by Jeff Strand
I hear a back-and-forth grinding sound. Daddy’s sawing the latch off the attic door! I look around for some kind of weapon, but all I see are toys. A plastic unicorn with shiny hair isn’t going to do any good.
Then, they erupt from the mess in the box.
Five purplish-brown wrinkled lumps with sunglasses and legs and saxophones.
They’re some old action figure things.
And they’re singing. I am not kidding. They look like…prunes?
I think they’re singing raisins. They must have been my mommy’s when she was a kid.
I jump back and slam my backbone against a bare upright stud. My teeth clack together and I don’t know whether to be more afraid of these singing raisin things or my Daddy coming at me with a saw.
Four little raisin dudes with big white sneakers chicken-walk toward me, pumping their arms, singing. My eyes bug out (well, maybe not the swollen one, but the other one is definitely bugging) and my bladder lets go. Now I feel ashamed on top of just being scared.
I wonder for a second why Mommy kept these things. Then, I think about my grandpa and how he was meaner than Daddy. Or so Mommy says when she’s putting the red stinging medicine on my belt scratches, when she’s being nice to me.
A loud crash and a cascade of cussing tells me that Daddy’s got the attic door off.
The raisin action figure dudes dance in a semi-circle around me.
The attic ladder falls down from the ten-foot ceiling with a slam and a twang of springs, which is followed by more swearing and an angry “ow.”
I’m crying now, crouching, rocking back and forth on my heels. Am I losing my mind? I’m only eight. That can’t happen ’til you’re old, like twenty-two or something, right? I’m okay. I’m okay. I hold my hands on top of my head and repeat to myself that I am okay.
The raisins sing louder, and they spin around all at the same time. I want to scream.
Daddy slides the Christmas tree box away from the doorway. He pokes his head up through the opening, like a prairie dog.
I can’t believe he’s coming up here!
I squeeze my eyes shut, which hurts, and cover my head with my bony forearms.
I hear the raisins singing and the stomping of Daddy’s boot.
“Ha! I told you I’d get you, you little fuck!”
The singing stops and I open my eyes to the most incredible sight. The raisin things are launching themselves at my daddy. One by one, they take running leaps and grab onto his white work shirt—the pocket, the collar. One swings from the end of his blood red tie. Instead of singing now, they’re biting!
The raisin action figure dudes are biting my daddy!
And he’s screaming and swatting at them. One raisin dude—the one with the big sunglasses—climbs right up Daddy’s face and stares him in the eyeball. Daddy hits himself in the nose, missing the little guy, and curses. With a move as smooth as his real low voice, the little raisin plants his mouth on the wet orb of Daddy’s eyeball and bites down. Daddy screeches as something wet and greasy leaks down his cheek, in between the raisin’s white legs.
Another one of the raisin dudes swings up to Daddy’s neck from the very point of his collar. He digs his big white-gloved hands into Daddy’s cleanly shaven neck, leaving two tracks of blood as he slides down a couple of inches. I can’t see real good, but I think he bites my daddy’s neck. Another chomps on his cheek. One hangs on his earlobe. There’s lots of blood now, all over Daddy’s face and shirt. Daddy sits down hard on the floor, a cloud of dust floating up as his butt hits the boards. He groans and flaps his arms and legs. One raisin cartwheels off of Daddy’s flipper, lands on his feet, and bows to me.
I get up, my eye going back and forth between Daddy and the bowing raisin. I make a break for the attic door.
As I climb down the broken ladder, I hear Daddy screaming over “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” which is now my favorite song.
I think I know why Mommy kept those things. I’m going to ask her if I can have them.
She’ll probably say no, but I don’t care.
