HOME | DD

Description
"i have the pieces. i just need the parts."-the macabre doctor"butcher black"

I've been gathering and making dolls for many years. searching for the right body, right shape, right proportions, etc. But despite my vast collection i can never find the right figure to fill the job.

Granted the job of being both a renowned craftsmen and aristocrat while keeping the guise of both in 18th century London is easy. But knowing that one day I will perish soon would leave my many works undone. I needed to make my self into something more. After all what is art but eternity?

I've studied the arts surgery all the while that I've been alive and it wasn't too hard to "gather" the materials for personal study, provided they died naturally of course. wouldn't want to use a butchered corpse or someone who was recently buried . yet no matter how hard i tried the best i could come up with were the macabre sculptures that make the dark and unholy. I could easily build a figurine here, make a puppet there, make a figure so lifelike, the queen of England her self would be shocked thinking i brought the dead to life. but it was impossible to maintain the illusion without motion.
then i traveled to France. and discovered how to make my replacement should I parish.

It was during the the Renaissance that i took a liking towards the technique of marionettes. the use of positioning and demonstrating technique of emotion through action. Alchemy also served well in providing life without the need of death. Provided that the right payment be made to keep ones own soul intact. Thankfully there was a brief moment of the plague spreading about Europe, and, with the help of some of the doctors obtained a body safe for use.

The attempts of using human bodies like dolls is difficult at best, and impossible at worst. Even with using alchemy the body of the dead does not last long as decay takes hold. I hold my sympathies for those i pulled from beyond.

then i realized it was not flesh but art and the doll itself that was necessary for the process to work. I constructed a special mannequin from parts i made myself. but the real process required a much better technique from London once I returned.

The first aspect of creating the figure was the appearance of skin. A humans would never work for skin is like a tight fitting glove. It fits but only for that person who was worn it so as to fit with age. I hunted down many fine threads for it's skin to use. Many an hour was spent to make the stitching so fine it looked it was seemed by fairies. the eyes were another issue it was hard to obtain glass eyes that looked real enough to look human, and clay never worked right to give one the illusion to reality. fortunatly the practiced craft of making dolls has made glass ware easy to construct with the right talent.

The hair...well...a wig would suffice I'd assume? Provided to hair was genuine and resistant to decay. the stitch work was easy enough to bind to the skin. The ears and lips were another difficulty to master. It took a precise level of stuffing to get the lips to the right size an yet still look human without becoming something comical. The ears were difficult to make real for even the finest craftsmanship of the feature was from clay which is prone to shattering. I had to use a very stiff form of cotton to make it look human to allow it to bend and feel real apart from the silken skin of the threads.

It took many long hours long hours to create it but it has finally been done. the eternity of man. The artists greatest creation. Oneself preserved in time of youth.
however the one final obstacle blocked my path. How to apply my self to art.

It was then that I came across a strange man garbed in black much similar to that of Frances doctors expect without the bird like mask. He described himself as a practitioner of the macabre and master of the knife. For what purpose of either could only have been assumed as medical at first glance.

He seemed interested about my project of preserving myself in art and also has studied in the act of alchemy, albeit with much greater interest in the subject than I did. He would gladly perform the ritual to which a person is bound to something. More referred to as soul-binding or "huarcruxation" as some call it. He explained to me the process involved human sacrifice, but much to my displeasure was assured it would be soul that would be used with no outside harm. however he did warn me that even if I was the one who would be used, there would be a great price for it...I agreed to it.

I brought him into my workshop late into the night with and prepared to mannequin for the process. Meanwhile the doctor in black drew the alchemical symbols for transmutation allowing my soul to be removed, transformed, and transferred to the vessel. Once he was finished he instructed me to sit the center of the circle and he would proceed. i prayed for god to allow me to transcend his mortal bound for man and grant me my wish. suddenly there was a flash and then...pain...then nothing...

I stared at the man who lay before me in the transmutation circle and stone that lay before him. I was a great challenge to turn his soul to a philosophers stone but worked...albeit I lost a hand to the process. i gazed upon the mannequin before me and back at the dead doll maker then placed to stone within the figures chest, drawing a line of a symbol to bind the stone to it and let the process take hold.

...then I awoke screaming as i grabbed my chest and tumbled to the floor, nearly toppling the doctor in the process in my shocked state. it was like gazing upon the universe itself and suddenly understanding everything, and suddenly being snapped back, "shoved" seeming oddly the more appropriate term for it and realizing what just occurred indeed happened.

I got and looked to where I once stood only to see the empty pedestal to where I once stood and at the circle where I once laid. My old body gone and nothing more than a small puddle of blood let behind. The doctor explained to me that It was a success and he has given me my wish...albeit that his left hand was longer with him but the stump covered with a thick cloth to stop the bleeding.

The doctor left without another word except to explain the price that was paid. There was no need, for I realized what the price was. I wasn't my body that was the payment, but my sanity. The body was merely the price for being turned to a philosophers stone. My sanity was the price for binding me to the mannequin. I was happy none the less but I couldn't help but understand some of what the doctors true profession was.

I live on making all my works throughout the world. dolls, statues, figurines, etc.
only now it's been over 200 years being alive and spreading my mark as an artist. although I've obtained a few "materials" for my self. still looking young and full of life, just like my muses do throughout the centuries...perfectly preserved throughout history...all with the help of the good doctor Allen hatchet. Funny how i found him again. It was when we both stumbled across a young man who had died of a few bullet wound in Europe in 1914. I was prying over a few good soldiers who had died in the the trenches to work into my collection, while the doctor was "tending" to a few surviving soldiers who had the misfortune of being struck or happened to be scavenging in the battlefield. He dispatched scavengers quickly enough with a loueger as he harvested a few parts from them, cutting them open, and turning them to mock forms of the living. He only noticed me when he saw a three foot long sowing needle fly into the chest of a German soldier who was about to shoot him. We exchanged pleasantries about how the other was fairing over the past hundred years. He claimed to be a humunculous that had far longer than most. While continued to make my work throughout history being seen by many with the inspiration of life into art while also engaging in the popular medium of taxidermy, particularly of mammals of ALL species. We parted ways for time. I returned to see the faces of horror and shock as the soldiers who returned the next the day to the battlefield to see their brothers-in-arms turned into the something more beautiful than soldiers. living statues that rivaled even the best replica looking as pristine and lie like as the the day they were alive. some simply standing in poses shouting orders for time to hear. while others looked frozen in time running for eternity. while those who not exactly in one piece...well...they served an excellent reminder of what war results in for the rest of time. And in the center of the battlefield i lone seven foot tall sewing needle rest gently and firmly place in the hill in the center of a fox hole. With two ribbons of one red and one blue tied into the top of the needles eye with the words "Vita brevis, ars longa, abhinc, ab initio and so let art exist for eternity." etched onto the blade.