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The euphoria of victory is a short-lived moment that stretches over a little beyond a week or so.
Like sucking on a piece of sour candy, the sweetness of the top crust lulls you into a misplaced sense of security and dampens away your defenses, your proud skepticism, and you're so high on it that it doesn't even cross your mind that this feeling might be temporary.
You're crawling into bed, muscles sore and tired from hours of slaving away under the evening sun, when it happens. When you hear the faint giggle of her specter ringing through your room for the first time. You don't scream. Instead, you're petrified, numb to your fingertips and toes, your pupils skidding through every dark corner fast enough to make your head spin.
You find nothing. No doll. But then you are more horrified by that prospect than anything else, that you can't trust your own sight and hearing when it's all you have. You listen to the skuttling of rats outside your window, breath caught in your throat because you know better than to mistake that particular noise for leaves.
The nights after are the worst, and sleep is near-impossible to catch.
You stare at your ceiling for hours, hardly daring to blink. But, eventually, when the stillness becomes suffocating and heavy on your chest, and your body aches with the desire for respite, you give in. Fear curdles low and cold in your stomach as she laughs and laughs and laughs.
Coward, she whispers, and the word settles beneath your skin, sharp and prickly like a needle.