#dezeree

[doll-on-the-rocks]

V. Lies and onions.

Outside Daiki's house. Daiki and Dezeree ride their bikes, Sid and Miyako get out of Isabel's pickup truck, and Duria kicks dandelions in Daiki's front yard.

[doll-on-the-rocks]

V. Lies and onions.

"Dark brown trim framed a red exterior, with hanging flower baskets hung from the eaves over the porch and dandelions taking over the thirsty beige lawn. Daiki stopped his bike with his foot about half a block away as he saw Sid step out of the pickup truck. The twin of the girl he liked sailed past him on her bright red bicycle and splashed through a puddle in a pothole. Dezeree glanced over her shoulder and the wind pushed wavy, tangled brown hair into her face."

[doll-on-the-rocks]

XVII. Home Haircut

Table of Contents

Teens grieve. A ghost haunts.

CW medical description of lethal injuries

The mirror above the sink opened in two places. Fingerprints marked the glass down near the lower part of the wooden frame to the medicine cabinet. Dezeree took out a small, semitransparent orange cylindrical bottle with a white childproof lid, twisted it open while pressing down on the lid, and popped his medication into his mouth before filling up his hands with water from the faucet to wash it down. He closed the bottle and put it away. As he shut the mirror, his reflection grinned happily at him. Dezeree flinched away and shrieked. His reflection just looked confused and a bit put off. She put a hand to the glass and smiled softly.

“This is my room,” Duria told her twin.

“It’s the bathroom,” Dezeree corrected reflexively.

“Is it the monkey’s what?” Duria asked and then grimaced at her selection of phrases. “What did I say?” She had no desire to torment Dezeree like she had Sid. She wished she could tell her twin that she loved him and missed him and wished she could soothe the loss of herself.

“This is fucked up,” Dezeree whispered. He ran out of the bathroom and began hunting around the house until he found a pair of scissors. When he came back to the bathroom, his reflection had waited for him with a lonely look in her eyes. Dezeree began cutting his hair off. “I can’t be seeing you,” he told her, “every time I look in the mirror.”

Duria nodded. She watched him give himself a short, uneven haircut and smiled sadly at him. Dezeree could see himself now. His sister was just an afterimage when he blinked. He threw the long hanks of hair out and took a shower to wash off the itchy clippings still on his neck and shoulders and down his back. Afterward he used a comb and the scissors to try to even everything out. Duria was gone from the mirror, gone from his eyelids. He breathed. With effort, he kept breathing. Everything hurt. He couldn’t eat breakfast, so he just drank some juice and left to go catch the bus.

On the bus, the kid sitting next to him ignored him to talk to the kids across the aisle. Dezeree leaned against the window and stared out at the familiar parade of houses, trees, fences, the free couch on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, churches, little crosses to show where people had died in car accidents, American flags over porches, and on and on. The bus trembled as it moved. Brown gunk patched a hole in the back of the brown-upholstered seat in front of Dezeree. The seats had a pebbly sheen, and the floor was aluminum and grooved.

Daiki waited for him again at the bus drop off. “Whoa, you cut your hair,” he commented as he fell into step beside Dezeree. “The black lipstick is cool. Um, about your -”

“The coroner,” recited Dezeree, “found blunt force trauma injuries to her internal organs and her hand, and a...calvrial? Cavalrial? ...fracture.”

“I don’t follow,” said Daiki.

“...With dirt marks on the face indicating shoe prints,” finished Dezeree. “I read that over and over again. Mom has the articles cut out from the newspaper and left on the table. That’s not in the article; that’s from an email.”

“What does it mean?” asked Daiki.

“It means somebody stomped my sister to death,” growled Dezeree. “So you can stop hanging around when I get off the bus, just waiting to see if she’ll show up and cut your face again.” He scowled in disgust. “Freak.”

Daiki shook his head. “She’s dead?”

“Leave me the fuck alone!” shouted Dezeree. He didn’t run, but he walked quickly away to his homeroom to wait for school to start.

