Prom

Glances

She grabbed the first container she could and peeled off the lid. She raised it up, brought the corner to her lips, and drank. It was chilled and it hit her throat like lotion on a burn. It tasted heavenly. Even though the cold had made it syrupy, it was pure refreshment, pure relief. She drank, breathing through her nose, throat chugging up and down. When the container was finished she placed it neatly on the counter. She licked her lips, feeling her pain fade, her brain come back to normal and gazing out at her front yard.

What is my front yard doing here? thought Amy. Then, what is my house doing here? She knew she ought to have been afraid, but she was too sated for any of that. She was just confused. She looked around the kitchen, and now that she did she noticed differences. A pile of envelopes that hadn’t been there that morning. Bananas in the fruit bowl, instead of apples. And, of course, the fridge full of blood.

She felt herself drawn up the stairs. She walked up to the door of her room. It was closed. She paused for a second, then knocked. There was no answer. She twisted the knob and pushed open the door. It was empty. And it was definitely her room. But, just like downstairs, there were differences. Different sheets on the bed. A different shirt corner hanging out of the hamper. Her confusion was growing and the calm she had felt after drinking was slowly ebbing.

She had to keep calm, so she could think. Whatever was going on, she couldn’t panic. She wanted her meds. Her parents didn’t know about them. She kept them hidden in the back of her old dollhouse, now in storage in the attic. She walked back out into the hallway, got under the trap door, pulled on the rope to open the hatch and bring down the ladder. She climbed up. There were no windows and it was too dark to see more than a few feet in front of her. She pulled out her phone to light the way so that she didn’t trip over anything and made her way to the dollhouse. Her feeling of uneasiness kept growing. She felt a new sickness now, a kind of grim tickle in the pit of her stomach. An ugly anticipation.

There was a loud creak from somewhere behind her. Amy whirled around. She stayed frozen, adrenaline making its icy way through her body, but she saw nothing and there was no more sound. After thirty seconds she turned back around to the dollhouse. Huge, white, gothic, it reached up almost to her chest. It had been her grandmother’s.

She kept her pills in the drawing room, all the way in the back, behind the dolls and frilly dresses and stuffed animals she had used to fill the rooms in front. She reached her way around and felt for the packet, but it wasn’t in its usual place. She groped around. Nothing. Her heart started beating faster and she groped around wildly. Had she put them back in a different room? Her fingers crawled their way into the salon, and here they brushed against a plastic surface.

But it wasn’t her pills. Tacky soft to the touch, like plastic wrap. And big, heavy. Her throat felt very tight and she had a terrible premonition. Her fingers crawled up and up, over bumps and ridges, until they came across a different texture. Like soft, springy threads. But not threads.

Her fingers convulsed and they gripped and she slowly pulled out the object by those strands, drawing it out through the toys and baby clothes. When she saw its shape in the shadows she already knew, but she brought her light closer to it anyway.

Dangling from her hand by a soft red pony tail and wrapped in layer after layer of clear plastic was Beatrice Walker’s head.