• Inside the Dollhouse

    She slumped slowly against the brick wall. The bow from her hair lay crumpled in the corner. The high heeled shoes that had trapped her feet every night for so many years lay in a disheveled heap beside her. Her white porcelain skin and perfectly painted red lips which were usually a solid wall of impenetrable happiness now conveyed the mournful repose she would always carry with her in the back of her mind.
    The metal circles that projected from her wrists, ankles and the top of her head itched. Every night every night…
    But the crowd had all gone home now. The dolls were left to themselves. And she was tired of their mindless chatter. She was tired of being hauled up every night on thick black strings and made to dance for a thousand people she would never know. As they laughed and awed she smiled and did her dance. Sometimes it was different tune, but no matter what she did by the end of the night every bone and gentle fiber of her skin ached from the endless pulling and yanking of those strings.
    The people in the audience… they saw a beautiful girl with flawless white skin that was there for their entertainment. They saw a life sized object. Like a piece of the wall or a chair in a furniture store.
    What they didn’t see were the huge gears and levers that grinded away above. Yanking the strings as justified by the engineers in the control room far above all the sad little doll’s heads. They didn’t see the neat little black boxes all lined up that the living dolls slept in. And they certainly didn’t see the process by which they had become what they were. An immortal play toy.
    But she was different… she had thoughts… They weren’t forbidden to learn but very few ever learned more than how to tie their shoes simply because they saw no reason to be educated.
    Their lives were all mapped out. Everything in place. They would dance. The people would watch and applaud when you were done. You never even had to learn the dances… Every move they made was carefully planned out and programmed into a thousand levers and gear above that they had no control over.
    She felt the brick against her smooth white back. It was neither hot nor cold to her. Steadily she felt every part of her settling back into place after tonight’s performance. Was it just her or did the music get faster every night? The dances more wild and exaggerated? Maybe it was just because she was a crowd favorite. With her neat little black dress to match her perfectly black eyes.
    The curtain in front of her hung heavy like a wall of water frozen in midair. Isolating her from all the commotion of back stage—the theatre was being filled for the second show. All the muted thumps and far away laughter were of another world for her at that moment. And yet the curtain had a hundred tiny holes in it. Eaten away by moths they let in that tiny bit of light that let her know that the world was still out there. That they hadn’t moved on without… that they hadn’t forgotten about her. The sad little doll who danced for them every night.
    Because as much as it frustrated her at times she knew this was what she had. This was all she had. The stage was her home, the crowd her family.
    Of course long ago she had had dreams of a nice suburban home, and before that a nice cottage in the mountains, and before that endless dreams of apartments and condos and trailer parks and anywhere but here…
    But she had abandoned those dreams long ago. She had seen the outside world change over the years but hers remained the same. This theatre was a way of escape. A way for the people living out there to forget that they were living in a world of technology and global warming and cars that went faster than trains. It allowed them to step into a place far before their time. To remind them that long ago it had been so much simpler.
    This little theatre still lit by gas lamps with red velvet seats and worn green and gold carpeting. The same stairs their grandparents tread upon, the same seats they sat in, the same performers they watched and applauded to. It had been there for fifty years and it would be there a hundred more.
    And she the sad doll who had once dreamed of more would be there till the very end. This was her world and her life…
    She heard them calling her name for the second show. With her shoes and stockings on her feet again she walked to the huge polished stage. The lights were dimmed down to almost pitch blackness and the faces around her blurred into one another. She stood on her mark and spread her arms out. The loops were attached by invisible hands moving with the speed and deftness of old friends shaking hands.
    The black cords were first loose and then the whirring and clanking of machinery thundered down before and they hauled slowly upward until she was suspended just above the ground. The familiar tug of the loops, the smell of the wood polish.
    The curtain came up and she was home again.