“Sorry,” murmured Daiki. He lingered there a second before he split off to go to his own homeroom. There he sat still and stared ahead, feeling like maybe he missed something and Dezeree was just joking to get Daiki to leave him alone. He’d worn eyeliner again and borrowed one of Miyako’s necklaces. Daiki touched the scabs where Duria had cut his face. Reciting an email describing his twin’s cause of death did not sound like a joke.

He tuned out everything going on around him to dwell on the facts and let the hope drain out. It still didn’t feel real. Clearly he’d annoyed the grieving remaining twin, and realizing that inflicted a kind of churning sensation that made him pluck at his eyebrows and sink down in his seat. When the bell rang he picked up his books and walked mechanically to his next class through the writhing sea of white and navy uniforms.

XVIII. Moments devoured.

[doll-on-the-rocks]

XIII. Doll on the Rocks

Table of Contents

A teenager under the influence kidnaps a younger teen.

CW violence, edibles, menses, sexual intentions

Electro-magnetic colors coursed through Sidney's limbs and pricked the tips of his fingers and tongue. Pieces of time slipped away unnoticed, lost under the glaze. It was a sweet, syrupy glaze, a sugar shell over the surface of Sid’s experience. Headphones sat on his neck, but the tinny guitar buzz might have been inside his ears instead of entering from the outside. Since it couldn’t settle on just one song and the continuous suggestion of lyrics overlapped and blurred out of focus, he expected the music was probably in his head. Were the headphones even plugged into anything? His fingers played along the cord and he laughed. Early night, the sky holding onto a luxurious blue tinged green near the horizon, a whole sky filled with cool, crisp, delicious air. It tasted a bit like fryer grease wafting from one of the glowing fast food restaurants floating on the asphalt ocean. The warm, salty smells layered lasagna-like between car exhaust and the river’s breath.

Sid savored the laughter of a gaggle of fellow pedestrians meandering near the greasy glow. He didn’t think he knew them, and his black and white checkered canvas sneakers carried him onward down a side street, under sodium orange auras. Bundles of dandelions waved to Sid as he passed, some fuzzy and white and others still in their youthful yellows. He had a few in his hands. The fast food slipped away behind him, replaced by ranch-style houses, towering evergreens (black in the blue night), fenced dogs shouting him away, and oily potholes. One side of the crumbling street had a sidewalk, for part of the block anyway.

“I know…” he started to say, and his hand dragged on a stop sign as he forgot where his mind went. The sign stopped him and he spent a few minutes staring at a graffiti tag on the back of the octagon. Why by himself? Sid envied the gaggle back in the greasy air. “...Where I am.” A section of time slipped away. “Do I?”

The dark closed in as the blue deepened. He couldn’t see any stars from under the street lights, but he did see familiar yards and trees and driveways. His hand traced a familiar leaning rotted wooden fence. The texture crawled across his sugar glaze, each ridge pronounced and individual but also waves, one after another, like the rippling wrinkles of wet sand at the beach where the water pushed it until it bunched up in a wobbly arrangement. This was wood, though. Just wood. He wanted to taste another mouth, feel another heartbeat under his teeth, and merge into somebody. Checkered shoes found their way through a side yard, fingertips tapped across a red bicycle leaned against the shadowed siding, then a larger, mismatched green bicycle. The window he found stood open and dark.

“Girlfriend for tonight,” Sid whisper-sang. His elbows dragged him across the sill and dumped him onto dusty carpet. On the floor of the twins’ room, Sidney checked his pocket. “Yes.” The little baggie of cookies had not run away or emptied itself. “I’ve got something sweet.”

Sleep crumbs bogged down Dezeree’s eyelids. She rolled over and covered her face with a plush frog. In seconds she returned to sleep as if nothing had disturbed her. Across the room, Duria lay in her own bed unable to sleep. She sat up and watched the boy bloom up from the floor.

“Sweeeeet,” he repeated in a husky whisper. His eyes gleamed and he held up his prized packet of baked goods.

“Why are you here?” Duria whispered.

He took it existentially and looked into the middle distance with philosophical alarm. “Why are we here?”

“This is my room.”

“Sweet.”

