by Tillie Cole
Scratch that. Now I was the most turned on I’d ever been. That fucking commanding, demanding voice . . .
I bowed, the blade pressing deeper against my chest. “As the lady wishes.”
“Good!” she sang, all her moodiness forgotten. “Now,” she said, racing up the next two steps. “Who’s next?”
I knew we had one more guard left from this shift. And he’d be guarding the Caterpillar. The final barrier to the reason we were here. We searched left and right but found no one. Until we found a back staircase. “Here,” I said. Dolly immediately pushed past me. I ran up the stairs behind her. I had barely made it to the top when a bullet fired into the stairwell. My heart stopped, needing it to not have hit Dolly, when suddenly I heard Dolly tutting and witnessed her plunging her blade into the barrel chest of the guard. As he slumped against the wall, slowly sliding down, his blood smearing the white paint, Dolly pulled her blade from the wound. “Naughty boy!”
She left the blood dripping from the filigree-patterned blade and stared at the door. I joined her. I knew what she was smelling—I was smelling it too.
Hashish.
“The Caterpillar,” Dolly said under her breath.
“The Caterpillar,” I repeated. “I’ll get to him first.” Dolly turned to argue, but I held up my hand, stopping her mid-breath. “I’ll secure him so he can’t move.” I reached down and stroked along the wet blood on her blade—up and down and up and down . . . stroking. Her cheeks flushed as my fingers almost touched hers. I brought my finger to my mouth and sucked the blood. My teeth ran over my bottom lip, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Dolly was watching me with blatant hunger in her gaze. I bent down, placing my mouth at her ear, and said, “Then he’s all yours.”
Dolly moaned, causing my already hard dick to twitch. I slammed my shoulder against the door. The wood gave way, and I wasted no time in rushing in. I followed the scent of tobacco, letting it guide me to a large desk. A gun sounded from somewhere behind it, but the aim was pitiful and lacked precision. I looked down . . . and there he was.
A red mist descended.
The Caterpillar’s fat body was quivering in the corner, his hookah by his side. His head was down and his eyes were closed . . . until they opened and landed straight on me. I let him stare. I let him piece together exactly who stood before him.
I waited—tick tock—waited—tick tock—waited—tick . . . until . . . “Heathan . . .” He shook his head in disbelief, double chin wobbling. His lips pulled back from his stained yellow teeth. “Impossible . . . you were locked away.”
I bent down and kicked away the gun he had dropped after his piss-poor shot. “That’s the thing about a prison full of psycho killers.” I unsheathed my cane and brought the spiked blade to hover at his throat. “We can manipulate an escape and kill those who stupidly kept us all captive.”
He blanched. “H-he’ll . . . h-he’ll know you’ve got out. He’ll know.”
I tilted my head, not breaking his terrified gaze. “I’m counting on it.”
“Rabbit?” Dolly’s voice called from the doorway. “Do you have him yet?” The Caterpillar’s face paled even further. “I’m bored. I want to have some fun!”
“Coming, darlin’.” I smiled as the Caterpillar locked eyes on me. “My Dolly has joined me. You remember her, don’t you?” My face hardened. “Get the fuck up.”
The Caterpillar shook his head. I pushed the tip of my blade into his shoulder. He screamed. I smiled. “I wasn’t requesting. I was insisting.”
The Caterpillar cried out in pain but scurried to his feet. Using the blade in his shoulder as my leash, I guided him out from behind the desk, kicking the wheeled office chair behind him. I pushed harder on the blade, and he sat down. I reached into my pocket for the duct tape and began securing him to the chair.
When I finished, I saw a flash of blue in the door. “Rabbit . . . I said I’m bored!” The Caterpillar turned his head toward the doorway.
“Ellis,” he murmured, and Dolly’s blue eyes snapped to his. Her lip curled in fury as he uttered that name.
She raised her blood-soaked blade and stormed to where he sat, her head dipped and her expression like fucking thunder. She sliced across his cheek with the flat side of the blade. Blood painted his face—not his, but the guard’s. “Don’t you dare say her name!” she hissed. The Caterpillar faced her again, eyebrows drawn down.
