Hollow Dolls, The (6 page)

“What
if he did and I...froze. He could—”

“Melanie.”
He said it authoritatively, like a daddy. “All you should do is focus on
something in the conscious world—say, on the buttons of his shirt or his tie.
Keep your focus there and conduct yourself accordingly.”

“Like
kick his ass.”

“Like
kick his ass, yes, and you didn’t hear that from me.”

 Melanie
stretched out on the couch and flipped off her sandals one after the other. Georgy’s
grandparents hung on the wall. The direction of his eyes photo made it seem the
grandfather was looking up her skirt. It made her think about an old black and
white horror movie she’d seen where the bad guys looked through the eyes in wall
portrait. She parted her legs and gramps seemed to like it.

Sunlight
poured into the office and all over her. A restless moan escaped her lips
completely by accident. Georgy swivelled away from her, scribbling and talking.
“You know, Mel, the stream of consciousness is much better and more focussed in
our hypnotherapy sessions...”

His
voice faded and she got lost imagining him coming over, forcing himself on her.
Melanie bent one knee and massaged herself, played with her rings, her neck
arched back, skin stuck to the leather...

 “Oh
Georgy!” The Southern belle came out again.

Georgy
swivelled. “Are you all-right?”

He
acted so proper and ignored anything she
might
have been doing.

“Yes,
I’m fine.”

“Now,
getting back...this episode is different than the others, how so?” said Georgy.

Melanie
sat up and adjusted her top. “You should have felt my skin from being on that
beach.”

“Let’s
explore that in a hypnotherapy session. Clearly you’re having some difficulty
piecing it together.”

“It
left me with a strange feeling...like I was possessed.”

“Yes...”

“It
only happens when I’m around other people. I have a tension in my chest and
stomach and it seems my heart is being gripped, physically. It beats like mad
sometimes, then I get this egg in my throat, my palms sweat. It’s  like I’m
sick with the flu and then it’s all gone just as quickly.”

“It
sounds like you’re in love, for goodness sakes.”

“In
love?”

She
realized right then that she was sopping wet.

“Be
right back.” Melanie rushed into the washroom dried off, rinsed her panties,
and rolled them in paper towels to dry them as best she could. Before leaving,
she quietly unlatched the bathroom window to the fire escape. Georgy had
refused to let her borrow the hypnotherapy files, so she was making plans.

“Ok,
Mel—we know this would be a good time to focus on your karate workouts as a
counter measure to control sexual feelings, correct?”

 “Do
you love your wife, Georgy?”

“That’s
an odd question.”

“What
if she found out about us? How in love you are with me.”

“I
know what you’re playing at, Mel, and it’s not productive.”

“Well,
I am being productive, in a way.”

“Not
funny.”

“I
need to learn about love—he said so.”

“Who?”

“The
Man-Rabbit.”

Georgy
ignored her again.

 “I’ll
book your hypnotherapy,” he said. “Skype or the office?”

“Office.”

“Tomorrow
at eleven okay?”

“Perfect.”

“And
I almost forgot...I’d like to give you this.” He took a small roughly carved
stone object off of his mantle and handed it to her. “It’s just a trinket,
really, something I picked up in Mexico. I think you’ll like it.”

Mel
examined the carving. It was an anthropomorphic rabbit and a woman arm-in-arm.

“She’s
Ixchel, the Moon Goddess in Mayan mythology,” said Georgy. “And he is her
moon-rabbit scribe. Please accept it as a gift.”

“Thank-you
so much.”

“Can
we meet later?” She used her British accent Melanie voice and touched his face.

Georgy
shook his head almost imperceptibly as if someone were watching. Melanie felt Lilly’s
presence. She rushed away to the door like Melanie, turned back, and said,
“Thanks for sneaking me in Georgy.” She flashed him a cheesecake smile she
closed the door.

Wednesday, May 23
^rd

She must have been late, or he was early, because after she snuck
in through the fire escape, there was barely time to take a few shots of the
files before Georgy came to the front door. She had to scurry like mad, biting
her tongue all the way but got out before he saw her.

Mel rushed to have them printed. She was disappointed; the few pages
she’d photographed were just medical history and psychobabble.

Multiple diagnoses:

DSM IV

301.83 Borderline Personality Disorder.

300.14 Dissociative Identity Disorder.

297.30 Shared Psychotic Disorder.

The patient has experienced delusions, hallucinations, bizarre and
disorganized behaviour, social and occupational dysfunction. Adheres to a rich,
elaborate, and exclusively internal fantasy world. 

