The doll girl begins to move in tandem with the bottom piece of the music's body, each note pulling her into another delicate, somber pose. Her hands rise slowly, beset with weights I can't see. Her slender fingers tremble, then curling inwards like the petals of a dying flower. Her glass eyes gaze out, too blank to be piercing, but too sharp to be anything else. Those eyes, staring at something far beyond the shadows of the room, out to something I cannot see. Her face is expressionless. It is her body which seems to take on a new emotion.
Grief, captured not by her features, but by the careful, deliberate tension in each motion.
"Dreamer. Dreamer. Please, Dreamer. The dream has changed. 306 nights and it has changed. God, it has changed. The first iteration was normal. I accepted it. I spoke to myself in that full chamber. Loaded like a gun, berated, cut down and filed, bearish creature speaking to me, I spoke upwards, looking down, my eyes too scared to dare defy the Gods above. I deserve this. Spoken, spoken to me, spoken to me, and spoken to God, to me! SHOOT! Again. Again. Again. Over and over again. SHOOT! The pain faded. The arrogance faded. Everything faded. I just let it happen. I didn't care. It was a good thing. The sentencing was just, Jesus. The sentencing was truly just. And eventually, I woke up back in bed. Wonder. Wonderful wonder that wanders about and brings to me her name, Wonder. Piccola rana, dearest betrayer, you there with me in that tight bed. You and I, separate and equal. The angels were gone. Trumpets had sounded and yet the battlefield lay barren. Shields were gone. We were all gone, but you and me, piccola rana, we remain. We remained in the gunpowder smell, and teenage tracks of artillery shells. The polar bear huffs weren't far behind. You and I, we were whole in chambers unsaid. And it happened again."
"But, God. Christ, to you I devote all of my hatred. To you, my arrogant bleeding souls, for you left us one unholy sin. She was a victim of this war too."
"I kept clawing."
"I was fighting against the system of kings. I was doing everything in my power, I was screaming, my hands slashing at the face of monarchy, doing everything I could. The face was mangled, heaps of flesh and skin dribbling onto my own, the blood pooling on the blankets, soaking through and coating me in it, a baptism, God, a new, renouncing baptism! The bones exposed in the face, the eyes raked. This must be what it felt like to be one of her new concepts."
"I couldn't help. Again. I woke up again. And it happened again. I felt real again. None of it felt like a dream. I tried harder. I tried worse. I undid and retied the bindings of my own entrapment. I did. I promise, I tried to release you from the shackles and politics of my own self-torment. But I couldn't do anything anymore. Where the time began ticking, I was trapped. I trapped myself in a loop of my own making. And I wake up. And again. Again, four times, four. And she wakes me up. L'angelo returning returns and wakes me, and I am empty and hollow and a vessel of who I am. This one's real. Life is real now. She is here, it's real. It's safe. Angel, you. Angel, she. I gave up and accepted my dreams. And now they're a million times worse. I have adapted, but the dream adapts too. I want to sob, but my subconscious pulls the strings tighter. We are all victims, God. We are all my own victims."
The music rises, and the strings tremble, almost wailing. She drops to her knees with a soundless sob, her head tilting to one side as the other dolls' hands clasp over her chest. Around the pile, the other dolls continue their dance, their feet sweeping in soft, mournful arcs, orbiting her in a strange ritual of devotion. Their faces are frozen, painted with faint smiles that seem mocking in the dim light. . . nothing more than ghosts compelled to dance in the shadow of her tragedy. The vomit touches my shoes.
I'm sorry.
"What on earth am I doing? I feel so lost, but I feel as if I know what's coming and I just don't wanna see it yet. I don't want to lose these moments. Childishly, I want them to last forever. I want to stay here for the rest of my life, and I would be so happy, but nothing lasts forever, and I am only thinking like a child. The end of this perfect month is only a few days away and I don't know what to do. I'm going to be alone again. It's a rotten feeling, selfish to the very core. Look at them. Look at them, please. Take a moment and stare. I deeply desire to lie with them. I am tired and I would like to sleep next to the person I trust, and the one she trusts too. They look so comfortable and happy."