“Her name . . .?” He looked to me. Like I would fucking help. Clear things up.
Wrong.
“Yes. Her name.” Dolly narrowed her eyes and moved directly in front of him. She traced down his sweating cheek with the barrel of her gun. “You touched her when you weren’t supposed to.” She shook her head, clicking her tongue. “She didn’t want you to.” The Caterpillar swallowed, and Dolly backed up. She studied him, tied to the chair, duct tape around his middle. Her head tipped from side to side.
“Darlin’?” I asked. Dolly blew out a breath and turned to me, shoulders sagging. “What’s wrong?” I unbuttoned my jacket and shrugged it from my shoulders. I rolled up my sleeves and checked the time on my pocket watch. We had plenty left until the next guard shift.
“Is it time to go?”
I shook my head. “No. Plenty of time.” Her shoulders sagged again.
“It’s smashed,” the Caterpillar said. Dolly and I turned to face him. “The watch. It’s broken. It was broken back then and it’s broken now. You’re fucking insane! Always were.” He shook his head. “And why is she speaking with an English accent? She’s from Dallas!”
I glanced down at my watch and saw the hands ticking around. Dolly did too. She shrugged and tapped her head with the barrel of her gun. “He’s crazy! It works just fine.”
Ignoring his smart mouth, I asked again, “What’s wrong?”
Dolly kicked the tip of her boot along the wooden floor. She sighed. “I thought I would know what to do when I got here.” She lifted her eyes to meet mine. “But now I’m here I’m spoiled for choice. I have all of these ways to kill him, and I just can’t pick one!” She began pacing. “Do I stab him? Shoot him? Both?” Her hands, holding her weapons, lifted in frustration. “Do I do it quickly or slowly?” She stopped, and her face looked beautifully sad. “I practiced saying ‘Time for tea’ so much that I never gave much thought to this bit.” Her bottom lip stuck out. “I should have. I don’t want to screw up.”
“You could never,” I said. The sound of the chair moving on the floor made Dolly turn around. He’d only moved a little. But just as I was about to counsel her again, her head whipped up and she gasped in excitement. She ran across the room and stopped in front of an old record player.
“How pretty!” she declared in awe. Putting her gun on the table, she moved the needle and the player crackled to life. Dolly squealed as the opening bars of the record played. “‘My Boy Lollipop’!” she shouted and began to sing along. Taking hold of her doll’s head, which she had tied to her belt by its hair, she danced around the room, her blade in her other hand.
I smirked as she danced with her doll, Alice, singing each and every word. When the song ended, Dolly ran back to the record player and played it again. “You’re fucking insane!” the Caterpillar said as she danced past him.
Dolly stopped dead and whirled to face him. I held my breath, waiting for her reaction, braced to watch the beauty of her wrath unleash. Instead she got right in his face and said, “Didn’t you know? All the best people are!”
He shook his head, but his words had been enough for Dolly to stop dancing and focus on the task at hand. She studied his tied-up form like he was a puzzle she was trying to solve. I could hear her murmuring to herself: “I could push the blade through his heart. Or I could stab his legs one at a time, then his arms and his chest. Or I could stab his skull . . . No, I might hit too much bone . . .”
I walked to the record player, placing the needle just so, to repeat the song again and again. As I turned, I spotted one of the Caterpillar’s
hands breaking free from the restraints. Before I could act, he brought his hand up in a quick movement and slapped it across Dolly’s face. In mere seconds I had drawn my cane, ready to stab him in the back of his neck, when Dolly whipped around, her lipstick all over her cheek from the slap. I paused, seeing something new in her expression. Pure rage.
Darkness.
Cruelty.
Murderous intent.
Dolly touched her cheek. She met my eyes as I grabbed the Caterpillar’s arm and re-tied him. Her eyes looked to the side . . . where she found herself staring back. Dolly walked to the mirror hanging on the wall and inspected her reflection.
She turned to me and spat, “He smeared my lipstick!”
