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8

Confused

Gwendolyn

G wendolyn made her first cup of coffee at four in the morning.

She added an obscene amount of creamer and downed it in three large gulps.

It was hotter than she normally drank it, but she needed the extra help.

Ordinarily, she would make her cup and it would grow cold long before she could finish it.

Gwendolyn didn’t want to go back to sleep.

When she felt awake enough to trust her coordination, Gwendolyn went to the bathroom.

She hung her sleeping shirt up and threw her panties across the room, as if the fabric had betrayed her instead of her own body.

Similar to her coffee, she liked her showers a bit lukewarm, too.

She was a glutton for routine, but Gwendolyn turned the handle as far to the left as it would go.

The shock of the icy water made Gwendolyn wince, body tensing away from the harsh stream .

She shivered as she reached for the netted washing cloth, drenching it in body wash and lathering it along her neck.

Gwendolyn let out an irritated groan as the vivid memory of Ambrosius’ mouth against her neck burst to the surface of her thoughts.

That nightmare had been …

well, more nightmare than Gwendolyn was used to.

Most of the time, Gwendolyn couldn’t remember her dreams. She was usually out like a light, despite her recent venture into insomnia.

It was enough to rationalize the whole thing away.

Gwendolyn hadn’t slept more than eight hours in a single night for years now.

She had always just assumed it was a factor of aging.

Older people slept less during the night and more during the day, that sort of thing.

But you don’t really nap either, Gwendolyn thought as she rinsed the soap off her body.

Ugh, whatever. You had a dream about a guy you hate, that’s not that weird.

All the extra stuff was just …

a sleep deprived creative brain doing what it does best!

Even her logic sounded like bullshit to Gwendolyn, but she went with it anyway.

She didn’t have time to go online and research all the hidden meanings of everything she saw in her dream.

Or perhaps she didn’t want to know.

Gwendolyn finished her shower and slipped her sleeping shirt back on.

She would have to throw it in the dirty clothes hamper before work and swap it out with another, but for breakfast it would work.

She didn’t even bother acknowledging her panties.

Breakfast was instant oatmeal with the complimentary brown sugar packet and a fruit bar.

Gwendolyn didn’t cook much.

It was something she had done when she lived with her family.

Gathered in her parents’ small kitchen, Gwendolyn would fry the spam in her mother’s special glaze—which was just white sugar and soy sauce—while her mother would take the cooked pieces and place them onto a bed of rice and nori.

She would watch as her mother effortlessly folded it all together, creating the perfect spam musabi.

As a nearly middle-aged woman, Gwendolyn found cooking too time consuming.

It took away from her art time, and her dolls were her everything.

Meals might not have been the same quality as her family’s, but it was what she was used to now.

After breakfast, Gwendolyn made a second cup of coffee before turning off the single serve machine.

Cup in hand, Gwendolyn made the small trip past her bed, eyeing her clock.

She would have four hours to work on her doll before she had to get ready for her day job.

But that was for later.

Now, Gwendolyn turned the corner of her divider shelf, ready to greet her wonderful dolls—

Who had all moved…

Gwendolyn almost dropped her coffee, trembling hands clutching the cup to her chest as her eyes widened at the sight.

Gwendolyn looked at her doll shelf every day.

She knew it better than any other part of her house.

Even better than the app placements of her phone.

She purposefully arranged her dolls to face the balcony, so they could see the lackluster view of her apartment complex parking lot.

It wasn’t the best, but it was better than looking at nothing.

So, how the fuck did they move?

!

All her dolls were angled in a way that each doll was facing directly at her.

There would be no way she wouldn’t see them as she moved past the shelf.

As if someone had purposefully moved them in some sick—

How did that fucking weirdo get in here ?

Gwendolyn’s thoughts were frantic as she looked over her shelf.

Had Ambrosius actually followed her home last night?

No, that wasn’t possible.

Gwendolyn had a weird dream, but that was all it had been, just a dream.

Yet, there was no explanation Gwendolyn could come up with as to why her dolls had moved.

Even as she pushed the blinds of her balcony aside and yanked on the sliding glass door, the lock proved that no one had climbed up.

You’re on the fifth floor of a tall apartment complex.

Men aren’t just climbing buildings like King Kong.

You’re being ridiculous Gwen!

Still, Gwendolyn eyed her dolls with unease as she slowly inched toward her work station.

She entertained the thought of installing security cameras in her work space when she saw her newly acquired doll.

It was still at her work station, exactly as Gwendolyn had left her.

She set her coffee down at the far side of her table against the wall.

“Maybe I…” Gwendolyn shut her eyes at the swell of bewilderment.

“I don’t even remember going to bed last night. Maybe I just did this before I passed out…”

The excuse sounded weak, like the kind of thing a character said to explain the weird shit that happened in horror movies.

But Gwen wasn’t a final girl.

For starters, she was too old by Hollywood standards.

A movie producer would recast her with the latest, youngest It Girl.

Secondly, despite her parents’ superstitious ways, Gwendolyn didn’t buy into any of it.

She had lost her wonder for folklore when her family uprooted Gwendolyn from the islands and planted her in Washington state.

But the alternative meant…

Gwendolyn opened her eyes, focusing on the doll.

