Deadlocked Dollhouse

by Mixi J Applebottom

  "Is this about my job again? I told you I'm not going to get a new one. I'm staying home. You can't stop me," she said, slamming down her spatula.

  Immediately, Mark was furious, his misplaced anger overwhelming his brain. His heart was pounding in his eyes; they were slanted little slits of fury at her. "You have to get a job! But that's beside the point. I was trying to talk to you about..."

  But she charged at him. "I do fucking not. And you can't make me. I will do what I want." Then she whirled her cocky little head around so her back was to him. Anger bounced between them like an energizing game of ping pong. She started scrubbing a pot with furious big, long strokes. Water was flinging up in little tiny dots all over the house. As she slammed the pot down into the suds, they let out a cry of steamy little anger.

  "Geez, that's not even what I was trying to talk to you about! Fuck. Why do you have to be like this! If you like eating, we have to work. But whatever, who cares. Eating doesn't matter. Does it? You being jobless screws up our finances." He grabbed his wallet and held it in front of his crotch and pretended to ride it. "Look, I'm Kelly. I just fucked our finances." Then he threw it on the ground and stomped on it. "Get a job if you want us to eat. That is how this works. That is the reason we work," Mark shouted, stomping on his own wallet while his wife stared at him.

  Just then, Beth stepped into the room, her tiny little mouth in a circle. "You don't like it?" she whimpered and immediately started to cry.

  It was then that Mark remembered she had given him the wallet for his birthday. "Fuck. Beth, no... I..." He clenched his fists and glared at his wife. This was her fault, he was sure. He picked up the wallet and shoved it back in his pocket. "I saw a spider." He swallowed, staring at Beth’s upset eyes and she nodded slowly.

  "Okay," she said with a sniffle and stepped back out of the room to the dollhouse.

  Kelly was silent, furiously scrubbing the pot and refusing to speak to him. A moment later, she set a pile of pancakes on the table and said, "Food is ready." She said it with a soft sneer, a laced threat. Like: We are eating, so maybe I don't need a job.

  He slammed the front door on the way out, his belly empty of pancakes. Anger was throbbing in his chest, and he never even told her that he thought they were cursed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mark was furious at work. He rarely showed up to work with anger hot in his belly. Mark continued to build the wall of the house, thinking about his wife and her absolute insistence that she not get a job. It really pissed him off while he stood there and he worked and he sacrificed. How dare she. He picked up a two by four and started to carry it toward the saw. The board turned red in his arms as his nose started to gush on it. His anger faded into a quiet terror. Kelly having no job was nothing compared to being cursed. He dropped the board, clutching his nose and rushing to the bathroom. The grimy mirror showed his face coated in blood. He quickly scrubbed it, but what started as a drizzle suddenly waterfalled, and he ended up sitting with his head between his knees desperately squeezing his nose shut as a puddle started to form between his legs.

  The third stage.

  Coralina was on the first stage, sleepwalking. His daughter was cursed. Panic was crawling up his tight chest and pressing on his tongue, begging for a bleat of raw terror to escape. But he bit his lips tight together and closed his eyes tight. Maybe he was just imagining this. Kelly would calm him down; he needed to tell her so that she could be his voice of reason.

  So he swallowed his anger and called his wife. While it rang, he threw a handful of paper towels on the ground and started to clean up his blood puddle with his foot. One hand still clutched his nose tightly to keep it from spewing. "Hey, Kelly. I don't want to fight. I think..."

  "I'm pregnant," she said, interrupting.

  "What?" He was so unprepared, he slipped in the blood he was wiping up. He twisted, one foot skittering out from under him. He had to let go of his nose to catch himself on the wall. The shock was unbelievable. "You are on the pill!"

  "I am; that's what is pissing me off so much. No part of me wanted a baby right now. I know that you were fine with us having another kid – but now... I just... I want to stay home with this one. I won't go back to work! I don't want to work, puking and pregnant gross. I don't want to clean hotel rooms when my belly is fat and my cankles swollen. It's not fair," she said with a loud half-sob threatening to burst free, and he could hear her slamming pots and dishes in the background. "It's not fucking fair!" And he could hear the tears threatening to spill out of her eyes.

