Brian keeps Anna’s lifeless body held close to him, trying to keep her warm as his tears trickle over her moonlight-pale face. The rest of us except Charlie, who’s chosen to keep quiet amidst our hurried farewells to our friend, aren’t doing much better than him.
I am hollow.
I promised I would get them out. All of them. I’ve already failed at that.
Julia’s body count ends here.
Outside the dollhouse, I hear the rumble of the closet door opening, followed by the telltale yanking away of the plastic roof.
“Well?” Julia sings merrily as her face fills the plastic frame above, wiping a hand across her lips, clearly operating under the belief that we didn’t hear her unfortunate purge a few minutes before. “Are you all ready to show me how much you appreciate me? Or is it time to go home to the jars again?”
“We’re… r-ready,” Gina whimpers.
“What’s going on?” Julia hisses suspiciously, sensing the mood immediately and trying to get a better view into the house. “Where’s Anna?”
“Julia,” I say as steadily as I can manage, having pulled myself thoroughly out of Gina’s embrace before the looming figure of our captor had a chance to see. “Anna is gone.”
The face above us freezes, blinking in disbelief, lower lip quivering.
“W-What?” Julia asks as her voice wavers with sadness, when suddenly the baby belts out a fresh scream.
At this point, her discovery of the baby’s survival was totally unavoidable without endangering everyone in this house, but all the same, the little girl’s cry fills me with dread. I see Brian go rigid.
“Is… is the baby all right?” Julia gasps, pressing her face against the opening of the dollhouse for a closer look, throwing her hands over her mouth in shock at the sight of the incredibly tiny life form. “Oh my God. She’s so… so…”
I’m glad Julia doesn’t finish her sentence. I think any descriptor she assigned to this baby that she herself just rendered motherless through inhumane torture and neglect would make me too sick to stay standing.
“Give me Anna and the baby, please,” Julia instructs with chilling politeness, recovering her composure in a snap and jamming her hand down into the hallway. She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth impatiently. “Now.”
Fuck.
“Julia,” I speak up again, quickly forcing myself to swallow the frog in my throat. “Are you sure you don’t want them to handle it? There’s no need to bother someone like you with-”
“No, Jack,” Julia snaps in abruptly, not angrily, but with enough force to let me know the discussion is ended. “They won’t be able to take care of her well enough in there. I’d like them both now, please.”
I can sense the gears turning in Brian’s head. No single action in his life has ever been as hard for him as this one; I can see it in his eyes. But he knows just as well as us that refusing Julia’s demand will only result in the house being opened completely, his useless defenses flicked aside, and the baby taken into the custody of a suddenly much more aggressive sixteen-year-old monster. The safest thing now, at the height of all our hopes and fears, is to put his daughter directly into the hand of the young girl who killed the woman he loved.
Biting his lip and trembling with the continuing tears, Brian and I work to lift Anna’s body onto Julia’s fingers, while Kelly cradles Brian and Anna’s daughter carefully behind.
I can see Kelly’s hand linger for a second longer on the baby’s head, clearly just as pained at what we’re all being forced to abide by.
“I need someone to help with the baby and clean her up,” Julia declares as she lifts Anna’s body and the baby up and out with incredible tenderness and care. “So she’ll be safe.”
At least she’s talking some sense, though this doesn’t bode particularly well for our getaway. Brian opens his mouth and raises a hand in a panic to volunteer for the job, but Julia’s well-known distaste for him allows her to snidely ignore his desire, and we can tell the choice has already been made. I see the harrowing blue eyes shift with subdued menace onto her romantic competition instead.
“Not you, Brian. Gina,” Julia mumbles weepily, the full emotion over losing one of her human hamsters finally settling in. Brian manages to keep himself silent, having realized that absolute compliance will be required to keep the baby safe. Julia squeezes her other hand down into the opening of the dollhouse and flattens her palm to the ground. “Get into my hand.”
There’s no hesitation. Gina brushes past me as she turns, holding her head high and taking a deep breath, then whispers rapidly into my ear: “If you get the chance, go. Please.”
My stomach churns. I want to ignore what I’ve heard, but the strength in her voice commands me to listen. I swallow hard, processing it unwillingly, knowing I’d say the same thing to her if we were switched right now.
I watch as Gina steps onto Julia’s fingertips and into the opposite palm that holds Anna’s body, along with the still-attached and screeching baby girl. She does it without a second’s pause for her fear of heights.
