Doll's House

A Doll's House

It were the early hours of the morning and, outside, the merciless winds punched through the windows and walls through huge blocks of gray, dirty snow, which were the only witnesses of a brutal crime which would wander eternally around the possessions of Martin Astley. The elderly man was outside when the walls of a room were stained by his wife's blood. A very old-fashioned way of killing, but yet still quite effective. The huge knife went up and down relentlessly, opening up tears and wounds in countless parts of the body of the 40-something matron, as the murderous voice repeated mechanically the phrase "We're family!"

...

"You must have quite a collection, Mr. Ivan", Martin Astley commented, looking at the countless books scattered across the oval table made of varnished wood. "Aren't you afraid of being mugged?" Ivan replied by shrugging. "The contents of that backpack of yours are priceless..."

"If something's priceless, then it's worthless." He sunk into the padded chair, holding a cup of coffee. "And all of my books have their worth. The coffee's cold...", he said to himself.

Martin Astley was a very elderly man, with some strings of gray hair above his head, deep-blue eyes and who, due to issues in his spine, dragged his hunched body across the huge mansion where he lived accompanied by little Maria and his butler Arnold, aided by a walking stick. As Martin delected himself appreciating all those real books, sniffing the pages, sliding his hands through them and feeling the different textures between their covers, Ivan allowed to question himself why such a wealthy man as Martin Astley submitted himself to walk around with a stick instead of acquiring a mechanical wheelchair or even a prosthesis.

"Is that your former wife?", asked Ivan, pretending to be curious.

On the front wall to where he was sitting there was a family portrait. For a long time it wasn't possible to see art in such level, and Ivan felt as if he was staring at a painting from the Renaissance. The frame measured nearly a meter tall, and inside it, Mr. Astley, still very young with blond hair cascading around his oval head, sat on a chair holding in his lap an also blonde child and, behind him, an elegant, slender woman put his hands covered in gloves on her husband's back.

Putting a book aside, Martin dragged himself to the painting and, with grief in his voice, answered affirmatively.

"She was murdered", he explained. "I was outside when it happened, and Maria was alongside me fortunately. It was a terrible murder, the assailant got in here and stabbed her countless times..." He gulped, and continued: "Since then I'm trying to search comfort in books, and nothing else... However, it's so hard trying to find books as the ones you carry."

Martin walked to the bookshelves, grabbed a random book and opened it to Ivan. Inside it, there was nothing else besides some physical pages, and all the rest was in holograms. Intrigued, Ivan took the book prototype in hands and passed one of his long, ring-studded fingers through the page until touching the solid back-cover. On the holograms, usually white and sometimes yellowed, what brought a false sensation of something real, there was one or other word scattered on what should be a line, and times when one or two words at most covered an entire page, or even a single article – "The" – weren't rare. Ivan knew about holographic books, but never held one before; even those were luxuried, and he felt quite curious. He nearly snickered.

"They never found the murderer?"

The widower denied, shaking his head to and fro. He dragged himself again to the table, and restarting the ritual of admiring the literary works he continued:

"Since then, the same happened to all the family's employees. People who served us for generations were murdered or mysteriously disappeared, it was nearly as if a ghost haunted this place."