Mulier Manipulatrix (a creepypasta)
I used to tell people I was lucky—light skin, accents that shifted depending on the neighborhood, the kind of face that let you pass without a second look. That’s the thing about luck: it makes you careless. It makes you forget there are corners of the world where a favor can be turned into a weapon.
My daughter’s name is June. She was eight months old the day we went to the mall. Her skin is the same light brown as mine, the kind that catches the light and fools strangers into thinking they know the story behind it. I pushed her stroller, stopped for a coffee, then sat on a bench to tie my shoe. I remember the small, ordinary motions—the way her fingers curled around my thumb, the tired drip of an afternoon rain on the glass roof above the atrium.
Then a woman—part Iranian, part English, she told me later with a smile that made the rest of her face look practiced—leaned down and started wiggling a finger in front of June’s face. She hadn’t asked. She hadn’t waited. Her hand was right there, close enough that the baby drew back and then, foolishly, reached for it.
“Can I hold her for a second?” she asked, all teeth and too much perfume.
No. My first thought was no. But I was tired and polite and tired of being the man everyone sized up and decided he didn’t belong. I said, “No, thank you.”
Her smile didn’t change. Her voice did. “If you don’t let me play,” she said, too loudly for the bench beside us, “I’ll take her out myself. And if you try to take her back, I’ll tell everyone you’re trying to kidnap my baby.” She leaned in until her breath smelled faintly of citrus. “Who do you think they’ll believe?”
It was the question that settled the room like fog. People were watching. I could see them look up from their phones, hear the predictable pause in the mall’s soundtrack where everyone waits to see what the drama will be. I thought of the bored security guard at the food court, the couples who glanced over and turned the other way. I thought of the cameras on the ceiling and how often they caught everything and meant nothing.
I felt ridiculous, but the thought of being accused of kidnapping my own child made my voice small and useless. I said the stupidest thing: “You can… you can play with her. But if you run off, I’ll come after you.” I tried to sound calm. The line between threat and plea blurred in my mouth.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said, her eyes bright as if we were sharing a private joke. “What do you think I am? I’m not a monster. I just wanted to play.” She took June, pinched her cheek until the baby made a rasping little sound, kissed her head, and handed her back as if returning a borrowed sweater. Then she walked away like nothing had happened.
For five minutes I sat there, chest tight, waiting for someone to stand up and laugh at me for being weak. No one did. Everyone was watching the other end of the mall, scrolling past it later like it had been a small act in a larger show.
I pushed the stroller to the bookstore because that’s where I went when I needed the world to make sense—shelves of neat, honest lines. I lost myself in the paperbacks until the world tilted.
An old woman—stooped like a question mark and with hands that moved like trembling punctuation—came up behind me and unbuckled the stroller strap. I didn’t know how long she’d been there. I didn’t know if she had been watching the whole time. Before I could step forward, her fingers were at June’s covers, trying to lift her out.
I grabbed the stroller and yanked it back, heart in my throat. The old woman bristled like she’d been insulted. Her mouth opened to say something sharp, indignant—then the other woman I’d let touch my child appeared.
She crossed the floor like an accusation and slapped the old woman hard enough to drop her to the tiles. “How dare you try to kidnap this man’s baby?” she shrieked. Her voice was an instrument tuned to outrage. She said she’d been watching them, followed them, saw how the older woman had circled and then tried to take the infant. People gathered in a ring. Cameras, I thought hopelessly, were probably on but that did not mean they would work for me. People were already calling the police with a version of the story that did not involve the flirtatious threat, the coercion, the way I had been bled of a choice.
No one looked at me for the truth. They looked at the woman who spoke the loudest and the clearest. They believed the woman who had been dramatic enough to create a scene and simple enough a narrative to swallow.
The old woman was arrested. The security guard patted my shoulder and muttered something about being lucky. Someone handed me a bottle of water; someone else asked if I wanted to press charges for assault. My mouth was dry and the words stuck to the roof of it. I could have said—should have said—that the woman had tried to steal my daughter by intimidation, that she had blackmailed me into “letting” her, that she’d threatened to call the shots on who would be trusted in a public place. But how would that sound? How would it sound next to the image of a frail old woman on the ground and a younger woman calling the police on a would-be kidnapper?
So I let them take the old woman away, and I let them tell the story they were ready to hear. The woman who’d taken June and slapped the old woman smiled at me like a partner in a secret. She said, “See? It works. People always believe me.” She turned, eyelashes batting just so, and disappeared into the crowd without so much as a backward glance. No one stopped her; why would they? She had provided the version of reality that fit.
It’s been a week. I haven’t told my wife—June’s mother—because the scene would explode into questions I cannot answer without explaining how I let myself be blackmailed. I sleep with the window cracked and the stroller next to the bed. At night I wake and count the hours until dawn as if time itself could be proof against people who make a life on the currency of lies.
Part of me wants to march back to that mall, to find the woman and make her name mean something ugly and public, to unmask the way she can walk into a crowd and rewrite their memory. Part of me knows that even if I do, she’ll spin the story so the world will still side with the louder voice. The math of it is cruel: the woman who wanted attention has it; the stunned man who tried to be reasonable has silence.
This is how it ends, for now. I watch my daughter sleep and feel the hollow where my courage should be. I teach her the names of animals, the colors of leaves, the shape of letters. I teach her to trust and to smile, because those are things I can give her without asking anyone’s permission. I teach myself to look for the small signs—the way people move, the way they insist—that might one day keep us safe.
If anyone ever tells you that bias is over, that justice is blind and fair, tell them about a bench in a mall and a woman with a practiced smile. Tell them about what a simple sentence—Who do you think they’ll believe?—can do to a man who loves his child. Tell them that sometimes being unlucky means there’s no one left to believe the truth.
