She tells me to make myself at home, so I lay down on the couch, watching as she makes her way into the bedroom. A shower is turned on.
I close my eyes, and fall asleep.
When I wake up, I find the fattest white cat in the world sitting on my lap. It looks at me and opens its mouth.
“Meow.”
I pet behind its ears and open my mouth.
“Meow.”
It’s nighttime already. I hear that the shower is still on. How long have I been out? I stand up and walk to the refrigerator. It’s a fancy place – very clean. I want a place like this. Except not one on stilts. There’s nothing in the refrigerator but five bottles of Budlight and a large frying pan of noodles and a paint brush covered in white paint. I lift up the cover and finger a noodle. Mmm…not bad. I wonder what else there is to eat. Maybe I’ll find those little marshmallows with apple-flavored goo inside! Mmmm, those things give my mouth an orgasm. The Japanese make them. They used to sell them at Shirokiya, but I can’t find them there anymore. I could ask the people who work there, but I’m shy, and I’m afraid that if I ask they’ll tell me to Scram!
I go looking around for a plate & fork, opening cabinet after cabinet, and in each one finding piles and piles of magazines called Surgical World. The covers make me sick: Men and women sitting in the nude on cold shiny tables with medical instruments dangling from stretching wounds, kissing and fondling each other. One cover shows a Japanese woman squatting on a surgical table and urinating. Forceps swing from her monster box. She blows the cameraman a kiss.
I make a glass of water and take a breather. Oh my God oh my God…forceps forceps monster box oh my good God.
I don’t ever want to meet the man who owns this house. Gag!
Natalie comes walking out from the bedroom in a pink bathrobe. She glides past me and opens the refrigerator, pulls on the crisper (where you would keep your fruits & vegetables) and takes out a bottle of red wine.
Instantly, I know what the night holds for me. My heart races. Hurray! I haven’t pleasured a woman in almost 5 years. Ho-hum. I wonder if I’ve still got it?
She holds the bottle up and asks the obvious:
“Thirsty?”
“I…”
She takes my hand and we sit on the carpet, next to a large, sliding door, overlooking the Honolulu city lights. The moon shines in. The floor is very furry, and feels good under my shy feet, which I try to hide by sitting on. Natalie pours our glasses full and she begins to tell me a story, of how her father back home used to own a mannequin factory. Every night, when he came home, he would take Natalie into the basement and force her to videotape him arguing with a different mannequin each night: Some days it would be a female, redheaded mannequin; other days a skinny male. He even brought fake children over. He lit candles thick as thighs all over the place, and even glued birthday candles to his arms and legs and fastened one large fat candle to his forehead. Then he would light each one and dance around while naked and singing “Pieces of Me” by Ashley Simpson.
“I love this song so much right now.”
Once, because it was a special day, on her 20th birthday, he danced around with a lit candle shoved up between his buttocks as his gift to her. He kept asking her to stop crying. “It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt,” he said. According to him, what he was doing was normal because his mother used to do the same thing when he was her age.
Natalie would cry while videotaping these strange events. Her father would always tell her, “It’s because of you and your mother that I’m doing this. My family has made me into a monster, and its name is Whale. I am Whale The Monster. Pity me for I have a soul of glass.”
He would cry, she tells me. After he argued with these dummies about political issues and the weather, he would fall before Natalie’s feet with his face in his hands, and weep. More than on one occasion did he urinate accidentally, looking up at her with a pathetic expression, moaning, “Not my fault! Not my fault!”
Then he would stand and wipe away the sniffles, his face changing back to its familiar, sane self.
“Off, Natalie. Off.”
I sit, staring down into my wine, at my wavy reflection. I can’t bear to look at her. I feel embarrassed being here. She says that it’s okay to feel weird, and then she puts her hand on my knee. Something deep inside me tingles.
I decide to look into her eyes, to show how strong I am and try to impress her.
“Where is he now?”
