I ran my hand through my hair, then, rolling to my side, threaded my arm under hers on top of the covers. I breathed deeply at the discomfort the action brought, but also at the familiarity it delivered too.
No one but Dolly could ever do this for me.
Dolly sighed. “Do you remember the film we would watch as children, Rabbit?” I stilled. “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?”
I searched my memory to pinpoint the one she was talking about. She insisted I watch a movie with her every night. “Films” she called them, using one of the British words that her “mummy” had instilled in her vocabulary.
“The one with the song ‘Truly Scrumptious.’ The doll that sang. I never really understood what the song was about. But when I would hear it, I would always think it was about a doll who wanted to be free, always spinning and spinning but never being able to move from her music box. Stuck. I always felt sad as nobody ever helped her. So she stayed trapped there forever.” I closed my eyes at the sad tone of her voice. Dolly was always happy. Never sad. I fucking hated the sound of her being sad. I suddenly felt something on my hand that made me go stock still. It was her finger. Her fingertip, softly circling the back of my hand wrapped over her waist. She laughed once, but the laugh was sad too. “You used to say I was the doll on the box, because of her makeup.” A pause. “But now I think I’m like her in different ways.”
I got what she was saying. She was trapped like the doll appeared to be. Trapped in her room of doors, and no one came to let her out. All she wanted was to be saved. To be free.
“She . . . the doll . . . I always felt like she wanted to be kissed too. Felt she wanted to be loved. I think she wanted her true love to return from wherever he was to save her.” Her finger stopped moving on my hand, then I felt her fingers wrap around mine and grip me tightly. “She was under a spell, and only her love’s first kiss could set her free.” My jaw clenched as she spoke. I knew she was telling me what her life was like when I left. How she’d waited for me to return.
She was the doll. Her words right now had nothing to do with the damn movie.
I’d taken too fucking long to return. The damage had already been done.
Then she started singing. In her soft, gentle voice, she started singing that song. The one sung by the woman dressed as a doll in the movie . . . and it fucking shattered my black heart. Her hand gripped mine tighter and tighter as she sang each line. And I heard all the pain. Heard it all come pouring from her mouth through that damn song. My vision blurred, and I blinked when I felt my cheeks get wet. I lifted my hand to my face and felt tears.
I hadn’t cried in eleven years. The last time was when I’d been taken from Dolly. And now, when I’d gotten her back . . . but gotten her back in pieces, with her heart now made of fragile glass.
Dolly finished her song, and the room was plunged into silence. I held her tightly, and then even tighter as her sleepy voice said, “One day we will kiss, Rabbit. One day we will kiss, and then this adventure will be so impossibly perfect . . .”
It wasn’t long before Dolly’s breath evened out.
But I didn’t sleep. With every hour that passed I replayed the image of her splayed in front of me, those words pouring from her lips. Words her fucked-up “uncles,” one in particular, had spoken to her as he raped her as a kid. I thought of her innocent voice singing that song. I mulled over what she wanted, what she had wanted for too long.
Freedom.
Love.
Then I thought of the kills yet to come. I thought of how we would take each one down. Because what I had planned before was no longer painful enough. No longer bloody enough. No longer violent enough.
The cunts deserved more. They deserved all that our fucked-up minds could conjure up. And they would get it. They would incur the full force of our revenge, and they wouldn’t see us coming.
I closed my eyes, a smile on my face.
I smiled at all the blood yet to come.
Carnage: courtesy of the Sick Fux.
Chapter 9
Eddie
Earnshaw Estate
Dallas, Texas
Slowly, I approached the door. The old hinges were broken and the wooden door smashed. Someone had kicked them through. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my gun. I fixed my hat so I could see the whole hallway as I crossed the threshold.