Memory627

Sally Finklestein cried pearls. She didn’t know why, she just always had. She had also spent every second since her creation under the stern, watchful eyes of her parents, as she supposed she must call them. Doctor Alric, who had stitched together her pale blue fabric flesh, stuffed her with crisp autumn leaves and used yards of rust-colored yarn for her waist-length hair. His wife, Jewel, who had named her, taught her to sew, clean, and cook. Together, they had taught her how to speak, to think, to feel, though there were many nights she wished they hadn’t. A heavy sadness had circled her phantom heart for as long as she could remember, an aching longing that she couldn’t understand. It grew worse every night, when the ever-full moon was highest, casting its bone-colored beams across the slumbering streets of Samhain, a realm inhabited by monsters, creatures, specters and demons. Furthest away from the lonely gray tower on the hill was the looming palace of the Pumpkin Queen, a being