A week goes by, and Charlie actually manages to fit pretty comfortably into our twisted little family. As it turns out, Julia was in need of another cast member and decided that a random guy who looks a few grocery carts short of a hobo was the ideal addition. She was right, at least, that no one would really miss him, as Charlie has no living family and keeps mostly to himself aside from his job at the dry cleaner’s. I don’t know how Julia is able to pick them so easily. With the kind of perfect accuracy she has choosing new additions to her shrunken slaves collection, you’d think she had a special detector for finding quiet, friendless loners. Not wanting to cause a ruckus (and not wanting to end up flattened under the spurned heel of Julia’s boot), Charlie set about catching up with the choreography and music for the show, which we filled him in on at night under cover of darkness, and in no time he was ready for the big event.
“Show night” was a big affair for Julia, who put on one of her nice dresses she normally reserved for our dates in order to look more prepared for the evening, which was as close to a glamorous night of theatrical magic she was ever going to get, considering how terrible her script was. Once all of us had changed into our costumes, we were brought out of the dollhouse and taken by bus over to the desk, which had been painstakingly prepared by our captor to look spotless. She even had her video camera and tripod set up to immortalize our performances forever, as well as a few well-placed desk lamps to give us proper lighting in the otherwise dark room. I’m not entirely sure of why she’s filming it in the first place, since she obviously can’t ever show it to anyone without getting a ticket to the looney bin.
“Lights… camera… ACTION!” grins Julia from behind her camera, turning it on as all of us traipse out from behind the makeshift stage wings and break into clumsy song. As we dance in barely adequate unison about before our owner like trained mice in our colorful outfits and tiny doll props, I can make out Julia grinning eagerly at me from behind the camera, even winking at me as I go into my solo.
It’s as if our entire lives have been building toward this. We all put on the show of our lives. As Gina and I, as the young leads, embrace and even kiss, I can almost feel Julia’s envious gaze melting through us, and it’s downright unsettling. Nevertheless, we push through and get on with questionable dignity remaining. The musical is a grueling thing, taking over two hours to get all the way through, not including intermission, and by the time it’s over, with all of us sweating and catching our breaths under the bright lights, it’s pretty late at night. Julia snaps the recorder off and stands up, turning the bedroom lights back on and golf clapping for us.
“Bravo, class, BRAVO! Oh… I’m… I can’t even put it into WORDS, it was just so… wonderful!” she gushes happily. “You all should go to Broadway, you’d be sensations! Well… okay, maybe there’d be a little problem with the audience seeing you, or getting stamped under a tap shoe, but…” she began, hearing none of us laughing. She coughs uncomfortably, smiling at us. “Oh, don’t be so serious, all of you. That was beautiful. I can’t wait to watch it and enjoy it all over again. Now… I’m sure all of you are tired, and so I am, honestly, so… let’s clean up the set and load up into the bus!”
Gratefully, we all grab up props meant for the dollhouse and head quickly for the bus, loading up and riding back to the house. One by one, Julia places the other five into the house, saving Charlie and I for last.
When she whispers happily into Charlie’s ear, he reaches upward toward her ear and whispers something back, to which she nods, although I can’t hear it. Finally, she puts him back in, but instead of grabbing me from the table and doing the same, she closes up the dollhouse and closes the closet door behind her.
She grins at me and leaves me there, starting back across the room to the storage closet where she keeps her other doll buildings. I watch her disappear inside and hear her rummaging roughly around through it all before emerging again with a small silver briefcase. She sets it down on the classroom desk across the room, snaps it open, and removes the thing that ruined my life those two long years ago.
The portable matter reduction device, in all of its horrendous glory. I instinctively begin trembling as Julia removes it and presses the “on” switch,” causing a bright blue light to trickle through a few vents along the handle of the device. She then picks it up and carries it toward me, aiming in my direction. My stomach nearly flips cleanly over.
What the hell is going on? What have I done to warrant this? Julia, in fits of rage, often threatens to shrink us even smaller, where our vulnerability only increases tenfold. The possibilities that open up when you’re one tenth of an inch tall (or, God forbid, smaller than that) are startling. Being inhaled up a nostril and suffocating in an entanglement of Julia’s snot. Being inserted into a crevice between two toes and drowning in soggy toejam. Being placed squarely on a molar and being ground perfectly to fit the space in her tooth. All of them beyond comprehension and now, not-so-far removed from reality. I brace myself as Julia calmly pulls the trigger on the device without another word, the reticle trained on me.