Hollow Dolls, The (4 page)

Hours later she came to, her head back over the rail of the tub. Stiff,
hurting. Her eyeballs throbbed, lips prickled. Everything prickled. The water was
pale cherry cold. The candle had burned down. The hall light gleamed off of the
bottle on the wooden chair. She tipped it back. Her and booze and the mouth of
a Jack Daniels bottle. It was all pretty intimate. She pressed the bottle mouth
to her lips and slowly parted them. Through the slit. Bubbles climbed up the neck
and gurgled in the bottle as she let the liquid into her mouth. Funny sound. She
almost laughed thinking of slits, caught herself then choked booze out her nose
and mouth. It rolled off her chin, and she spritzed Jack Daniels like rain
drizzle on top of the water. She tipped the bottle back down, gracelessly smashing
it on the side of the tub.

 “Fuck-fuck-fuck!”

She stepped out at the other end and nearly fell.

Four Abbys were stranded over on the chair so she tip-toed over
the glass saying, “Ouch.” She groaned in pain automatically while she didn’t
feel a thing. Got them.

She realized after she didn’t need to walk on glass; the margarine
container was full of them. The plastic clock that never got hung was flat on
the kitchen table. Big hand little hand, it said five-twenty.  Mel sat and
drank a water, crushed and snorted one Abby only this time, then smoked a pinner
joint for breakfast. It tasted so good she wanted to put syrup on it.

Things would be okay. Things
were
okay. Except the tile
floor had a trail of blood prints where she’d just walked. She sat making
little kitten balls of Kleenex and taped them on her cuts.

Then she called Miss Winnie. She closed hers and saw Winnie’s translucent
copper penny eyes perfectly.

“We were supposed to do it together.”

Wrong was only for Winnie. Nobody else could make Mel even think
that word.  She’d done wrong.

“But I stopped!” she said quickly.

It was too late; the phone had disconnected on Winnie’s end.

Mel hurried, eating a granola bar, following
the shiny
sidewalk to Winnie’s. The sky was turning light by the time she got to her
door, the only red thing on the entire block.

‘13’
it said, in white metal letters. Gaisford Street in Kentish Town. She leaned to
one side, taking the pressure off her worst foot. Mel’s leg shook, so she
touched it to the step to make it stop. The door swung open. Winnie’s white
housecoat walked away.

Following
in without a word, Mel dropped beside Winnie’s feet at the end of the couch.

“Grab
a drink—I’m too pooped.”

Winnie’s
brown locks were scraggly, nested and didn’t make it past her jawline like
usual. She had racoon eyes and the skin around her lips was red from wiping her
mouth too much.

Mel
drifted into the imaginary okay-ness of the screen. ‘Clockwork Orange’ was on. She
limped to the kitchen table and snorted one canine. Winnie looked over. Mel brought
back rum and two tumblers and gave her one. Winnie didn’t snort. She smoked and
swallowed. Mel gave her a canine.

“What’s
wrong with your leg?”

“Nothing.”
She paused. “I guess I’m in trouble,” said Mel.

“I
know!” cried Winnie. “Don’t you think I can even tell?” Winnie looked back to
the screen and stuffed her hands between her legs, squeezed down on them. Mel
looked at the curled corners of Winnie’s mouth, a little more on the left than
the right.

“I
saw him. And my mum.”

She
needed to let her know, to have an excuse for breaking their trust.

Nothing
doing.

“Spied
on them at The Lock. Then Peter...”

As
soon as Winnie heard the name, she looked in Mel’s eyes.

They
stared at one another. Mel hardly needed to say another word. “I froze.”

Winnie
knew. She slipped an arm around Mel’s waist and slid down snuggling against Mel’s
belly.

“You
won’t leave me, will you?” said Mel, staring at the screen and stroking
Winnie’s hair.

“Nope,”
Winnie mumbled. She was crying her crocodile tears into Mel’s shirt like a
tribute to mark the bad that had been done to Mel.

