any of this was even possible. "If all of what you said is true, and you failed the test; how did you end up in the doll? Did the other girl go back into her old body anyway?"

"No," the doll smiled wide as she began to speak, "not exactly. Her mind was transferred into my body, and my mind was trapped here. This is the cycle that continues over and over. Those trapped are able to regain human form after paying their penance, but the body nor the life they return to are not their own. They gain half a life, which I guess is better than no life at all. There is only one way to truly right the situation, and you failed. You started to change with your parents, but when you had the chance to help out someone in need you grew selfish and cared only about yourself. If you were able to resist your darker temptations I would have been able to go back to my original body, as would the girl in my body; so overall it would be as if the curse never happened." The doll began to laugh and cackle loudly as its arms reached towards Alice. "I guess you're smart enough to know what's going to happen now," the doll yelled, as Alice found herself being pulled onto the floor by some mysterious force that was moving her towards the doll.

"No...no," Alice managed to sputter as she tried to pull away, but to no avail. "I can't be a doll, none of this can be real, there's no way any of this is possible. I must still be dreaming, the entire day has to be one big dream." She began to laugh hysterically out of terror and fear.

'Don't worry Alice,' the doll coyly replied, her words seemingly entering Alice's mind. 'The transference didn't hurt a bit when it happened to me, so I don't think it will hurt you now. Just stop struggling, it won't help you. I tried the same thing when it was my turn.' The bright purple aura completely filled the room, and with a bright flash of purple-light the aura vanished.

Alice slowly rose off of the ground and stretched her legs. "Now, that's much better," she shouted joyfully, glancing at the black doll on the bed. "It's been a whole year since I've been able to move around like this." She quickly reached for a compact that was sitting on her dresser and opened it, studying her reflection. "You do look marvelous, don't you Alice? I think I'm going to enjoy this new body. While I was at least an seven, you're definitely a nine." She chuckled and then turned to face the doll. "Don't worry dear, in a year you're find someone else too. You won't be able to tell them the truth though until they either pass or fail the test." She paused for a moment and looked around the room. "Well, I better go see what Brad's up to today. Wouldn't want to keep my new boyfriend waiting." She walked out of the room, laughing with each step she took.

The black doll stayed sitting on the bed, not moving or saying a word. 'I'm..I'm a doll,' Alice thought. 'I should have woken up by now if this was a dream. I don't know what to do...' She tried to shout or move, but no sound left her lips and her attempts at motion yielded no results. Alice began to weep internally for several hours, until a noise broke her out of her her state. 'Maybe it's me..I mean..the girl who's in my body. Maybe she's decided to try to help me.' The bedroom door creaked open and Jean Liddy stepped inside.

"Well, hmm," the old woman mused out loud as she looked at the doll. "I talked to my mom and all of my sisters and my sister-in-law, and none of them sent you to Alice. I guess you must have been a wrong delivery or something." She paused, found the old wooden box that the doll came in, and started to pack it up. "I'll just put you back in your box and buy another gift box like the one you came in. I wonder if I dump you off at the post-office they'll be able to find where you're supposed to go, or I could always give you to charity." Jean smiled as she prepared to close the lid on the wooden box. "You know, Alice sounded so nice and kind on the phone when she called, I think she's actually going to change for the best." As she finished her sentence, the woman placed the wooden cover on the box and sealed it shut.

Trying to Capture: Gothita (Medium 10-20k)
Total CC: 28,747

Note: The first 6k or so CC is introduction but I feel it's relevant to the overall plot as it shows Alice's personality and the family dynamic. If you think I should fail because of too much background, I will edit and re-submit accordingly.

 

oh ho ho ho merry christmas

claiming I guess!

 

THE BEGINNING STUFF

Let’s jump right in.

