The Dreamhouse Read online

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  © 2017 Nicole Thorn

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  Cover Art by Eugene Teplitsky

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  ISBN 978-1-62007-181-6 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-1-948099-01-1 (paperback)

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  To Sarah, for being there when things fall to pieces.

  To Kenny, for letting me try and make up for the years I missed.

  “We are all broken—that’s how the light gets in.”

  —Ernest Hemingway

  twirled the pencil around in my fingers, and my eyes closed as I prayed that Allison answered the phone. It always scared me when a call went past more than three rings. I called earlier than normal, and I hoped that it was the only reason it took her longer to answer.

  “Come on, honey,” I whispered, tilting my head back in my chair.

  My feet were firmly up on the desk as I waited. My notebook rested on my lap, and this was my next call for the day. It was all planned out perfectly, so I could keep up with my numbers. I had so many now, and I wouldn’t let anyone slip through the crack. Never again.

  “Hey, Layla,” Allison said when she answered the phone. “Sorry, I was just getting home.”

  My heart pounded, but the beats started evening out. I slowly exhaled so she couldn’t hear me. “Hi, sweetie,” I said, smiling. “How was your day?”

  “Oh, it was great,” she said, so bubbly that my teeth hurt. “My parents are taking me to that art show, and then we’re getting a late dinner.”

  I smiled again but for another reason. Her parents hadn’t taken her art seriously for so long, and it put her in such a dark place. She resented them, and it was causing her crushing pain. But they talked a lot, and things were on the mend. I heard about every step of it, because I wanted to know.

  I talked with her for a little while before she had to go. My break was almost over anyway, and I didn’t want to miss a call. One wrong move… one little cog that didn’t turn at the right time, and a life could be lost. They were all so important, and I had to save them.

  We hung up, and I sat up straight in my chair as I tossed my notebook on the desk. It was opened to a new page for my next caller. Everybody got one because I made sure to check up on them all. Most of the time, these were just people who needed someone to talk to. They didn’t really want to die. They wanted to feel connected to another person, and I was more than happy to be that person.

  “Everything going okay?” Mindy asked as she approached my desk.

  The woman stood at almost six feet, and her black hair fell to the middle of her back, matching the length of my blonde hair. She smiled as she sat at my desk.

  “Great,” I told her. “I was just getting back on-duty.”

  I set my pencil down on the keyboard as she looked at my notebook. I didn’t let people read it because there was very personal information in it, so I closed the cover.

  “That’s good. Lydia lost someone today,” she said, looking heartbroken. “She called the police, but they didn’t get there in time.” Her glassy eyes looked away from me as she blinked. “She heard the gunshot over the phone.”

  I winced.

  Gunshot… I knew precisely what that sounded like. I knew what the air smelled like when a gun went off. I knew what it was like to have the scent of blood stuck in your nose for days. The crimson leaked into every crack in your palms because you couldn’t scrub it hard enough. I knew the sound that brain matter made when it hit concrete. The crunch of skull fragments when careless paramedics stepped over them. I knew how quickly a body went cold and how instantly it began looking unreal. And I knew how a body without a soul was nothing at all.

  My mouth went dry, and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I cleared my throat, but my voice was husky when I spoke. “Is Lydia okay?”

  Mindy shook her head. “She’s taking a couple days. I was hoping you could pick up for her this Sunday.”

  I nodded, not saying it out loud. Mindy left me, and I remained frozen, staring at my notebook without really seeing it.

  I knew what this was when I signed up. I knew we lost people, and I knew the day would come for me too. That didn’t mean I couldn’t put it off for as long as humanly possible. Life was so precious, and we only got this one. I wanted everyone to make it to a very old age. I wanted them to have what Kylie decided she didn’t want when she left us. It was all or nothing, and she went back on the deal. I would never do that.

  My phone rang, and I jumped in my seat, being ripped back into reality. I picked it up and put it to my ear.

  Before I could greet the person, they spoke to me. His voice was shaky, and he sounded young. “H-hello?”

  “Hi, honey,” I said, trying desperately to sound normal. “My name is Layla.”

  He cut me off before I could go on. “I don’t want this anymore,” he whispered. “I just… I just keep waking up, and I don’t even know why anymore. It’s always the same. Every single day.” He paused, and I heard his voice catch. “I want to sleep.”

  I stayed calm because it was in my training. The truth was that I was petrified every time my phone rang. I was just very good at faking it. “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Bennett,” he said in that same whisper.

  “Okay, Bennett. I want you to keep talking to me. Tell me why you don’t want this anymore.”

  He took a few seconds, and I was afraid I already lost him. But I heard him breathing through restrained tears. God, I’d been him so many fucking times. “I don’t matter at all, and I can’t think of anything else. It’s crushing me, and I want it all to stop.”

  I took a deep breath. “You called me for a reason, Bennett. I think that means you want to be alive more than you don’t want to. Whatever is going on and whatever is hurting you, it’s not something you should let win. If you give up now then you never get to see what happens when you get better.”

