"Hi. Did you need in my store?" said a very perky young lady. She had purple hair and pigtails. He probably wouldn't have even noticed that her eyes were bright green and her lips bright red, except that she looked almost like a clown. He stepped back. Her top was so tight with her cleavage popping out, and he could hardly pay attention to anything she was saying.
"What?" he said, completely flustered by this clownish-looking girl standing in front of him.
"I'm opening a bakery here. Why are you peering in my windows?" said the woman, tossing her head and sending her purple pigtails waggling back and forth.
"A bakery? I was looking for the dollhouse place," he said, immediately turning bright red. How was he going to explain that he was looking for dollhouse furniture? Especially to this cute entrepreneur.
"The dollhouse guy? I'm pretty sure he's dead. But I do have the phone number of the guy leasing it to me... Here, let me give it to you." And with that, she handed him her purse. Completely bewildered, he held it for her while she rummaged through it. Not two minutes later, she yanked out a business card. On the front was printed blue and purple stripes with the name “Cupcakes with Candy.” On the other side, it was blank, and she scrawled from a scrap of paper written in lipstick. "There you go, pretty sure that's his number. Go away now," she said with a bright smile and a wink.
Mark wasn't quite sure how to respond to any of that, but he thanked her and climbed back into his truck. He sat in his truck, staring at the girl unlocking the door very slowly, with her purple pigtails. She was definitely going to run an entertaining bakery. That was all he knew for sure at this point.
He was dialing the phone number not two minutes later. "Hello?" Mark said, pausing as the other person replied hello. "Hey, I'm looking for the dollhouse repair guy. I need a replacement table leaf."
Chapter Five
Twenty minutes later, he was at a yellow over-sized house. His truck looked out of place in the driveway, considering that the house appeared to be even more expensive and fancier than the ones he customarily built. But he climbed out and knocked on the front door. A few seconds later, the giant wooden door with the perfect stained-glass windows swung open. In front of him was standing a young woman. "Hello?"
"Hi, I called about the table for my dollhouse?" Mark swallowed awkwardly, trying not to choke on the words “table for my dollhouse.” He was getting tired of meeting beautiful young women who judged him for his dollhouse. Not that he played with a dollhouse! He just had a splinter in his hand that he needed to get taken out so he could concentrate on other things. And in this case, that splinter was the broken dollhouse table, and he needed to fix it so he could stop thinking about it. He couldn’t explain in one deep breath that this table leaf represented his skills as a father.
The girl stared at him with a blank, dumb expression. Finally, she opened the door much wider and turned behind her and shouted, "Dad! Some guy is here."
Then she walked away, not even caring to see if her father showed up. Mark uncomfortably waited. He tried not to stare at the interior of the house. It was absolutely immaculate, as if it was a hotel, as opposed to a home. Even the smell of jasmine flowers was filtered through the air, perhaps from actual, healthy flowers in the house. Mark felt immediately shabby, as if his bald head, old leather jacket, and tired jeans didn’t belong in a place this fancy.
A man who appeared to be about in his late fifties came to the door. "Hello, Mark?"
Mark nodded. His face turning red again, he could just imagine the young girl answering the door earlier. “Table for my dollhouse.” The words rang in his hot red ears. God forbid he had to say it again.
"Hello, I'm Mr. Vladimir and I have sadly taken over for my father. Of course, the old storefront is closed. I’ll be opening a new one soon, downtown."
"Okay," said Mark, not totally sure what else to say. The man turned and started walking away from the front door, pausing maybe ten feet away, and then looking back at Mark. He waved his hand and Mark quickly followed. He felt like a cloud of dirt must be falling off of him just like Pigpen.
"Sorry, I just came back from work," he said. "I brought you the part that's broken. I'm hoping that you just have a replacement piece."