The phrase “typical sixteen-year old American girl” is kind of weird to me, ‘cause it really doesn’t say much (also because it should be punctuated as “sixteen year-old”). There are all kinds of sixteen year-old girls, with all kinds of personalities and all kinds of things that would fall into everything they would want. To say that a typical girl is a blonde-haired cheerleader with a boyfriend and nice car and queen bee friends is a little… restricting, I guess? From a stylistic perspective, it’s also completely useless at describing, and on top of that you go ahead and describe what you say a teenage girl should want in the very next sentence, so it’s kind of redundant.
I only point this out because you specifically told me to grade this story because it had a female protagonist.

In terms of more stylistic stuff, and first sentence aside, your introduction isn’t bad. You do a good job of setting up your character, and your story isn’t terribly complicated to necessitate much more in your introduction in the first place.

In terms of things to consider for the future, I would suggest having more of a hook. If Alice’s life is so awesome, why should I care to read on about her story? Everything seems to be going her way, and the first half or so of this story is just her being a colossal bitch to everyone she knows despite all odds. There’s really very little convincing me to care about this character, let alone her story, which means your introduction might need to do a little more.

It’s always hard to get people to care about characters who are intentionally evil. You try to do this by hinting that Alice is going to learn her lesson, but I’d argue that the promise of watching someone, no matter how annoying, suffer isn’t exactly the most compelling hook either. In short, why should I keep reading your story? What about your introduction is going to convince me that I should continue reading? Think about that, and try to channel the answers to those kinds of questions into your introduction. I’m not suggesting that you spoil the entire story in your first few sentences, but you need to try to channel those ending emotions into your introduction so that your reader cares about the beginning as much as the ending.

Hooks, man. Hooks.

THE PLOT STUFF

For a medium-ranked story, your plot is pretty solid. There’s a nice beginning, middle, and end, and you’ve got some character development with a nice twist at the end. Overall, the plot is complicated enough to keep a story going through the length of it, but not too complicated enough to leave the reader guessing, so nice work on this front.

The one plot hole that I’d really look into is with the mechanics of the doll’s curse, though. From what I understand, it goes in this order:
=selfish girl receives a doll
=doll tries to convince her to change her ways
=girl will either
a. Change her ways, at which point ??? but I assume the reward is not turning into a doll
b. Not change her ways, at which point the girl is transformed into the doll, and the doll takes the body of the girl
If this is really the case, I’m not understanding the doll’s (who was formerly a girl and who, I should mention, will be able to regain a body in one case) motivation for helping the girl. If the doll fails to help the girl improve, then the doll gets a new body. If the doll helps the girl improve, then the doll presumably gets nothing? (she can’t get her old body back, because that was taken when she was possessed) Point being, the doll’s reward comes if she fails her task of reforming the girl; why should the doll even bother trying to reform the girl at all? If the doll actually succeeds, the doll gets nothing (other than the reassurance that the girl won’t be stuck as a doll, but the doll has to be selfish and uncaring to become cured into a doll in the first place, right?). If anything, the doll should try to make the girl fail to get better, because that way the doll has a chance at regaining a body again; if this is the case, why does the cursed doll exist? Why bother with the story of trying to help other selfish girls, since clearly redeeming the girl isn’t actually the logical choice of action?

Tl;dr: your story is cool, but it makes very little logical sense. Don’t rule out reality to make room for rule of cool, bro. (And if I’m misinterpreting how this curse works, hit me up and re-explain, ‘cause I’m honestly confused haha.)

I think the overall takeaway for improvement you could take from here would be with the liberal use of some classic horror stuff. A lot of elements in this story feel like they were originally from some other horror-y thing: the creepy doll, the somewhat-jump-scare cuts where things aren’t where they should be, the possession, the concept of people caught in a curse being cursed to curse other people. The spoiled teenage queen-bee-girl isn’t entirely a new concept either, although making an entire story about her, plus subverting the typical ending by not having her learn her lesson before the story concludes was a nice twist.