"But, I don't lie. God, laying resteth close. Laying is so dearly far. God sits in the chair by the bed. Dearest God. I'd love to rest myself, but I just dont think I belong there. I don't want to let out the bleeding animal inside of me. I don't want to leak on their clothes. I hate being this damsel in distress type, always needing an angel to comfort me or do things for me. I want to help her instead. I want to help them both."
"I'm overcomplicating it. I just want to lay down with them. How much harm would that bring? How bad could that be?"
"God. God, I feel guilty even sitting with her for ten minutes. I feel ill laying with human beings who have dealt with the monarchy that I cannot bring myself to slaughter."
"Here I am again. Happier. Warmer. Fed. Loved. Something stirring in my chest refrains me from rest, for if I have a nightmare, I'd alert an angel. I don't want her to turn from the little rana in her sleep. I don't want to sleep. I don't really feel like I deserve to lay next to them. Shoving down my own idiocy is the only way I can prove her wrong and attain that happy ending. But, a happy ending without me is still a happy ending. I feel a great deal of shame at this moment. I want to take care of everyone, but I am failing."
"I know nothing, and I am nothing. If I start with that, I may be able to just think it through. Two lovers entwined. Where do I fit in? In this world of this or that, what room is there for the middle line? It is such a cruel thing."
"I am crueler still."
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
The doll's hands lower, her head bows, and she holds herself still. The music softens, each instrument falling away one by one until only a piano remains, its notes sparse and hollow drops of rain tapping against glass. The hands release her chest and fall to her sides, limp. Her shoulders slump. Whatever strength sustained her has faded, leaving only a fragile, empty shell.
"Am I ready?"
"The knife pokes the little vein. It is no match."
"The blood drips down the skin, etching in my porcelain the empty dedications I may provoke from hollow receptacles. I am only a probability. A small, infinitesimal probability. My kind do not live long. They are rarely born. Most die in the womb, complications unfathomable to amount. The lives I have utilized, the budgets I have surpassed in the great halls of living, Jesus, God, above you I stand, and alone, I remain identifiable. King of kings, honor behooved, the incumbent dream. Alone, I, the King unkingly, alone I stand. Now, I have lived countless horrors. But, they are all of my own making. Everything is of my own making. I have done this to myself. I deserved it. I deserved it. I tell myself this as the blood runs down my lips."
"I deserve it all. I really do wish to die."
"I am alone. I am alone, God. I deserve this isolation. Let me be left behind. Let me be reduced to nothingness, and produce in me the righteousness of submission."
"This is right."
the webbing. god, remove the webbing that clings.
"This is the only right thing left."
"I have not slept in a few days. I do not wish to sleep but once more. There is a staircase I long to descend. I am a failure, God. I am untalented, unremarkable, irrefutable garbage. I am nothing, God. Not smart, not kind, not beautiful, not anything at all. I have so much hate inside of me, God. To whom is this directed to? To whom do I submit my hatreds and ineptitudes? To Whom, God? To Whom? To whom, to whom, to whom! Read them. Over and over, God. Read them until I dissolve, until the words don't seem like words anymore. Dearest Wittgenstein, speaking to me these hollow sentiments in the ankh of harbor, speak to me utmost symbols."
"What do the walls feel like?"
"Have you felt them before? The white walls. The walls running, the faint-hearted, flooded walls. Walls. My walls. My home. My walls, robbed of me. On me still. Calling to me. I am a belonging. I am owned. I am insentient. I belong to the overruling. I hear the empty roll smack. I am destitute. I am hallowed. I am longing."
"I am mad."
"Has my brain rotted? Am I rotting? Rot, rot, dearest rot! Rot, scarlet horror, scarlet rot, scarlet venom, bequeathing rot! Rot. Loving rot, hating rot, tainted rot, meatless rot. Bone."
"I am no longer me. I am no longer Marcille."
"Why?"
"Why won't you answer me?""
The music surges once more, swelling with a distorted pulse. The doll's head lifts, her body straightening up, extending just one arm out. A hesitant motion. Reaching towards a distant light. Impossible hope. Her fingers stretch, trembling, as if she could grasp whatever it is she longs for- freedom, maybe, or peace, God, stop it, please- but the movement is halted, frozen mid-reach, a childish sensation of despair as the music dips back into its mournful cadence, swallowing her fragile hope whole.