Again, Mel dismissed the clinical diagnoses; those were some formality
of his to allow her to come to therapy. How else would he get her alone? They
certainly weren’t going to start dating. On the next page she skimmed through a
report of some kind that Georgy had written about her:

...believe
completely in what she says will lead you to a maze of infinite roads and
ravines...

Jung
said, "The meeting of two personalities is a contact of two chemical
substances: there is a reaction and both are transformed."

...that
is one stage, and something you must pay careful heed to. Interpret the inner
workings of your mind as well; carefully from the moment you begin to interact
with her.

...you
must perceive the tricks that your own mind is playing; that is, your own
transformation that is might be ensconced in a folie à deux with Mel, a shared
psychotic delusion.

...the
luxury to distance yourself, so pay heed to my notes, they may just save your
sanity.

The
final page went off into more shrink speak that made no sense.

Mel
suddenly had the idea that Georgy must be working on a book and using his
patients for fodder. What a devious plan! Now she wanted the rest of that file.
Mel returned to his office prompt for the eleven o’clock appointment they’d
made, dropped the photos onto his desk, and leaned over in a pseudo accidental
pose showing a ridiculous amount of cleavage. She was Melanie being coy, and
had no control.

“I’d
like to see the full manuscript, doctor.”

Georgy
came around the desk and wrangled her clothes off.   

She
looked at the ceiling above the desk as everything jiggled around. Uh-huh, for
sure he’s just doing this to make his book sexier.

The next day at noon, Mel received a phone call from an older
woman who seemed confused.

“I found your number on her phone,” whispered the woman. “She
seems lost.”

Mel picked Winnie up from the Kentish Town senior’s center. She’d
been sitting in a chair for over an hour where the old folks played bingo. Her
apartment was a worse mess than Mel’s, and by the look of the coffee table,
she’d been living on the couch for days. Winnie wouldn’t talk on the way home
and flopped on the couch as soon as they arrived.

 “Win? You can’t do this!”

No answer.

Melanie grabbed Winnie’s arms and shook
her hard.

“Winnieee!!” Melanie was screeching at
her in her bitchiest little girl voice. “Stop it right now!”

She pulled Winnie off the couch and
dragged her across the floor to the kitchen and sprayed water on her from the
kitchen sink. Winnie wouldn’t respond.

“Winiieee!!!” Melanie got on top of
Winnie on the floor, wrapped her arms around her, shook her around like a doll.
Winnie’s legs and arms bounced on the floor, lifeless.

Sometimes Winnie would go like that.
Just gone. No answer. So did Melanie. There was no diagnosis, because they only
did it to get each other back. Winnie was afraid of the woman with the long
dark hair. Alejandra. Now, Melanie was too. Because Alejandra had shifted
gears, splitting into two.

So now, they’d both have to run from her.
They needed to be together and Winnie knew that. So she’d gone inside. It was like
hide and seek, not a game—it was for real. Mel had to go in, find her version
of Alejandra, and come to terms with it. To her and Winnie, it was just taking
care of business. To the shrinks it would probably be something exotic to write
a paper on. Maybe even enough for a whole conference.

Winnie’s hair smelled like toast. The
seniors were having bacon and tomato sandwiches for lunch.  Chanel No.5 was
mixed in there, too. She always had a hint. Winnie’s father had a theory: millions
of men had been seduced by the smell, therefore, Chanel No.5 had become part of
the human male’s genetic pheromone radar structure.

Winnie didn’t want a man particularly. Wearing
it was an ode to her dad. Strange as could be, she didn’t love her dad at all, although
he’d suffered at the hand of Lauren, and that qualified him to be on the team
against her mother. Anyone on that team knew what was what.

“I’m glad you’re here,” said Winnie. She
muffled the words into her pillow.

“Finally,” said Melanie. She leaned over
and kissed her hair. “Now you can let it out...what’s going on?”

“I can’t.”

“Just try, please, just say anything.”

 “She won’t let me.” Winnie choked the
words out.

“I think you should go back on your
meds,” said Melanie, stroking Winnie’s hair and wiping the tears off of her
cheeks. Winnie was like a real live doll who could make tears.

“I mean, for a while at least. I know
you hate what they do to you... Win, look at what’s happening now—it’s worse.”