“Is this show and tell, or are you gonna share?” She snatched the bag away from him and popped open the interlocking plastic ridges at the top. “Did you make these?”

Sid nodded. “They’re very good. I already had one. You want a cookie?”

“Heck yeah.” Duria shoved one in her mouth and chewed as she lifted another out of the bag. “Mmm.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “...Could it be you, could it be you-uu?” he sang off-key then mumble-sang a few lines he didn’t know properly. “Darling some- uh, sii-iiick. Dum-bum-ba-badum...kiss off into the air...”

“You’re really not that good at singing,” Duria said through her third cookie.

“Humming is for birds.”

“Birds are, like, famous for singing. That’s why we call them ‘song birds.’”

“Don’t care. Walk with me.”

She passed the empty bag back to Sid. He chewed on it thoughtfully. Crumbs fell onto the carpet.

“Where do you even want to go?” Duria asked. She threw her covers off and combed her fingers through her hair. “I’m not even really dressed. All I got is these jammies.”

“Out, under the sky,” Sid replied, voice mangled around damp plastic.

Duria looked over at her sister, then at the door. The late hour hid her caution from her mind, and a soft shift in the air flowing in from the window called to her. “Too hot inside, anyway.” Still in September, some of August showed up now and then.

“Hot,” echoed Sid. He followed her back out the window.

Foliage in its messy silhouette crowded in from one side, and the edge of the roof from another, but the sky kept calling. Duria walked out into the street, traffic capillaries dead as circulation drew cars to bars and restaurants where the city still had a pulse. Above her in this residential lane she saw a black sky tinged orange from the street lamps. Cool, fresh air played with her hair and filled her lungs, a welcome change in scenery for her insomnia. One gangly, taller teenage soul shared the open atmosphere with her. He took her hand and found a direction for migration. Duria asked no questions, made no objections, simply made tracks as she joined Sid on his nocturnal travels.

“Together on the grass?” he asked, and lost the bag to the storm gutters. The two of them made two shades slipping along, careless, easy.

“What?” she asked.

“Monkey’s say,” Sid teased and touched her neck. “Monkey monkey. Say what.”

“What?”

He laughed at her then gripped her in his hands and intentions. “Or under the big toy, at the park. It will be almost private.”

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” Duria told him. A heavy breath of fog filled her from her belly upward, swallowing her into a still pond mind. Lost in ripples, she looked around minutes later to see the small park. Pebbly gravel filled a rectangle bordered in wooden beams.

“A park again,” she remarked and looked over at the swings.

Plastic slides sloped from wooden platforms and pilons. Her hand hovered near a nonary assemblage of turning plastic sections: tic tac toe, but large and tactile. Sid turned all the sections to X’s. When Duria turned her head the colors bled along behind their objects. She had the feeling of dreaming, and something in the continuity of her moment had snapped apart. The puzzle to put her moments back together looked too challenging from inside her eyes.

“I feel...kinda...sick,” Duria articulated with effort. She knew warm skin on hers. Hands? Hands, arms, chest. She knew it was there, or thought he was. “Sid?”

Sid pulled the side of her head to his chest and entangled his fingers all through her hair. “Hear me through me. Breathe with me. We can become...something...new.”

“I hear the ocean in you,” Duria whispered, listening to his chest. She thought about fish. Teeth grasped her shoulder, and nails, and the body of water pulled her down.

“I needed this,” Sid whispered. The gravel crunched underneath. It smelled of rock dust. The pebbles did not have the sharp edges of driveway gravel, nor the soft give of a bed.

Duria’s fingers could push through the tiny rocks and a mesmerizing shift rattled over her hands and past her eyes. “Whoa. Underwater?”

“Are you wet?” Sid asked. Amid the minerals, a tidal smell wafted his way. He looked at his fingers and, in the dark, didn’t quite understand. Were they darker than before? Sid rubbed fingertips together and it wasn’t slippery like he expected, but sticky. “I need just a small piece of light.” He dug in his pocket with his other hand and rooted out a small, cheap lighter with a pattern of marijuana leaves on the plastic casing. His thumb made its familiar flick and birthed a tiny fire with a blue middle. In this newborn light, Sid examined his fingers again. Red.