My daughter’s name is June. She was eight months old the day we went to the mall. Her skin is the same light brown as mine, the kind that catches the light and fools strangers into thinking they know the story behind it. I pushed her stroller, stopped for a coffee, then sat on a bench to tie my shoe. I remember the small, ordinary motions—the way her fingers curled around my thumb, the tired drip of an afternoon rain on the glass roof above the atrium.
Then a woman—part Iranian, part English, she told me later with a smile that made the rest of her face look practiced—leaned down and started wiggling a finger in front of June’s face. She hadn’t asked. She hadn’t waited. Her hand was right there, close enough that the baby drew back and then, foolishly, reached for it.
“Can I hold her for a second?” she asked, all teeth and too much perfume.
No. My first thought was no. But I was tired and polite and tired of being the man everyone sized up and decided he didn’t belong. I said, “No, thank you.”
Her smile didn’t change. Her voice did. “If you don’t let me play,” she said, too loudly for the bench beside us, “I’ll take her out myself. And if you try to take her back, I’ll tell everyone you’re trying to kidnap my baby.” She leaned in until her breath smelled faintly of citrus. “Who do you think they’ll believe?”
It was the question that settled the room like fog. People were watching. I could see them look up from their phones, hear the predictable pause in the mall’s soundtrack where everyone waits to see what the drama will be. I thought of the bored security guard at the food court, the couples who glanced over and turned the other way. I thought of the cameras on the ceiling and how often they caught everything and meant nothing.
I felt ridiculous, but the thought of being accused of kidnapping my own child made my voice small and useless. I said the stupidest thing: “You can… you can play with her. But if you run off, I’ll come after you.” I tried to sound calm. The line between threat and plea blurred in my mouth.
“Oh, don’t be silly,” she said, her eyes bright as if we were sharing a private joke. “What do you think I am? I’m not a monster. I just wanted to play.” She took June, pinched her cheek until the baby made a rasping little sound, kissed her head, and handed her back as if returning a borrowed sweater. Then she walked away like nothing had happened.
For five minutes I sat there, chest tight, waiting for someone to stand up and laugh at me for being weak. No one did. Everyone was watching the other end of the mall, scrolling past it later like it had been a small act in a larger show.
I pushed the stroller to the bookstore because that’s where I went when I needed the world to make sense—shelves of neat, honest lines. I lost myself in the paperbacks until the world tilted.
An old woman—stooped like a question mark and with hands that moved like trembling punctuation—came up behind me and unbuckled the stroller strap. I didn’t know how long she’d been there. I didn’t know if she had been watching the whole time. Before I could step forward, her fingers were at June’s covers, trying to lift her out.
I grabbed the stroller and yanked it back, heart in my throat. The old woman bristled like she’d been insulted. Her mouth opened to say something sharp, indignant—then the other woman I’d let touch my child appeared.
She crossed the floor like an accusation and slapped the old woman hard enough to drop her to the tiles. “How dare you try to kidnap this man’s baby?” she shrieked. Her voice was an instrument tuned to outrage. She said she’d been watching them, followed them, saw how the older woman had circled and then tried to take the infant. People gathered in a ring. Cameras, I thought hopelessly, were probably on but that did not mean they would work for me. People were already calling the police with a version of the story that did not involve the flirtatious threat, the coercion, the way I had been bled of a choice.
No one looked at me for the truth. They looked at the woman who spoke the loudest and the clearest. They believed the woman who had been dramatic enough to create a scene and simple enough a narrative to swallow.
The old woman was arrested. The security guard patted my shoulder and muttered something about being lucky. Someone handed me a bottle of water; someone else asked if I wanted to press charges for assault. My mouth was dry and the words stuck to the roof of it. I could have said—should have said—that the woman had tried to steal my daughter by intimidation, that she had blackmailed me into “letting” her, that she’d threatened to call the shots on who would be trusted in a public place. But how would that sound? How would it sound next to the image of a frail old woman on the ground and a younger woman calling the police on a would-be kidnapper?
So I let them take the old woman away, and I let them tell the story they were ready to hear. The woman who’d taken June and slapped the old woman smiled at me like a partner in a secret. She said, “See? It works. People always believe me.” She turned, eyelashes batting just so, and disappeared into the crowd without so much as a backward glance. No one stopped her; why would they? She had provided the version of reality that fit.
It’s been a week. I haven’t told my wife—June’s mother—because the scene would explode into questions I cannot answer without explaining how I let myself be blackmailed. I sleep with the window cracked and the stroller next to the bed. At night I wake and count the hours until dawn as if time itself could be proof against people who make a life on the currency of lies.
Part of me wants to march back to that mall, to find the woman and make her name mean something ugly and public, to unmask the way she can walk into a crowd and rewrite their memory. Part of me knows that even if I do, she’ll spin the story so the world will still side with the louder voice. The math of it is cruel: the woman who wanted attention has it; the stunned man who tried to be reasonable has silence.
This is how it ends, for now. I watch my daughter sleep and feel the hollow where my courage should be. I teach her the names of animals, the colors of leaves, the shape of letters. I teach her to trust and to smile, because those are things I can give her without asking anyone’s permission. I teach myself to look for the small signs—the way people move, the way they insist—that might one day keep us safe.
If anyone ever tells you that bias is over, that justice is blind and fair, tell them about a bench in a mall and a woman with a practiced smile. Tell them about what a simple sentence—Who do you think they’ll believe?—can do to a man who loves his child. Tell them that sometimes being unlucky means there’s no one left to believe the truth.
31-35, M