It’s strange how you spend your entire life with someone and it turns out you don’t know them at all.
You don’t know yourself.
You wake up every day and take yourself for granted when that self has dissociated into something else.
Something potent.
Something criminally insane.
I spend the entire night reading the book. Dolls.
The alter ego never allowed me to read the book before, or come near it until completion.
Until I went in to search for that alter ego and didn’t find it.
I found the book, though. The full manuscript was left in an envelope on the table for the agent.
I found the clever words that hinted something real but still remained in fiction land.
What Gav did to his dolls, though? Yeah, that was described in meticulous detail.
But Gav didn’t want any of those dolls. They were plastic. They weren’t real.
Gav’s father didn’t let him play with dolls. After Gav’s mother’s death, his father brought him to his knees and told him he’d now take his mother’s duties.
Gav’s father hit him and touched him. Gav’s father took his virginity when he was nine because he had the right to before anyone else. He made him, so he got to own every part of him.
Gav’s father was depraved.
Gav became insane.
He didn’t know it, though. Gav is like Antoine Roquentin from Nausea. Antoine didn’t know he had an existential crisis, and Gav didn’t know he was insane.
Criminally. Psychologically.
Gav hid his favourite doll under his pillow and kept looking at it while his father fucked him, pushing his head against the pillow to muffle the sound so no one in the house could hear.
The doll had long blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
The doll smiled at him every night his father came for him.
The doll kept him sane.
The doll made him feel safe.
He became her Doll Master because that was the only thing in his life he had control over.
Gav’s father fucked him until he was eighteen. Every night. No exceptions. He told Gav he loved him and he couldn’t live without him, as he bled him. He told Gav he was his one and only as he whipped his back.
Gav just looked at his doll. Even when he grew older. Even when everyone at school called him a nerd, and the most popular girl told him to watch it when he tripped into her.
Gav promised to ruin that girl’s life.
Then Gav’s father died in an accident. Gav was no longer tormented, but he cried that night. He cut himself to feel the blood his father used to extract out of him.
He cried when no one hit him and fucked him.
Gav masturbated with his doll, but he wasn’t satisfied anymore.
So Gav decided to find a replacement for his father. He married an abusive woman who spoke like his father did and raped him in the same way.
Gav got his father back. He got his balance back.
And every night, when his wife was asleep, Gav stared at that doll. He’d smile and tell her, “Your master is here, so you can sleep, Doll.”
She didn’t listen to him sometimes, so he placed her between his legs and punished her.
Gav had a daughter, but she wasn’t a doll. She was just an extension of him. He didn’t love her like he loved his doll.
His daughter was a reminder of his cruel wife, too. She looked so much like her, and every time he saw her, he wanted to push her away so that his wife would only beat him.
Gav knew he had to act normal. He was good at acting normal. No one suspected him — not even in his father’s mansion. His wife didn’t suspect him either.
Gav was a good boy.
He raised his daughter to be a good girl. He knew when to cry and how. Gav practised smiles and tears every day. He practised people, too.
He watched them and knew how to get to them — how to make them like him. The more people liked him in parties, the harder his wife raped him. So Gav made himself more likeable until his wife nearly killed him with her beatings.
Gav smiled when he fell asleep hugging his doll.
Then Gav’s wife found the doll. She made fun of it and of him. She told him he was a psycho and threw the doll into the fireplace. Gav screamed as the smell of burnt plastic filled the air.
His wife killed his doll.
Gav didn’t know how it happened. One second, his wife was laughing as she left. And the next, Gav ran behind her and pushed her.
She fell and then she no longer breathed.
Something inside Gav unlocked. His father was dead. His wife was dead. No one understood him or his needs.
The night his wife died, Gav cried because he couldn’t smile anymore.
He’d lost his doll.
But then he found her. He’d seen her before, but he had his doll at the time, so he didn’t care much about any other doll.
But that night was different. That night, she was crying. His doll didn’t cry, she only smiled.
Now, she cried for him. She was sad for him, and Gav decided he’d found his doll again.
Gav knew that he’d own that doll.
He didn’t want to hurt her, though. He didn’t want to unleash how much he missed her.
So he found other dolls, temporary ones. He hit them from the back, masturbated to their helpless bodies, then left them in the forest.
They had golden blonde hair and bright blue eyes. They looked like his doll, but weren’t.
Now, Gav has his doll. She comes to him. She smiles at him and compliments him.
He cooks for her, washes her, and brushes her hair. He changes her clothes and takes pictures of her. When no one is looking, he masturbates to them.
To her.
His doll.
The one he’ll own forever.
No one believed in his happily ever after, but he did.
He believed that he and his doll would have forever. One way or another.
My hands are unsteady as I find the pictures in the box. Countless pictures of Silver in several indecent positions — while she’s asleep, half-naked, through the shower peephole.
The door to the office opens and I glance up.
Sebastian stares at me. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you have a gun?” I ask in a voice I don’t recognise.
He nods.
I never saw it coming when I should’ve.
That’s what happens when you watch everyone else except for yourself. When you observe everything except for the thing that’s right in front of your eyes.
I never recalled Dad’s last words, but now, I do.
When I ran outside that day, I was scared because I’d heard Mum scream.
I thought something had happened to her.
Dad is drowning in the pool, blood oozing from his head.
The sound of gurgling nearly suffocates me. Dad is going to drown.
I don’t want him to drown.
He reaches his hand out and I extend my smaller one. The red water is pulling him under. The red water is taking him away.
“Dad…” My whisper is haunted, my small hand trembling along with my entire body.
His face contorts. Chaos. It’s coming back.
Just like it took me to the dark, it’s now taking him.
“Y-you’re a monster,” Dad gurgles on the water. “R-run, Cole.”
Then he’s gone.
Run, Cole.
Those were his last words to me. Not the ‘You’re a monster’ part. He wasn’t looking at me when he said those words.
He was looking behind me.
At the shadow I couldn’t possibly sense because I was shaking, watching Dad drown and not being able to do anything about it.
He was looking at Gav.
Or what’s written in the book as Gav.
Gav is my mother.
Silver is her doll.