Winnie’s
arm felt warm against Mel’s back. She tucked her hand between Winnie’s bare legs.
Felt the bumps. There were scabs from Winnie scratching her cuts. Some were
open, with faint blood smears.

While
they watched the movie, Winnie did up Mel’s feet and wrists with Band-Aids. She
made plastic asterisks on Mel’s wrists using three on each side and drew
smileys in the middle. They sat back on the couch and drank rum.

When
the movie ended, Winnie told Mel, “You smell like a wet dog.”

They
brought all the stuff in. Rum, candles, ciggies, ashtray, xannies. Winnie
filled the old claw foot. The wall was painted vanilla above the divide. Winnie
had cut perfect squares of the deep blue wallpaper and pasted it into each
square on the wainscoting. Paper Boy brand. The wallpaper company called it
‘hand made’ design because the rabbit print pattern was formed by a hand shadow
puppet that depicted the fingers as well. When you looked at the rabbit design
you saw clasped hands that formed a rabbit and the image flipped back and forth
right before your eyes. Hands. Rabbits. Hands. Rabbits. Winnie did the whole
place with it herself.

She
touched Mel’s rings with her toe, moved down over her vag lips and nestled on her
bum. Winnie nudged her there and Mel looked up, shrugged and shook her head like
she was cancelling something, preventing it from turning into a thought.

The
tub filled and Winnie turned and turned on the starred porcelain cross handles.
Then came the squeals at the end, and the faucet finally shut. The water slowly
trickled. The drain made an empty noise in the silence. It was the built-in
kind of drain you couldn’t fix without taking the whole thing apart. Winnie
didn’t want to call a plumber. The last service guy who came to fix the stove
flirted with her and when he came close, her dog ears picked up the polyphonic
tones of wheezing in his lungs.

She’d
wanted to cut him and was willing to, only she didn’t. Now she couldn’t get the
wheezing out of her mind. Winnie was not calling any more repair guys. Ever.

Mel
took two xannies. Winnie poked her toe into Mel’s leg. Held up two fingers like
a V. Mel handed her a few of the white Xanax bars, then started scrubbing
herself with too much soap. Winnie made her finger in a downward curve, painted
it across her lips. She closed her eyes.

“I
see her sometimes,” said Winnie. “She’s cutting Dad’s fingers off and squeezing
them for ketchup.” She picked a scab off of her leg and blood poofed in the
water.

Winnie
had drawn a detailed black and red ink image of herself eating her mother’s leg
at the dining room table. Her mother’s body was stretched out on the table with
a tourniquet on her leg, her face turned to the viewer, still alive. In the
drawing, Winnie herself looked out at the viewer while chewing on the flesh.
She’d been successful at giving herself ‘that look’, the one Mel saw in her.
Plus she had drawn the blood on her own lips and cheeks. It was her eyes and all
the subtle nuances of Winnie’s expression. She’d done it over and over until
Mel said it was right. The drawing hung in a gilded frame in Winnie’s living
room for some time. During one of her impulsive furies, Winnie had smashed it
open and burnt the drawing.

Winnie
pulled out the little blade in her nail clippers and cut eyes in her wrists
like Mel’s. She felt warmer inside. Closer to her, bringing their connection
back to where it belonged. She watched the pink escape into the water. Mel
didn’t care anymore about cuts or blood. Neither of them did.

The
tub needed filling every fifteen minutes or so. Winnie turned the hot on and
Mel paddled to circulate it. They drank some more, then Winnie added more hot
water. They’d usually top it about five times, turn to prunes and get out.
Winnie kneeled in front of  Mel. She carefully took Mel’s bandages off and kissed
her little eyes. She compared them to hers. Hers were still open. Fresh, not
bleeding that much anymore.

Then
Winnie started talking about the woman with the long dark hair. It made her restless.
She thought of Mel with her black hair. She tried teasing by biting on her
nipples. Mel was fading in and out.