“Dad? I don’t know. One day he just vanished – POOF! Left my mum and me all alone. I had to take care of her all by my lonesome. Boyfriends got so fed up with me. I’d always have to tell them, ‘Sorry, but I gotta be home by this time or that. My mum needs me.’”
She stands up and faces the moon.
“I must’ve had about…50 boyfriends. And they all couldn’t handle the fact that my mum was my life.”
“Where’s your mum now?”
“In hell, for all I care.”
“What?? I thought you loved your mum.”
“She was my life.”
Natalie put her sweaty hand against the glass, eyes deep in the moon.
“My mother turned into some kind of demonic whale – all adults do at some point in their lives. This is my theory.”
I down the rest of my wine.
“Yessm. Adults can be assholes. I never want to grow up.”
“Let’s stay young together!”
She laughs and jumps down in front of me, holding my hands.
“Let’s never grow up.”
My head begins to spin, and the words come out slurred:
“Yessssm…”
Her face moves up and down. Her mouth opens and her tongue flaps in a crazy way.
“Yalalalalalalala!”
She darts up and dances around the room, her hands cutting the air in little ax-like movements, the fat under her arms jiggling.
“Yalalalalalalala!”
I lay back and curl into the fetal position. She looks down on me and takes my arms, pulls me up, and carries me like a baby, over her shoulder, into her bedroom.
A ringing sound wakes me up. My eyes hurt. It’s still dark out. My tongue is heavy. I look around the room to find mannequins all over the place. An alarm clock nearby SHRIEKS and BOUNCES on a table. I reach out – head pounding – and slap it silent. It falls to the ground and I don’t bother to pick it up. I find a candy bar with a ribbon tied around it on my pillow. My name is on the ribbon. Milkyway. My favorite. I eat it quickly and I am full and happy.
On average, every chocolate bar contains at least three insect legs. But I don’t care. What sane person does? And where’s Natalie? I make myself still, eyes half open, and listen for any signs of life.
There’s a light “pounding,” what sounds like feet moving around. She must be dancing again. I get to my feet and massage my head. The dummies in the room all seem to be staring right at me. Many of them have no legs. Some torsos poke out from under the bed, arms bent at painful angles. They’re all bald, with painted lips.
I open the door and walk down the hallway, into the living room.
Natalie is on the floor in front of the fireplace, wrestling with a male mannequin. She sees me and yells out, “Help, Rubs! He’s trying to kill me!”
I run up to the thing and pick it up by its neck.
The thing FIGHTS BACK, and HITS me in the belly.
I go “Oomph!” and screech out and fall to the ground next to Natalie. The bald mannequin stands, slowly, with the crackling of wood burning louder, and reels its head up as the shadows of flames dance across its face. It opens its white eyes and looks down on me and I go “Waaaaahhh!” and run away, but Natalie grabs at my foot and I fall hard on my right hip. She crawls after me and begs, “No, no, don’t leave ME! BLAHHHHH!”
I take her hands and drag her away, both of us shrieking into the hallway as the thing runs after us in a wrong way – as if it had no knees. I throw her into the bedroom and I slam the doo
r and lean against it. The mannequin HAMMERS on the door, yelling garbled sentences.
“Flabberhwregjdkj865lkja!exesandohhhhs!”
It’s in an insane nut rage.
Natalie flies onto the bed and throws a fit, fists pounding (and bouncing).
“Whywhywhywhywhywhy?”
I scream at her through all the noise.
“What goes on here? Oh, God!”
She sits up and stares at me as if she’s just seen a ghost.
“I knocked him unconscious! It’s not supposed to be this way! Believe me, Rubs!”
The thing on the other side SHRIEKS.
“Weeeeeeeeeeeee!”
Natalie puts her hands to her ears and yells.
“Ooooooooooooooo!”
I shut my eyes.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The mannequin BANGS against the door again, making lusty moaning sounds.
Natalie cries out something long in German that I don’t understand.
“Noch etwas butter, bitte!”
