Hollow Dolls, The Read Online Free PDF Page B

mixed with the watery film and ran down her arm as she rested it on
her knee. Then the other side. She watched the pinks and reds mix with the
water on her arms. A relief flooded her. Comfort. Like a hand inside her saying
with its touch, “Everything is going to be okay.”
    She licked the blood from her forearm and realized she was hungry.
Two little cuts like eyes on her wrists. She cut another perfect thin line on
her calf at the top. And then another. She counted; thirty-eight still showing in
various pinks and reds. The rest were plain white and so close together they
weren’t lines any more, just a patch of scar with frayed edges. White comb.
    Winnie.
     They were supposed to be doing it together. Now this was wrong.
    She set the blade on the chair and swallowed an Abby, then eyed
the other four. If she took them she’d probably drown. It would be easier. Winnie
would be left behind—she could never do that.She let her arms drop into
the warm water.
    Girls always fall for doctors...
    ‘Got a dirty way, cause I got a dirty mouth, dirty South...’ It
was the last bit of lyric that Melanie heard. She was the little Southern Girl
with hands folded under the water, cute and dirty.
     
    Hours later she came to, her head back over the rail of the tub. Stiff,
hurting. Her eyeballs throbbed, lips prickled. Everything prickled. The water was
pale cherry cold. The candle had burned down. The hall light gleamed off of the
bottle on the wooden chair. She tipped it back. Her and booze and the mouth of
a Jack Daniels bottle. It was all pretty intimate. She pressed the bottle mouth
to her lips and slowly parted them. Through the slit. Bubbles climbed up the neck
and gurgled in the bottle as she let the liquid into her mouth. Funny sound. She
almost laughed thinking of slits, caught herself then choked booze out her nose
and mouth. It rolled off her chin, and she spritzed Jack Daniels like rain
drizzle on top of the water. She tipped the bottle back down, gracelessly smashing
it on the side of the tub.
     “Fuck-fuck-fuck!”
    She stepped out at the other end and nearly fell.
    Four Abbys were stranded over on the chair so she tip-toed over
the glass saying, “Ouch.” She groaned in pain automatically while she didn’t
feel a thing. Got them.
    She realized after she didn’t need to walk on glass; the margarine
container was full of them. The plastic clock that never got hung was flat on
the kitchen table. Big hand little hand, it said five-twenty.  Mel sat and
drank a water, crushed and snorted one Abby only this time, then smoked a pinner
joint for breakfast. It tasted so good she wanted to put syrup on it.
    Things would be okay. Things were okay. Except the tile
floor had a trail of blood prints where she’d just walked. She sat making
little kitten balls of Kleenex and taped them on her cuts.
    Then she called Miss Winnie. She closed hers and saw Winnie’s translucent
copper penny eyes perfectly.
    “We were supposed to do it together.”
    Wrong was only for Winnie. Nobody else could make Mel even think
that word.  She’d done wrong.
    “But I stopped!” she said quickly.
    It was too late; the phone had disconnected on Winnie’s end.
     
    Mel hurried, eating a granola bar, following the shiny
sidewalk to Winnie’s. The sky was turning light by the time she got to her
door, the only red thing on the entire block.
    ‘13’
it said, in white metal letters. Gaisford Street in Kentish Town. She leaned to
one side, taking the pressure off her worst foot. Mel’s leg shook, so she
touched it to the step to make it stop. The door swung open. Winnie’s white
housecoat walked away.
    Following
in without a word, Mel dropped beside Winnie’s feet at the end of the couch.
    “Grab
a drink—I’m too pooped.”
    Winnie’s
brown locks were scraggly, nested and didn’t make it past her jawline like
usual. She had racoon eyes and the skin around her lips was red from wiping her
mouth too much.
    Mel
drifted into the imaginary