Hollow Dolls, The (12 page)

Mel told Winnie that night on the couch that she’d
always loved her. It was a lie though. Neither of them could love. On the
island they could. Maybe it would happen here, too. The way the Man-Rabbit had
told Mel. Mel kept thinking she was in love, talking about it as if it were
real. Winnie just shook her head. “We’re Hollow Dolls Mel,” she mumbled.

“What?” barked Alejandra behind her.

Winnie zipped it.

She set up her laptop on the little table. It was
strange how she did that. Winnie and Alejandra would be talking or whatever and
then, the next thing, Alejandra would just be gone and something completely
different would be happening, as though somebody had just snipped a piece out
of the time tape and joined it back together.

The room was dark. She was alone. A dinky window
looked out on the alley. Lovely. That was okay, she’d be writing most of the
time. She’d downloaded all the new stuff off of Mel’s computer while Mel was
out cold on the floor. Winnie the bitch. Turning on her bestie.

Time to get high again. Out front of the Dodson
there was a good street scene. A guy tried to sell her some shite bunk, though.
Skinny white arsehole, with barely any teeth. It was a chunk of deodorant!
Winnie felt so mellow still from the last hit, she wanted something to smoke
and it was such a disappointment. So weak.

“Great sodding welcome wagon you are. Tossser!” She
tried to be mean and tough, only she was smiling. Then he had the nerve to
stick his hand under her shirt from behind and grab her boob. So Winnie twisted
his arm back and he went down on his knees in front of her. Some wankers
started clapping. Winnie laughed. It was so easy. It seemed like everyone down
here was wasted.

“Sod off!” She kicked him on the collar bone,
yelling purposely loud so everyone would see. She didn’t break it though. She
knew how to hold back just enough. Then she pushed him down and laughed some
more walking down the street. It was so, so funny down here. Bollocksy weenies
everywhere.

Then she found Timmy; sweet, sweet fellah. He hooked
her up with some really good rock and they sat smoking in her room for a while.
Now she could write! Now she could kick Alejandra’s ass. What would those kids
at Haverstock think now? Her mind went ranty and ravey. Winnie had been the
outsider in class. Never allowed to be cool. They didn’t even know her. Didn’t
know about her book. Didn’t know about Mel. Winnie didn’t give a sod about kids
at school anyway. She never got compliments, never got asked out. Now take a
look sodfucks. She’d nearly got her black belt. Here she was in Vancouver, BC.
Kicking ass. This was like ‘the shit’ American style.

Winnie picked up the baggie of Fentanyl patches
Alejandra had left her. “Here,” she said, dropping half on Timmy. “Trade you
for more moon rocks.”

“Plus a bj,” said Timmy.

He smiled and tried to the serious tough guy, but he
was shy and she could see what a stretch it was for him just to say that to her.
He’d had only been on crack for less than a year and his teeth were still okay.
Winnie could hardly say no. He’d been so sweet to her. After she made him cum
in her mouth, they smoked a chunk and sat on either side of the huge Pooh Bear
stuffy Winnie had bought at the pawn shop. Pooh was bigger than Timmy, bloody
hell. Winnie told Timmy the real story about Winnie The Pooh. The Canadian
soldier in England and all that. He loved it. Winnie drew a picture of Timmy’s
mirror image and held it in front of him. That freaked him out a little, so
they smoked more rock. Winnie slapped a fentanyl patch on Timmy’s belly when he
wasn’t looking. Right on the line of hair below his belly button. She laughed and
he got mad, so she took his cock in her mouth again to say sorry, making him
cum again. After that, the three of them chatted the rest of the night away and
she let him fuck her from behind even though she didn’t really even want it.
She pretended it was Mel with the blue man. But he was kind of smaller than
that and she kept realizing it was Timmy’s little penis inside her.

That
was the end of the email. Winnie didn’t sign off. Mel closed her laptop, wondered
why Alejandra hadn’t tried to take her back to Lilly yet. Alejandra was
stalling, waiting for something. There was the July 1
^st
  date that Winnie
had talked about. That couldn’t be true. Winnie was off the rails. She had to
find that girl.

