Hollow Dolls, The (41 page)
Authors: MT Dahl
When Mel got home she dropped her handbag, teetered and flopped out
cold onto her bed.
44
Within two days, Oksana was finally back home with her mother and
she’d arrived with a nice fat bank account of British currency.
Melanie looked down on Myanmar as the jet passed through the
clouds to a clearing. She remembered watching Alejandra with Winnie and Kim Li
at her camp. All that was lost. Her sister. The darkest one of all. Melanie
would never reconcile what had happened. She knew that the universe dealt dark
mad cards to her and that some would be in her hand forever, and she could
never lay them down, never play them. She’d told everyone she wanted to be
known strictly as Melanie now.
Winnie was fine when Melanie caught up to her at Hotel Boutique
Jade with Kim Li. It had been exactly two weeks. Winnie was pretending the
whole time that Melanie had told her ‘a few weeks’ instead of ‘a few days’ that
afternoon when they’d parted. It was Winnie’s own private jamais vu way of
dealing with Melanie’s absence.
Winnie and Kim Li had played a bit as Winnie explained it. Now Winnie
had a tiny tat on her palm. A pink letter ‘K’ with an ‘L’ leaning on it.
~*~
A limousine pulled up to the private Li Enterprises hangar at
Heathrow Airport. Lights shone across the stair as it folded out from the
company jet. Two suspicious looking characters wearing dark hoodies stepped down
the stairway toward the tarmac.
“What’s the plan?” said Melanie.
“We go in visiting and come out as orderlies,” said Winnie. “Lauren
is out cold in the laundry cart.”
“I like it.”
They stepped off of the bottom of the jet’s stairway and walked hand
in hand across to the waiting limo. Phoenia opened the door for them. She’d insisted
on playing chauffeur for this special occasion.
They nestled close together in the spacious back seat.
“I’m going to draw another picture of mom and me in the dining
room,” said Winnie. “Only this time, it’ll be the real thing.”
Phoenia was about to drive them to Melanie and Winnie’s new apartment
on Tavistock Street
in
Covent Garden. It had a fabulous wrought iron balcony which was great for
cooling off after baths. It was fully stocked with pills and potions and had all
the amenities close by—even a Burger King within walking distance.
Sitting in the back seat, Winnie parted her freshly dyed black
hair and gave Melanie a peck on the lips. Then she folded her fingers in
between Melanie’s and squeezed.
Melanie looked into the eyes of her dark princess. Winnie bristled
with that look of hers.
Melanie saw them all over Winnie. Charred raven feathers.
Melanie plucked two bottles of water from the case sitting on the
table in the limo. She’d called ahead to Phoenia. A special order.
Melanie squeezed one at Winnie and the angel hair bead of water sprayed
on Winnie’s cheek. Melanie licked it off. She watched Winnie’s mouth. The corners
curled as Melanie handed her one. They unscrewed the white caps and touched
their bottles together in celebration.
“Cheers,” said Winnie.
“Drink up,” said Melanie. “It’ll keep you balanced.”
The Silence
The silence is where you meet Melanie
Willow. Not that she’d creep up on you, but you might find her in some lazy,
hazy memory dawdling along while you’re killing time. Say it happens sitting in
your car at the traffic light. You’re gone away with her, ah yes, how lovely to
be together again... Then you’re startled with a ‘beep, beep’ somewhere from
behind. Where? Oh, uh... You wave in the rear view,
sorry
and your earlobes
turn red for a few seconds as you pull away into the intersection.
Then you pull into your driveway and
realize you haven’t seen anything around you for the last three blocks. It
seems impossible. How can anyone drive when they’re not seeing anything around
them? You were with Melanie again. You’re flustered at the very least and for
some, the realization is worse.
If you’ve had that happen a few times,
disappearing in your mind with her, you might be apt to sit in the driveway
inside your car for minutes on end going over it in your head. By the way,
you’re making your neighbors nervous... So you realize full well that what
you’ve just seen in those last three blocks is strange stuff. Images,
sounds—things not in your own inventory; that is, not a part of your rational
memory. How does that happen? Or, you might want to consider, how does she do
that?
You finally open the door and step out
of the car. That bit of chilly sweat on your upper lip registers its existence
when you look at your kid’s bike. Your neck feels clammy. Damn, it’s all over
your chest too, under your shirt. That’s the vulnerability talking. Your
reptile brain administering some juicy fight or flight chemistry cocktail.
What
the hell
, you think, you’re a bit freaked out. But you should be. After
all, you could have run over someone’s kid on the way home. You might have run
over your own kid in the driveway!
