Hollow Dolls, The Read Online Free PDF

fully transformed into the man on the beach. How had she
forgotten? On the back it said “Jack, xo” in ballpoint pen. He’d left a clue. Maybe
a way back to the island.
    Leaning onto a small juice glass she crushed two of the green ones,
rolled them on the round of the glass like a baker rolling dough, then chop-chop-chopped
with her razor and made two fat  lines. ‘Canines’, she called the green
tablets, because they had a k on one side and a 9 on the other. Those were the
ones Georgy prescribed whenever she hurt herself sparring. She didn’t take that
many, hence the stash. Pain was a different thing for her than for most people.
She related to it like it was a person. It was a place where Nigreda and her
lived now like room-mates.
     With worse injuries, Georgy would give her the blue ones instead.
Like when she dislocated her shoulder. They were both Oxycodone, the blue ones
were stronger. Oxy was like the distant trailer trash lab rat cousin of opium. Heroin
was something she’d never do. Never shoot with a needle. The guitar player in
Lexa’s band shot heroin. Mel had watched her turn into a zombie in six months.
    The powder Mel just snorted got rid of Peter, his face, his touch.
She laid back on the couch and lit a ciggie. So perfect. She’d forgotten how
good these were. The character’s lines on cable TV didn’t matter. The images
were nice enough. The cigarettes tasted good.
    After she woke, Mel felt creepy inside again. She couldn’t face
anything. As soon as thoughts of Peter began to form she shook her head. This
time she pulled a blue one from the other bag. ABG in capital letters on these
ones. She said, “Abigail.” Called them Abbys for short. She finished chopping two
fat lines of blue powder and snorted them up. Mel tipped her head back and
inhaled through her nose hard. On the couch her eyelids swam in blood. Her and Nigreda.
The real perfect thing, oxycodone flowed through her blood painting bluebells
and cockle shells, it sank into her limbs, into every corner. These were the
ones—Abbys.
    ‘Erykah Badu - Southern Girl’, played on the stereo.
    Muh muh muh muh— muh—muh muh.
    Sing a lang sang, sing a lang song...
    Mel had it on repeat. She wobble danced, then flopped back on the
couch.
    Love was just there, out in front of her to the left. She could
reach out and touch the bulrushes that leaned over with the weight of big burnt
orange caterpillars as they inched their way toward her. They promised to be
perfect butterflies, that their wings would take the pain away forever. Melanie
breathed in the scent of the yellow grasses bending in the breeze under the
golden sun and it tickled as it blew her pony tail across her bare back.
     
    The cigarette had burned through her shirt to her chest, went out,
and rolled onto the floor. Emptiness rang. The chest burn hurt, the way
cigarette burns do. They’re a low heat that leave lingering damage, a resonant
pain with dark memories. She went to the bathroom to pee, wash her face, and just
see.
    Back to the margarine container. Just one canine.Plus a glass
of bourbon. That was better. She looked at his picture again and wanted to know
how he’d done it. He’d put the photo right there where he knew she’d be going
into the oxys. Mel ran a bath, put everything she needed on the chair by the
tub and got in.
    Her hands were underwater in secret and a Marlboro dangled from
her mouth. Smoke trailed up into her eye and when she turned her head to make
the smoke stream go away she was her mother. She tilted her head back to take a
drag then spit the butt into the water. Nicotine trailed down into the water
like cigarette blood.
    A shiny wiggle of light danced on the blade as the candle’s flame played
with her breath. It felt like a threesome; her breath to the flame to the
blade. Intimate.
    She knew where everything was under the skin, inside her wrist. She
made a small incision beside the tendon careful to miss the blue vein. Blood
trickled,