Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Deadlocked Dollhouse
A Locked House Haunting
Mixi J Applebottom
Copyright © 2017 by Mixi J Applebottom
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For those of us who want to be great parents,
and give good gifts,
and be better than the generations before us.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Padlocked Penthouse
About the Author
Also by Mixi J Applebottom
Prologue
The saw made a quick buzzing noise, and then it paused. The sound lingered in the air with the dust. His old wrinkly hand brushed some of the sawdust off of the edge of the cut. With a long shhh, he blew some air across the edge. The cut was smooth and straight, just like it should be.
The thin piece of wood slid perfectly fitted on the tiny little staircase. It was the third tread, counting from the bottom up. The entire staircase was only six inches tall, and it had taken him five full minutes to perfectly shape each tread. He left that one, not glued in place, just sitting and waiting for him, while he grabbed another tiny thin board. He carried it over to the little router, and set the groove for the front of the tread. The router bit whirred to life at the touch of a button, the tiny blade set to trim the square edge into a half-circle.
The dust was growing in the air, even with his expensive vacuum system running. He was wearing a dust mask as he always did when he worked long hours. This would be his final house.
Four hundred houses. He really like the idea of stopping on an even number, and this was the four-hundredth house. He would be retiring in less than a week. This house should sell for eight thousand dollars; that was the going rate. But he had every intention of keeping it, the final dollhouse.
It was Victorian, as most of the styled dollhouses were. He loved those particular houses because they were intricate, detailed. He knew he would be spending at least a full month individually carving all of the handrails and the spindles for that staircase. They would be gloriously beautiful, worth every second of his efforts. After the front of the tread of the step was routed, he moved it back to the tiny saw blade. He measured and re-measured, and then cut the tread to fit. He set it on the fourth stair. It fit perfectly, he reflected, sighing. There was sadness pushing through the dust in the air. A finality. This would be the end. The last staircase, and he was one tread closer to packing up his workshop and retiring.
When all the treads were finally cut for the staircase, he carefully glued them all into place and then hammered with the tiniest little nails until they were well seated.
With a soft smile, he looked at the perfectly proportioned little stairs. This would be his masterpiece. Every trick that he knew from his entire life's work would be put into this dollhouse. He gently twisted the banister knob, and the staircase popped open as a little set of drawers. It was one of the many secret latches that he had installed in this house. He carefully pushed each step back into place, twisted the knob, and again, all ten stairs popped forwards from spring-loaded little drawers.
If he could've built that into his own beautiful home, he would have. But at this moment in his life, even with his houses selling for eight thousand dollars at a crack, he still had never purchased a custom home. Nothing at all like the houses that he built, with secret little levers. His wife was the reason why. Despite their wealth and his brilliant success, she never was in line with his dreams. That was why they never bought a custom home and never would.
He shook the thought from his mind and focused on the final house. This one would have at least seven different secret levers. He smiled brightly as he stared at the empty rooms that would come to life before his fingertips.
The dollhouse was perfection; all seven of the latches worked perfectly and smoothly upon their installation. He was just finishing up coating each and every piece of wood with paint, tile, and tiny perfectly matched wallpaper.
He carefully lined a piece of glass with glue while he held it with a pair of tweezers. He had glued tiny pads on the ends of the tweezer so they wouldn't scratch the tiny pane of glass. It was as thin as paper. He would use a suction cup to gently place the glas
s into the window frame. The suction cup was about as big as an eraser on a pencil. Carefully, he set up his tools and waited five seconds for the glue to set just slightly before he pressed the glass gently into place. His wife came in.
"Is that the final house?" she said with a sneer of disgust. She had never enjoyed his career. And now that it was almost at the end, she seemed to have the most hate for it that she had ever had. "Is it done? Can we move on with our lives now?"
He didn't respond, ignoring his wife as he had done a thousand other times. Maybe ten thousand other times. She was unreasonable, that was what he always thought to himself. Unreasonable women do as they please.
But he didn't need to reply; she could see with her eyes that he wasn't quite done yet. It was close, maybe twenty or thirty more hours of work. In a project that took more than two hundred hours, twenty or thirty left was next to nothing. But she wanted to schedule that cruise.
She let out a nasty little laugh, revealing her gums with few teeth. Even though he had bought her teeth, she refused to wear them. Her scraggly gray hair looked like she had just been electrocuted moments before, despite him offering many a time to take her to the salon and get something pretty done.
They weren't even close to poor, so why did she insist on wandering around looking like a bedraggled old homeless woman? For a man who'd spent his entire life making tiny little intricate beautiful things, his wife had spent the entire time looking like a hobo. It disgusted him. She disgusted him.
But he had no plans to leave. After all, he was a man of convictions. And he would not walk out on his wife for no reason. Well, for this lame reason of her choosing to be an ugly old hag. That wasn't enough to leave her. She had to do something worse. Besides, even when she was unpleasant, she was still his. There was comfort in having her. Back when they were young, she was his rock; she helped him sell his first house. But as the years had grown on, her mood towards his work had stiffened and grown cold. He should have retired last year to appease her, but he really wanted to finish at four hundred houses. He'd been doing this for forty years; what was one more?
The suction cup made a soft kissing noise as it finally adhered itself to the ready glass. The glue was nearly perfectly set; it was ready. He turned to place the glass into the baby's bedroom. As he pushed on the window frame, studying his wrinkled, trembling hand before he slipped the glass into place, his wife turned. As she moved, her big clumsy body bumbled into his. The glass shifted, and he wasn't dexterous enough anymore to catch himself. The glass knocked from his hand and sliced into hers.
He held his breath a moment as her eyes grew big and wide. A trickle of red started to drip.