"I'm sure I do," said Mr. Vladimir, and he opened the door to a room that was filled to the brim with shelves and boxes. He calmly walked over and pulled a line of boxes off of the back shelf. The box was long and thin, almost long enough for a gun. But when he carefully peeled the top off, inside were tiny little table leaves. There had to have been a thousand of them in there. “Have you been collecting long?”
Mark coughed. “Uh, no, this is for my kid.”
Mr. Vladimir raised his eyebrow. “You let children play with the dollhouse? That’s nice, I suppose.” He plucked out one table leaf, as if it was a peach from a tree, and handed it over to Mark. "No charge. My dad made way too many of these anyway."
Mark stuffed the table leaf in his pocket. "I heard he died?"
"Yes." The older man looked down at his feet and then snapped his eyes back up at Mark. "He made a dollhouse that wasn't like any of his other dollhouses. It was... special. And unfortunately, it was the death of him."
Mark let out an uncomfortable cough. "A dollhouse killed him?"
"I think it killed him. My mother was very superstitious, so perhaps she has rubbed off on me. But he just died suddenly and violently as soon as the last piece was placed."
"Yeah," said Mark uncomfortably. He was barely even paying attention to this crazy man ranting about a dollhouse. He was trying to think to himself a polite way to make his way out of here. But he also wanted to be grateful for the tiny little table leaf. The free table leaf.
Mr. Vladimir and turned and looked at Mark. "I just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s been stressful, and I keep having nightmares about him. The dollhouse was just too much for him. It cursed him. I’m sorry, I’ve got to ask you to leave." Mr. Vladimir was suddenly teary eyed.
"Yeah," said Mark, getting more uncomfortable. "Well, thank you very much for this table leaf. I'm sure my daughters will be very impressed."
Mr. Vladimir nodded and allowed Mark to leave. Mark's final thought before he got into his big red truck was that all the money in the world could not save that man's sanity.
Chapter Six
Mark drove home with a smile on his face, even though the brakes on the truck were suddenly squealing much louder, and the engine was making a terrible clunk, clunk sound. The whole truck was starting to shudder every time the engine tried to turn over. But even that could not dampen his good mood. It was like that splinter that had been digging under his skin, driving him absolutely mad, that feeling had finally left him. He had a replacement part.
And he couldn't wait to get home and put it in the table, and then he could focus on important things. Like his wife, and like trying to be the dad that he hoped he could be. He did it. He successfully took care of Coralina and Beth. They might not understand how important it was to him that he took care of little things like if he broke their toy, he would fix it. He could still remember his dad taking that Nintendo Sixty-four and slamming it into the wall, cracking it to smithereens. It was never replaced. It wasn't even his fault! His dad picked up the Nintendo and he smashed it into the wall repeatedly because he lost his job. It had nothing to do with Mark.
Who paid the price? Just that little ten-year-old kid. And he still remembered the pain of his wonderful present being destroyed before his very eyes. He was probably overcompensating by running all over town looking for a tiny little dollhouse table leaf, but... Abuse runs in family lines. And Mark was terrified that he would catch it.
The truck rumbled into the garage and finally was grateful for his turning off the key. He got out, closed the garage door, and immediately went into the house. Coralina screamed, "Daddy!" Her feet charging at him, leaping into his arms. He smiled and could hardly stop grinning at the child.
"I got that part of your table tha
t was broken. It took me all day," he said.
Coralina did not care. She just said, "Oh. Can you teach me how to get a solo in the choir?"
He ruffled her little blonde curls with his big meaty hands. "Go sing a song."
Coralina did exactly what her father said, standing on the couch and singing at the top of her lungs. The song she picked was a raunchy dirty number about drinking a lot of liquor. And Mark made a mental note to stop allowing the children to listen to the public radio.
"Hey, Beth. Do you want to see the part I got you?" he said to his littlest daughter.
She smiled at him and nodded.
"Can't you just say yes?" he said, holding out his hand with it covering the little table piece.