There’s that saying going around that there’s nothing original in fiction, and while this is kind of true, that’s not to say that you may as well start using all of the clichés because there’s no point in trying to create new material. In this case, you kind of want to avoid thing that you’ve seen a lot before: there’s not really the same scary, novel effect in some of these clichés as you’d probably be looking for. For instance, with the whole “oh this doll is being really creepy,” I’m not really worked up: I can name more horror movies centering around creepy dolls than I would care to count. In other words, how do you intend to make your story unique and memorable from the thousands of others that are already out there?

Maybe try combining things in different ways. Your ending that “oh and btw the doll was secretly evil/soul-destroying” isn’t terribly new because it’s been done before; maybe try changing that a little. Don’t be afraid to tread new ground with your fiction: anything goes! Those old plots don’t have to define your new story; let your imagination dictate what’s right and wrong.

THE PRETTY STUFF

Your grammar is pretty much solid. There’s some stylistic flow things that I’d be inclined to point out for higher ranks, but for a medium-ranked capture, you’ve definitely got some good stuff here. There were a few random typos, but nothing major.

In terms of description and prose style, you have plenty of nice descriptions of physical things—the doll’s appearance, the party, Alice’s appearance are all nicely shown through your text and incorporated in a generally non-awkward manner. For a medium-rank, you’re pretty solid in this category as well, so nice job here!

If I were to offer some sort of constructive criticism, I’d focus on some of the less tangible things, like your character’s feelings. A lot of the time, you’re just like “HERE ALICE IS A BITCH”, and then you show that really well, and that’s great! But when you’re dealing with that short bit of redemption with her parents, where she tries to be nice and ends up being decent to her parents, it all really comes out of left field. There’s not much that makes us feel like she’s being scared into being good, not much to express the idea that she’s re-evaluating her perception of herself as a person/the world in general, not much to even deal with all of that emotional turmoil that’s going on. Instead, you kind of just speed through it, even though this could be a really, really pivotal moment in your story.

What I would do is go through your story and pick out these big, emotional moments. Obviously, you can’t describe how a character is feeling each and every time anything happens ever, but there are some pivotal moments here that you could definitely expand upon. Once you identify these moments, stop for a bit and think: how does your character feel at this moment? Do his/her decisions have some sort basis in his/her backstory? How much of that gets revealed through the narration at that moment, or maybe some of it gets saved for later? Consider all of the emotional turmoil—your characters, no matter how shallow, have something going on beneath the surface, and you as a writer should consider that. The emotions of your characters help make them more relatable; if, in times of crisis, your characters are emotionally dull, they don’t really feel human at all, which you want to avoid.

THE NUMERICAL AND CONCLUSION STUFF

In terms of numbers, you’re near the upper limits of the suggested range, which is nice. We don’t really look for specific numbers, but there was definitely enough raw substance in this story to merit a capture for a medium-rank.

You mention in your end notes that you were tentative about having the first couple thousand characters being dedicated to backstory/character development, so I want to address this really quick: in certain cases, there’s really nothing wrong with having the initial parts of your story being devoted to character backstory. Again, this is on a case-by-case basis—in this case, your backstory is vital to the rest of your story because the story is devoted to having Alice get over her character flaws, so showing these vices isn’t so much backstory as part of the actual plot.

It’s best not to think of your story in chunks. Don’t think of it like “this is the introduction, this is where the backstory happens, now I’m going to spend three thousand, four hundred sixty-two characters on developing this subplot.” There’s no real formula to building the perfect story (which is why grading is so finicky sometimes), so don’t get too hung up on trying to find one! Just do what feels right, and things will work out.

Anyway. For a medium-ranked story, you have enough here for me to declare gothita captured. In the future, I’d work on a couple of major things: having a cleaner introduction and a more unique plot, and maybe working on the internal logic of your story a bit (ie the mechanics of how the doll curse works/why it functions the way it does). As it stands, though, you have lots of good for this story, so excellent work!