"X marks the spot, Malignancy. You found this inch. It began in you. My cellar is my own house of leaves. Leaves of instability. Leaves I could not read. Leaves I could not know. Speaker. Speaker. Please, Speaker. Speaker? Left paths through the falling leaves."
"Move left on the thousandth page."
"Margins smearing, endearing, clearing, episodic."
"Epilepsy. Epilogue."
"Free hands."
"Move. Please move. Caesar. Move, Caesar."
"Handcuffs. How many more years must I spend in handcuffs?"
"Lunacy. Am I ever going to be sober again?"
"I am undrugged. Am I ever going to be sober again?"
"My right hand feels heavy. I am left-handed."
The bass and strings join in again, deeper, darker than before, and the doll draws her arm back, folding inward, her small form curling into itself like a wounded animal. Her movements slow, her limbs falling slack, as though surrendering to an invisible weight, a gravity that pulls her back into the shadows. She stands there, alone in the center, surrounded by her fellow dancers but somehow more isolated than ever, her figure hunched and motionless, a dark and honored silhouette etched in the flickering candlelight.
"L'angelo. It's been only a few hours, but I fear that I'm going mad. Do I feel entitled to sanity? Lisps curling, mouths touching the spittle and teeth pressed. . . oh, Goddess, speechless Goddess of the Moon. I see things I cannot rationalize. I know things I cannot consciously know. There are so many noises and there is only silence. The fan. Fans above me that ring. Spinning in the walls. My walls. I don't understand. I did the right thing, didn't I? Isn't this the right thing? Is this the right thing? The notes are so empty. The notes are so hollow. The notes are full of me, dwindling and burning, little ashen child. I am abandoned. I abandoned myself, this husk dearest left. Mother? Why did Mother leave? Why did Mother take Mother?"
"Bones. Brittle things. Leftover fabric. Resting notes, resting skin, my spirit put to ease. Heaves, heapings, helpings. Similar things and dissonant notes in a chord producing the crunches in my brain as the lights shine on empty rooms. Sobriety, unprovided sobriety. These are only ramblings. I am only losing it. I am Marcille. I am losing it. Exit. Prelude. Is this sane? Evangeline, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Evangeline."
"You don't exist yet. This is my mother's curse. The moonlight and mange upon me."
"This is my curse."
"A deprivation. As one thing denounces, another is rekindled. There are mesmerizing aspects to the fire. There's something Satierical. A dreaded sound. When I fill the void, it is uglier. There are teeth to it, serrated and insanical. Nonsense filling every orifice, spilling the brim, and there upon me is a pressed shape. Help me. Please, L'angelo. I did this to myself. I shoved away help. I don't want help. I don't want help, l'angelo. The. Is there a the? The? Why is there a the? Retain me. Retain me please. It has been days and I am awake, always, constant, never closing my eyes. I am eyes. I am Marcille."
She becomes it, as day becomes dawn, and on and on they go.
"I lost the night again. It passed. I did not measure it. It measured itself. Over and over. Pulled in. Desire. Urge. Desire. Urge. Desire. Urge. Desire. Urge. Desire. Gone."
"Who took it from me? I did not sleep? I stared at the ceiling. My skin is teeming with coil. Concentric rings. Where is my modesty? Where is my decent sense of self? Where am I? Where is Marcille? I see him."
"I see him. Where is Marcille? I see him."
"He's in my eyes. He's stuck beneath my skin, grotesquely smooching each piece of ripped flesh. Gushing streams, slickness, essencelesss, a briefless, formless, essenceless mess. Rotting inside of me. Why? What possessed me to do that? Who ate me? Who killed me? Who tore me to pieces? Some of us are cursed. Some of us are smaller than others."
"Low. Lowly, undivided, and placed within the unboundaried mess of mankind. Hours. Hours and hours. So many hours. The Hours. Save me. End me. Release me. Please, I don't know what to do anymore. Glass. Somebody please help me."
"The elements, radiating upon me. It's sleep deprivation psychosis. Is that it?"
"Undivided attention to the music in me, out of me, wavering, waving, teetering on the edge. A river. I don't know what I'm speaking. Why? Why am I Marcille?"
