by Kipjo Ewers
As he neared the bed, Fred began his interrogation by poking the doll in its chest with the bat. It caused the remote that was in its hand to fall from its loose grip and hit the floor. Fred scampered backward gripping the bat tight ready to swing as his muscles and bones began to rattle with anxiety.
He had seen more of his fair share of movies where the victim foolishly got too close and was sadistically eviscerated before they could blink. He wasn’t about to become a cliché today.
Moving to the foot of the bed, Fred looked down at a slant to inspect the doll’s feet. If it were running about the place, its feet would have been dirty due to the hardwood floor that he barely cleaned unless he spilled something.
Holding the bat by the barrel, he used the knob to bend the right foot back so that he could get a clearer look at its sole. A slight sigh of relief escaped through his nostrils, they were as clean as when he took her out the box. His eyes then narrowed in suspicion as he noticed Mary’s slippers which were still in their place next to her bedside.
It could have easily used them to move about the apartment to keep from getting its feet dirty. Grabbing the bat by its handle again, Fred held it ready to bash its skull as he carefully reached out, and turned its right-hand palm facing up to inspect it for grime.
He did the same with the left hand. They were just as clean as the feet with no sign of household labor on them. However, he thought to himself, it could have used the gloves in the kitchen to protect its hands, or washed them thoroughly in the bathroom sink.
There was only one other way to find out.
Fred slightly raised its hand up, while leaning in to give it a sniff test. At the last second, he released it taking a step back realizing what he was doing. He rattled his skull to get some sense back into it.
“What the hell are you doing Fred? It’s just a …”
In mid verbal thought, Fred became jolted by the sound of his apartment comlink buzzer.
“Who the hell?” He snarled.
He gave the doll a quick look and then stormed out of the bedroom back down the hallway to the comlink stabbing the button with his finger.
“Who is it?”
“Whole Foods delivery,” Came back a young man’s voice on the other side of the comlink.
“Wrong apartment.”
Before he could walk away, the comlink buzzed again.
“I said wrong apartment!” an irritated Fred barked while jabbing the button again.
“Are you Fredrick Garrett?” the young man yelled back.
“Yeah …” Fred’s voice softened a bit with bewilderment.
“Then this delivery is for you.”
He pushed the button to say something irate with a sprinkle of vulgarity.
He hesitated as he realized that the refrigerator was empty. Whoever threw out his takeout food was probably responsible for the grocery order, and cleaning his house. Finally, he would get a name, curse them the hell out, and then put this weird ordeal behind him.
“Hold on, I’m coming right down.”
He made sure to put the bat down leaning it against a wall in the foyer area before he headed downstairs.
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
Fred opened to door to see a young man in his earlier twenties with a clipboard in his hand wearing a Metallica t-shirt and worn blue jeans waiting for him with over ten bags of groceries on the stoop of the town house. He seemed both unfazed and slightly vexed by Fred’s visage that had not changed from upstairs which was a mixture of irritation and confusion.
Fred’s scanned the ten bags of food and other items at his feet before acknowledging the delivery man.
“What the hell is all of this?”
“Food delivery,” the young man sighed extending the clipboard. “Please sign here.”
Fred took the clipboard from him and took his time to find the purchaser’s name. His eyes widened which caused his heart to miss a beat. The order had his name as the buyer.
“This can’t be right, I didn’t order this,” Fred answered with a defensive tone.
“That’s not your username on the online info?” The delivery man asked.
As Fred continued to read, his eyes began to get blurry from the mist that formed.
“‘Garretsareawesome’ … was my wife’s account,” Fred lowered his head. “She passed away last year, and I haven’t used the account since. I don’t even remember the password. So, this has to be some glitch, or fraud, or something.”
“Oh …sorry to hear that,” the delivery man softened up a bit.
Fred quickly used his sleeve to wipe his eyes. As he scanned the paperwork again, his eyes began to widen in disbelief.
“This order was made this morning?”
“That’s what it says.” The young man earnestly nodded.
His heart began to beat faster as he also noticed that the last four digits of his American Express were used to place the order.
“Look if you didn’t make the order, I could just bring it back.” The delivery man coughed. “You can just call the store, and they will reverse the charge, I think it takes four to five days to go back to your account.”
“Uh …no,” Fred sighed shaking his head. “I was going to go shopping this weekend anyway …this just scratches one thing off my list. I’ll call my card company and get this sorted out when I get upstairs.”
With a signature, he took possession of the grocery at his feet and gave the young man a twenty-dollar tip for the hassle. He offered to help Fred bring the bags upstairs, but Fred politely declined. He then took his time carrying five bags in each hand up the flights to his apartment.