She let out a scream and shook her hand violently, as if the glass was a spider. The miniature window slipped out of her flesh from the force of her flailing. The glass, dripping with glue and blood, spun like a Chinese throwing star, smashing into the house. Tiny shattered bits of glass went flying literally everywhere all over the tiny intricate library. He was absolutely exasperated.
She was injured, yes, but he was furious. This was the third time she had managed to knock something into his final creation. And this time, she shattered glass and blood all over the interior of the nearly completed library. He slammed his perfect little tweezers down on his desk. Then he turned and stared at his hideous wife. "Why are you even in here?" he said, anger growling out with every word like a rabid dog.
She sucked on the sliced hand. "I think I need stitches. You cut me," she said, her accusatory tone mixed with a whine of pain. "Why the fuck would you cut me?" she said, her voice growing downright shrill. It was like she was trying to grate every single nerve of his with her pitch.
And it was working well.
"I'm going to have to order new glass! It will take weeks to get here. Plus, I'll have to clean up all this blood. You are why this takes so long," he said, jabbing his finger at her face. "You stupid..."
"I'll curse you," she said with a painfully calm, angry voice. The room grew suddenly cold, as he was finally pushed too far.
"You hideous bitch," he replied. "Do you know how much I think about divorcing you? I do. All the time. But I put up with you because you are my wife. And that means something to me. But honestly? Fuck you. Fuck you and your toothless, hideous face." It was the first time in their entire marriage that he used hateful language towards his wife, though she had used it at him plenty of times. Usually he'd say “fine, dear” or “it's okay.” Or “I'm sorry.” But today, he just wanted to finish his masterpiece. And he was so close. This would take hours upon hours to fix
But he was not expecting the thing that happened next. As she straightened her back and pointed her finger at him, he felt the curse long before she finished saying it. It felt like cold water slowly being poured from the top of his head all the way down his body. A cold, frigid feeling dripping across his entire soul, his entire being. He couldn't reply; he was stuck gargling on his words like an idiot.
When she finally relented, he leapt on top of her and stabbed straight through her neck with the funny little suction cup device. It sounded like it kissed her right before it penetrated her.
A month later, he was dead.
But the house was complete.
Chapter One
The Dollhouse
Mark was sitting in his truck, pounding on the steering wheel with his fists and his fingertips. Alternating fist pounds and finger thumps, he was keeping time with the loud obnoxious rock music he was playing. As he pulled into his parking spot, he turned off the key. The music went silent, but the truck clanged to a stop. The door didn't really lock, but he didn't care anyway. Who was gonna rob his truck? He hopped out of the red dusty thing and slipped on his leather jacket. He was thirty-six and was about to step into the familiar thrift store for the thousandth time.
Today, he was on a quest. He wanted to find the girl a new bike seat. He had two beautiful daughters, Coralina, who was loud and seven, and Beth, who was six years old. Beth was quiet and reserved, and barely spoke to anyone. She was so incredibly shy, he wondered how he could be her father. He didn't feel shy at all.
But there you have it; he had one daughter with his personality that was boisterous and loud and the other one was as meek as a mouse. He was looking for new bike seat for Coralina. He bought her a bike at the thrift store a few weeks ago, but the bike seat itself was so brittle from the sunshine that the first time Coralina rode, it cracked in half. As he wandered up and down the aisles, he saw in the furniture section a large wooden dollhouse. It had individual shingles on the roof, and he almost didn't look at it any further. Individual shingles, for a dollhouse. His own roof had fewer shingles than that tiny little dollhouse.
It was clearly a collector’s item and probably over a thousand dollars. After an unsuccessful search for a pink bike seat, finally he asked one of the workers, "Any chance you have a bike seat?"
"Sure, let me see." The scraggly old man wandered towards the back of the thrift shop. Everything was piled fairly neatly, and Mark found himself glancing back at the perfectly shingled, very expensive dollhouse.
"How about this one?" said the old man, handing Mark a pink bike seat. It didn't look too sun damaged, and even seemed like maybe it would look good with the bike. Although looking good was never a priority. Function over form.
That's what you do when you're broke.
He looked at the price tag of the bike seat and it was three dollars. No problem. He could skip lunch today so that Coralina could ride a bike. Besides, he was constantly battling the nervous feeling in his stomach that maybe, just maybe he was a terrible father.
After all, in order to get his kid a used bike seat, he had to skip lunch. That was not the sign of a good father; that was the signs of a fuck up. Sure, he was fixing the bike, but he shouldn't have to shop at a thrift store for a freaking bike seat and skip lunch to get it for her.
"What's the price of the dollhouse?" Mark said before he even managed to stop himself
. He didn't really want to know; he might as well ask what the price of a Lamborghini was. He wasn't going to get that expensive high-quality dollhouse today.
Not when he skipped lunch to buy a used bike seat. He stuck his hands in his leather coat and he stared at the perfect little shingles in a nice little line. The house was better than his own actual home.
"The dollhouse? Oh, I think it's five bucks," said the old man as he started to shuffle away to help some other customer.
Mark's eyes were so big from shock that they fell out of his head, rolled across the floor, and got kicked by a kid who was screaming at his mother. Five dollars?
Not a second later, he was running towards the dollhouse. He picked it up without even looking inside. He could put it on Craigslist for two hundred bucks and come out ahead. New bike seat, and a bunch of lunches.
Or... As he was standing in line holding the bulky dollhouse, his mind started to wander away from the profitability of this purchase. What if he gave Beth and Coralina the most expensive dollhouse they ever had? Would that mean he was a good father? Or... Was he indulging them too much? Or... Did it not even count because he was getting a dollhouse for five dollars?
In the end, he decided it didn't matter. And on a whim, just like that, he brought home a gorgeous, eight-thousand-dollar dollhouse.
Deadlocked Dollhouse Page 1