She reaches under the bed and slides out a long, white box. She slaps the cover off and pulls out a large snake. She drapes it over her shoulder and holds it up in triumph and SCREAMS, running toward me. I jump out of the way and the mannequin kicks the door open. I fall into a pile of dummies and watch in horror as Natalie bullwhips the giant snake onto the mannequin, who cries out in terror and falls to the ground like a mad fish out of water.
Natalie jumps down by me and we hold each other, crying, watching as the snake wraps around the mannequin and squeeeeeeeezes the great embrace, biting the left side of the mannequin’s face – from scalp to chin.
There’s a SNAP…
…and the man goes limp with a sigh.
The snake proceeds to swallow his arm.
Natalie stands and picks up the long, white box. She takes out some red roses and sprinkles petals over the snake, which looks up to her and falls asleep. She scoops it up and puts it back into its box.
I walk to the door and look down on the mannequin.
The bite mark on its face is a bright, blue lump. The white paint has been smeared, same with the paint on his arm, which the snake had gobbled – now covered in wetness.
In the hallway, the closet door is open.
There are open cans of white paint, and ten used brushes. I look into the bedroom and see the discarded “mannequins” and then I look back to the dead man at my toes.
A sudden shudder torpedoes down my stomach.
I slowly step back from the bedroom.
Natalie says, with her back to me: “I think there’s something wrong with me. I blame my parents. I blame my father. It’s all his fault. They painted me this way.”
I’m already backing away down the hallway. She turns around with tears in her eyes. For a second, I want to help her, to hold her in my arms and say everything’s all right.
I run through the living room. She walks after me, crying and screaming, kicking holes in the walls.
I jet out the front door and the next thing I know I’m outside, under the blinding moon, walking on the side of the road with my heart pounding in my head.
“Windows”
IT’S TWO IN THE morning. As I walk down the hill, a car pulls up and the woman inside offers to give me a ride. She looks cute (or I guess I should say beautiful, since she’s older), so I accept her offer and get in the car. We drive down the mountain and talk about Natalie. At first, I’m calm, cool, and collected…but as I get deeper into the tale, I lose it and start crying. I could have been seriously injured.
The lady driving me home is Polly.
She had been spying on Natalie the whole night. Polly was her pal, but because Natalie tried to slaughter her, she ended their friendship.
As we drive up to the Jack in The Box drive-though, I ask if she would tell me her story, and she agrees.
They had been pals since age 6. But four days ago, that all changed. Spending a night at Natalie’s house, Polly woke up standing in the kitchen with no recollection of how she got there. Did she sleepwalk? Last she remembered she was sleeping on the living room couch while Natalie snored in the bedroom.
Her lips hurt, and there were little black curly hairs in her mouth. Her head spun. The living room floor was covered in empty wine bottles and batteries and half-eaten bananas and stuffed animal dolls and so many clean socks. She went over to Natalie’s room and peeked inside. And that’s when she first saw Natalie & The Mannequins.
She was painting someone white – someone who was sitting on the edge of the bed and seemed to be in a deep sleep.
The person was bald and nude – a female by the obvious details Polly could see. Hair was all over the bed. Natalie wore a pink bathrobe, humming while she colored the poor soul a thick white.
Whatever it was looked like plain white paint. The can on the ground had a plain white label. Natalie raised the lady’s stiff arms and they stayed in the air, like a zombie’s. Natalie dipped her brush into the heavy liquid.
There was a puddle at Polly’s feet: White, the same substance in the can.
Something distant MOANED.
Polly leaned against the hallway wall, startled. The groan was soft. Polly crouched and looked into the room. Natalie brushed the stranger’s face with the back of her hand.
“Shhhh. Shhhh, child, shhhh.”
The woman had her eyes WIDE OPEN, arms still levitated at shoulder-level. Her lips bubbled.
“Oooooooooooh…”
“Shhh, child, shhhhhhhh. Child.”