 “I just needed to see you.”

Mel was at Jennie’s house once again, it’d been more than five
years. She walked in and sat on the couch.

“Could I have a drink—something strong?”

Jennie brought seven and seven. Mel hated seven up.

“The police called,” said Jennie. “I acted like you never existed.
The man said it was just routine questioning.”

“What else did he say?” Mel’s stomach tensed like she was sparring,
readying for a blow.

Please, not now.

“I told them I only attended the funeral out of a sense of duty, because
she was my sister, that I hadn’t seen her for many years before the funeral.”

“And Mel, there’s something else...” Jennie’s face dropped.

Getting caught reality invaded Mel thoroughly.

“I think the main reason they were checking is because
he
was killed too—they said murdered.”

Jennie was hesitant to say his name.

“Peter?” said Mel.

“Yes, they found him the same way, his throat had been cut.”
Jennie whispered the last part.

Plausible deniability hung in the air.

“Were they calling from London?”

 “Well, the man said it was routine, he said that a few times, and
that they were looking for a daughter of Marlene Williams in connection with the
murder. He wouldn’t say where he was calling from. I complained and asked the
man for his name and badge number. He made some excuse and hung up on me.”

“Sounds odd.”

“He said the killer might have blonde hair.”

“Well, it’s nothing to worry about.”

Jennie took Mel’s hands.  “Dear, I think it’s best to cut all
ties,” said Jennie. “Do whatever it takes—I can help.”

Mel nodded and it seemed Jennie knew.

 “Ok, enough about that,” said Jennie, leading Mel out to the
kitchen. “Have you had any luck on tracking down Walter? It’s so exciting!”

Mel explained everything that happened, the diary, what she knew
so far.

“What about that bump to your head—what happened?”

 “Oh that. I was in a cab on the way from the airport and we got
in an accident. All I remember is the headlights, then I woke up in the
hospital.”

Jennie never made a fuss about things. She always seemed to know
what Mel was going through and simply helped without question or hesitation.

“I’ll let you rest then. You can take Gayle’s room.”

Mel went to the basement; her room was at ground level, tucked
away from the main part of the house. They used to smoke weed by the window and
never got caught. She began to clear away the pictures on the dresser to set up
her laptop.

How cool it was just to look at the pictures on the dresser with
everyone so happy. There were picnics and swimming pools in the photos... Jennie
and Gayle were the shining light in her life then. Whenever she had visited, the
return always loomed heavily; what might be waiting in store for her when she
got back home. Mel felt the dread. It was strange to have such a thing
percolate inside her. Melanie-cat was at work, dropping torn remnants of rodent
flesh on the front step.

Back then, home equalled a terrible diagnosis.
You have a month
to live.
There wasn’t much else you could think of really. That’s what it
had been like. Mel’s mind had been invaded with Marlene and Peter like a
cancer. She put the last picture frame down on the end of the dresser and
cleared the way for her laptop.

There was Oksana’s photo on the desktop of her computer, and here she
was so far away. She ought to have stayed and done what she’d set out to do.

Mel turned the light low and undressed, setting the white rabbit
on the night stand. With the cam on record, she started the New Age music CD
she always played. Everything was simple and exactly the same each time they
had a session. All set, she connected to Georgy on Skype.

“Hi Georgy.”

“Hello Mel.”

Mel got comfy on her aunt’s puffy blue satin quilt, her arms
stretched out to her sides and legs in a V. The heavy curtains were closed, the
room was just light enough to see Mel’s body outline. Georgy didn’t pay much
attention to Mel’s body during the sessions. He spoke all the instructions
slowly and fairly monotone, giving a sixty to ninety second interval between
each to allow Mel’s focus and inner meditative movement.

“You’re on the mountain.”

“You're walking down the path.”

”You’re under the waterfall and walking into the tunnel.”

“You are out the other side.”

“Where are you?”

A minute or so passed and Mel spoke.

“I’m
on the farm.”

During
this session Mel didn’t speak much aloud. She was remembering a deeply buried
event; the day she’d spent on a farm. Not a quaint pastoral remembrance, a
sexually violent one which altered her subconscious more than any other single
event in her life.

