“This is your final and most brutal test. Hell, I know you’re ready, but I want you to let go of everything and let the anger and bloodthirst take over. Real soon, you are going to have to do some horrific things, and it may be to people that you once cared about. So you will have to lose the guilt and the remorse and just go for it,” Bess said, jumping down and dragging out a black sports bag from the seat in front. I unzipped the bag, and inside where six bottles of vodka, a length of chain with a padlock and a torch lighter. I could hear static on the drivers radio and Bess began to dancegrabbing my leg.
“Watch this!” she said, her voice exuberant. She opened her mouth wide and sat perfectly still, her amber eyes looking like they were flashing with sparks of electricity. The driver’s radio crackled and then a voice spoke.
“Miguel, the road ahead is blocked. You will have to take a detour along Foxglove Drive.” The bus came to a halt, and turned, heading up the hill into the woods. Bess closed her mouth.
“Wasn’t that cool?!” I nodded, impressed at the new talent she’d shown me. I wondered what else she could do, that I hadn’t seen yet.
“What now?” I asked.
“Just wait. A little further down the road and then you will see!” The bus cruised up the hill until we reached the top where you could see a stunning view towards the coast in the direction of dad’s drug den. Bess went as still as the dead again and her eyes looked like they were burning from within. The bus stopped dead, and the driver cursed, pumping the gas, but nothing happened.
“Sit tight kids. I have to go and check the engine,” he said, opening the door and going out. There were groans all round. Everyone wanted to get home and eat. Some kids got up and began walking up the aisle, hanging over seats and talking to their friends. I felt a rush of adrenaline, and I stood up, picking up the sports bag, my eyes too feeling like they were aflame. Bess and I began to sing, and soon the kidscalmed down and sat back in their seats like automatons, joining in with us.
Trapped inside, No way to leave, as the flames burn brighter. Kiddie meat, so cooked so lean, pop goes the weasel.
They sang the verse over and over, getting more erratic and frenzied each time. I smashed the bottles of vodka at regular intervals along the aisle, but the children, in their trance-like state did nothing, they just kept singing. Bess and I got out of the bus and went to check on the driver, who looked puzzled as he heard the melodic noise from inside the bus.
“Boo!” Bess shouted, startling the driver as I slammed the hood onto his head. He coughed, projecting blood all over me. I slammed the hood again and heard a crack as his nose broke. I kept doing it over and over until he was slumped over the engine bay, his head split open and his features unrecognizable, his brain matter splattered all over the engine and underside of the hood, looking like strawberry Jello. The singing had reached hysterical levels and Bess skipped to the open door of the bus, cackling like a lunatic. I walked slowly, yet with purpose and placed my bag on the floor next to the bus, getting out the padlock, chain and torch lighter. I climbed aboard and secured the chain and padlock around the door lever so that they wouldn’t be able to get out. I could see the vodka dribbling down the steps of the bus as I exited, and in one swift motion, I lit the flammable liquid, the spark instantaneous. I then closed the doorfrom outside.
Abruptly, the singing stopped as the little bodies were engulfed by flames. Bess and I stood holding hands as we watched bloody red fists banging on windows and little faces devoid of hair and skin howling to be set free. But we didn’t set them free. The raging flames reflected in our dead eyes, and I felt nothing.
I awoke, an acrid smell of smoke in my nostrils. Panicked, I looked around and realized that I wasn’t in my room, but laying in the undergrowth in the woods at the top of Foxglove Drive. I was no longer wearing the weasel mask. Bess was next to me, completely still. I craned my neck to look through the trees, and I saw the firefighters crowded around the bus, its carcass still smouldering. Groups of parents were being restrained behind police barriers, wailing in anguish, desperate to find the remains of their dead children. I promptly threw up. Bess had tricked me. This hadn’t been a dream.
“Why did you make me do this” I seethed, “this wasn’t what the Dollmaker would have wanted!”
Bess came alive then. “I’m tired of doing what the Dollmaker wants all the time. Though she created me, I’ve spent my whole existence doing whatever she has asked. I was thinking about what you said. I don’t know what will happen when all of this is over. So I wanted to go out with a bang, literally.”
“But why kill kids. They’re innocent,” I said sadly.
“Because I could never be one,” Bess replied, tears trickling down her cheeks. I picked her up and we made our way through the trees away from the carnage and back home.