Mel would never ask Winnie to go back on
her meds, not really.

Winnie sat up abruptly.

“Remember when we were on the island?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s been happening to me...with her,
Alejandra. She’s been taking me away, to a place with elves.” Then Winnie
flopped. “I can’t tell you any more, she’ll know and be really mean.”

Melanie fetched a glass of water, and
coaxed Winnie to sit up.

“Winnie. You can’t start that again. You
need to stay out here with me. Take these and you’ll feel better.”

 She slipped a Xanax bar past Winnie’s
lips and handed her the glass. Winnie drank it down and they cuddled and fell
asleep.

When they awoke there was the problem of
Alejandra. It hung in the air, like a game that might become real. It
would
become real. Before they could get into it again, Mel knew enough to just move
ahead. Otherwise they’d be lost on rants—insufferable tangents of imagination
and reality. Things would get broken.

Mel pulled out her journals.

“This will cheer you up. I have a whole,
big, fantastic project for you.”

She brought her bag to the kitchen table
and began setting everything out and explaining. Winnie followed, put her arms
around Mel’s waist from behind and held on tight. Mel handed everything over.
Besides the transcripts and Georgy’s notes, she gave Winnie her personal
journals. Handwritten stuff that went back ten years to the basement in
Vancouver, Peter and his friends... Back when she was twelve, thirteen. Winnie
didn’t know everything about Mel. Now she would.

“Look at these.” She showed her the hypnotherapy session
transcriptions. Georgy had finally given in. She’d gotten to him, holding back
an orgasm, teasing his cock with her tongue. In between licks and squeezes he
finally agreed.

The project manic flipped Winnie out of her dark side. She made a
new Word document on her laptop. Mel watched her type ‘The Man-Rabbit’ at the
top of the page and turn for a sign of approval. Mel nodded and made big eyes
at her. They sat and sorted things while Winnie made notes and organized
everything like a pack rat. They promised to send each other daily entries via
their computers. And they agreed that the dailies would be one hundred percent
the truth, always.

Then they went back under the covers on
the couch. Got tangled in each other. Scrunching toes, locking fingers, getting
hot, getting each other off. And they departed to the island together. Mel was
holding Winnie in her arms on the sand.

The Man-Rabbit stepped out of the
forest. She told him about Nigreda. He told her the truth about the mission and
Mel repeated everything aloud back to him as he had instructed.

“You
must open your heart, learn to love,” said the Man-Rabbit.

“You
must open your heart and learn to love,” said Mel and she stroked Winnie’s
hair.

“Your
dark energy is from a mutation in human DNA that occurred when the Lians came. You
are the only one who can detect and eliminate the evil bloodlines of the earth.
You must restore the light.”

Mel
repeated it back.

 “You
knew the bad wolves, even as a little girl, didn’t you?” 
Melanie
and Winnie both nodded.

“That’s
why we need you.”

 “We?” said Mel and Winnie together.

“Ixchel—she’s what humans would call my
boss. She was here when Lians arrived and split The Milky Way into light and
dark.

Mel wandered off on her own and found a
machete leaning on some banana bunches.  It burned her fingers when she touched
the naked handle. Beyond the
bunches was her mother, Marlene, on a blanket.

“Bitch,”
said Melanie.

“Tramp,”
said Marlene back, refusing to look at her.

Mel
swung the machete hard across her neck. The head bounced once and rolled away.
She clutched the hair, lifted the head to eye level. The eyes were open. She
smacked the blade’s side against her cheek over and over until the eyes bulged.
Blood splashed her breasts and legs. The tongue protruded erect and leathery
like a boiled kidney clamped between Marlene’s chipped, yellow teeth. Detached
remnants of the veins, arteries and musculature dangled from inside the flap.
“Welcome to Hell, mom.” She hurled the head into the jungle.

 The
Man-Rabbit came to the beach as she washed the blood off of her breasts and
legs: “When you are on a mission, your dark Lian side may take over completely.
You must be careful.”

Winnie and Melanie had gone completely
mad on each other. They were knotted like sock monkeys in the blankets again. Mel
held Winnie’s waist with her hands in a mouth-to-belly communion, calling her
‘dark princess’ over and over.

During breakfast they recovered from all
that had happened and they went over the mission once again.

“The Lians are here.”

They talked about the beginning, the
split into dark and light. The white rabbit and the carving of Ixchel and the
moon-rabbit scribe sat on the table between them.

