The DollHouse

Chapter Five

A/N: I've been a bit terrible at updating this... but it's back as my focus now. Got a bit stuck too, since I realised that (since it's a first draft) it lacks a lot of life, particularly in the characters. So, I'm open to suggestion!

The Dollhouse is creepy at night. The sun hasn’t risen, but we were told to get here at five thirty, so here we are: shivering and confused, outside of the closed, locked doors. Jules turns the corner and raises his hand, seeing us all waiting. He is late, but it doesn’t matter since so are they.

Just as he arrives at the front, greeting me with an enthusiastic shoulder bump that is far too jovial for the time of morning, the doors open. A woman in a pencil skirt and white blouse greets us.

“Welcome to your first day,” she chirps, looking around at us all and either missing or ignoring the utter apathy on our faces. “My name is Katrina. Come inside and I’ll show you around.”

She leads us into the foyer and through a door behind the front desk. The room is small and contains nothing but computers. I look around for another door, but there isn’t one. Oddly, there are no desks.

“Our workplace is a desk-free zone,” she says, reading my mind. She bounces her head to the side as she talks, as if she is saying something cute and sweet. She reminds me of a little kid, but she’s tall and attractive. It’s unnerving. “Workers are encouraged to walk the floors, either behind the glass in the observation rooms, or, if there are only one or two other workers visible, on the floor itself.”

Observation room for me, I think to myself. I didn’t even know they had one. Maybe I can spend the next three weeks hiding from everyone.

“But industry experience candidates,” she continues. “That’s you,” she jabs her finger in the air at each of us, one by one, pulling a cute face while she does. “Are encouraged to be visible, so that we may monitor your ability to separate yourselves from the entertainment.”

That figures, I think, quietly ignoring the urge to hold her fingers and head still, free from bobbing and jabbing.

“If you will follow me, I’ll show you how to access the observation rooms,” she says, leading us back out the door and into a small elevator that I had assumed was for disability use.

The elevator bypasses the normal floor entrances, and leads instead into four long corridors that cover the perimeter of each floor. There is an instep for the staircase entrance, but the observation corridors - I can hardly call them rooms - continue without a break, surrounding the entire floor. I had assumed the mirrored walls were just a continuation of the outside decor, but clearly they had a purpose all along. We can see them, but they can’t see us.

Given that there are about twenty workers to each floor, this whole place just became infinitely creepier. At least in the middle of the floor, you know who is watching.

Katrina leads us through all four observation floors, and then hands out our tablets. “The computers downstairs are only used if there is a problem with the tablets,” she explains. “You should have all been taken through the program at school, so I’ll assign you your floors and let you get to it. Business opens in an hour.”