Oh, excuse me, sir, you’re still
standing by the car staring into space. Better start walking up the driveway
before the neighbors call 911. That’s it, move slowly toward the house with
your hands at your sides like everything is okay. Glance back, check the grill
for blood spatter, torn bits of clothing. You got it.
Then the overture. Someone’s slipped
something into your drink. The fight-flight cocktail has a delicious endorphins
after taste right? You know why that’s happened. Because now she is making you
want her at the same time, isn’t she? My God, you’re thinking about sex while
you’ve just commandeered a four thousand pound out of control weapon that could
have been dragging small children down the road, ripping their little bodies to
shreds! And here you are sporting a boner in your pant leg over it. You’re
disgusting!
Remember when kids used to say ‘sliding
down a razor blade covered in lemonade.’ It feels something like that, right?
And if it’s more than plain old lust for
her, if love is involved, and that would be on your end only bub, the special
silent place of Melanie Willow comes to you via direct link. Imagine being lost
on deserted island with her, the two of you naked as peeled grapes and just as
wet, kissing and making passionate love, sand in her bum crack and everything.
Then the next moment you’re hands are deep inside a cadaver, and it’s someone
you’ve murdered! You’re pulling organs and tendons... No, wait, stop all
that—here’s how Melanie would explain it.
“Guys just slap that one word on the
outside of the package—love—and expect it will insure delivery for everything
else they want from a girl. They’re just like The Coyote trying out some gizmo
without knowing it’s going to blow up in their face. Remember that whistling
sound going all the way down to the canyon bottom, and then just before the
crash...nothing.”
Beep, beep.
The Unloved
You, at the zoo. You looked into the
eyes of the monkey, and it looked back in knowing. You were sure. You looked
again closer to see if the monkey would acknowledge. No! It was a trick of your
mind. Of course the monkey hadn’t looked back the same way.
Love was an accident; two things crashed into one another. It
seemed only disorienting at first, then you realized your trajectory had
changed, you were being transformed. You looked at your old self veering away
in space without even a goodbye.
No matter.
You longed and longed for that first taste of love to return. Your
body craved the original, begged even, only the feeling was never quite there.
You stretched your heart out to grasp the sleeping jailer keys that dangled from
his belt. It might as well have been Orion’s. You cursed. Love was like licking
honey off a thistle.
Then, another crash...
You envied the ones who never crashed, so you looked often and
long at them. Their connection was tenuous, their demeanor serial.
Here, take my hand.
You called them ‘The Unloved.’
You. You were the compassionate one. You believed that The Unloved
only had yet to lick the thistle—but their eyes—they were like a vacuum to suck
you in, you knew that.
You were the one who waited, believed in goodness. “Give it time,”
you said, “It must be my perception of things.” The niggle persisted. The
imprint of The Unloved haunted you like a missing appendage. They had struck
your psyche and left their mark.
So you had to look closer to know. You gravitated closer and
closer, perhaps touching—the without which not of human communion. This was how
you would know for sure.
Then one took you in. And that was no accident.
In the field, y
our persona disappeared. You were
whitewashed, your data scrambled. Afraid to be taken forever, you focussed your
heart brain tirelessly to revive your self-image. You looked to the sky and
yes—you actually prayed—to who didn’t matter, because you began to feel your
identity gathering together. When you looked at your reflection, you cocked
your head, you recognized it once again like a distant relative that had grown
and evolved—yet there was the form, the original still inside. There was that
person you once knew.
You became yourself once again. The tail of the salamander returning
to claim its morphogenetic form. Here it was again, the new and improved you.
Get yours now! Change back on the dollar! Step right up folks, how
can you stay away when you want to play?
The
Lians
Long
before the recorded history of any human civilization the wall of perception
was built by our enemies. Humans were split, mind and body. That is why the
enemy is able to hide in plain sight.
Many
have tried to break down the wall. In ancient India, The Vedas pierced the wall
between worlds which they called ‘The Maya’, the illusion. In South America,
the people of the Andes Mountains long ago learned to hold themselves in unison
with everything. ‘As above, so below.’ They used special plants to brew an
ayahuasca drink which would tear down the wall, and allowed them to be one with
the Gaian mind. The enemy could not hide. Sixties youth in social revolution
tried to break down the wall using LSD as a vehicle, yet even that large modern
thrust faded away.
The
resistance to duality has been small and weak, and our enemies are everywhere
now. They are ready to come out in the open and to take over. Remember, the
enemy is already in your head. They speak in a voice that strikes you down,
says you are weak. When you hear that voice, it is them. They are in control of
you. They cannot be seen by most. But as Mel said, “Soon the veil will
disappear.”
Who
are ‘they’, the enemy, the dark lords of your very mind? We call them Lians.
Remember one thing. They can interface with each other simultaneously, they are
a single conscious mind—now ready to absorb Gaia.