Winnie said, “I’m doing my mother
first,” and she scooped a chunk of pink grapefruit into her mouth.

Mel wondered how she planned to pull
that off.

~*~

Sometimes Winnie went on a pretend
mission to domesticate Mel into a pull-my-string doll. It wasn’t Winnie’s true intention
at all, it was an obsession. Obsessions did not have intention.

Today was their latest episode of
Winnie
Gets Mel A Man
. 

Winnie was probably getting mad and would punch her any second
because Mel ignored her and just sat there watching her calf muscle twitch. A
drip of sweat fell from the tip of Mel’s nose and hit the tile floor.
Heartbeats in her ears slowly wound down.

People stared hard at that hearts and spades wheel, didn’t they? 
As if they had telekinetic powers to make it stop.
Tock...tock......tock.........tock.

 “Mel, you’re not listening,” said Winnie.

“Am, too!”

“Ok look,” said Winnie, in her director’s voice. “You’re a sexy
blonde packing a mean punch—it scares them off—right?.”

“Sexy, you say...”

 The whole thing was really just a rom-com directed by Winnie. Mel
slid the towel from around her neck and twirled it into rat-tail.

“Don’t you—” Winnie got her feet away in time, then Mel’s quick
follow-up nailed her. She grabbed Mel’s sweatshirt and shoved her hard against
the lockers. Mel wanted to throw her down.

She looked at the hard tiled floor, then back at Winnie. “Hey,
tiger.” Mel smiled and let Winnie have her way. Giving in to her felt good.

“And the other night at The Koko Club when the bouncer went after
Gerald and you stepped in—big fail Mel.”

 “Ok, you’re right.” She got up close and made a snarky face,
plain like vanilla, and Winnie put her palm flat on Mel’s mouth, pushed her
away hard.

“He never called you again, did he?” she said.

“It’s only been a few weeks.”

“Two weeks in dating is a divorce, Mel, end of story.”

“I never said I’d marry the guy, and Win, you know I don’t
date
.”

“Ok sod off then, shower time.”

Mel caught her before she left the room. “Good work today.”

Winnie turned and flexed her biceps, body builder style, then
painted a smile. Just a quick swipe with the finger. Secret like sign language.
With her body turned that way, naked and shiny with sweat, she looked like a
boxer; a Welsh-English lass contender that could kick serious ass—and what was
Winnie Hayes—all of eighteen, soaking wet.

Mel ran after her and slid on the ceramic tile floor of the
communal shower room. She saw Winnie had some welts coming up on her legs. They
were like stars at the top of her page. It felt too good, having punished her
for hours. Mel put her hands on the wall pat-down style and leaned into the
spray.

By the time they left, the caretaker was clicking off the lights
at the Fulham Dojo. Rain dotted the windshield of Winnie’s Cooper S as they
took the exit back to Camden Town. Speakers punched out Daft Punk’s, “Harder
Better Faster Stronger.”

“Fancy a pint?” said Winnie.

“Sure.”

“The Wheelbarrow?”

“Why not?

 “Moonfleet,” said Winnie.

“What?”

“Oh nothing.”
Bread eaten in secret.
 

Mel looked over at Winnie and her little smile. It was cute when
she did that, hiding in her hoodie of brown curls, hazel eyes flashing secrets.
A total doll she was, with deadly options once her wheels were up.

“COD after?” said Winnie. Their latest game was Black Ops II. They
were playing some guys from Wembley on XBox Live.

“Sounds good.”

They’d just done their Seido karate session—sparring, drill
combinations, reaction and timing work. Being a third Dan Black Belt, it was
required that Mel train others; Winnie was working on her black belt—tonight
she’d pushed extra hard.

“How’s our memoir going?”

“Pretty good,” said Winnie, holding back a grin. “It’s a
blood-letting.”

Winifred Hayes, sweet author of the tastily macabre. She gave good
word. Winnie had read the book she’d gained notoriety with in Manchester,
Play
With Me
, to Mel naked under the covers. The book included the incidents
that led to the morbid, cannibalistic death of her poor dad, Harvey
.
Win
at one end of the couch, Mel at the other. It made for better sex. Those grisly
words pouring out of Winnie’s sweet mouth.

She watched Winnie’s lips as they drove, then she turned, gazed
through the rain spattered window dreaming of taking her ass with the blue man.