Dreams of a Ragged Doll
Cate Gardner
The ringmaster offered a resounding NO that echoed around the ring, stalls and out through the entrance. Anna picked at the stitches running across her wrist. The ringmaster stomped his foot and pointed his gloved hand towards the exit. He couldn’t want her to leave. This was her dream. Two clowns approached Anna from either side. They picked her up by her elbows and carried her from the tent. A girl with candyfloss hair and a polished smile sashayed past. Anna didn’t think the girl would be right for the circus at all, but then the ringmaster sang YES leaving Anna dumbfounded.
Anna pulled her ragdoll, Suzy, from her pocket and picked at the doll’s neck stitches. It distracted her from picking at her own. She should have left the doll in its box in the attic; shouldn’t have listened to it.
“If you carry on doing that, my head will fall off. You don’t want that,” Ragdoll Suzy said.
Ragdoll Suzy had orchestrated the audition piece—the real girl who became a doll. They’d sat in the attic all night threading cotton through Anna’s skin, covering every joint and crease and making seams along her arms, legs and torso.
Anna forced all the air from her body and flopped forward, her arms drooping between her legs, her fingers drifting through grass. A clown-shaped shadow swept over her. Anna’s spit drooled on the clown’s shiny shoes. His still burning cigarette brushed through her hair; tiny sparks flickered and died.
The mournful clown stared at her, his downturned smile both painted and real. He shook his head. Anna straightened her back causing several of the stitches running down her spine to tear.
“You shouldn’t fuss so,” the clown said, words that had infected her childhood.
A sob built in her chest. How to explain to this man who was dressed in oversize shoes, red nose and curly green wig that she was nothing without a dream. She reached into her pocket for a handkerchief. Instead, the folded recruitment flyer for The Drim & Drab Circus Troupe fluttered out. They should have said yes. Anna fussed with Ragdoll Suzy’s hair. The doll blinked but didn’t betray her animation by speaking in front of the clown. Suzy had not been so shy beneath the rafters when persuading Anna to pull her from the cardboard box.
“If I leave my dream will be done,” Anna said.
Squeals echoed from within the tent. Sounded like the Ringmaster. Yet, she couldn’t stay; each giggle, every delighted word tugged and unravelled a stitch. The clown bowed his head. Perhaps he did understand what it meant to watch a dream die. Perhaps this was her one and only circus performance. She hung her head lower to offer him a decent show, and then she turned and shuffled away, feet dragging through soil, the exit seeming an impossible distance.
“Quitter,” Ragdoll Suzy said. “If I had bones, they’d have picked me.”
The clown followed them across the sunburned grasses, out through the rusted park gates and under the railway bridge. Luminous graffiti lit the dark…Dreams Die Here. Ragdoll Suzy giggled. The clown’s breath tickled the back of Anna’s neck. Leaving the dark of the bridge, she pressed her hand to her eyes and waited for the sun’s glare to lessen. The clown pressed against her back. When she perched on a bollard outside the transport café, the clown perched on the neighboring bollard.
Anna picked at stitches running from thumb to wrist and unravelled three. Her chest felt as if it would burst from the fight to contain her loss. The clown pulled a string of moth eaten handkerchiefs from his yellow jacket and held them out to her. She tried to grab one, but her hand passed through it.
Not real. The clown looked even more mournful at the fact. He opened his mouth to object, but no words exited and he faded.
“In not recognizing him, you killed his dream,” Ragdoll Suzy said.
Anna recalled him now; a squat clown, stuffing imploding from his belly, buried amid old toys in a box bound for the attic. A tear trickled down her cheek, catching on a stit
ch end. She knew saying ‘he was just a toy’ wouldn’t cut it. Sometimes she thought the world a toy box, and that nothing was real, that someday a hand would delve in and throw her into the trash, which was pretty much how she felt today.
She unpicked several more stitches until she’d unravelled her skin up to her elbow. A lorry hissed into the parking lot and the lorry driver hopped out the cab. He looked as sprightly as a trapeze artiste. Crossing the lot, he spat on the tarmac and ran a hand through his greasy hair. Anna followed him into the café. Bacon fat sizzled and coffee brewed, determined to prove that the world was real.
