"Isn't she cute?"
     Brenda Black held out a hideously deranged looking doll for Billy to admire.
     It was an old, victorian looking thing, in decrepit, violet silk and lace, with a dementedly frozen smile on a cracked porcelain face. The parted lips revealed tiny, little pearly teeth. They were disturbingly real looking teeth, as if stolen from an infant's cadaver.
     "Um... yeah," said Billy Brady, with a look on his face that said, "Keep that thing away from me."
     "My friends collect Living Dead Dolls," the girl explained, "but I wanted something unique and one-of-a-kind. I found her on Ebay. Someone in Maine was selling her. That's Stephen King territory, you know. I call her Morticia."
     It was an awkward first meeting for them both. They'd met online. She was BiteGirrrl666 and he was KewlDude88.
     She was a goth. He was just horny.
     Her parents were away on vacation. His parents didn't hear him sneak out. It was just a short ride on his bike to where she lived on Chandler Street.
     Brenda had immediately invited Billy to her bedroom, a gesture that he took to portend his imminent salvation from Teenage Virgin Hell.
     "Want to watch a movie?" Breanda asked.
     "Um... sure," he said, following her around the bed like a puppy dog to several stacks of DVDs that stood on either side of her little television.
     "Let's watch this, 'The Bride of Chucky,' have you seen it?"
      Billy shook his head distractedly, following Brenda onto her black velvet covered bed. He leaned back into a pile of mismatched pillows that reeked of Nag Champa incense and stale pot smoke. Brenda pointed her remote at the TV and navigated quickly past the trailers and the disc menu to start the movie.
     Morticia the Doll sat facing them, propped against one stack of DVDs beside the TV, seemingly fixed upon Billy with a glassy stare. He was finding it harder and harder to focus either on the movie or on Brenda laying beside him.
     "Do you mind if we move the doll?" he asked.
     Brenda seemed offended. "Why, don't you like her?"
     She hopped from the bed and gathered the antique doll under her arm, returning to lay beside Billy.
     The boy repressed a shiver and pretended to watch the movie, all the while imagining scenarios, one after another, to seduce his new-found friend, while the eyes of Morticia continued to seem trained upon him.
     Then as Chucky made his move on Jennifer Tilly, Billy made his. Summoning all of his teenage cool, he rolled over onto Brenda, who sighed compliently and let the scary old doll fall beside her.
     Billy looked down at Brenda, intending to kiss her, but her sheer strangeness was beginning to affect him. Being so close to her, he began to see things that had escaped his notice before.
     The slenderness that had appealed to him at first now seemed disturbingly frail and skeletal. Her delicate hands seemed rat-like and her pale skin appeared waxen. Her scent seemed sickly sweet.
     The boy let his weight pin the fragile girl to the bed, but she made no move to resist. Billy was going to try to go through with this, despite the fact that he could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. He buried he face against Brenda's shoulder and tried to get her skirt up and her panties down, trying to ignore his sense of the girl's growing impatience at his awkwardness.
     Suddenly Billy felt a vicious hickey being applied to his neck. He jerked back, sending Brenda's doll tumbling off of the bed where it fell against the nightstand, staring up at him.
     "What the fuck!" cried Billy, clapping his hand to his neck and feeling the sticky wetness of blood. In his shock, he imagined that Morticia's lips looked a brighter crimson than before.
     He scrambled off the bed, zipping his pants as his feet hit the floor. He heard Brenda's voice behind him, pleading with him to stay.
     "Don't go, Billy! I'm BiteGirl, remember? We like to bite!"
     But Billy was already to the front door, banging it open and stumbling down the steps. He bruised his crotch as he leapt onto his waiting bike and pedalled frantically, craving the safety and normalcy of his room
     Brenda picked Morticia up off of the floor. She sighed as she sank back against the pillows, turning her and the doll's gaze back toward the television where Chucky and his Bride were electrocuting someone in a bathtub.

                                                                    ***
     Back at home, Billy lay in bed for hours sleeplessly, imagining the night's events. Still a virgin, he thought to himself. He wondered how he would explain the extreme hickey on his neck. He hadn't looked at it yet, but he was sure his parents would notice it in the morning.
     In the comfort of his bedroom, Brenda didn't seem so bad - kinda sexy, in a strange way. He could have had her!
     If he could just get that creepy doll locked in a box somewhere. He had stopped considering the bizarre thoughts he had had about the thing, but he still didn't want to have to see it ever again.
     He got out of bed, turned on his computer and logged on.
     There she was: BiteGirl666. She couldn't sleep either.
     He typed her an instant message.
     KewlDude88: hi
     BiteGirrrl666: hi
     KewlDude88: sorry I left like that
     Billy waited a full minute for an answer.
     BiteGirrrl666: com,e bacjk
     KewlDude88: are you sure???
     Another long pause.
     BiteGirrrl: yess come bac
     This time Billy paused before answering.
     KewlDude88: you seem different
     The pause that followed was long, long enough for Billy to guess the coming reply, a chilling moment before the words appeared on his screen.
     BiteGirrrl666: thisss is mmorticia!

                                                                    ***

     Billy snatched his hands way from the keyboard as if it were the hateful doll itself. He jabbed a finger onto the power button on his computer, shutting it down cold. Before the monitor had faded to blackness, Billy had already leapt back into bed and pulled the covers over his head.
     Meanwhile, Brenda sat at her computer, laughing gleefully as she saw Billy instantly log off.
     Billy didn't move a muscle as a swarm of 'what if's' swirled in his head.
     What if that thing was alive? What if it could find him? What if he heard a scratching at his window, or the creak of hinges at his door, or a scuttling noise under his bed?
     When he awoke it was morning and blessed sunlight streamed through his window. A dull ache from his neck reminded him of the night before.
     He shuffled to the bathroom mirror... and in disbelief he closed his eyes at the sight that reflected back. Two crescent shaped rows of teeth marks, pressed deeply into his throat, surrounded by a livid bruise.
     The bite was small, made with tiny teeth - like teeth from a baby's cadaver.