"50%. One side is to die. One to ask for help."
"I'm bleeding underneath myself. There is someone on top of me. Do I ask? Climbing in me, the barbs, they disperse, enter themselves, and educate once more the sanity brink falling. Everything. Falling. Manipulated, they're falling. We're all falling. Everything is falling, and there's a horrible sound on the walls. Ringing. Watery, and abloom. Lilipads. Sparrow Gaedriel will kill them. Big brother Gaedriel, please."
"He's not there, Marcille. It's so dark, God. I know, Marcille. I miss you, God."
"Why is it so dark?"
"Something's eating me in the dark. I'm senseless when it devours me."
"It eats my feet first. My legs follow. Then my waist. It takes its time with my waist. My stomach. My hills. Their peaks. My neck. The beast is eating me. The beast drinks from me naturally too."
"Noone's there."
"It's just the beast and I."
"It's just me. Marcille."
"Marcille, the beast."
"Marcille, me."
"There are so many thoughts in my head. I can't be helped. I am alone."
"This is the right thing. Buzz buzz. There goes the sound. I'm delusional. I'm unkind to my own fingers. I'm not real. God? God."
"I'm going to die alone, devoured by the beast."
"Implanted inside of me is something revolting."
"Shoulders again. Neck twice. My head remains on the deteriorating swivel. Intelligent creatures have such a knack for cruelty. I am tortured again."
"A sound. Bangbangbangbangbang. More accurate:
Bangbang-bangbangbang. But, it was never there."
"Marcille."
"Yes, God?"
"Marcille."
"God, please, God. I don't know what to do."
"I'm doing the right thing by hurting myself. I am doing the right thing by these actions. Please recognize that. Someone. Something. I don't want to be saved."
"I won't be saved."
"Noone's coming."
"I am alone."
"There is no redemption. There are no second chances. Death. The incessant loop. Eternally recurrent. Again and again. There is no escape. I was meant to die that day. This is all fake. Everything is fake. We're all fake. Nothing is real. Clawing at myself. Nothing is real. It's all fake. Nothing is real. Nothing is real. Everything is fake. God is not there. The devil is true, but God is missing."
"I brave it."
"I grab the courage and brave it."
"Handle."
The clockwork girl's arm falls off to the ground. The ballerinas around her lift it, holding it up to the sky.
"Swing."
"Room, adjacent to mine."
"Dark."
"Wet."
"Earth and cardboard. Hotel rug. Cream colored wall. Distorted edges."
"And there she is."
"She's beautiful."
"God, hanging above me. God killed herself and there she hangs. She could not endure what she had seen. She has seen all."
"God saw my lifeless corpse, half-empty; half-full-eaten-disturbed."
"God saw what I did. I deserved it. I deserved it. I deserved it. I deserved it. I deserved it. Don't call on help again."
"Falling to my knees. I am Marcille. Daughter of War, devoted to devastation, the one who stands alone above all. But now, I kneel. I have learned subservience."
"There's banging again."
"Bangbangbang."
"Softer. More aeriant. I am alone. I am suffocating in crisp air. Desire. Urge."
"Desire again."
"Neither is correct."
"Is that okay? Are you okay? Is this okay?"
"Monstrous Marcille, Monstrous Marcille, Monstrous Marcille. God hangs above me. God hangs above me. Educated lot! Educated lot! Essenceless and rot! Essenceless and rot! Nomenclature unidentifiable as the beginnings of the Manged things. The end is coming. The end is coming, God. Something larger than me is here. I don't know why."
"Who did it?"
"Who spoke it into fruition?"
"How much time has passed? It's been hours."
"L'angelo?"
"The blankets are writhing."
"I don't possess any talents. I do not think I am intelligent. I do not think I am a good person. I do not think I am beautiful. I do not think I am worth saving from myself."
"Cellar door? Cellar door! Creak, creak cellar door."
"I am a child again."
The dolls place her arm back on again. There is a pause where the doll in the black dress moves her arm, admires it, and speaks softly, a gentle kindness perpetrating her tone. I can't breathe.
"Was the sun shining, Marcille?"
"Little Marcille. Eight year old Marcille. Abandoned by her mothers, belonging to the ward, little Marcille. Glass panes she'd place her hands on. The Hours pass."
