Doll House

VIII. The Overall Man

They traveled together for a long time after that. Ages, it seemed, the Overall Man was driving. The old man didn't talk much after that, though he would occasionally hum. An old tune that no one alive now would recognize. He never turned on the radio, and at times, hours could go by without anyone making a sound inside the car.

They drove so long that indeed, when the car stopped and the Overall Man took the basket out of the car, night had fallen. It was her first night away from the old house in the woods. Tonight, Vicky would not sneak out of bed and into the playing room because there would be no one there to sneak to. She pictured the girl, in her old pajamas that had once belonged to someone else, alone in the playing room, her face lit by the moonlight through the window.

His hands were unexpectedly warm against her porcelain skin. The Overall Man picked her up gently, her blonde head yet unsmashed and held her up to his aging eyes.

"You're very pretty, little one. I've had my eye on you for a long time."

Tara says nothing, focuses on studying the old man, tracing the deep, careful lines dug inside his skin. His face is like tunnels, trenches snaking their way around his eyes, around his mouth. As such, it no longer looks like skin. It's all tarnished, like leather, like some ogre. His dark, chocolate-brown fingers contrasted against the milk-white doll. And they stare into each other's faces – the doll into his thick-lens glasses that make him see again and the Overall Man into the lingering yellow stains at the corners of her eyes.

"Somebody was taking care of you," he murmurs, not taking his eyes off the doll. "Was it the girl?"

Tara, again, says nothing. If it weren't for the old man, they might've got to safety by now. They'd be out of the woods and maybe even somewhere else.

"I'm not the enemy here, you know."

Except that's not really true, is it? She can choose to think they would've been safe, but she knows, inside her heart of heart's that they probably wouldn't have been. The old man was right, the woods would've never let them leave and as they had turned the girl around once, they would undoubtedly do it again. And again, until the girl could run no longer.

"I won't hurt you, I promise. I wont put you inside that thing ever again," he nodded towards the old metal stand, now discarded inside the basket. "It must be terribly painful."

And his old fingers dig into her body, right where the prongs used to go, those merciless claws that made sure she wasn't going anywhere, and it doesn't hurt. The old man's fingers push gently. He feels the graze of the metal teeth along his skin. And she feels better, more than better, she feels good again. An ancient feeling she no longer even remembers. She used to feel like this once, before her body had ever known such primitive bindings.

For a moment, she lets go of her resentment for the old man, forgets that he's the one who left her friend behind and thinks maybe, he's not a stranger after all. Maybe he knew her in her life before the house.

"How did you do that?"

"One doesn't come to be my age without learning a few tricks. Besides, this is what I do. I save dolls like you."

"Save them from what?"

The old man releases her, lays her down on a soft pillow. 'From the land of forgetting. You've been left to be forgotten, in the back of children's minds, gone forever. But I won't let that happen. I'll remember you all.'

And from her resting place on the pillow, Tara can see clearly around herself for the first time. She sees the other toys, many many toys, some she remembers and others, she does not. They were from before her time at the house, maybe.