  Fuck. How was he going to get her to take him seriously now? "Look, you can stay home," he said, hoping to end the conversation quickly so they could move on to the “hey, we've got a cursed dollhouse” part of the conversation.

  But him relenting just caused serious waterworks. Her bawling was loud and breathless, with goofy hiccups between sobs. She audibly tried to gather herself and he could picture her taking a breath and wiping her eyes. "Don't tease me. Do you mean it? I'm sure we can figure it out. I can... I can figure it out." She lost it again. He could feel the relief in her voice. A loud hiccup made her giggle.

  "Yes. I'm excited to have another kid!" he said, trying desperately to sound excited. "Kids are great." But secretly, his stomach was turning. What if he couldn't take care of three children? Coralina was on the roof this morning, and he had already brought in a cursed dollhouse. What on earth could he do wrong next?

  The cycle of abuse.

  What if it caught him? How could he possibly break a cycle if it had become supernatural?

  "Mark, I know that you’re terrified about being a dad. We've been doing great so far! You've been doing fucking great," Kelly said through sniffles. As if she instinctively knew that he was already spiraling. He was running lies through his head of the ways that he was going to fuck up tiny humans. "It's gonna be okay, but I will figure the budget out. I'll do whatever it takes. Maybe I could babysit if we really need? If it's real tight?"

  "Kelly, I have got to talk to you..." But then he glanced at his watch. Fuck, his break was over. "Shit, I gotta go, but... look at the books under the couch. I think... I think that's... Our dollhouse. I'm concerned." And he hung up without even saying goodbye.

  Hopefully, she would feel the urgency in his voice and not just think he was screwing around.

  Chapter Twenty

  He impatiently waited for lunch time. His stomach hurt, and he regretted not eating pancakes. If only he had more than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But also, he needed to call his wife again. Maybe, with any luck, she would have read the books and understand what was going on. Maybe she could talk some sense into him and tell him he was imagining things. At least they'd be in it together, whatever this was. His lunch would be cut short from his extra-long break. He couldn't dial the phone while he ripped open his sandwich. The broken finger on his right hand suddenly gained his attention as he was tearing the saran wrap off the pb&j. Sleepwalking, then bone break. Fuck. Coralina broken. Her tiny little bones snapped. God, he hoped he was wrong.

  The thought turned his stomach, and he punched the button to call Kelly. "Hey, honey?" he said to his silent wife on the phone. He was starting to worry that she hadn't actually picked up because she was so quiet. "Did you read them?"

  "Is this some sort of fucking joke? Are you pranking me because I'm pregnant?" There was a ring of hostility in her voice, disbelief running through her veins. She was as angry as he'd ever heard her.

  He swallowed nervously, trying to prepare himself to calm her down. "I wish I was. I already was sleepwalking. I broke my finger, and now the nosebleeds," he said, trying to sound very calm. Kelly was a beast when she was angry, and he needed her present and thoughtful, not angry and shouting. "I don't know if it's real. I just know that I'm kind of freaked out. I also think I know where the witch is who... started all of this. What you think?"

  "I don't believe you," she said, even more hostile-sounding. This wasn't going well. What was he sup
posed to do now? "Why the hell would you do this to me? Have you been planning this ever since you got this dollhouse?" He could hear her foot tapping the linoleum in the kitchen with a rapid slap-slap sound. "Coralina was sleepwalking. Are you trying tell me she is going to break a bone?" Her voice was getting a higher and higher pitch as she shouted.

  Mark tugged on his shirt collar. The panicky feeling was starting to choke him. "I don't know!" He took a deep breath and tried his damnedest to collect himself. "Fuck, Kelly, seriously. It's not a prank. When I went to get the little table leaf, the guy told me a lot of weird shit. And I got bored and stopped by the library to check it out. " He could feel her angry breathing on the phone. "Could you just help me figure out what to do next?" He was met with angry silence. He couldn't stop himself; he just had to twist the knife. "You do, after all, have no job," he said, sarcastic frustration running off his tongue like the blood running out his nose.