"Yes," she said. But she didn't say any follow-up words. Mark wondered if she was going to need to be in speech class. Or some sort of counseling class. Was this his fault? Should he have talked to her more as a baby? Did it have something to do with him not reading? Because he hated reading to kids, but if reading would help, he would read.
She let out a squeal of delight when he dropped the table leaf into her hand. She immediately ran over to the dollhouse and carefully placed it in between the ends of the table. Then she turned and came back and put it back in his hand.
"What's wrong?" he asked, his stomach turning with frustration.
"Don't fit," said Beth, and with that two-word speech, she went back to playing with the dolls.
"I'm sure it fits, I'm sure." He walked over to the dollhouse with her and sat on the ground. Very calmly, he set the leaf in between the two ends of the table. It was clearly the wrong size. He turned it and tried to put it in the location that it had been stored, hoping that at least the table clicked shut again, with the added weight of the tiny little table leaf. But it wouldn't fit that direction either.
It was like getting a splinter out, and realizing that he only got half of it. The other half was now buried deep under the skin; maybe infection would push it out. Or it could be dug out with a knife.
He started to heat up nuggets and French fries for dinner. But he was so disgusted. He didn't even bother to heat any up for himself.
He’d have to go back to that crazy guy.
Chapter Seven
Night Walk
He went to bed and barely spoke to Kelly. He couldn't seem to find words, the anger rumbling deep within his skin. He was a failure.
That was the only thing he could think about. He was a disappointment, and he was a failure, and he broke his child's toy. And that same betrayal that he felt when his dad destroyed his Nintendo Sixty-four. He betrayed his own children. The abuse continued.
He fell asleep with that restless word lingering on his mind, with that half-broken splinter digging through his skin.
It was not shocking that he had a nightmare. But he had never had a nightmare quite like this before.
He was walking downtown, and the girl with the purple hair with big pigtails and giant breasts turned and stared at him. "It is cursed. My business is going to fail, and I'm going to kill myself," she said with a sad smile. "My name's Candy. I make cupcakes with candy. I hope you come and buy some before it's all over."
In the dream, Mark stared at her, her colored contacts sliding around her eyeballs so the iris did not look centered anymore. He looked away. And he saw the other young girl, the one from Mr. Vladimir's house. She was pointing at him and laughing. "You idiot. You didn't even think to find out if your dollhouse is haunted."
"Cursed. Not haunted," said Mr. Vladimir, and they were suddenly at a boardroom table. It was circular, and Mark sat on one side feeling awkward in his leather jacket, and Mr. Vladimir sat in a tuxedo on the other side. His hands were full in front of him, as if he was a lawyer at a deposition. "Black magic. Two families killed, and my father, he was killed too." And with that, Vladimir lifted his hands into the air and slowly did an incantation. In front of them, they both saw the little wooden dollhouse figures start walking around. A long, thin needle slowly floated through the air and stabbed one of the wooden figures in the heart. At that same moment, they both turned and looked.
Candy, the purple-haired girl with the wandering irises, was in the middle of cutting her own head off with a guillotine. Except she had dropped the blade and it gotten stuck in her spinal cord. She couldn't seem to quite get it all the way through her head. "I just need the right tool," she said. Her hand turned into a long rubbery snake and started slithering through the building she was in. It finally found a toolbox and she grabbed a large fat sledgehammer. Her long, snaky arms slithered back to her head, still stuck in the guillotine. And with slow, long blows, she hit the guillotine blade deeper and deeper into her neck until it finally popped through. Her eyes spun in, but her face looked wildly relieved. As if that splinter had finally been removed.
Mark was completely nauseated by the sight of her head slowly getting sliced off by a blade. He turned back and stared at Mr. Vladimir. "Why would she do that?"
Mr. Vladimir leaned forwards and slammed his hand down in the center of the table. The table cracked open and popped apart and inside between the two table’s ends were chairs and a splintered-up table leaf. "Nobody can stop the dollhouse."