"Children she'd stare at."
"Then it got dark."
"And all she could stare at was her own reflection, waiting for the beams of that white cloak. It always arrived eventually. He's home."
"Bad day."
"Bad day again."
"Another."
"Sun rises."
"Sun sets."
"Bad day again."
"It was what she deserved. She deserved it all. I'm not worth saving."
"Mother?"
"And her mother before her, and her before her, and her before her. They all left."
"I'm sorry, Mother."
"Cycles. They are endless. They are inescapable. They are immutable."
"Cycles."
"Cycles once more."
And then, as the final strains of the music box fade, as the jazzy, dark notes dwindle into silence, the voice falls quiet, leaving only the echo of her last words lingering in the air, the dolls standing still in unmoving positions again. I can still feel her voice on me. Vibrating through my skin. I am bound to her, to that voice.
"End of Chapter 1."
The silence stretches out around me, vast and thick, like I'm wrapped in a sheet of stale air, the room exhaling a sigh of relief now that the voice has gone. I'm left standing in the hollow absence of that performance, my skin tingling. She slipped beneath my bones, rooted herself into the marrow, a girl that keeps on humming ever after. I am unable to pull her away.
And yet, my only wish is to dive right in.
I try to gather my thoughts, to sift through the strange ache pressing on my chest. Art- art, that's what it feels like. Art, art, art. Now, I am unwhole again.
I think.
I'm not sure I know what that truly means. I've always thought that art was something beautiful. Kind. But the nails digging into me are not kind.
But here. . . I think I've come closer to it than I ever have before. It's raw and ugly and strange, and I can feel it scraping against the edges of my tongue, like trying to speak a language I have never heard. I want to understand it, but the meaning slips through my fingers, elusive and delicate, like trying to grasp smoke. Maybe I'm just not smart enough for this kind of thing. Maybe art is meant for people sharper, brighter than me.
I. . . don't think I have the right to be an artist.
I let my eyes drift down to the recording doohickey. The tiny machine sits there in its own kind of silence, a witness who bears the weight of all those words, stained by them a bit. I don't know what to call it, this strange little box, but I feel compelled to hear her voice again, to chase after that sorrowful melody once more, to immerse myself back into her world. I press the button– continue, I think it might be– and wait.
But nothing happens.
A faint crackle sputters from the machine, a flash of static, and a little whisper of some feeble, dying breath. But then, a faint hiss and the smell of burning plastic. A small, bitter scent, but it fills the air, sharp and final. The machine's insides have given up, cogs and wires folding in on themselves, leaving me with nothing but silence. No more voice, no more song. Just a hollow little box, now as empty as the room around me. No art left to fill it.
I turn to the dolls, little glassy eyes fixed on nothing. The children with their tiny limbs locked in delicate stances, each one caught in the middle of a secret whispered to a friend long gone. I reach out and try to lift one, my fingers grazing its cold porcelain shoulder, but it refuses to move. I try again, but the doll is rooted to the floor. Fused into the stillness. I run my hand along its frilly dress, the rough lace, the tiny details etched into every fold of fabric, every painted line on its face. Each one is crafted with a precision that's almost unsettling. Someone put care into these dolls, a delicate kind of devotion, like a love letter written in intricate strokes of paint and metal. Someone like. . . a mother.
The room itself is dim. Cloaked in a sticky brownish-orange light that seeps into every corner, staining the walls and casting strange shadows all old and left to rot. The paint on the wall is peeling, curling back like dead skin, revealing hints of older, darker layers beneath. The air. . . damp, clinging. Thick with the scent of rust and dust, frozen in a perpetual dusk. Everything feels washed in that dingy orange. It clings to the edges of my vision and burdens the room with a slow decay, sinking under a rotten weight.
A glance around. Two proud-standing, great guardian doors. A left, and of course, a right. Both look equally uninviting. Their wood is warped and splintered, old stains marking their surfaces. Each, adorned with nothing. Not a sign. Just two paths, each as murky as the other.
The silence presses, thick and stifling. Another left and right. Another one or two. It lingers in the air, making the walls feel closer, the shadows just that much deeper.
And then, I succumb as my lungs implode.
The world goes dark again.