She would need a glass of warm water if she wanted to remove the head.

Most Miss Moxie Doll heads were attached to a neck peg that would break if Gwendolyn forced the head off without first softening the material.

She fetched a cup of warm water, using a glass she kept for her doll work under the sink.

Gwendolyn didn’t want to poison herself any more than society had.

She slowed as she neared the shelf, apprehension growing despite her attempt at rational thinking.

If Gwendolyn expected the dolls had moved again, maybe that would lessen the shock if they did move?

Yet, when Gwendolyn came around the corner, the dolls were exactly as she had first found them.

Every eye she had hand drawn staring at her the moment she saw them.

It was still unnerving, and odd given how many times Gwendolyn had looked at them and felt comforted.

To feel the opposite was …

new.

Gwendolyn shook her head, placing the cup on her workstation near the doll.

The Maddie Doll was still naked from when Gwendolyn examined the skeleton.

Gwendolyn grabbed a dish rag she kept in a drawer under the desk.

The plastic could get warm when she removed the head.

When she lifted the doll, Gwendolyn was taken aback as pieces of the doll’s hair fell to the desk.

Gwendolyn’s brow furrowed in confusion as she ran her fingers over the fallen hair.

Had the hair been damaged at some point, and Gwendolyn hadn’t noticed it before?

No, I examined her top to bottom, there’s no way…

The hair plugs were still firmly set, but as Gwendolyn turned the doll, she could see the hair was a choppy mess.

It was as if a toddler had taken a pair of scissors to the poor doll.

The shortest length of hair was just below the doll’s round jaw on the right side.

If her interest in the limited doll had only been about collecting, she would have been livid .

Gwendolyn supposed it didn’t really matter since she was going to cut the hair anyway.

But it didn’t answer the question as to how the cuts to the doll’s hair had occurred.

Another weird experience that had happened in less than twenty-four hours of entering that antique store.

A weird experience that Gwendolyn couldn’t rationally explain.

You’re just being superstitious, Gwendolyn thought as she took her scissors to the doll’s hair.

It was easier to remove the hair at a shorter length anyway.

Satisfied, Gwendolyn dunked the doll’s head into the warm water.

Removing the head went smoothly, much to her relief.

The last thing she needed was to spend her limited time fixing the neck peg.

Head now free, Gwendolyn used a pair of needle nose pliers to remove each piece of hair from the doll’s head.

Getting lost in the work was easy for Gwendolyn.

It was one of her favorite parts of doll making.

Nothing existed but her and the doll, so it was easy to let all the noise of the last twenty-four hours fade away.

By the time Gwendolyn had taken acetone to the doll’s face, her phone alarm rang.

With a sigh, Gwendolyn left her dolls to get ready for work.

The regular mundane task of shrugging on her work uniform was like putting a mask on.

Gwendolyn didn’t consider every thought in her head as inappropriate, but there was something about her work uniform that severed the connection from her brain to her mouth.

The last thing society needed to know was her unfiltered thoughts.

Last she checked, it wasn’t appropriate to tell her upstairs neighbors that she could hear them having boring sex, or that she knew the man two doors down was stealing packages.

Her opinions on the matter wouldn’t really change anything or protect what little peace of mind Gwendolyn had .

Just shut the fuck up and get through the workday.

It would be a shitty one.

Gwendolyn was working until closing, which meant she would be working with almost every employee.

A short shift once a day was bearable, simply because Gwendolyn could still hold on to her mask of polite indifference for that long.

Eight-hour shifts had gotten trickier as the years went by.

Still, Gwendolyn did her best to shake off her exhaustion as she gathered her bag and slipped her shoes on.

She did one last look over her kitchen to make sure she hadn’t left the coffee maker on before exiting her apartment.

She was in the middle of locking her door when she caught sight of her neighbor from two doors down.

He was kneeling in front of the apartment across from him, a familiar brown and blue package within his grasp.

When the man lifted his scruffy face up, his eyes caught Gwendolyn staring.

He sent her a hard look, one that she didn’t entirely understand.

It wasn’t the first time Gwendolyn had caught him in the middle of stealing, but it was the first time that she felt strange about it.

As she watched him pretend to nonchalantly knock on the neighbor’s door, Gwendolyn felt a sudden rush of annoyance.

It was similar to how she felt whenever someone bought the harder to find Miss Moxie accessory bundles at work.

That feeling lingered even as the man toed the doormat before walking casually back toward his apartment.

Gwendolyn couldn’t explain where the feeling came from.

She didn’t care if he stole mail, that was between him and the U.S.

government.

You’re just tired, she thought as she hurried to the elevator .

Gwendolyn would have to grab a bottle of allergy medicine during her lunch break.

It probably wasn’t good for her, but it was one of the best legal things that would knock Gwendolyn into sleep.

Waking up from it was a pain in the ass, though.

Gwendolyn would wake up all groggy and confused for the first three hours, but obviously the lack of sleep was getting to her.

Being disgruntled outside of her apartment just wasn’t safe.

With another sigh, Gwendolyn entered the elevator and hit the button for the first floor.

As she adjusted her heavy cardigan, she looked up as the doors were closing and her eyes widened.

Skittering across the floor just outside of the elevator doors was a spider with a blue back.