Read Hollow Dolls, The for Free Online

okay-ness of the screen. ‘Clockwork Orange’ was on. She
limped to the kitchen table and snorted one canine. Winnie looked over. Mel brought
back rum and two tumblers and gave her one. Winnie didn’t snort. She smoked and
swallowed. Mel gave her a canine.
    “What’s
wrong with your leg?”
    “Nothing.”
She paused. “I guess I’m in trouble,” said Mel.
    “I
know!” cried Winnie. “Don’t you think I can even tell?” Winnie looked back to
the screen and stuffed her hands between her legs, squeezed down on them. Mel
looked at the curled corners of Winnie’s mouth, a little more on the left than
the right.
    “I
saw him. And my mum.”
    She
needed to let her know, to have an excuse for breaking their trust.
    Nothing
doing.
    “Spied
on them at The Lock. Then Peter...”
    As
soon as Winnie heard the name, she looked in Mel’s eyes.
    They
stared at one another. Mel hardly needed to say another word. “I froze.”
    Winnie
knew. She slipped an arm around Mel’s waist and slid down snuggling against Mel’s
belly.
    “You
won’t leave me, will you?” said Mel, staring at the screen and stroking
Winnie’s hair.
    “Nope,”
Winnie mumbled. She was crying her crocodile tears into Mel’s shirt like a
tribute to mark the bad that had been done to Mel.
    Winnie’s
arm felt warm against Mel’s back. She tucked her hand between Winnie’s bare legs.
Felt the bumps. There were scabs from Winnie scratching her cuts. Some were
open, with faint blood smears.
    While
they watched the movie, Winnie did up Mel’s feet and wrists with Band-Aids. She
made plastic asterisks on Mel’s wrists using three on each side and drew
smileys in the middle. They sat back on the couch and drank rum.
    When
the movie ended, Winnie told Mel, “You smell like a wet dog.”
    They
brought all the stuff in. Rum, candles, ciggies, ashtray, xannies. Winnie
filled the old claw foot. The wall was painted vanilla above the divide. Winnie
had cut perfect squares of the deep blue wallpaper and pasted it into each
square on the wainscoting. Paper Boy brand. The wallpaper company called it
‘hand made’ design because the rabbit print pattern was formed by a hand shadow
puppet that depicted the fingers as well. When you looked at the rabbit design
you saw clasped hands that formed a rabbit and the image flipped back and forth
right before your eyes. Hands. Rabbits. Hands. Rabbits. Winnie did the whole
place with it herself.
    She
touched Mel’s rings with her toe, moved down over her vag lips and nestled on her
bum. Winnie nudged her there and Mel looked up, shrugged and shook her head like
she was cancelling something, preventing it from turning into a thought.
    The
tub filled and Winnie turned and turned on the starred porcelain cross handles.
Then came the squeals at the end, and the faucet finally shut. The water slowly
trickled. The drain made an empty noise in the silence. It was the built-in
kind of drain you couldn’t fix without taking the whole thing apart. Winnie
didn’t want to call a plumber. The last service guy who came to fix the stove
flirted with her and when he came close, her dog ears picked up the polyphonic
tones of wheezing in his lungs.
    She’d
wanted to cut him and was willing to, only she didn’t. Now she couldn’t get the
wheezing out of her mind. Winnie was not calling any more repair guys. Ever.
    Mel
took two xannies. Winnie poked her toe into Mel’s leg. Held up two fingers like
a V. Mel handed her a few of the white Xanax bars, then started scrubbing
herself with too much soap. Winnie made her finger in a downward curve, painted
it across her lips. She closed her eyes.
    “I
see her sometimes,” said Winnie. “She’s cutting Dad’s fingers off and squeezing
them for ketchup.” She picked a scab off of her leg and blood poofed in the
water.
    Winnie
had drawn a detailed black and red ink image of herself eating her mother’s leg
at the dining room table. Her mother’s body was stretched out on the table