  "Oh, I thought it was okay that I didn't have a job because, " she started screaming, "you put a baby inside me!" And she hung up.

  Then he was really mad; what an utterly stupid conversation. Coralina was on the roof this morning, and he had been on the roof not just a few nights earlier. Was Coralina gonna snap one of her tiny, perfect bones? He had an immediate vision of her eye socket crushed, and he gagged. He never finished his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, opting to let his belly ache with hunger. Why did they have to fight? He dragged his feet back to work, dejected and confused. Fuck. If his wife wouldn't help him, who would?

  Not an hour later, Kelly called, frantic. "We're at the hospital. Coralina broke her arm." She was breathless, and a man's low rumbling voice was barely audible for a moment. "Doctor is here, gotta go." She hung up almost as soon as she called. Mark's hair was on end. His scalp was prickling, as if his hair was turning gray that very second.

  Coralina was stage two, bone snap.

  Mark was stage three, blood cry.

  Fuck.

  Not five minutes later, he was in his truck, rattling down the road toward the hospital. As he stopped at a red light, he could feel panic brewing in his chest. His heart was pounding in his ears. He glanced to the left and saw an old lady driving a red car. She pointed at him, miming something frantically. He turned the hand crank on his window, and it screeched down slowly. "What?"

  "Your nose is bleeding!" she said with a horrified look on her face.

  He grabbed his nose with his right hand, the one with the broken finger sticking out cockeyed from his face. Blood was already soaking his shirt. He had a terrible sinking feeling that he should not be driving to the hospital, but he should be driving to find that witch and save his family from the haunting, or curse, or whatever it was. Would she be able to help? The light turned green and he pounded the gas with his foot, terrified that he wouldn't be able to stop this curse.

  They waited in the ER for two hours before they finally set Coralina's arm. Mark could tell it was broken as soon as he saw it. Her right arm hung at such a crooked angle. This is a curse. She broke it right in the middle, right where her bicep would sit. Mark's head was pounding behind his eyes so hard he couldn't think. His girl was whimpering from the pain, and sweating. A large nurse gave her an injection and she went quiet and goofy. My little girl is cursed. He was grateful for her sedation. They called it a clean break. Coralina said she wasn't totally sure how it happened, something about tripping. Kelly wept nearly as hard as the little patient. But Mark felt like the whole experience was outside himself. His one thought was pounding in his skull. We've been cursed.

  They drove home, and it was already late. They stopped at Burger King on the way home. Mark spent the last of his paycheck to buy four cold, one-dollar hamburgers. It was well past bedtime, and Kelly was falling asleep, and both girls were already snoring by the time he got home.

  Kelly climbed up to bed, and Mark tucked Coralina in her own bed, and Beth in hers. All three of his favorite women were sleeping. He rummaged through the house, grabbing some crackers and a beer. His mind was spinning a web of tangled thoughts so thick that he'd never be able to rest. Coralina broke her arm. He sat down and looked at the books again. He drank one beer, then two beers. They didn't say anything else; there was nothing else useful here. No secrets left, scrawled in a margin anywhere.

  How many people that had that dollhouse killed? he wondered. He searched for the name Kevin and murder into Google, and he found an article not six months old. Kevin killed his dog, his wife, and himself. It didn't mention his broken toe, so he didn't know if it was the same Kevin. Why would this man, who apparently had no daughter, own a dollhouse, though? He googled Kevin's name now that he knew the last name, and found his Facebook page. He flipped through the man's pictures. Most of them were just him and his wife smiling. In one picture, the couple were lying on their couch together, him underneath, her on top. The picture was posted not even a month before the murdering spree. She was lying on top of him, and they were holding hands. She had her tongue stuck out and he was in the middle of the happiest-looking laugh Mark had ever seen. What could have ruined this happy couple?