Mark awoke in a sweat with a scream. He knew he would have to go back and fix that damn table leaf; he couldn't stop thinking about it. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but then he realized he wasn't in his bed. He stayed perfectly still, his body shivering from sweat. His face was damp from tears that he apparently had been crying in his sleep. But he couldn't face it; where was he? Slowly, he turned his head to the left and then he turned his head to the right. His eyes would not make sense of what he was seeing, but was he still dreaming? He reached up and slapped his face really hard, and the sting was incredible.
Slowly, he sat down, waiting for his eyes to finish describing the scene to him. But it just seemed unbelievable. Why was there a tree to the left?
There was a second tree to the right.
And as he sat there, in the dark, his eyes slowly told him the truth. Somehow, he had climbed on the roof. His toes were hanging right over the gutter. If he took one more step, he would've fallen off the roof. That scared the shit out of him.
Chapter Eight
Kelly woke up earlier than normal and was making waffles. He was already downstairs from his roof nightmare. He didn’t want her to know he woke up on the shingles. It was shocking to see Kelly awake and out of bed. The first thing she did was shove him. So he did the thing that he did, and grabbed her butt so hard that she nearly hit the ceiling. It was one of the many ways that they played rough with each other. He loved his wife and her silly ridiculous behavior. She pulled the frozen waffle from the toaster and placed it on a plate for them. Then she dumped some syrup on top. "I thought you'd be hungry."
"Why are you even awake?" he said, scarfing bits of waffle between putting on his shoes and socks.
"I wanted today to start off well," she said hesitantly.
He knew, before she even said the next sentence. He knew there was some big trouble. "Tell me," he said, short and sharp. "I have to go to work soon. Blurt it out."
"Well, you know how Emily is." Kelly paused.
Kelly had this infuriating way of starting in the middle of the story. And Mark had no time for that, both because he had to leave for work any minute now, and on top of that, Emily was her boss. "Shit. Don't tell me." The waffle was no longer edible. He couldn't even force the frozen half warm waffle down with a waterfall of syrup.
"Fine, I won't," said Kelly and she slammed her dishes in the sink.
"The truck, its brakes are squealing! The engine is probably gonna blow any minute now. And you," he pointed with his fork, "you lost your job! How could you do that! We need that money."
"I don't even believe that dollhouse cost only five dollars. I think you're a liar. Maybe if you stop spending money on ridiculous toys for the children because you're all caught up in 'am I a good dad' all t
he time. We don't even need two incomes. You make fine money," she said furiously. But she was lying, and they both knew it.
He didn't want to fight, so he stood up and stomped out.
Chapter Nine
There was no drumming on the steering wheel today – his nightmare would have probably given him a foul mood no matter what happened this morning – but Kelly losing her job was no joke. And now! She would get to stay home all day with Coralina and Beth. And he would have to go to his shitty job and build shitty walls for stupid houses that he never got to live in.
This time, he remembered to grab the broken table leaf and the wrong size one, so at least he could show the crazy old man which kind he needed. It wasn't until lunch time when he sat down and ate his peanut butter and jelly sandwich that he wondered how he had climbed on the roof. He wasn't naturally a sleepwalker. It seemed so surreal and so strange, that he probably would've forgotten it entirely and dismissed it all as dream – except that it took him forty-five minutes to figure out how to get off the roof. He still had no idea how he got up there in the first place.
Surely he only dreamt about the dollhouse being haunted because Mr. Vladimir was acting so weird about it the whole time they talked yesterday. Then again – he'd never sleepwalked before.
Kelly would have another job in a couple of days; she was usually pretty quick to apply for a new job. Plus, the job sucked, and they both knew it. She'd been doing hotel maid work for a while, so she was constantly covered in blood and semen and who knows what else from other people. It was disgusting, and he didn't like Kelly working disgusting, shady jobs.
Deadlocked Dollhouse Page 3