Inside,
she was Melanie, and she spoke directly to Mel. They’d been here on the farm before
in sessions. There was no control on where Melanie went into the past and for
some reason she was at the farm again.

Around
the time Melanie turned twelve, she was taken to a farm by Peter where it
looked like a small party was taking place. A handful of men lounged and
jabbered around an outdoor barbeque pit in the early afternoon. August sun
shone bright. It might have been an idyllic family setting, something ordinary—and
it was for a while it was—then it wasn’t. 

While
the men were at the barbeque, Melanie was led out into a secluded field where
she was raped and abused repeatedly by men who’d paid Peter.

For
the entire afternoon Melanie had been tied naked with leather strips to a metal
combine. When she looked around her, Melanie saw an endless pattern of the rows
of harvested strawberry plants. And far off into the distance, a bluish-green
mountain-side loomed in the hazy summer atmosphere.

At
the time she didn’t know what the metal object was she’d been tied to since
she’d never seen such a thing as a combine. To her it was big black comb. Only
it was curved round and partly sunk in the ground, like it was combing the
dirt. The metal was so old that the rust had shed whatever outer layers it was
going to shed and had become black and hard.

The
shape along the top of the mountain was like an elephant. Melanie imagined a
whole family of elephants like a chain joined trunk-to-tail, going all along
the horizon. One man after another came upon her. She kept thinking of the
elephant family and how they’d stick together through anything. Trunk. Tail.
Trunk. Tail. Trunk. Tail.

Peter
turned Melanie over and tied her wrists and ankles so her front was down and
her backside was up. Melanie wanted to go away again, into the pain or off with
the elephants, yet she stayed present, knowing each thrust, feeling them inside
her. A girl’s voice began to whisper in her ear. And then she came out. Melanie
believed she came from the black metal next to her cheek and slipped right
inside Melanie’s body. The girl told Melanie how one day they would cut these
men on the neck and play with the blood. “Together,” she said. “And we will be
lovers in blood forever.”

Melanie
imagined it right then, tied to the metal while being raped, that she and the
girl would cut the men and throw them into the dark, dark hole of nothing. She
was with the girl, then they went back in the pain together. Looked into each
other’s eyes and saw the stars and fish swimming in blood. When that happened,
the men were gone.

Melanie
knew she’d been here on the farm before only this time she was talking directly
to Mel, just as she spoke to the girl on the combine. Melanie continued telling
Mel the story of that day while her body was stretched out on the cool, blue
satin.

Georgy spoke the sequence to bring Mel out again.

 “You’re moving through time Mel, moving past the Man-Rabbit, away
from there. Now things are clear, no longer cloudy or murky. No longer black
and white.

“As a child you thought like a child, you acted like a child. Now
you see things clearly. Mel, you will awake when you hear the sound.”

Then Georgy played the usual series of tones to wake Mel and
disconnected as soon as he saw she had awoken and was all right.

Mel sat up and looked around in a post-hypnotic phase. She drifted
back to the place she’d just been. The excitement of being tied to the metal
aroused her. She knew already that Nigreda was in her back then, but as she sat
up on the bed in the dark, she realized Nigreda even more clearly. She remembered
the little girl’s face from that day. It felt like she’d just gone back and
they’d celebrated her birthday together.

Mel laid back, closed her eyes and rubbed her hood ring, top of
the seven. The memory of the farm that day flowed through her mind. All the
images that had just been dredged up from her subconscious through Melanie.
Then Mel realized something was different. She’d seen the two men in suits who
approached Peter. Melanie was still tied down. One of the men took Peter away
and a woman with long dark hair came to untie her.

Mel sat up on the bed. Took out her phone and flipped to the
picture Cara had sent. It was Alejandra! She had been on the farm that day.
She’d come with the men and untied her and took her from the farm. How could
Alejandra have known her then?

Mel immediately opened her email and began typing.

Dear Georgy;

Thank you for the Skype session. Alejandra was at the farm. Has
she been in other sessions and I forgot??
I need to get
prescription refills, can you do that and send them to me at The Sandman Suites
on Davie Street in Vancouver.” Mel.