“OOOOOOOOO!”
“Child! SHH!”
“O!”
“Shhh!”
Natalie raced her hand between the woman’s thighs and rubbed her to silence. The woman’s eyes shut, arms still up.
Natalie tilted her head as she worked. She pulled her hand out, soaked.
Polly wanted to vomit – it took all her will power to keep the garlic bread at bay. Her knees shook.
She couldn’t move– watching as her dear friend continued to paint this stranger white. Why was she doing this?
Natalie used a remote to turn on the radio, and classical music played, softly. Natalie reached down somewhere and brought up a little pink zipper bag. She opened it and took out a syringe, a pink lighter, a spoon, a little bag of green grass and a little bag of white sand, and an empty soda can.
She put some white on the spoon along with some clear liquid from between the mannequin’s legs and heated it with the pink lighter. She sipped it all up with the syringe and injected the hot mess into the soft underside of the mannequin’s armpits.
Natalie held the empty green can of apple iced tea.
She took out a pen and poked a hole in the center of the can. She put some green over the center hole and put her mouth to the can and lit up the green and inhaled…coughed…and then exhaled into the mannequin’s face, laughing. Then she kissed her on the white lips and smoked some more…coughed some more…and giggled some more.
Polly could see more in the room:
Under the bed were more white things, sleeping in the shadows. She saw white faces – frozen in mid-scream, and they were extreme – almost comical expressions. Against the walls were more of these “mannequins”, except these were broken – lower halves missing – hands clawed, reaching for air. She looked deeper into the room and saw all the painted legs, leaning against a wall.
Polly’s meal was screaming its way up her throat. Natalie put her hands on the mannequin’s knees, and eased her head between her thighs. Natalie let out soft MMMM’s as she worked, her buttocks grooving up into the air.
The mannequin didn’t move an inch – back arched, face-forward, chest out, arms still up – frozen.
The white thing was staring back at Polly, side-eyeing her with wide, mortified eyes.
Polly GASPED and leaned against the wall, slapping one hand over her lips and one hand to her head, yanking on hair. Polly shook her head violently, crying, emitting a whining sound.
<
br /> Natalie cheered, child-like, from between the cool thighs:
“Yaaaaaa!”
Polly dry heaved and speed-tiptoed to the kitchen and threw her face into the sink.
She shoved a middle finger down her throat:
“BRRRRRRAKKKKK!”
No matter how hard you try, you can’t vomit silently. It came out like mud – thudding into the sink, drumming a little tune. Her eyes watered – behind them images of Natalie bringing a mannequin to orgasm like a horizontal fountain. Polly’s belly contracted and the remaining ingredients came rolling forth.
Someone was standing behind her, breathing heavily.
It was Natalie, her eyes sleepy, her upper body swaying from side-to-side.
She looked like giving up.
Something was in her hand….
An electrical handsaw.
Polly took a step back, hands blindly searching the counter for something sharp.
Natalie walked toward her, bringing the saw up and turning it on. Polly caught a shriek in her throat. They tell you that in the remaining few seconds of your life, everything flashes before your watery eyes. But it isn’t so. The truth is, you think of nothing. NOTHING comes to you. It’s all just a blank. You FEEL more than you think. That sense of dread is what fills those watery eyes.
Polly took a step forward and began to plead. But it did no good. Natalie worked the tool, making tiny chopping motions. It was loud – the very vibrations cutting through Polly’s stomach.
Natalie’s eyes were drowsy.
Her footing was clumsy.
Polly had an idea –
NOW OR NEVER!
She gave Natalie a spinning jump kick to the head with a HI-YAA! and headed for the door.
RUSHING STEPS behind her and the loud BUZZZZZZZZZ of the machine.
Polly turned the knob.
Locked.
She turned around just in time to dodge the saw as it ROARED past her face in slow motion and dug into the door.
A neighbor outside yelled, “Shut up!”
People below them hit their ceilings with their brooms.
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