By the time the driver had ordered breakfast, Anna had unravelled her left arm from elbow to shoulder. Ragdoll Suzy stretched her lips to form a black hole O. Blood pooled on the table. Anna stuffed napkins into the shoulder socket to stem the flow. Sawdust mingled with the blood, proving that the circus did run through her veins. The driver sat at the adjacent table. He stared at her between bites of toast, bacon and egg. She took the flyer from her pocket and placed it on his table. Her left arm hung from a single thread. The driver gagged, toast lodged in his throat.
“Do you have a dream? If not, we could form a partnership. Your lorry would look mighty fine stuffed with carnival tents.” She waited a moment, and when he didn’t answer, she added, “Please. Without a dream I am nothing.”
The driver pressed his hand to his mouth and ran in the direction of the toilets. Spying his keys sitting beside his plate, Anna palmed them and left the café. She’d never driven a lorry before and suspected attempting to drive one handed would be difficult. Grabbing the side of the cab with her good arm, Anna hoisted herself into the lorry. She stabbed the key into the ignition, fired the engine and just sat there. In the wing mirror, she watched the driver exit the café. He carried Ragdoll Suzy.
Anna bit the stitches securing her lower lip. Having crossed the forecourt, the driver reached up and pulled her good arm. It unravelled at the elbow. Anna dropped from the cab before she lost the arm. Ragdoll Suzy lay grinning beside her.
“Freak,” the driver said, knocking her aside and wiping his hands down his jeans.
“I just wanted to belong to them.”
She wished her clown would return holding a festoon of paper flowers and a letter of recommendation. She should have stolen him from the attic and not Ragdoll Suzy. He could have taught her how to tumble, how to make folk laugh. Anna scooted along on her bum, rolled over and used her knees to help her stand. She’d try the circus again. Be someone else. Anna pulled at her elbow stitches and reaffixed them as best she could. The blood had already begun to clot.
“I wouldn’t leave me behind again,” Ragdoll Suzy said.
With hope dented and worn, but not beyond repair, Anna bent and picked up Suzy, then headed back to the circus. A jaunty melody echoed across the park drawing in the punters. The candyfloss haired girl manned the entrance, handing out tickets and hypnotizing passers-by with her teeth. Anna wished she could sew the girl’s lips together. She was sure Suzy would agree. The doll hung limp from Anna’s fingers, playing toy.
“It’s five pounds to enter,” the candyfloss girl said, grabbing Anna’s elbow. Stitches tore.
“I’m a circus artiste,” Anna said.
In her hand, Ragdoll Suzy’s chest moved as if Suzy fought to contain her snort.
“Oh wait, didn’t I see you at the auditions? Go ahead, I won’t tell anyone you didn’t pay.”
“It was my dream to be here, was it yours?”
The girl’s eyes widened. All she could muster was, “Sorry.”
Anna loped towards the audition tent, her left ankle threatening to snap beneath the weight of broken dreams. They wouldn’t say no this time. With her arms hanging from tenuous threads, she was too freakish for them to reject. She looked at her chest, concerned the stitches above her heart had loosened; her chest ached with the want of this place. Drawing in a sawdust breath, Anna entered the tent. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The tent had emptied, the ringmaster returned to his caravan before the show, the clowns to their dressing rooms. Only empty seats, elephant dung and abandoned recruitment flyers remained.
Anna dropped to the floor, knee stitches snapping. If the ringmaster and his clowns came back now, surely they’d see her act worth investing in. And her upkeep costs were low—needle and thread. Her head dipped forward, too heavy for her neck. Ragdoll Suzy dropped from Anna’s fingers and stood with no bend to her rag limbs. Anna’s head continued to droop, dragging at stitches, exposing her spine.
Outside the tent, a barker shouted, “Roll up, roll up.”