Winnie
went back to her end, turned sideways away from the faucet and blasted more hot
water into the tub. She stuck her finger in and out of the water flow, saying,
‘Ow,’ each time in a low, monotone voice.

Mel
stirred. She told Winnie in a groggy voice about the Man-Rabbit and the island.
It took her almost a solid minute to find the little white rabbit in her jeans
pocket on the floor so she could show Winnie. Winnie reached over and picked up
Mel’s bottle of xannies.

“I
want to go...to the island,” said Winnie. She took the cap off and poured half
in her palm. Popped them in her mouth and swallowed them all down with rum. Mel
took the rest, then dropped the empty plastic bottle over her shoulder. It
bounced around on tile floor and then it was quiet, except for the empty sound
of the water in the drain.

“Hollow
dolls,” said Winnie.

Mel
took the rum and filled the glass tumblers that said 500 ML on the bottom. The wallpaper
rabbits changed as they sat at each end and sipped their rum. Rabbits. Hands.
Rabbits. Hands. Winnie tucked her fingers in between each of Mel’s toes on both
feet.  

Mel
watched Winnie’s eyes roll around. They wanted to roll back and stay there. They
pulled forward at the last second and looked right at Mel’s.

“I
guess I should say something important,” said Winnie.

“You
just did.”

Twelve hours later, Mel’s eyes fluttered open slow and mechanical.
Winnie was bent forward like a doll whose batteries had gone dead. Mel noticed
Winnie’s face had a blue tinge. Her neck felt cold like plastic. She was alive.
The floor of the tub had dried urine and barf all over it. She almost threw up
again. Mel stood, fell out of the tub, clutching the shower curtain, and did
throw up. On the floor, clamouring in puke, she insisted she could stand and
did so, knocking her knees and bumbling around like a newborn giraffe.

She stood back in the tub and hosed everything down with the
shower head, then dried her plastic Winnie doll. Something pinged inside, like
a tiny voice. She checked Winnie’s pulse automatically. As Mel held her fingers
to Winnie’s wrist, she saw her own hand as a nurse’s hand, as though it were attached
to a third person who was there with them. The nurse wrestled Winnie’s
housecoat onto her limp body and carried her to the couch.

They both slept for another six hours. Mel woke to hear Winnie
puttering around. They drank coffee, hated themselves worse than ever, and
recuperated for the rest of the day.

Mel called in very sick.

Eight pm.

Winnie was Mel’s to a certain extent, all the time. Winnie gave it
all, always. Only sometimes Mel needed to reel her in. Crop lashes from Mel
really hurt. The pain made Winnie’s body buzz from the warmth that radiated
out. She felt shaky good inside.

Mel described it to Winnie. She wanted to open Winnie flat on the
ground and cum all over her. Winnie liked the idea of being opened flat; it seemed
like it would be another place of perfect safety Mel could bring her to. Winnie
pictured herself a page in a big fat book, hiding. Mel told Winnie about
Nigreda and how they’d done it together, laid out flat by The Lock Tavern that
night.

“Brown girls covered in cum droplets,” said Mel. She described how
she and Nigreda had disappeared in the pain. Mel knew Winnie was a little
jealous, maybe a lot. She promised her, “Win, I know we can go there together
with Nigreda. We will.”

On rare occasions, they would switch. Mel called it ‘topping from
the bottom’. She’d even let Winnie use the blue man sometimes and Winnie would
wear Mel’s white socks and runners—they were a size too big and she was always
slipping when she rocked away on top of Mel. It was just a funny thing between
them. Little nuances. Was that what love was about?

Mel had a way out of their funk—their almost deadly funk—a way
that didn’t require them to end everything, and a way for them to lay
themselves flat out together. Maybe.

She cracked the Absinthe Zele that she’d given Winnie last
Christmas. Out of her pack: the diary, four bottled waters, a packet of canines,
her pot—she told Winnie to get her vitamins.

Mel squeezed the plastic water bottle hard with the cap on. A
hairline spray came out of the cap hitting Winnie’s nipples and Winnie pushed
her chest out for more.

