I glanced down at my watch and saw the hands ticking around. Dolly did too. She shrugged and tapped her head with the barrel of her gun. “He’s crazy! It works just fine.”
Ignoring his smart mouth, I asked again, “What’s wrong?”
Dolly kicked the tip of her boot along the wooden floor. She sighed. “I thought I would know what to do when I got here.” She lifted her eyes to meet mine. “But now I’m here I’m spoiled for choice. I have all of these ways to kill him, and I just can’t pick one!” She began pacing. “Do I stab him? Shoot him? Both?” Her hands, holding her weapons, lifted in frustration. “Do I do it quickly or slowly?” She stopped, and her face looked beautifully sad. “I practiced saying ‘Time for tea’ so much that I never gave much thought to this bit.” Her bottom lip stuck out. “I should have. I don’t want to screw up.”
“You could never,” I said. The sound of the chair moving on the floor made Dolly turn around. He’d only moved a little. But just as I was about to counsel her again, her head whipped up and she gasped in excitement. She ran across the room and stopped in front of an old record player.
“How pretty!” she declared in awe. Putting her gun on the table, she moved the needle and the player crackled to life. Dolly squealed as the opening bars of the record played. “‘My Boy Lollipop’!” she shouted and began to sing along. Taking hold of her doll’s head, which she had tied to her belt by its hair, she danced around the room, her blade in her other hand.
I smirked as she danced with her doll, Alice, singing each and every word. When the song ended, Dolly ran back to the record player and played it again. “You’re fucking insane!” the Caterpillar said as she danced past him.
Dolly stopped dead and whirled to face him. I held my breath, waiting for her reaction, braced to watch the beauty of her wrath unleash. Instead she got right in his face and said, “Didn’t you know? All the best people are!”
He shook his head, but his words had been enough for Dolly to stop dancing and focus on the task at hand. She studied his tied-up form like he was a puzzle she was trying to solve. I could hear her murmuring to herself: “I could push the blade through his heart. Or I could stab his legs one at a time, then his arms and his chest. Or I could stab his skull . . . No, I might hit too much bone . . .”
I walked to the record player, placing the needle just so, to repeat the song again and again. As I turned, I spotted one of the Caterpillar’s hands breaking free from the restraints. Before I could act, he brought his hand up in a quick movement and slapped it across Dolly’s face. In mere seconds I had drawn my cane, ready to stab him in the back of his neck, when Dolly whipped around, her lipstick all over her cheek from the slap. I paused, seeing something new in her expression. Pure rage.
Darkness.
Cruelty.
Murderous intent.
Dolly touched her cheek. She met my eyes as I grabbed the Caterpillar’s arm and re-tied him. Her eyes looked to the side . . . where she found herself staring back. Dolly walked to the mirror hanging on the wall and inspected her reflection.
She turned to me and spat, “He smeared my lipstick!”
Dolly’s emotions seemed to boil, anger causing her body to shake and her skin to blaze red. Gripping the blade tighter, she charged at the Caterpillar and stabbed his shoulder. She yelled as she did so, piercing him over and over again in new spots—his shoulders, his thighs . . . his stomach. She drew back, out of breath, eyes ablaze with pleasure. It was then that I realized more lurked inside my Dolly than innocence and light. Darkness dwelled in her too. A malevolent presence lurking in the shadows, waiting for its chance to feed. My Dolly, sinister and cruel. Thirsting for the kill. I took a deep breath. She was my living, breathing doll. She wore the face of the purest angel, masking such evil living within.
My soul’s perfectly fucked-up counterpart.
The Caterpillar began to choke on his blood. Dolly’s eyes never wavered from his as she watched him try to fight his inevitable death. He spluttered, he coughed, then he hissed, “You’re sick”—cough, splutter, spit—“You’re just a couple of sick fucks.”
Dolly stilled, then looked at me. “Sick fucks . . . We’re just a couple of sick fucks!” Then she was moving, circling the Caterpillar, dancing in rings around him as he shuffled off this mortal coil. “Sick fucks, sick fucks, we’re the sick fucks!” I walked to stand behind him, and Dolly circled me too. As I smiled, watching the most beautiful creature ever to grace this earth smile and dance and laugh so free, I bent and whispered in the abusive cunt’s ear, “You said, years ago, you didn’t care what you had to pay to have us both . . .” I pushed my own blade into his spine, severing his ability to walk. Not that he’d survive to walk again anyway. “You’ve now had us both . . .” I sucked in a breath through my teeth as I watched Dolly singing along to the song, twirling her doll’s head in her blood-soaked hands, discoloring the spindly yellow strands of what was left of its hair. “I hope it was everything you craved.”