O:JA&L Flash Nonfiction: Essay
Kimberly Kearns
WHEN THE GAME ENDS
My daughter has this rubber mannequin head. It’s the size of a real, actual human head. It has long, silky blond hair that she combs and practices her French braiding technique on. It has all the delicate features of a real person, with elaborately painted light green eyes and full red lips that she once applied makeup to. The makeup never came off, so the mannequin ended up looking like a drag queen. And it’s just a head, no body, just a sizable noggin with a lot of hair and a long, slender neck.
We sometimes play this game in our house. It doesn’t have a name. It’s just a game where we hide things. It doesn’t have a start or an end. It just begins. Someone randomly starts it up in the hopes of annoying another member of the family, and it usually isn’t planned. I think sometimes it happens by accident.
Like that time a rogue navy and white striped sock ended up in my husband’s clean laundry. He handed it to me and said, “This isn’t mine.”
“Well, it’s not mine,” I said, throwing it back at him.
Thus began our game of hiding the sock. We’d sneak it under pillows, underneath piles of underwear in drawers, or inside closets, just to playfully get under each other’s skin. That one lasted quite a long time. Maybe a couple of months.
A few years ago, we played this game with a fake, plastic pile of dog poop, stashing it in various spots to surprise the kids, like in their lunchboxes, on the floor in their rooms, or tucked into their shoes.
I’m not sure who started hiding the mannequin head, but suddenly that mess of blond hair was everywhere. She began to make her way all over the house, turning up in bizarre places like on a shelf in the pantry or inside the shower. While most of us got a kick out of it, the mannequin head really bothered my oldest son.
He wasn’t so into the game anymore. He claimed her face creeped him out. Her eyes were weird, her makeup nightmarish. Every time the mannequin head found its way into his room, he threatened to shave off all her hair, making his sister scream and cry.
Eventually, the game started to wear on my husband too. He complained that being startled by her staring back at him from the kitchen cabinet at five a.m., half-asleep and reaching for his coffee mug, was getting to be too much.
So one day, I moved the mannequin to a shelf in the laundry room and didn’t bother to tell anyone. A few days passed, and the game was over.
Eventually, my daughter asked me what happened to her mannequin.
“Your brother didn’t like it,” I said. “She weirded him out.”
“Why? But I like her,” she complained.
“Sorry,” I said. “I think the game’s over.”
“Okay.” She frowned.
I took her hands and squeezed them tight. “How about I try to braid your hair, instead?”
About the writer:
Kimberly Kearns holds a Creative Writing minor from Colby College and completed the eighteen-month Creative Writing Certificate Program at Emory University. She is the author of the self-published memoir On the Edge of Shattered, which built a substantial readership through social media and Substack. Kearns served as lead writer for F*cking Sober: The First 90 Days (season “Betsy”), a Webby Award–winning narrative podcast, co-hosted The Weekend Sober podcast, and founded Sober in the Suburbs, a community for women in recovery in the Greater Boston area. Combining lived experience in recovery with storytelling, public speaking, and advocacy, Kimberly Kearns engages a strong audience through writing, podcasting, and community outreach. She has appeared on sobriety podcasts, panels, and local events, encouraging women to live courageously and alcohol-free. Her work and story have been featured in The Boston Globe, TODAY.com, NPR, Fox 25 News, and WBZ News. Kimberly Kearns currently lives in Needham, Massachusetts, with her husband and three children.
Image: Caput Rufum by O:JA&L staff creative. 2025. Public domain via MidJourney AI.
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