Mel tossed her the bottled water. “Drink that!”

“Here.” Mel handed Winnie the picture of Jack. “This
is the man part,” she said. “Draw him inside the Man-Rabbit. With the fine fur
and the little ears. The man is Jack, but they are one together.”

“Who is he?” Winnie asked.

“That’s the thing, I feel like I know him. I found the
picture mixed in with my oxys, after everything happened. I think the Man-Rabbit
put it there...somehow. I don’t know Win, we’re just doing this.”

Winnie had already drawn the Man-Rabbit while Mel
described him to her. It was as if she were describing a perpetrator to the
cops as a witness. Winnie drew and redrew until it was as good as it could be. Once
Winnie had the Man-Rabbit’s image right, Mel told her to draw him in as many
positions as she could, like a Michelangelo sketch book. Plus she was to leave
the facial expression the same, because the Man-Rabbit didn’t change his expression,
ever.
After Winnie completed the drawings to Mel’s
satisfaction, she spent some time explaining to Winnie how and why they needed
to go to the island.

Mel cracked the Absinthe Zele and poured some into a snifter.

“It looks like mouthwash,” said Winnie.

“It tastes like gasoline—until you add this.”

Mel dipped a teaspoon of white sugar into the snifter to soak up
the absinthe liquid. Winnie lit it on fire and Mel tilted the spoon. Flaming
caramelized sugar dripped into the snifter.

Winnie’s vitamins were eight orange ecstasy tabs sitting on the
table with an embossed Playboy logo on them. Winnie tilted her head back and Mel
dropped two in and gave her another water.

About an hour later, after the absinthe was done, they were stand-up
kissing, Mel holding Winnie tight. Then Mel broke away. She pushed Winnie down
onto the couch. Winnie knew what was next.

Out from the bedroom with long black hair, corseted in black
leather, Mel forced Winnie onto her hands and knees and cuffed her. Fucked her
from behind with the blue man. She didn’t wear the runners, because she wasn’t
Mel, she was the woman with the long dark hair. She put Winnie across her lap and
snapped a short black crop hard across her cheeks. One cheek, then the other.
Five on each side every ten minutes for a half an hour while she teased her
clit just a little.

Afterward, Winnie laid on top—her back to Mel’s front. Mel wrapped
her legs around Winnie’s waist. They fit together like a hot dog and bun. Their
bodies were like that. They could sit or lay anywhere and in seconds come
together like two pieces of a whole. Winnie imagined it was like when she
pushed two pieces of broken ceramic together, sometimes if it was perfect, the
crack would just disappear and the thing would appear whole again. It really
was their story; something broken and mended, that fit perfect and held strong
again. With a bit of glue. She was thinking about what the glue was that held
them and wiggled her burning bum on Mel.

“I want to get rings too.” Winnie could feel them against her
scorched skin. The metal felt cool. The top ring was a clitoral hood ring and
right at that moment Winnie heard a little moan escape from Mel’s lips. She was
making Mel wet moving her hot bottom around on that ring.

Mel played with Winnie’s nipples, touching her finger to her
tongue to wet them. Winnie had to fight back her urge to squirm and arouse
herself. Mel licked her fingers again, and did the same to Winnie’s clitoris.
Winnie knew she would be denied an orgasm, which was the second hardest thing
Mel ever made her submissive do.  

When Winnie was trembling sufficiently, Mel sat Winnie up for a
break, gave her two more vitamins, and two for herself. Plus another bottle of
water.  Then she did the ultimate, the hardest thing for Winnie as her
submissive. Breath play with orgasm denial. What Mel had outlined to her about
this scene was going to alter their whole future together. They both knew that.

Mel held her arm around Winnie’s throat; she talked about the Man-Rabbit
and their plan while she teased Winnie’s clitoris. Winnie got shorter of breath
as the air wheezed in her throat and lungs. With Winnie’s hearing, the wheezing
was in all sorts of strange polyphonic tones that shifted as Mel adjusted her
arm around her neck.