Dolly’s emotions seemed to boil, anger causing her body to shake and her skin to blaze red. Gripping the blade tighter, she charged at the Caterpillar and stabbed his shoulder. She yelled as she did so, piercing him over and over again in new spots—his shoulders, his thighs . . . his stomach. She drew back, out of breath, eyes ablaze with pleasure. It was then that I realized more lurked inside my Dolly than innocence and light. Darkness dwelled in her too. A malevolent presence lurking in the shadows, waiting for its chance to feed. My Dolly, sinister and cruel. Thirsting for the kill. I took a deep breath. She was my living, breathing doll. She wore the face of the purest angel, masking such evil living within.
My soul’s perfectly fucked-up counterpart.
The Caterpillar began to choke on his blood. Dolly’s eyes never wavered from his as she watched him try to fight his inevitable death. He spluttered, he coughed, then he hissed, “You’re sick”—cough, splutter, spit—“You’re just a couple of sick fucks.”
Dolly stilled, then looked at me. “Sick fucks . . . We’re just a couple of sick fucks!” Then she was moving, circling the Caterpillar, dancing in rings around him as he shuffled off this mortal coil. “Sick fucks, sick fucks, we’re the sick fucks!” I walked to stand behind him, and Dolly circled me too. As I smiled, watching the most beautiful creature ever to grace this earth smile and dance and laugh so free, I bent and whispered in the abusive cunt’s ear, “You said, years ago, you didn’t care what you had to pay to have us both . . .” I pushed my own blade into his spine, severing his ability to walk. Not that he’d survive to walk again anyway. “You’ve now had us both . . .” I sucked in a breath through my teeth as I watched Dolly singing along to the song, twirling her doll’s head in her blood-soaked hands, discoloring the spindly yellow strands of what was left of its hair. “I hope it was everything you craved.”
He spluttered his final breaths. His head fell forward, and I knew he was gone. I felt only satisfaction.
I stood straight. Dolly stopped dancing. Her eyes lit up. “He’s gone? I defeated him?” she asked, holding her breath.
“You sure did, darlin’.” I moved around to where she was standing. Her lipstick was still spread over her cheek from the Caterpillar’s slap. I narrowed my eyes. “He hurt you.”
Dolly brought her hand to her cheek. Her face clouded with anger. “No. But he smudged my favorite shade.” She pulled out her lipstick from her pocket and walked to the mirror. She wiped away the smeared lipstick and reapplied it to her lips. “Rabbit? What’s a sick fuck?”
I saw the confusion on her face. “People who kill bad men,” I said, picking up my jacket. “People like us.”
“Sick fucks,” she repeated. She looked down at her lipstick, then lifted her head again with a gleam in her eyes. She twisted up the lipstick, ran to the wall and began to write. I stared, breath held, as her uneducated hand tried to write . . . tried to spell. The pink lipstick stood starkly against the white wall. When she had finished, I exhaled, and a smile edged on my lips.
“There!” She jumped back to admire her work. “Sick fucks!” She stared proudly at the wall, but when she turned back to me, I saw concern, even apprehension, on her face. “Is it correct, Rabbit? Did I spell it okay?” She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. I glanced over her head and read her untidy writing. No education except what I had taught her. Educational neglect, deprived of her absolute right to learn by that cunt of a father and his predatory friends.
Yet she was still the fucking brightest star in my sky.
I read her writing, the misspelled word shining like a beacon . . .
SICK FUX
“Well, Rabbit? Did I do well?” Her voice was weak and nervous. I walked to where she stood with her head bent and eyes wary.
“You did perfect, darlin’. ‘Sick Fux.’ That’s us, written in your lipstick. Your favorite shade, as always.”
Dolly looked down at her lipstick, now completely ruined, and whimpered. I clenched and unclenched my fist until my finger found its way, found its strength, to touch her chin. Dolly gasped at the contact and lifted her huge blue eyes. “We’ll get you another. We’ll get you all the fucking makeup you’ll ever need.”
“Now?” she asked, seeming to forget I was touching her.
“Now.”
