DOLLS

My sister, Anna, died 2 years ago, and her death brought me into a place where no one could hear sentiments.

It was a lonely void where your consciousness floats like a lost spirit, and the deepest part of it is unknown and is always unknown. I hovered around that endless and eternal void searching for answers, but all I found was me being trapped into this silent yet frightening ordeal.

The death of my innocent sister really brought an unimaginable pain to our family. 

And now, as I search for what I believe are answers, I could describe in full details the story of Anna's death, and how she had affected and inflicted mysteries within our household--if you insist my telling.

----------------

She died at age 22 from a disease the neurologist called spongiform encephalopathies. A deadly brain disease which causes abnormal folding of the brain cells; cells in the brain and in the body seriously deteriorate and with the decline in nervous function. The doctor said she got it from eating a meat from an infected animal. But I doubt it.

My family owns Doll House Inc. and this job obviously brought my sister into loving dolls, while I, on the other hand, hated the idea of making human-like toys which can somehow ruin someone else's childhood. How ironic would it be to know that the son of the owner of this company has pediophobia? I hate dolls and I fear them, but I had to live with them.

When the doctor pronounced  my sister's death, on her bed, beside her favorite dolls, my mother lost the vigor to continue living. It gave her so much pain that it lasted a week before her tears dried. Night after night she would howl and scream that our helpers would need, with no more options left, to clutch and wrestle her. I pitied mother, and father was not around to be with her. 

"Mama's not feeling well," I called father up a week after Anna's burial; he's in a business trip with a german investor who decided to work with the company. He's in Germany, of course.

"She's being childish. I have my own share of pain, too, Philip, but being irrational was not my option," he said flatly.

"She needs you," I pleaded, the phone I was holding squeaked as I grasped it because of anger. Why is he being too insensitive?

"What I want you to do, Philip, is to take charge of the company while I'm not around. Hire a nurse for your mother or try taking her to a psychologist--" he did not finish his horrible utterance of  selfish expressions as I quickly cut our conversation with so much hatred in my heart. He was becoming useless, as a husband and as a father.

After that conversation with my father, I was relieved to know that mother was well again. She's back to her self and she's already doing the things she normally does in our house. Tending the groceries, petting our dogs, taking charge of the concerns in the company and becoming a mother to me again. She's back to normal.

But it didn't last long.

When father went back from Germany, mother would always wake up in the middle of the night shouting and screaming my sister's name. She kept on calling her name as if she's still there. There were nights when mother would actually sleep on Anna's bed and would cry the whole night.

But mom, I'm still here.

I want to say that but I couldn't.

----------------

Ulrich Fleischer.

I thought I heard his name before, but I just couldn't remember when.

He visited a week after my father's arrival. The german investor who looks a lot like Elvis Presley, it's just that he's too white to be the king of rock and roll, arrived just after the a typhoon raged over our abode. He said he needed to file some papers here in the Philippines, and he had a wonderful proposal for my father--something about porcelain--I can't make anything out from his accent, that's why. It was confusing, honestly, like he's still talking in german.