More stitches popped. Anna dragged herself to the seats and crawled beneath them. Ragdoll Suzy remained in the center of the ring, cracking knuckles she hadn’t had until a moment before and testing the strength of a newly grown spine. Anna stared out at the ring, too floppy and unravelled to crawl back into the show. The ringmaster entered, followed by eager customers. People filled the seats. Wood creaked above Anna’s head while she peered from between someone’s swollen ankles. Center stage, Ragdoll Suzy bowed and even the Ringmaster offered a gasp.
“My dream,” Anna whispered. “You’ve stolen my dream.” No one heard her.
Ragdoll Suzy hopped onto a clown’s shoes and addressed the audience, “Everyone has dreams and in places like this, some of them come true.”
“Sensational,” the crowd agreed and broke the last of Anna’s stitches with their applause.
Attic Dog
David Raffin
The attic dog is old. He is one of the first of his kind. His circuits are integrated. He has integrity. His power source is corroded, and depleted. He is powerless. He is corrosive. He lives in your house. He gets around. You never know where he will be found. Except somewhere in the attic, definitely.
He often lies on discarded remnants of shag carpet. They are a bright orange shag remnants and he is a short faux-brown haired dog; he himself is not shaggy. Because he is both powerless and corroded, he has no bark preceding his bite.
The attic is a mess. No one remembers the dog is there.
There is a box of old crackerjack prizes in the attic. Mostly small books that came with small magnifying glasses. The magnifiers have been long lost. All that remain are the small books, filled with small jokes. They provide levity to the dog. They also provide frustration, due to the eyestrain.
There is a box filled with old horror movies on VHS tape. They are large. The boxes are extra roomy for the tape contained within. The tape within is cradled either by a thin black plastic pull-out container or an even more awkward thick corrugated cardboard pull-out unit. They are fillers. The boxes have disquieting pictures of things like axe murder. This does nothing for the dog’s sense of security. The dog can only speculate as to the actual content of the tapes, there being neither VCR or television in the attic. The whole situation serves to confound the dog.
There is a box filled with old paperbacks on the subject of UFOs and ESP. The dog has read them. The dog knows how to set fires with its mind. There is also a VHS box that details this. It does not seem like a good idea to the dog at this time. He does, however, understand that knowledge is power. There might come a time. There might yet come a time.
There is a rubber chicken in the attic. The dog finds this in bad taste.
There is a marmalade jar filled with volcanic ash— with masking tape on it and a childish script stating: “Volcanic ash, 1980.”
There is a Tupperware container filled with oil paint and mold, dated 1982.
There is a container filled with old rusty nails and screws, undated.
There are beaten and battered board games—taped, and yellowed with age.
There is a coloring book filled with anthropomorphic dogs wearing hats and vests but no pants. There is a velvet painting of dogs playing pool.
Mostly the dog does not know what to make of it. Sociologically, it is a mish-mash.
There is a book detailing physics. T
he dog knows how to split atoms. It is a theoretical understanding, unlike the aforementioned ability to start fires. He lacks proper equipment. And opposable thumbs. While he has mastered pyrokinesis he is still working on telekinesis. If he had access to the equipment he would have the means.
The dog has time. Plenty of time.
There is a box of broken clocks and wristwatches.
The dog cannot figure out how to work the latch on the door. One day. One day.
The dog has set up a system of booby-traps. To deal with intruders. The dog guards.
This is the dog’s domain. He is master over all.
There is a monster making machine. It makes spiders and scorpions from gelatinous goo in metal plates. There are various beasts throughout the attic. The dog made some of them. The ones that he has made he has named. The ones that he did not make chose their own names or go nameless.
The nameless ones cannot be trusted.
It is neither day or night in the attic, though the spiders argue that it is always night in the absence of day. The dog is not one for sophistry. He is literal minded. He was made that way. He is straight forward.
The dog cannot walk backwards. However, before his batteries were corroded, he could flip.
The rubber spiders hate the live spiders but the live spiders are without opinion regarding the rubber spiders.
The dog considers them the same though he knows they are not the same.