A partially out of breath and distraught Fred stood in his kitchen looking down at the order receipt and then at the bags. Penny size tears fell from his eyes as he massaged his forehead battling not to lose it. He prayed for someone to call, and say surprise it was them. Hurt replaced the fear, anger, and frustration within him. All he wanted was an answer.
“Look …whoever is doing this …please stop,” he sniffled. “It’s not funny anymore. Please.”
Fred took a moment to pull himself together, and used putting the groceries away as a distraction. It didn’t work as everything he pulled out was something she had bought.
Getting a second wind of anger Fred got on the phone with American Express to see if there were any other fraudulent charges on his card. As insane as it was for him to imagine at that point, he was hoping he was dealing with a remorseful hacker who sent him the food after running up his card.
It would not explain everything else, but he could at least chalk the delivery up to some crazy coincidence. Unfortunately, the representative checking the transaction for him three times could not find any other out of the ordinary charges except for the food delivery. For safe measure, Fred requested a new card with a different number and filed a fraud investigation.
He thought about calling back his sister and forcing her to admit that she had something to do with what was going on. But as he played his argument to her in his head it did not make sense. Even if she hired a cleaning service to clean his apartment and gave them his key, it still did not explain the groceries. He never told her the username, and there was no way she could have reset the password because the password link would automatically be sent to Mary’s old e-mail address.
Not to mention Veronica had him beat in the cheapskate department. He knew she’d rather roll up her sleeves and clean herself before she shelled out money for someone to do something she was physically capable of doing.
In the end, he decided not to pursue it. Not only did he not want to start an argument with his sister, but he also did not want to worry her. He sensed he did enough of that during their conversation earlier in the evening.
He made himself a simple bowl of whole wheat spaghetti and vegetable pasta sauce for dinner and vegged out to television to take his mind off what happened. Now and then he�
��d give the place a quick look around as if someone was watching him.
Fred stayed up for as long as he could fight off sleep. He left some of the lights on this time before retiring to the back. As Fred walked into the bedroom, a scowl came over his face as he remembered it was in there sitting on the bed, still staring at him. He envisioned himself hurling it into the hallway and slamming the door shut.
Then he remembered how much he paid for it. That he would be giving whoever or whatever it was that was doing this to him the satisfaction, even though he honestly did not have a clue what was happening to him.
Fred opted to roughly set it down for bed like he did last night. He was close to breaking the eyelids as he flicked them closed.
He then removed his work clothes placing them in the hamper instead of the floor in front of the bed. Turning off the bedroom light on his side of the bed, he slipped in between the sheets and forcefully grabbed it around its waist pulling it close to him.
He became blinded once again by warm, silent tears as he gripped the doll as tightly as he possibly could.
“You’re just a doll,” he whispered in its ear, “just a stupid doll.”
CHAPTER 3
“Holy fucking shit!”
Were the first words to come out of Fred’s mouth as he awoke the next morning to the sound of his alarm going off.
It was hard to say it with his heart in his throat.
Despite last night’s disturbing events, Fred slept peacefully once again only to wake up to something even more disturbing.
It was staring right at him.
More correctly it was resting on top of him with its right leg entangled in-between his legs nuzzled against his chest …looking at him. What was even more troubling was somewhere in the middle of the night, he began to hold it ever so lovingly in return. Fred did not know what bothered him more, its large brown eyes looking back at him, or the fact that somehow during the dead of night he moved it into a lover’s embrace, their embrace.
In the back of his mind he wanted to fling it off the bed, but once again remembered the couple thousand dollars he spent on it. He opted to slide from underneath it and leaping out of bed.
He stood there staring at it as it lay lifeless on its back.
He then checked himself to make sure no funny business accidentally went on during the night. There were no signs of discharge from him, or wet spot on it, and his boxer shorts were both on and dry. Fred stood there with his mind flooded with questions attempted to filter them out with reason.
“Nothing happened,” he huffed. “It feels like a real person, a real woman. So, you ended up hugging it. That’s all, you got carried away.”
He used this reasoning to grant him courage as he edged back over to it to get a closer look. He gave its left breast a poke and then a tight squeeze. He then followed up by giving its left thigh a hard slap.
No response.
With a reluctant nod, he was satisfied with his examination. He then glanced over at his phone to check the time.
“Shit, I got to get to work.”
He rushed stripping off his shirt and underwear as he ran down the hallway into the bathroom diving into the shower stall to do a toothbrush and wash to get ready faster and out the door. His task, however, became involved as his mind wondered to how he woke up. For a split second, he was almost sure he saw an expression on its face. For a split second, it appeared as if it was watching him sleep.
