I awoke with a start, blinking as I raced to make sense of my surroundings. Quickly, I gathered that I must have fallen asleep on the couch shortly after filing my last blog, the one about Cardi B or whatever, though I had no recollection of drifting off. The room was serene, a breeze wafting in through the open window above me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss.
And then I saw it.
The doll.
There, propped up between my feet, was a nesting doll—what the Russians call a “matryoshka,” which is Russian “little round bitch.” She gazed upon me through those lacquered paint-on-wood pupils with a smile probably meant to entice, though all I felt was revulsion.
“I don’t own a Russian nesting doll,” I thought to myself. “I’ve never owned a Russian nesting doll in my life.”
Confused by her origins and increasingly creeped out by her presence, I thought about picking her up and hurling her out the open window, disposing of her once and for all! But then, my curiosity won out. Dolls always brought me joy as a child. How could this one be any different?
I slowly inched towards her, took her between my hands, and twisted. Nestled in between her sturdy peasant haunches, I found another, smaller nesting doll. She had a sticky note attached to her.
“AT LEAST 200,000 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM COVID-19 IN THE UNITED STATES AS OF SATURDAY ACCORDING TO THIS ARTICLE I READ ON MOTHER JONES,” it read in all caps.
“What a horrible little doll,” I thought to myself. “Have Russian children ever known joy? Perhaps I shall find her dolljoy further down.”
I twisted this second doll, and out popped another, even smaller doll—again, with a sticky note attached. “AND NBC NEWS SAYS THAT OVER 400,000 PEOPLE WILL DIE IN THE U.S. ACCORDING TO SOME PREDICTIONS,” this note read.
“Well, that didn’t bring me any joy,” I said. “Surely, the next one will.”
I picked up this smaller doll and twisted once more, rending her in two until an even smaller doll plopped out. She, too, bore a sticky note with an all-caps message scrawled on it—one that, unfortunately, was also not nice to read.
“USA TODAY SAID WE MIGHT HAVE TO DEAL WITH A ‘TWINDEMIC’ THIS FALL WHAT THE FUCK,” it said.
And with that, I hurled the doll and every twisted-apart half of her matrilineal ancestry out the open window, just as I should have done from the start. I swiped open my phone, googled “fat transfer breast augmentation,” and thought about having even bigger titties. A calm washed over me. I was ignorant but free.