Watching so much that I care about in this world rising up once again in the omnipotent hands of our self-appointed goddess makes it tough to keep my eyes up on the sky, but I force myself to. Focus.
In the most backwards way imaginable, though, I’m reassured by something I see in Julia’s eyes. The same adoration and protectiveness she displays when gazing at me, this time directed at the baby, with a slight difference.
Almost motherly.
It’s a mortifying sight as Julia holds her hand closer and closer to her face to examine an infant less than an inch long, a loving smile slimily spread over her pink lips, yet somehow I know instinctively that she won’t harm the little girl, at least not without being pushed to the absolute edge first.
Unfortunately enough, that time might not be far away, if I miraculously manage to pull off my plan.
Julia disappears from view with Gina and the baby, her steps heavy but steady as she returns to the bathroom. Brian and I remain standing somehow, though Kelly sinks to her knees and buries her face in her hands, sobbing.
“I finally figured it out,” Charlie states with satisfaction, placing his hands on his hips as he steps forward again, breaking the silence with the unwelcome coldness of his words.
“Figured what out?” I ask icily, my vision still trained on the opening in the dollhouse roof.
“What the smell on her was. Gina, I mean,” he says with a self-assured nod of his head. “It was bugging the hell out of me.”
“What are you even…”
“Pussy juice,” he declares confidently. “All the shit dried into her head and shoulders, too. That’s what it was. Pussy juice.”
I clench my fists tightly enough that my knuckles pop a few seconds apart from one another, my skin burning hot and white like an iron.
“I thought we told you to stay quiet until we get out of here,” Brian says, hardly present, as his attention just as much as mine is fixed to the opening in the roof, waiting breathlessly for Julia to return.
“You know what the problem with all of you is?” Charlie opines slowly. “You’re such a bunch of goddamned dejected sacks. No wonder you can’t keep yourselves together. If I was all of you, living like this and not letting myself just let go sometimes, I’d ask Julia to squeeze my fucking brains out the top of me.”
“Shut the hell up,” Kelly scowls through her tears.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Charlie simpers condescendingly. “Did I touch a nerve? Hit a little too close to home? Maybe you’re just not looking hard enough at yourselves, then, to see it.”
“You’re running out of chances,” Brian threatens.
“But you wanna know something?” Charlie states, stepping away from Brian and tapping me on the shoulder this time. “Jackie-Boy here is the worst of all. He gets to see some hot girl-in-girl action, and what does he do? He fucking cries like a little bitch about it. Can’t even appreciate the goddamn art of pretty little Gina going for a swim up Julia’s gorgeous cunt.”
My body is screaming for me to turn around and deliver wild haymakers to Charlie’s face until his lips cease to move, but I don’t, and it’s only after a moment of painfully confusing turmoil that I understand why.
“Don’t do it, Brian. Kelly,” I warn slowly, shutting my eyes and trying to calm myself. “He wants us to do it.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I do,” Charlie confirms, tapping Brian on the shoulder. “Because then I get to show off what I can really do to your face when you make me mad enough. Like right now.”
“Because then this whole thing goes down if we attack him anymore,” I correct. “He’s just trying to screw us over again.”
“Of course, it’s not like it would be very hard getting a hit on any of you. You can probably barely see through all your fucking pansy tears,” Charlie adds, holding his arms out, leaving himself wide open for the punch we all so badly want to deliver. “So maybe I’m aiming too low right now.”
“I think you are,” Brian responds, his fists clenched as well.
“Brian,” Kelly cries, sniffling. “Please. Don’t listen.”
“C’mon, buddy,” Charlie says, looking Brian square in the eye as he realizes who the most vulnerable of us is right now. “I mean, for fuck’s sake. Your girlfriend’s probably getting snipped off your new brat and then flushed right down the toilet alongside Julia’s post-bender piss. Let’s see some kind of reaction about that. Let’s see if you really care.”
Kelly and I are already wrapping our arms around Brian’s elbows and bracing ourselves against the ground in anticipation as he lunges forward at Charlie.
“Brian, STOP!” Kelly pleads as we immediately begin losing ground to our rampaging and emotionally broken friend, his resolve easily able to let him overpower two people. “He’s just saying that to…”
Brian’s already well beyond the point of listening as he breaks free of us and charges clumsily forward. Charlie holds himself wide open, prepared for an attack that could render our whole “worshipful little runts” act a waste and a lie in the eyes of Julia.
