The Dollhouse

Chapter 30

PARAPHERNALIA in the kitchen arranged a threatening portrait. The folded crocheted doilies, the meat thawing on the counter, a kitchen knife a notch out of order. Arabella guided me into the eating area, her claws piercing, and pulled out a chair into the center.

I hoped she would slap me about the face, get it over with and then stew in misery up in the master bedroom for a couple of days straight.

But she had other ideas.

My weight fell dramatically on to the wooden frame of the seat, and the bones in my rear seared with instant discomfort.

Disassociation had its own grasp, its sly fingers wrapping around my subconscious and luring it away into a safe place. During testing times in threatened me with the blissful option to leave my body. But today, I fought it. Visuals pumped faster than any heart rhythm - bloody knuckles, crying through locked rooms, patting the soft ground to bury a young feline's corpse.

My mother's silhouette swam through like a poltergeist, seguing through the thoughts. She was sitting on her bed, flipping through a paper from 1953, pointing out an article she wrote. It had been credited to a male author.

"What did you do?" I had said.

"Exposed him," she laughed derisively, looking down at the tiny print. "They fired me because of it. At least afterwards a magazine hired me to review films, which was the most glorious six months of my career. But they didn't think it was suitable, because in some of the flicks the actors say damn and everything."

I likened my life back then as a fishbowl. Going around in circles. But I felt tremendous sympathy for my Mom then, and realized how truly stick she was herself.

"Be strong, Mom," I expressed solemnly, which in hindsight was an odd thing to say indeed. But she appeared to understand my intention.

Be strong.

"I thought about cutting your beautiful hair," Arabella muttered, in a voice that caused my whole heart to clench with contempt. "But it didn't seem fitting. Not poetic enough."

My composure betrayed no emotion.

Violet and Rudy donned the tragic expressions of renaissance muses. It would have been comical had I not been prisoner, with Arabella pacing around me like I was a subject of dissection.

"This is ridiculous," Violet declared, throwing around her hands with almost theatrical passion. "Lydia has nothing to do with this."

Any fool could have detected the undertone of fear. Arabella momentarily look like this she had been blessed by some great entity. For her wicked smile only grew wider, and whatever the plan was, she has the upper hand.

"I don't care. Lock me away! Starve me, beat me!"

"Just shut up," I snapped.

Right then I hated Violet. I really did.

Willpower and resistance were the most important things I held dear. If I could summon the strength of my mother, the sheer spirit mixed with whiskey and fire, I knew I could walk out of here with my head held high.

Arabella held a strand of my hair between her fingers. A beastly hunger was in her eye, and a familiar quiver returned to my bones upon the touch.

Why did they touch my hair?

"Don't do that," I said angrily.

Pride was the only preventing my legs from carrying me from that room. I thought about Betsy, who had endured torture worse than anything I'd faced. Do it for her.