Charlie’s mouth hangs open, his knees locked in place.

                Julia’s face, tightened and white-hot with the old familiar rage I used to fear but now am grateful to see, disappears from view.  I haven’t seen a look in her eyes like that since Beth arrived, and before that, when she drank Jimmy out of a glass.  Her fingers, trembling, wrap around the opening of the house.

                “Grab a wall,” I hiss to Kelly and Brian, who immediately recognize what’s coming and roll to the side just in time to latch around a plastic doorframe.

                The force that propels the dollhouse outside the closet and onto the carpet is monumental.  I’m surprised it doesn’t do a complete 360 flip.  After rolling easily onto its side, it begins to lift upward again before slamming back down right-side up, tossing our personal gravity into oblivion for a few breathless instants.

                The three of us manage to get a good enough grip on the wall to avoid being thrown down the hallway, but Charlie, in his paralyzed stupor, is not so lucky, and is tossed to the end of the plastic aisle, slamming onto his head and landing roughly on his ankle.  He screeches in pain, clutching his skull, too terrified to look up.

                Julia wrenches the main house open at the hinged halfway divider, leaving us exposed with absolutely nowhere to run or hide.

                The stand-off that follows is enough to chill everyone to the spine twice over and leave the average human in tears, if not for the hardened mental conditioning we’ve been forced into over the years.  Julia hunches before the dollhouse, hands flat on the ground, oceanic blue eyes narrowed intently on us all and capable of catching on fire.

                She holds the posture of a young girl opening up her dollhouse to innocently play with her toys, but with so much palpable malice emanating from her face that not even an outsider could be remotely fooled by the façade.

                “Jack,” Julia intones icily at last, lips pursed and eyes unblinkingly locked to Charlie.  “I thought you said you could convince them.”

                “I…” I begin.

                “He did, goddess,” Kelly declares bravely from next to me.  Lowering herself to her knees on the plastic floor, she grabs Brian by the wrist and pulls him down into a kneeling position as well, which he swiftly obeys as the pair of them put their hands together as if in prayer.  I follow their example, just for good measure.  “We are ready to serve you, now and forever, in whatever ways you please.”

                “Yes, goddess,” Brian repeats respectfully with head bowed.

                “Wow,” Julia says with a nod, clearly pleasantly surprised.  “You are something, Jack.”

                “Bunch of lying SHITHEADS!” Charlie roars, fighting to stand up.  “Not a goddamn thing they’re saying or doing right now is the truth.”

                “Is that so?” Julia answers coldly to him, cocking her head to the side so that a few of her dark locks cascade messily over her eyes.  “I can’t believe you’ve got the nerve to say that to me after everything that just came out of your little freak mouth.”

                “M-M-Maybe I said some things in a rougher way than I meant them, b-but I’ve never lied to you, Julia!” Charlie gasps defensively at the direct address, dropping to his knees as well, though for entirely different reasons.  “Never!”

                “I thought you understood how things are, Charlie,” Julia simpers with legitimate disappointment.  “But now I see why you did everything you did.”

                “I…”

                “Stop talking now.  You’ve said enough.”

                “PLEASE!  J-J-Just l-listen … they were making a plan to escape, right now!  T-This is all part of it.  Don’t you s-s-see that?” Charlie pleads as logically as he can with a girl so deep in a god complex that she undoubtedly abandoned logic the moment she emerged from her mother’s womb.

                “Why the hell should I believe you?” Julia demands, leaning in closer and closer to Charlie’s corner of the exposed plastic hallway.

                “Because I was right the first time!  I’ve never done anything that wasn’t meant for you.”

                “Right after everything I heard you say?  Jack asked you everything so nicely, and what did you do?  Said I wasn’t a goddess.  Said you… you thought… you could use me, for… for your sick little dick!” Julia manages with difficulty, obviously still queasy from her drunken antics but even more violently ill and almost choking at the mere thought of a man using her for his own purposes: her greatest personal fear, realized.  I knew it could be done if Charlie just kept talking, though I hadn’t anticipated him going quite as in-depth as he did.

