Strings

Chapter 9

To the eyes of anyone who was under the standards of being a practical, they would have simply seen the sight of a middle-aged man, coming out of a shutdown toy store, with an old doll in his arms, simply as it was. A man with a doll. To Jack it was also the same thing, with only the exception that the doll sagging in his arms, was in fact alive, and not just your usual, over-priced, robotically animatronic doll.

 Jack had felt as though, for a moment, his body had lost control, and just suddenly began to move on its own when he realized that he was climbing back up from the basement, carrying the doll with him, cloths and textiles forgotten. After realizing this, and what he had chosen to do, irrational or not, he tried his best to resume the same deadpanned face he had worn when he arrived as he came out the store.

 Val was at the side of her car then, hauling the rest of the boxes and containers in her car to take to the junk shop again. She raised her head when she saw him coming out from the store. "Mr. Collingwood. Thought you got lost in there." She said and laughed, as though it were the funniest joke in the world.

 Jack barely even looked at her as he strode very carefully towards his truck. He made sure not to go too fast or too slow so that she wouldn't notice the offness, omitting from him. She didn't miss the doll, though.

 "Oh! That's a pretty little thing you got there."

Almost initially, Jack moved the doll to his other arm as he got near to his truck.

"Yeah.. That's what I said." He murmured, busying himself with getting the doll at the back so that it could be tucked away from Val's sight.

"Where'd you find it? I didn't think we had this doll before.." Val reported, getting more boxes and hauling them into her car in small stacks. Working girl.

"It was stuck under one of the shelves." Okay. Not the most elaborately-made excuse he'd ever made, but it sounded convincing enough.

 The wooden parts of the doll clattered quietly against the metal of the truck as Jack set it down as gently as he could.

"Okay, then. Is that all you're going to take? You don't want anything else?" Val inquired, kneeling down to re-arrange the contents of a former employee's box (Jack couldn't see the name scribbled on the side. It seemed to start with an 'H'.)

 Having been hidden away from the other on-looker, the doll's eyes began to move again. Its head gently lolled to the right to look up at Jack. "You be quiet and don't move." Jack whispered to it.

"What?"

He turned his head to Val, who had now stood up with the employee's box in hand, looking at Jack questioningly.

"Excuse me?" Jack questioned back.

"You said something, just now." The younger girl stated matter-of-fact.

Jack's head shook out of habit. Having no thought-up answer to his action, he suddenly said: "I was talking to the doll."

 It didn't even took a second for Val's face to fall with utter confusion.

"You...were...talking... to the doll?" She repeated awkwardly.

Like what most usually happens to people when their thoughtless words are back-lashed at them, Jack looked back at Val with a mirroring look of uncertainty. When it finally registered to him, he blinked once, and then shook his head again.

"Yeah.. I talk to my dolls sometimes."

 Seeing that Val still had an unbelieving look on her face, Jack decided to add one more. "It was something that.. Gordon taught me." He said with difficulty.

 Jack had reasoned with himself before coming there, that he wouldn't say or hint at something to make Val think that he had, in any way close ties with the boss. But, he couldn't argue with himself now, since it managed to finally convince the girl.

"Oh. I see." She grinned, with a complete message of, 'I knew it' written in every speck of it.

 Gushing with a sigh of relief, Jack turned to face his car and took a moment to get his breathing even. When he finally did, Jack quickly got in the driver's seat, almost slamming the car door against himself. He thought he saw Val flinch from the sound.

"Have a good one, Mr. Collingwood." She said, waving with one hand. Jack only nodded his head curtly in response. Automatically getting his hand to the keys and his feet to the brakes, Jack started the truck, and didn't hesitate a moment on driving away.                   

 *****

 As Gordon's Toy Emporium became smaller on the rear-view mirror, a new, if not more, disturbing dilemma had surfaced. Jack had aided a newly-acquainted toy doll upon its' pleas. And while he hadn't even considered why he decided to do so, his mind had done and repeated the same thing, and allowed it refuge in his house. His house! He was doing just fine when he carried it out of the store; put it in his truck; drive it back to his home; and for Heaven's sake, even place it neatly in the den, before he hurriedly rushed to the kitchen to get his bottle of gin. It wasn't that he still thought he was hallucinating and wanted to prove himself wrong. He just really wanted a xxxxxxx drink to clear his mind. It was pretty xxxxxxx up, but that was how alcohol worked for Jack. In the opposite way, even if people told him that was xxxx.

 It wasn't the usual bottle-chugging. He was pouring some in a glass, if anyone could believe it. Probably not his ex-wife, Jack momentarily thinks, but he quickly dismisses it. When the glass is nearly full, Jack placed the bottle down, and looked very carefully into the swirling liquid in the glass. "What are you doing?" He asked himself. Surely that wasn't enough for the situation. A 'what are you doing' question did not suffice the reason for harboring a live doll on a xxxx whim. A 'have you lost your xxxxxxx mind?!' seemed a lot more appropriate in Jack's case.
 

 Not even noticing that he was very easily ignoring his 'aqua de vida', even though it was in front of him, Jack leaned to the right, to look out the doorway that lead to the living room, and was directly parallel to the den. He knew the doll was in there, sat properly on a chair where he had left it. He knew this for a fact, because he already learned that it couldn't move. Being a doll with literally broken limbs and all. Jack honestly thought that morning when he woke up, that he wouldn't be having an inward battle between fear and paranoia raging in his gut.

 He was gnashing his gums with uneasiness that he just couldn't shake away. Everything was just so... "xxxxxxx trippy." He said. Again, he looked at his drink. "That's not gonna help." With a motion so swift, that he never thought possible he could associate with his liquor, Jack dumped his glass in the sink. And he followed it with the bottle next, and then he dumped that in the trash bin behind the door.

 When he straightened up, Jack took the deepest breath he could endure, and sighed very slowly as he got out of the kitchen, and made his way to the den. "Let's just get this over with." He convinced himself, planning to learn about the doll, if there was anything to learn about it, and then decide what to do afterwards.

 It was on the chair just as he left it. Its' arms were placed neatly on its' lap, and it's legs were almost drooping along with the chair's legs. It seemed to have heard Jack come into the room, because its head shifted on top of its' shoulders, and lay weightlessly on it to look at him. Although this only proves that the doll truly can't move, and won't have any chance (not the highest, at least) in attacking Jack, he had to admit, that it still scared the xxxx out of him. Stilling his nerve furthermore, Jack sucked in his cowardice, and marched forward into the room.

 The doll's head lay unmoving, but its eyes followed him as he got the foot couch from the side and sat on it.

"Okay..." He began, making himself as comfortable as possible, folding his elbows on his thighs and clasping his hands together.

"Let's get this straightened out." He said, uncomfortably, but not uneasily, staring the doll right in the eye.

"I'm going to ask questions, and you're going to answer in brief, but substantial replies. You got me?" He said.

The doll blinked, almost humanely realistically, and then said: "Okay."