I’m not letting Charlie win, not when we’re this close to the end.
Taking advantage of Brian’s slowed pace in crossing the bloodied handkerchief, I tackle him around the side and knock the both of us to the ground, holding an elbow over his stomach to discourage him from getting up.
Brian sputters, reddened eyes glaring at me with pure lust for revenge, and for a moment I think he might hit me.
Before he can consider it further, Kelly follows us to the ground, pressing her knees on Brian’s outstretched arms and holding them down.
“Just hold still, Brian!” Kelly shouts, placing a hand on his warm forehead. “Breathe. It’s okay now. Stop listening to him. Just look at us. Breathe.”
Closing his eyes, Brian allows more tears to fall down his face, and his muscles cease constricting against the weight of Kelly and me in an attempt to rise. We did it.
“Oh, come the fuck ON!” Charlie growls, taking a few steps closer to us. His tone is still emphatic and theatrical, but there’s something else coming through now as he sees us refusing to lower ourselves to his level: desperation.
“You come on,” Kelly hisses at him. “Take your games and back off if you still want to get out of here at all.”
“Just look at you all. You all make me fucking sick,” Charlie continues, crossing his arms and meandering around the hallway in an attempt to fill our field of view, since we refuse to turn and look at him. He circles around the cluster of us on the floor until he’s the closest one to the opening in the ceiling above, though his attention is still squarely on us. “You can’t even look at me when I talk to you.”
“Then stop doing it and knock your head against that wall until things start making sense again,” I suggest.
He’s lined up right where we need him now.
“I meant what I said,” he says, refocusing on me. “You’re the worst of all. God damn it, kid your age? How many nights before you ended up here did you spend touching yourself to the thought of a fucking dime like Julia even taking a second look at you?”
I bite my lip. Despite Charlie’s elaborate and last-ditch effort to enrage us, he’s right to an extent. At fifteen, without any romantic prospects or first kisses, I’d sometimes lie awake at night fantasizing about someone with half Julia’s beauty giving me a chance.
I know now perfectly well that I would give those odds up forever just to have a single peaceful night of solid rest.
“Are you even listening to me?” Charlie bellows, his volume rising simultaneously with his level of desperation as he realizes his chances to ruin the plan are rapidly disappearing. I can tell he wants us to look him in the eye, but I won’t give him the satisfaction. Not yet. “You had it made in the fucking shade: food, water, place to sleep, a hot-ass piece of jailbait throwing herself at you every second of every day, and you can’t even pull your head out of your ass long enough to fully appreciate it. I mean, the fucking tits, and the…”
“I’m not sure she’d appreciate you talking about her that,” I declare suddenly, intensely meeting his gaze without allowing myself to break it. Now that he thinks he’s got my attention, he won’t be moving anytime soon. “You’d make her angry.”
“You’re fucking with me, right?” he chuckles heartily, clutching his sides. “You can’t return the favor she’s giving to you, and you won’t even listen to someone who calls her like she deserves to be called.”
“Well, what would you call her, then?” I ask innocently, seeing that the fury in his urgent eyes has now robbed him of all situational awareness.
“She’s a severely fuckable sixteen-year-old. We had the chance to do whatever we wanted with her in here! Anything,” Charlie laughs in disbelief at my perceived ignorance, practically drooling in his broken-down state with a libido frustrated to the point of insanity. “What would I call her? You’re out of your fucking head. She’s the best piece of skin you or I were ever going to have the shot at, and the best part is she didn’t even realize it yet. Jesus Christ. She’s such a gaping whore for you for some goddamned reason and you’re wasting the best parts of her away! All we had to do was work it out, say the right shit that she wanted to hear, use her fucked up little brain for us, and she’d have let us go to town on that ass. We could just get some fucking relief!”
“You don’t sound quite ready to worship our goddess,” I comment obviously.
“Ready to WORSHIP our g-” he pants, unable to finish the sentence, his fists shaking wildly. I’m starting to think he’ll attack me now instead of the other way around. “How tightly has she wrapped your spine around her finger? She’s a goddamned psychotic bitch with a raging pussy. She’s all alone out there, slobbering for cock! We could’ve had her worshipping us if you hadn’t FUCKED us all OVER! So there. That’s your fucking answer. Now what?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I shrug, finally breaking eye contact to look up at the opening of the house behind Charlie’s back and up to Julia, who’s been looming silently overhead for the past minute and a half. “What now, Goddess?”