7 Naughty little bess
For the next couple of weeks, I was shell shocked. Bess had been absent, just an inanimate doll that glared at me mockingly from my bedside table. In the end, I’d had enough of her staring, so I put her on the top shelf in my closet.
I felt the guilt churning inside me, threatening to overtake my emotions and have me running to the cops and turning myself in. For some reason I didn’t, knowing that if I ended up in jail, then all of this would have been for nothing, my life would have no meaning, and I couldn’t let Savannah down, especially when her own creation had rebelled against her.
I didn’t have any murderous dreams; inside my head was just white noise when I slept. The nothingness felt unusual and made me feel anxious, being that I was so used to having these horrible nightmares for so long now, so I had to focus on something else. I went to the library to study for my exams. I saw Briarfrom a distance, and she seemed in another world and totally blanked me. In fact, quite a few people in my senior year looked lost and on edge, similar to how I was feeling. Were they the children of the people who hurt Savannah? It might just be a coincidence, but when I went to question any of them if they had dolls, it was like an invisible force pulled me back. Despite my impatience, I knew that soon all would be revealed.
My dad rang me in floods of tears, apologizing for his outburst and said that he and Angel had finally gotten help to quit their drug addiction. He told me that he wanted to make it up to me and we’d have to do something special for my birthday. I didn’t relish going to that crack den again, but he assured me that they had deep cleaned the house and threw away all of their drugs. To be fair, he sounded more sober than when I last spoke to him. I agreed to go for a birthday dinner with him on the eve of my birthday, in just three weeks’ time, just the two of us, to a new boutique restaurant that had just opened up on the bluff. They served dinner in air-conditioned glass pods that overlooked the ocean.
My exams went by without much fuss, though I felt like I was just going through the motions. I was confident that I would get into the college that I wanted to go to, that being Cornell, the furthest away from home. All of that seemed a pipe dream at the moment, frat parties, mixers, fucking hot girls and carving out an academic future. I felt sad and also victimized because of something that had happenedbefore I was even fucking born. It just wasn’t fair. Disgruntled and feeling lonely, I went and played tennis, my opponent being the tennis ball machine. I smiled wanly as I remembered saucy times in the equipment shed. I hit each serve expertly and swung my racket until the sky turned pink and I was dripping with sweat. However I still felt that I had an itch that needed scratched, but I just wasn’t sure what it was. I took a long, soothing shower, feeling the ghost of an erection as I remembered fucking Briar against the tiles. Then I put on some sweats and went to the kitchen.
Being that it was warm outside, Florian was busy making a scrumptious salad and some warm crusty rolls. I could feel myself salivating as I watched him slice up juicy tomatoes and crisp, iceberg lettuce.
“Ah Caspian!!” Florian said grinning, “your mom is in the dining room. She’d like you to join her for dinner.” I inwardly rolled my eyes and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I was definitely gonna need alcohol to take the edge off.
Mother was seated at the head of the futuristic, enormous glass dining table, looking sheepish, clad in a fuchsia body-hugging long dress that accentuated her big tits. Jeez, I shouldn’t be checking out my mom, but my teenage libido seemed to have other ideas. A place was set for me to her right, so I sat down and gazed at the garish modern art oil painting on the wall in front of me.
“Caspian, I am aware that I may have beenslightly harsh to you since your father left,” my mom said, sipping her chardonnay.
“Just since dad left, are you serious mom? You’ve been on my back my whole life. I’ve never felt like a real son to you, more like a project or a fashion accessory that you no longer wanted when you divorced dad.” My mother didn’t respond, and there was an awkward silence, so heavy that I felt like I was being suffocated. Finally, she pushed a small black box wrapped with a metallic gold ribbon over to me.
“Hopefully, this will make up for it. Happy birthday Caspian,” she said, a shadow of a smile on her ice maiden face, “I know it’s a bit early, but you’ve been studying hard, and I know you’re going to do well in college. You deserve to be rewarded.”
“Buying my love like you’ve always done mom!” I wailed, leaping up with such force that the chair fell over and clattered noisily on the floor, “I never cared about all that. I just wanted loving parents. I just wanted you to be my mom.”
“You know I’m not a tactile person!” my mother said, getting exasperated and lighting up a cigarette.