Duria lay under the platform with him but her eyes, for the moment, showed vacancy. Her breathing slowed to a shallow, sleepy shift in, and out, and in, and out, lungs on minimal reception. Disgust roiled up in Sid and split his sugar glaze apart. He crawled out from under the platform and shook his fingers, but they remained red, sticky, terrible.

“Liar!” Sid hoarsely choked. He dragged the girl out from under the playground equipment and wrenched her limbs through the gravel. “You’re fucking gross! You never said you were gross!”

“I don’t...I’m not gross. What did I say?” Duria slowly pieced words together. She looked around where she lay prone on the ground. “Is it the monkey’s what?”

“Now my hand is filthy. Filthy pajama whore. We were going to be something!” Sid paced and shook his hands, kicking up tiny stones as he walked. “I can’t use that! There’s nothing beautiful anymore. There should only be a little blood, just a little, because you’re a new thing, that’s all. But you leak contamination and lies.”

Duria didn’t respond because she couldn’t think, and she couldn’t think of why she couldn’t think. Muddled, stagnant, she couldn’t see through this pond that had gulped her down. The boy raved and wheeled around on the other side of the addled waters immersing her. But she breathed air. That was still true. Dusty, dry air filled her nose again and again as her automatics kept automating the basics. Then a forearm splashed through and slammed into her head. A hand caught her hair and dragged her into wild motion and pain. Her hands found a wrist and her own face, pillowed an impact at the cost of the small bones in those hands of hers. A cry drowned in her parched throat and the stars the streetlights had concealed burst forth in her orbit.

“Ssthop,” croaked Duria. She tasted rock and dust and blood and noise. Her lips swelled into her words and made the syllables somehow even more difficult. “Stahpfit, yorrurtin me!”

Sid dropped her from his hands and gripped his own arms as his feet found her instead. Something that wasn’t rock made a crunching sound, muffled and grinding. He felt the sound more than he heard it. His heel dashed down again, finding a rag doll and kicking it into the earth. Dolls don’t cry, and this one didn’t either. Meat doll. It didn’t cry, or move, because of course it didn’t. Sid staggered backwards and pushed his dusty, bloodied fingers back through his hair, cradling the sides of his skull.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” he muttered. “Just...open...another way.” Sid took a minute to catch his breath. “Whew. Alright.” Some of his distortion gave way to a glimpse of clarity, but he flinched away from it. “No, I just, I needed to. I’m okay now. Sorry.” He looked across a small field at a treeline, houses just beyond. “I’m not playing with dolls.” Sid looked down. He could barely see the figure in the shadow of the big toy. “Ria?”

He waited. The moment stretched on and nothing changed. “Ria?”

Sid crouched down and reached toward her face. He found blood again. “You just keep leaking all over,” he joked. “But it’s okay. I’m sorry I freaked out a bit. We can go someplace warm and, like, shower, have some drinks, get a pizza. Leo’s place maybe? Home is no good. Can’t you just taste the pepperoni? That’s gonna be so good. When you’re all clean we’ll find ways to make tonight still work. Oooh, I bet…” His hand traveled. Something was broken. Something was wrong. She lay right there, but he found himself alone again, and that wasn’t her.

He sat on a slide, arms hanging down over his knees, knuckles hurting, hands stiff. Sid waited for awhile, humming and fidgeting. Headlights flowed past and he looked over at the figure in the moment’s borrowed light. Halogen brilliance picked out cruel details.

“Duria,” whispered Sidney. He rose, staggered, puked, looked back again, but the light had passed on down the road. Shadows pooled where clarity had flashed, just for a second, but that light had burned itself into his brain. “Duria?” A few steps, a pause, trembling, spitting acid, unable to breathe. No use looking over there again. Grief sobered him. He sobbed, scratched at his arms, then broke into a run. Rubber soles slapped the pavement and the sky air belonged to a wholly different night, under a wholly different sky.

XIV. Smeared eyeliner.