                Julia’s hand rises from the carpet, her soft fingers curled into menacing claws, and casts a shadow over her cowering and loudmouthed prey as she prepares to snatch him up.  Even from here I can see the sheen in her palm of clammy sweat.

                It’s clear her venomous words aren’t just an act to intimidate us into submission like normal.  This isn’t simply one of her sick head games.

                She’s wired.

                “PLEASE!” Charlie squeaks uselessly as our sixteen-year-old warden’s fingers clench like peachy cobras around his body, instantly squeezing away most of his air.

                “Didn’t I tell you to stop talking to me, you little insect?” Julia spits, lifting him up from the dollhouse and closer to her face, her wrist trembling with fury.  Her pupils have dilated dangerously.

                Her tongue slides across her lower lip, leaving a glistening sheen of saliva.

                “NO!  WAIT!  T-T-The hole!” Charlie screams as his head pokes out the top of Julia’s fist, squirming with pants-wetting terror at the sight of her tongue, finally deciding it’s time to throw everything on the table.

                “What hole?” Julia demands immediately as her brow furrows, her fingers squeezing thoughtfully around Charlie’s sides.

                “The fucking hole in the bathroom wall behind the blow dryer!  They were gonna act all puppy-nice to you right now, get you to take them in there to clean up, and go through it when you weren’t looking!  It’s all your BOYFRIEND’S idea.”

                Julia pauses for a moment, her fist halting in midair as she chews it over.  I see her eyes dart over to me, clearly too hesitant to believe without proof that I’ve stabbed her in the back, before returning to Charlie, who she then places with oddly delicate care back onto the house floor, though her hand is still shaking.

                “I’ll be right back,” she says solemnly, rising to her feet and marching away for the bathroom, her mighty steps causing the house to quake in rhythm.

                I glance furtively at the low-arched embroidered footstool that sits no more than ten seconds run from here.  With the house open and Julia on the rampage, this is going to be our opening.  Close, but it’s too risky to go now.  We’ll have to drag this out as far as we can to make it work.

                “Well, I hope you’re all fucking pleased with yourselves,” Charlie snickers under his breath, looking over at Brian and Kelly, who have hung their heads in waiting, refusing to give him the time of day any longer.  “I hope you’re all real fucking pleased.  You could’ve avoided this all if you just managed to not piss me off when all I wanted was to help you.  And now look.  I’ve come out on top.”

                “No,” I say.

                “No?” he chuckles, turning back to me.  “Why’s that?  I just plugged up your last door out of here because you all were ready to throw me to the dogs.  And why in the holy hell are you fucking smirking at me?”

                “Because,” I answer simply.  “There is no hole in the bathroom.”

                If Julia was a thunderstorm before, she’s a hurricane now as she reenters the bedroom with so much force I think she might kick the entire dollhouse across the room if she can avoid falling over.  The rush of wind as she comes to a stop nearly knocks us all over.  She slams down to her haunches again instead, holding herself up on her fists like a gorilla as she leans her face in close enough for Charlie to feel the heat of every breath.

                “That was the last time you will ever lie to me, you sick little worm,” Julia gags out with a sneer, pursing her lips and inhaling hard before spitting a thick wad of saliva onto Charlie like a cannonball.

                The force of the gooey phlegm cocktail is enough to bowl over our former compatriot against a plastic wall, the vodka-and-vomit-scented mass stickily engulfing his face and chest as he slumps down, fighting needlessly to remove Julia’s spit from his eyes so he can see again.

                Before he can even manage to clear away enough goop to see, Julia’s fingers are pinched around Charlie’s left ankle and yanking him out of the house fast enough to give him whiplash.

                For a moment, I think she’s going to lift him up by his leg to her face for a personal talking to, but she’s apparently well past those kinds of manners, because with a flick of her wrist she instead sends Charlie sailing in the other direction across the room.