What a Doll!

I. Just Another Saturday at Miller's

Mikey sauntered into Miller’s sundries and soda shop, craning his neck to see past the crowd of poodle-skirted girls loitering around the candy display case at the entrance. Many heads in that group turned and followed his progress further inside as if a magnet connected each of their eyes to his moving form. Broad shoulders, easy charm, and a pleasant face made Mikey popular and well-liked at his high school, Centerville High. This was made even more apparent as some of the bolder girls greeted him along the way, while others whispered and giggled among themselves nodding in his direction and at the booth that sat three other teenage boys. Two identical arms waved him over as the group caught sight of him--the towering, towheaded brothers, the Helgenflaat twins, and the devilish (and devilishly handsome)  reigning King and quarterback of Centerville's football team, Colin Mathers.

As Mikey approached,  Colin leaned back into the faux leather seat and nodded for him to sit. He had his usual cat-with-the-cream smirk on his face, but today the glint in his eye was decidedly meaner, more lascivious. “Hey, check out the piece of ass at the counter.”

Mikey took a seat opposite the twins and inclined his head toward the counter where the soda shop's proprietor, Mr. Miller, was having an animated chat with a petite strawberry blonde. He pretended to study the ice cream menu on the wall as he covertly took in the girl's immaculate ponytail, white eyelet blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and sensible saddle shoes. One of the Helgenflaat twins let out a loud whistle and many people, including the young girl, surprised at the trilling noise, turned to ferret out the source of the sound. When she eventually determined their group as the culprits , finding all four pairs of eyes pinned to her, her own eyes danced in merriment at the audacious manner of their compliment. Colin held her gaze and bobbed his chin at her in further approval and accompanied it with a wink for good measure. One side of her lips twitched, as if to smile, but the smile never quite spread to the other corner of her face. She simply turned away again and resumed her conversation with Mr. Miller.

II. Slighted

This girl had the palest blue eyes Mikey had ever seen--they reminded him of the sky on a deceptively temperate day. A day that turns still and then neon-nausea green, right before a tornado begins brewing. Mikey couldn't stop staring at her; he was mesmerized. She was not simply beautiful, she was perfect, every feature placid, as if carefully sculpted from a liquid, malleable ivory metal. Mikey began to believe in love at first sight that day.

Colin, arrogant prick that he was, was nothing but supremely confident in the power of his extreme good looks and swagger. He'd yet to meet a soul that could or would dare say no to him, and he was already up on his feet, ready to make this girl his latest conquest. Mr. Miller had already moved behind the counter, so the blonde was sitting by herself on a swivel stool at the counter. Colin stood over her, hot breath ruffling the fine hairs on her neck, before he placed one meaty palm against the small of her back. “Hey dollface-- why have I never seen you before? I'm sure I know every single little gal at Centerville High."

The girl at first appeared to not have heard him. A long pause punctuated the air before she swiveled in her chair, the time she took to pin him with her searing blue gaze, just as measured. A sensible boy  would've chafed under her unnerving assessment, but Colin was far from a sensible boy. He found her behaviour encouraging, she excited him. Another angelic half-smile tickled her lips. She then calmly returned to stirring the banana split that was on the table in front of her.

There was no uncertainty of the dismissal issued in this gesture and the whole place waited, breath suspended, to see how Colin would react to this snub.  He flushed crimson a heartbeat before regaining his composure. A grin alighted on his face, a shoddy attempt to be amiable, but unable to mask the hunger that lurked just beneath its veneer.   He sidled up to her ear so only she could hear his next words. “You stupid, tease. You fucking cunt. No girl ignores Colin Mathers the Third in this town and gets away with it. You're not gonna be so special once I'm done with you. I will get what you owe me. Baby, I'm gonna enjoy it, and you will, too." To emphasize his point, he placed a heavy hand suggestively right in the middle of her skirt. 

III. The Shortcut

Mikey overheard his friend's threat and each word struck true, spitting venomous, a snake coiling around his own heart. He bolted upright ready to be the hero and shield her from Colin, but his fantasy of being noble and slaying a lecherous dragon evaporated as soon as he stood, and he hurried to sit back down in the narrow booth.  Though he was ashamed and outraged at Colin’s behaviour towards this vision, this angel, HIS angel, he felt helpless to take action. Who dared challenge the great Colin Mathers? It was widely known the other boy was a savage fighter, and Colin outweighed him by about two solid stones. If that wasn't enough to deter anyone,  his father, Mayor Mathers,  controlled the local police force and the entire town as adeptly as his son ran the teen population. The Mathers WERE Centerville. Mikey decided to err on the side of prudence, and let the bigger boy's ill behaviour go, unchallenged. By later that day he had convinced himself it wasn't enough to get worked up about. He continued to joke and hang out with the trio and resolved to put the incident out of his mind. By the evening, he had almost forgotten what had taken place.

