Doll Face by Tim Curran Page B

rat.
    With a cry, he reached down and felt his hand brush against a greasy pelt that almost seemed to palpitate with the verminous life within. Goddamn thing was no bush league sewer rat, it was a monster the size of a cat and if he doubted its intentions before, there was no mistaking them as it bit into his leg and brought a hot, needling pain to his calf.
    Chazz grabbed at it, clutching a thick rope of tail that squirmed in his hand like an especially unpleasant snake. He ripped the rat away from his pants, feeling its claws tearing at the material as they tried to maintain their hold. He had no idea what he had in mind other than peeling that son-of-a-bitch free, but he found himself swinging it around in loose circles, seeming to enjoy the power he held over it. Once he had picked up the necessary velocity, he let it fly.
    It hit a patch of moonlit wall with the sort of force that should have injured it and made it bleed. But it left no blood splotch. In fact, as it hit the wall, it simply fell apart…it broke into pieces.
    Chazz let out a muffled cry.
    It wasn’t real. Like everything in this place, it just wasn’t real.
    In the moonlight, he could see it there on the floor. Its head was hairless like that of a possum, detached from its body, the jaws still trying to bite. Two of its legs had fallen off and they were still moving, still trying to claw. But the very worst thing was that its body had broken open and he could see what looked like whirring gears inside it, spindles and springs.
    There was no end to this shit.
    The rat was like some windup toy.
    And as this settled into Chazz’s mind, mixing up in there with the rest of it and making him more confused and pushing him that much closer to complete lunacy, he heard another sound.
    Creak, creak.
    He looked around. It was Lady Peg-leg again, it had to be Lady Peg-leg again…but no, as he peered out the window, he saw that she was no longer in the street. He couldn’t see her anywhere.
    Creak, creak, creak.
    And besides, this sound was in the room with him.
    Yes, over there beyond what he thought was a couch, he could make out a dim figure. It was sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth, back and forth.
    Creak, creak, creak.
    “Who…who’s there?”
    And a voice, feminine in caliber, throaty and breathless, said, “It’s me, doll-face. And I’ve been here a long, long time.”
    A woman, another doll woman.
    He nearly started cackling hysterically at the idea of it.
    “Stay away from me! You come by me and I’ll kill you!”
    The voice giggled in its throat. “Oh, you don’t have to worry about me, doll-face. It’s the old lady who wants you. The peg-leg lady. She wants your heart. You have a nice, strong heart and she doesn’t have one at all. She wants yours.”
    “Fuck you!” Chazz shouted.
    The chair stopped creaking. “You only had to ask, doll-face. You only had to ask.”
    The doll woman had risen from the chair now and was coming with that same clicking sound as the doll man in the street. She moved with a shambling gait, painfully and slowly as if one leg was longer than the other. He could see her reaching out with sharp fingers, long hair sweeping from side to side as she got closer.
    With a scream, Chazz vaulted across the room to where he had seen a door.
    He barely got through it. Her fingers dragged through his hair and then he slammed it shut behind him and he could hear her nails scraping at the other side as if they were not nails at all, but claws.
    The door had a lock and he set it.
    She continued to claw at the other side. “When I find you, doll-face, I’ll fuck you.”
    Chazz threw himself backward, his skin crawling again.
    He stumbled over a chair and fell into a pool of moonlight that made his fingers look ashen and almost phosphorescent like the petals of night-blooming orchids. He was shaking, drooling, chattering his teeth. Tears ran from his eyes and he could not throw together a single coherent