It sent Winnie to a place that no other submissive could ever go.
With her eyes closed Winnie saw colors, a palette that shifted hues with the
tonal shift of the wheezing in her throat. In the color she drew Jack inside
the Man-Rabbit and brought the two together. It was her task—to make that
drawing in her eyes and to not have an orgasm.

It wasn’t like, ‘Poof!’ and the real Man-Rabbit was magically there
on Winnie’s eyelids. She drew them together, with colored pens. Winnie could
see her hands when she drew in her mind too. Time expanded and lost meaning as
the Man-Rabbit came to her.

A little higher, Winnie’s clit got tickled, a touch or two on her
anus. And then Mel let go and cupped Winnie’s boobs. She felt Winnie’s body
squirm in agony, groaning and begging to cum.

After she lasted through another round like that, Mel bit and kissed
her ear, which meant she was released—
if
she’d finished the drawing. After
the kiss, Winnie rolled off of Mel and put her lips around Mel’s nipple. Her
face was rosy and wet with sweat.

Drawing done.

Mel whispered to her. Winnie moved her jaw so that Mel’s voice was
different. Mel held out the white rabbit to Winnie.

“Hold it.”

Winnie took it in her fist and put it between her legs. Mel brought
them to the beach again, describing everything, and took Winnie with her. After,
Mel and Winnie talked about the island and the Man-Rabbit; what they were
seeing together moment by moment.

W
innie
suddenly cried, “Jaaaack.”

It
was a strange, far-away voice in Mel’s ears.

She
jostled Winnie and they were in both places; on the beach and on the couch. They
began laughing like mad, flopping around like fish on a shore until they were
gasping for breath between worlds.

Calmed
and tangled together on couch again, Mel stirred with such a hunger. She kissed
Winnie’s mouth and felt along her sweaty body slowly with her lips to every
place where her tongue could go inside. Winnie was so ready; juicy and wet—Mel
ate her like caviar.

They
laid together, silent, as one.

Then
Mel was off on her own. Around her was total darkness. She was in the ocean
treading water up to her chin. Something gripped her ankles and pulled her
under. Teeth bit into her neck. Her lungs filled with blood and from between
the teeth came a voice. “My Killer.” The words brought her back to the couch. Winnie’s
body was on top of hers. She turned to Winnie’s head on her shoulder and saw her
lips were sticky with Mel’s own blood. Mel licked them. “My dark princess,” she
said. Those were Mel’s true blood love’s red lips.

In the morning, Mel woke first. She struggled to get
unstuck from Winnie.

A tiny groan.

“Stay,” sounded from Winnie’s throat.

With the coffee on, Mel pulled out her laptop and
began writing, hoping for a cure to an epic hangover. After a while, Winnie
mumbled something about her bum from across the room. Mel took a few Ritalin
tablets and chugged them back with the last of her bottled water.

Winnie came over and put her hands on Mel’s
shoulders as she sat typing.

“We were on the island,” said Winnie.

“Folded flat,” replied Mel. She was writing about it,
because they’d done what they’d set out to. Now they were ready to begin the
mission. She reached around and felt the bottom of her dark princess. Winnie
could wander off into the lowlands, where the wild girls go. Things would be
better now. Mel watched her red bum cheeks as Winnie went to the counter and
put the kettle on. She cut the tops off three tea bags and poured the leaves
into the French press. Winnie hated tea bags.

Mel stood and went to her.

“What happens on the island, the Man-Rabbit’s
mission—it’s ours, only ours.”

“When do we start to get bad wolves?”

Mel pointed to the photo on the computer screen.

“She’s Oksana. Phillip sold her.”

“Phillip?”

“A bad wolf,” said Mel. “A target.”

After Winnie finished her tea she said, “Let’s play Call
Of Duty.” She got up and marched toward the bedroom, her cheeks bouncing and
glanced back at Mel with a smile. “Better get dressed for the kill.”