That was, until he was on his way home, taking the younger set's favored shortcut through a more rundown part of town--a part where he knew Colin and the other boys would hold booze-fueled parties, and where Colin would regularly bring some of his  so-called “dates.” Mikey had never attended any of these shindigs, but he heard his fair share of lurid rumours, each new story sprinting down the gamut from shocking to mildly frightening, to outright stomach-turning. He didn't know why this errant thought flashed in his mind as he dragged his feet over the weeds bordering the path, but he began to recall one early morning several months back where he had encountered Lila Stevens, on his way to fetch his mom groceries; Lila running along the road, crying and disheveled. He remembered the blood on her dress and running down her lily-fair limbs. He remembered the bite of shame he felt as he walked a wide swath around her, doing his best to avoid her, doing his best to not have to ask what happened, knowing in an unwilling, blurred part of his brain what the answer would be. He remembered riding past the Stevens' residence on his bike, coming upon Lila's daddy pruning the rose bush in their garden, unabashedly crying, thinking no one could see him. He remembered Lila's mom, continuing to attend church, going through the motions of genuflecting and making the sign of the cross like a catatonic automaton. Last week, the cheerleaders were twittering excitedly amongst themselves that Lila had all of a sudden taken ill and been sent away to live with her maiden aunt.

IV. Paper Dolls, Blue Eyes, and Red Blood

Mikey shook his head to dissipate the image from his weary thoughts. When he refocused his eyes on the road in front of him he saw Colin and the strawberry blonde angel, bodies curved together as if locked in embrace. The girl broke away and pivoted to her left, sashaying away from Colin, her each step placed delicately, one in front of the other, a waltz along the dusty road. What swiftly followed after burned a permanent imprint upon Mikey's mind.

Colin's face was contorted in rage and he began walking behind the girl, catcalling and hurtling insults, fast gaining on her until he was sidled up against her back. The girl herself made no motion to quicken her step, nor did she indicate at all that she heard the stinging affront flung in her direction-- she was not panicked or affected in the least, and continued to meander at a sedate pace, her graceful dancer's gait and calm demeanor appearing to further enrage her pursuer. Colin gripped both her wrists, herding the girl up against a large oak, the shadow of the behemoth tree partially cloaking both their movements. Mikey's fear and lethargy abandoned him at that moment; he simply knew Colin would not hesitate to collect bounty on his earlier boast. He began to sprint towards them, determined to brawl with Colin if necessary, when both the girl and Colin reemerged from the semi-dark, their silhouettes, paper cutouts on a puppet stage against the fading sunset.

Mikey's strawberry angel stood with her arm held straight out in front of her, somehow unnaturally extended, silver and shiny. He blinked to make sure the sun's russet colors melding with the girl's hair were not playing tricks on his eyes. The whole scene rolled in delicious swirls of tawny and amber, melting into one another. It reminded Mikey of the toppings to a ice cream sundae, and he had to steady himself against his inexplicable dizziness, muffling a hysterical giggle at the ridiculous image he was envisioning. Beyond the whirling caramel confection that cushioned him as he watched the puppet show, his angel had neatly run her forearm--wait, was that gorgeous glint a sabre? Her arm?--Mikey fought hard to comprehend---as she ran this scythe appendage lovingly through  Colin in an elegant wave, that began beneath the swelling curve of his groin and came out through his skull in a spectacular ruby shower of his life blood like a horn, refashioning him into a sparkling, strange unicorn. The colors, the artistry--how efficient, how lovely! The profuse fountain rained red, red, red, generous in its bloody benediction until it could give no more.  Colin now looked just like a skewered tenderloin ready to be grilled.

The lovely girl then turned to Mikey, only her head making the rotation while her body continued to cradle Colin's limp form.  Each increment of her head's revolution a slow clock sound--TICK tock, TICK tock, TICK tok!--until it was like a globe turned halfway around on its axis. Her untethered face formed a careful smile and she winked one ice blue eye. This was the last insistent snapshot that pressed against Mikey's brain before the welcoming blackness enveloped him.