Fred forcefully shook himself to his senses. He began to get angry with himself for apparently losing it. In his mind, Fred knew it was just damn doll and nothing more. He mentally admonished himself to stop all of the foolish thoughts running through his head and to pull himself together.
As he began contemplating the pros and cons of purchasing the doll and if he should return it, he felt the hairs on his body stand on end.
As if someone was watching him.
It was an overpowering feeling that made his legs shake and his heart pound so hard it felt as if it would burst through his chest cavity. The atmosphere in the room became so hefty he ended up involuntarily relieving himself in the shower, he was now ninety-five percent sure someone or something was in the bathroom with him because its presence was making his body vibrate with fear.
A naked, afraid, and alone Fred willed his terrified body to spin around to confront who or whatever was in the room.
He unleashed a bloodcurdling scream as he saw a figure dart away through the frosted fogged up windows of the glass shower; it was the combination of seeing a shadowy image and hearing the steady thumping of footsteps on the hardwood floor that freaked him out.
Fred groaned clutching his tailbone. The sudden shock of what he saw jolted him back causing him to smack against the tile and shower knobs. He slowly rubbed the small of his spine which took the brunt of the hit as he turned to shut off the shower completely.
The pain became secondary as he remembered what caused him to become startled in the first place. Fred gingerly pushed open the door snatching up a towel wrapping it around him. He moved towards the entrance of the bathroom on the tips of his toes.
“Who’s out there? I said who the hell is out there?”
He made sure his voice was loud and forceful, even though he was shaking like a wet leaf. From what he heard the sound of the alleged footsteps went toward his bedroom. The heavy feeling he felt in the shower was in the hallway. It was as if he could feel the very air around him.
It intensified the closer he got to his bedroom.
He paused to collect himself and build some real courage. He used it to catapult himself into his room to get the drop on whoever or whatever was there. Once inside Fred quickly spun around with his hands up ready for anything. Except for the crushing feeling that was still present, the room along with the entire apartment was eerily silent. A soaking wet Fred slowly turned to the human size doll lying on his bed. It was where he left it, face up on its back. Fred moved to her side of the bed edging closer to it. He took his hand waving it in front of its face.
Nothing.
He poked it again, this time in its right cheek, then directly in its right eye.
Still nothing.
A scowl formed on his face as he glared at it.
“Buying you was a friggin bad idea.”
There was no denying that because of the doll he got two good night’s sleep. But the cost of it was heart stopping paranoia and the constant feeling that he was in a cliché horror movie when he was awake. It was making him feel uncomfortable in his own house, which was pissing him off.
As he went back to contemplating the fate of his bedmate, his eyes glanced at the silver sterling clock on her night stand.
“Shit, I’m running late.”
The doll and whatever what going on in his apartment or with him had to take a back burner to get to work. Fred rushed to dry himself off, throw on some deodorant, body lotion, and his clothes. He grabbed his phone and personal effects tossing them into his bag before rushing out the door. Because of the shenanigans that went down, he did not have time to make his breakfast and lunch and would have to buy something out on the street.
Or so he thought.
Fred was going to be late.
In the center of their dining room table, was his red lunch pail that Mary bought him for his first day of work … That he stopped using after that day. The same lunch pail stored in one of the bottom cabinets in the kitchen. Fred’s heart began beating to the levels of a rabbit being chased by a fox as he timorously edged towards the lunch pail.
He lifted it first before opening it. His emotions along with his stomach were in the middle of a hurricane swirl. The weight he felt meant there was something inside of it.
Fred’s right eye began to twitch as he set it back down on the table. He was nearing the border of nervous breakdown land as he just stared at it.
His mannerism became robotic as he popped the latch and slowly opened the lid praying to see a severed hand or snak
es spill out. At least it would officially signify that he was certifiable. Instead, he saw something else that made his blood boil.
Inside was a neatly made turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread, a small tin of Pringle sour cream potato chips, a tangerine, and a small bottle of water.
Fred’s eyes began to glass over as the rage within him began to grow.
“Goddammit, Ms. Santiago!”
He marched toward his door heading to her apartment again. He didn’t care how bad it looked cursing out a senior woman, or if it caused him to get evicted. He did not know how she did it, but she was the only logical culprit, the only one he ever told when she asked him what was in his lunch box one day. Now he was going to tell her to stay the hell out of his life and apartment once and for all for however long he would be renting even if it meant bringing her to tears.