  But as he stared at the picture, he noticed a mirror over the couch had a familiar shape. Carefully, he zoomed in, and he could make out the tiny shingled roof in the reflection. He turned and looked at the dollhouse in his living room, and then looked back at the picture. It was the exact same little diamond pattern. In fact, as he stared, he realized one of the diamonds had a chip. He hopped up and walked carefully around the dollhouse. It didn't take long to find the exact spot in the roofline that was in the man's picture. That same tiny chip.

  Fuck.

  He flipped back through the library books, but he couldn't find the girl's name anywhere.

  But he didn't need to. He searched again for Kevin, and at the end of one of the articles, there was a link, "Is slaughtering families a new problem in the valley?" He clicked the link, and there was another article about a young girl, a teenager who had killed her brother and both her parents. And then herself. Her name was Emily. It said she had a broken leg.

  He flipped back through the library books and found her note about her broken leg, right next to Kevin's note about his broken toe. It had to be her.

  The air in the room felt thick, and he was helplessly choking on it as his chest tightened. Quickly, he chugged another beer. Mark's panic could possibly be stalled by booze. He stared vacantly at the wall. There was a large empty feeling inside him. He was completely numb. He had no way to fight the supernatural. What the hell should he do next? His vacant staring was awakened by a click. The bedroom door just swung shut. He turned and saw Kelly standing at the top of the stairs. She was slowly walking down, almost in a daze. "Kelly?"

  He glanced down at his phone. It was nearly 2 AM. He couldn't believe that he been sitting here thinking about that damn dollhouse this long. When he glanced back up, she was at the bottom of the stairs. "Kelly?" Mark stood to grab her, but she didn't turn her head, stepping out the front door.

  He had this sudden thought that if he followed her, he would know how they were getting on the roof. Quickly, he slipped on his sandals and stepped out the door after her.

  His heart dropped to his stomach and he suddenly retched. He looked back up at his wife, scaling the building like a demon, her elbows turned the wrong direction, climbing with a frantic pace. Then she slowly stood on the shingles and turned and placed her toes at the edge of the roof. She was grinning a wide, terrible smile. She lifted her arms, and took a deep breath.

  Kelly scaled the outside of the building.

  It scared the fuck out of him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He set up the ladder and slowly climbed up. Kelly was standing at the edge of the roof, her arms outstretched, a grin permanently plastered on her face. "Kelly," Mark said, trying not to scare her.

  It took him two hours to get his wife off the roof. He almost called the fire department. She wouldn't wake up, and he couldn't carry her down a
ladder. Instead of continuing to try and force her down, he sat on the roof at her feet, clinging tightly to her calves until she awoke. It was nearly four in the morning when she finally started stirring. Mark was terrified and tear-streaked, and when she finally became aware of her situation, she sat down with him. He wept hard and held her while she slowly looked around and tried to make sense of what had happened. "How did I get on the roof?"

  "I don't know; you were sleepwalking." Mark had decided never to tell her that she had been consumed by a curse like a demon. Never tell her that she scaled the building like a demon. He involuntarily shuddered. She pressed her lips tight together but didn't demand he explain, thankfully.

  "Mark, I want you to go talk to the dollhouse guy again and see if we can do anything else. He seemed to be the most educated about this particular problem. And I believe you now," she said, being the third person in their family to be on the roof in just a short few days.

  He rolled his eyes. "Oh good, you believe me. I'm hoping we can stop it before you break any bones," said Mark. He was nervous, thinking about his pregnant wife snapping. Would the baby be cursed? Would it snap a bone inside his wife's belly?

  "I'm more concerned about the part of the curse where we kill each other," said Kelly, and then, she climbed down the ladder. Her movements were resolute, and she trembled slightly. Mark had been trying to avoid that thought.

  What if he killed the people he loved?

  He didn't go in to work that day, instead driving back to Mr. Vladimir's home. This time, he went at a respectable hour, Kelly's idea. And it was nearly ten in the morning when he got there.

  He knocked on the door and despite being able to see Mr. Vladimir in the window, there was no answer. He knocked again, more forcefully this time. Again, Mark was left standing alone in front of the door.