Dolly darted across the room for her gun. I made my way to the exit. But Dolly stopped and turned to face the Caterpillar’s dead body. She placed her weapons on the floor and ran to his chair. Pushing on the backrest, she rolled him toward the wall where she had written “Sick Fux.” She placed him directly underneath. She stepped back to admire her work. “Now all the bad men will know who destroyed him.” She smiled, and what I saw was malice through the beauty. “And they’ll know who is coming for them too. Wonderland’s Sick Fux.”
Dolly picked up her weapons and ran out of the door, gun and blade and doll’s head in hand. I took one look at the room, at what my girl had achieved, and I felt the black hole in my chest begin to fill.
Fill with the inky black tar that only Dolly could bring. Fill with the confirmation that we had met as children for a reason.
That she had been designed solely for me.
As evil as me, and all mine to control.
My Dolly.
My darlin’.
My fellow Sick Fuck.
I took the pack of cards from my pocket and fanned them in my hand. When I found the one I wanted, I strolled to the body, mesmerized by the expression of death on his face, and held the card up high. I studied the likeness of my drawing and the face of this asshole, the one that was etched into my mind just as sure as if a blade had sliced into my brain. The two were similar, but nothing could come close to the real face of this prick: a man with an insatiable craving to touch and fuck kids.
I cleared my throat and spat at the bloodied cheek of the Caterpillar, watching the spit merge with the fresh-spilled blood. Flicking my fingers, I sent the card falling to his chest.
I smiled, triumphant at the kill.
The Three of Hearts was dead.
“It’s a treasure trove,” she whispered as she looked around the store. My trunk was filled with more cash than I could carry—the latest bounty found in the Caterpillar’s safe.
Now it belonged to us, inadequate compensation for the years of hell Dolly had been subjected to. It had joined the stash I had from under the Warden’s and Mrs. Jenkins’s mattresses. I had more money than I knew what to do with.
Spending it on what Dolly loved most seemed a fitting way to blow it.
I leaned on my cane as I looked around the store that held my little Dolly so captive. Makeup, stretching from the front of the store to the back. I glanced down at my girl and felt something like warmth fill my cold dead heart.
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life,” she said in awe. She looked up at me, her long lashes batting against her cheek. We’d cleaned up at the motel and then come straight here.
“Can I help y’all?” a female voice asked from in front of us. I immediately shifted next to Dolly, protecting her, making sure no one fucked with us.
I glared at the tall, slim brunette before us, dressed all in black. Dolly gasped and stepped closer to her, her eyes fixed on the woman’s face. “Your face,” she said, her English ac
cent sounding all proper and thick. “I want to look like that. How do I look like you?”
The woman’s eyebrows pulled down, and then her gaze roved first over Dolly, then me. Her eyes widened. “Oh my God! Are you cosplayers?” She stepped back to assess Dolly. “Alice in Wonderland, right? Steampunk?”
I had no idea what the fuck she was talking about, but I stepped even closer to Dolly, ready to pull her back. But Dolly’s eyes lit up at the mention of her favorite book. “Alice, yes! We’re in Wonderland. We’re on an adventure.”
The woman laughed, but before she had a chance to say anything else, Dolly pulled out her tube of ruined lipstick. “I need more of this. It’s all gone.”
The woman took the lipstick and studied it. “Vintage Chanel?” She shook her head. “You should keep hold of this. The tube alone will be worth something. Lucky for you, the shade still exists, just a newer formula and design.” She waved her hand. “Come on. If you’re cosplaying Alice, we need to make you look the part.”
Dolly looked back at me. I nodded, giving her permission to go. The woman led Dolly around the store, filling a basket with shit I had no idea about. But I didn’t care as I watched Dolly’s smile grow wider and wider with each new item added. This was what I had waited eleven years to see. Her face. Her body. My fucking girl killing so fucking beautifully it was like watching one of Chapel’s poems come to life. A damn symphony in motion—a slice here, a stab there, and so much deliciously warm blood spilling to the floor.
Death had a smell.
I had always imagined it smelled of roses, like Dolly.
I hadn’t been wrong.
As we walked through the store, people stared; stared, until I glared back at them. They must have sensed how much I wanted to see them robbed of life, because they looked away quickly, most fleeing the shop as if they could sense I was a predator stalking my prey.
