Chapter 7
He went to bed, and barely spoke to Kelly. He couldn’t seem to find words, the anger of rumbling deep within his skin. He was a failure.
That was the only thing he could think about. He was a disappointment, and he was a failure, and he broke his child’s toy. And that same betrayal that he felt when his dad destroyed his Nintendo sixty-four. He betrayed his own children. The abuse continued.
And he fell asleep with that restless word lingering on his mind, with that half broken splinter, digging through his skin.
It was not shocking that he had a nightmare. But, he had never had a nightmare quite like this before.
He was walking down town, and the girl with the purple hair with big pigtails and giant breasts turned and stared at him. “It is cursed. My business is going to fail, and I’m going to kill myself.” She said, with a sad smile. “My name’s Candy, I make cupcakes with candy. I hope you come and buy some, before it’s all over.”
And in the dream, Mark stared at her, her colored contacts sliding around her eyeball, so the iris did not look centered anymore. He looked away. And he saw the other young gir, the one from Mr. Valdimir’s house. She was pointing at him and laughing. “You idiot. You didn’t even think to find out if your dollhouse is haunted.”
“Cursed. Not haunted.” Said Mr. Vladimir, and they were suddenly at a board room table. It was circular, and Mark sat on one side feeling awkward in his leather jacket, and Mr. Vladimir sat in a tuxedo on the other side. His hands were full in front of him, as if he was a lawyer at a deposition. “Black magic. Two families killed, and my father, he was killed too.” And with that Vladimir lifted his hands into the air and slowly did an incantation. And in front of them they both saw the little wooden dollhouse figures start walking around. A long thin needle slowly floated through the air and stabbed one of the wooden figures in the heart. And at that same moment they both turned and looked.
Candy, the purple haired girl with the wandering irises, was in the middle of cutting her own head off with a guillotine. Except, she had dropped the blade and it gotten stuck in her spinal cord. And she couldn’t seem to quite get it all the way through her head., “I just need the right tool.” She said. And then her hand turn into a long rubbery snake and started slithering through the building she was in. It took finally found a toolbox. And she grabbed a large fat sledgehammer. Her long sneaky arms slithered back to her head, still stuck in the guillotine. And with slow long blows she hit the guillotine blade deeper and deeper into her neck until it finally popped through. Her eyes spun in, but her face looked wildly relieved. As if that splinter had finally been removed.
Mark, completely nauseated by the sight of her head slowly getting sliced off by a blade. He turned back and stared at Mr. Vladimir. “Why would she do that?”
Mr. Vladimir leaned forwards and slammed his hand down in the center of the table. The table cracked open and popped apart and inside between the two tables ends was chairs and a splintered up table leaf. “Nobody can stop the dollhouse.”
And Mark awoke in a sweat, with a scream. And he knew he would have to go back and fix that damn table leaf, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but then he realized he wasn’t in his bed. He stayed perfectly still, his body shivering from sweat. And his face damp from tears that he apparently had been crying in his sleep. But he couldn’t face it, where was he? Slowly he turned his head to the left and then he turned his head to the right. But his eyes would not make sense of what he was saying, but she still dreaming? He reached up and slapped his face really hard, and the sting was incredible.
Slowly he sat down. Waiting for his eyes to finish describing the scene to him. But it just seemed unbelievable. Why was there a tree to the left?
And there was a second tree to the right.
And as he sat there, in the dark, his eyes slowly told him the truth. Somehow, he had climbed on the roof. And his toes were hanging right over the gutter. If he took one more step he would’ve fallen off the roof. That scared the shit out of him.