  I listened to him cry, and it was like a punch to the chest. So much pain in it, and I knew what it was like to be that desperate. “It’s never going to stop,” he cried. I almost couldn’t understand him, and I had to strain. “I’m stuck, and I’m alone. Always alone. The thoughts won’t go away. It’s so quiet, and they get so loud.” He stopped again, and the sound he made was like a bell pealing. “I need it to stop.”

  “Listen to me,” I said softly. “Nothing, not a damn thing in this world is so bad that death is the answer. It might look really appealing sometimes, but you can’t give in.”

  “Why not? No one would even miss me.”

  I shook my head, more for me than him. “That’s not true.”

  “You don’t know,” he snapped. “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know what this feels like. What it’s like to be stuck in this box and not know how to get out.”

  I didn’t say what I could have. That I knew better than most what it felt like to be trapped. It wasn’t what he needed to hear right now. “Please, just listen to me.”

  He didn’t let me finish. “I don’t want to be alone. I wanted… I wanted someone to at least know. I’m sorry.”

  No! He was going to hang
up on me. If he did, he was gone, and I failed. “Bennett!” I squeaked. “Wait. Please, please wait. Tell me where you are right now.”

  “So you can call the cops?”

  “No.” I looked down, my gaze locking on my wrist.

  They were both marked with the same jagged scar from the day me and my sisters tried to make our never-ending pain go away. But that was just it. It did end. “I don’t want to do this over the phone. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you. We can talk. Okay?”

  I listened for the click, but I just heard his breathing for another few seconds. “If I tell you, and you send the police—”

  “I swear to God, I will not call the police. Tell me.”

  He gave me an address, and he sounded so afraid of me as he did it. I knew the street instantly. “Oh,” I said. “That’s right by my house. Bennett. I will be there in ten minutes, I promise. Can you promise me that you’ll be waiting for me?”

  I could almost hear him thinking. “Ten?”

  “Ten,” I confirmed. “What’s another ten minutes?”

  He made me wait before he said, “Okay.”

  I smiled, and breathed again. “Okay, honey. I will be with you as soon as I can.”

  I grabbed my notebook, and I started running, not telling anyone where I was going. I flew out of the little office room, and I almost slammed into the wall in the hallway. I didn’t have time to wait for the elevator, so I took the stairs, almost tripping on my way down. Thank God I wore tennies to the office.

  While I missed the wall, I did not miss my VW Bug. I bashed into the hood, ribs first. I wheezed, and limped to the driver’s side so I could shove my keys in and open it. I turned it on, buckled up, and then got the fuck out of the parking lot.

  I should have gotten a ticket for all the stop signs I ran, but no one was on the rainy Washington road in the middle of January. It was freezing, but not enough for the snow to come back yet. It was due any time now, but I wasn’t hoping for it. It didn’t really matter. Not now.

  It was a block away from my street, and I cursed for a solid minute when I saw that I had nowhere close to park. They lined the streets, and I wouldn’t be able to park anywhere near Bennett’s house. I would be hoofing it. Fine, then.

  I parked on the side of the street and started running as fast as I could. The biting air stung my skin, and I wished I was in pants right now. I went with a shirt and skirt, and that was a bad call. Even with the knee socks. Fuck me and my poor planning.

  I had the numbers of the house memorized in my head, but I would have been able to guess which one it was just by the look of it. The only one without a car in the driveway.

  I ran up to the door and pounded on it with my fists, forgetting that doorbells were a thing. While I waited, I doubled over and tried to catch my breath. My hands braced against my bare knees as I called the porch some colorful names.

  I didn’t hear the door open as I went off. “Mother fucking goddammit. Never… running… again.”

  “Umm,” a boy said.

  I looked up, still gasping. The boy standing in front of me was tall. Maybe six foot two, and that made him nine or so inches taller than me. He was lanky as fuck, and in worn-out jeans and an even more worn out The Smiths shirt. His warm, chocolate brown eyes were bloodshot, but his messy brown hair was almost able to cover them up.

  I smiled. “Hey, is it cool if I throw up in your flowerbed?”

  He almost didn’t have a choice in that. My head spun, and the cold made most of my body numb. I tried to stand straight, but my back wasn’t having it.

  “I…” I stopped to gag at the cold. “Had to run. Like in that song.”

  “I Ran?”

  “No,” I coughed. “The other one.” I shook my head, and un-kinked my fingers. “Jeez. These boots were made for walking.”

  He looked at my feet. “Those are sneakers.”

  I huffed out, seeing fog in the air. “So, they are. Can I come in?” I whimpered. “I’m freezing my junk off out here.”

  I didn’t wait for the invite before I walked past him and into the house. My vision was blurry, and I dropped onto my knees to crawl a little. It was carpet, and I decided that I wanted to feel it on my face.

  I lay on my tummy and smiled at the clock. “Eleven minutes… I take off three for all the wheezing I did on your porch.”

  The boy walked around, watching me. “Layla?”

  I smiled, and rolled onto my back, holding my hand out to shake his. “I really hope you’re Bennett, or I will be so pissed off.”

  He shook my hand and then dropped it. “Um…” He swallowed. “I don’t really… know what to say.”

  I sat up, finally having caught my breath. I pointed to the spot by the couch. “Sit on down, baby. Because I can’t move my body anywhere else. We have things to talk about.”

  When he sat against the couch, the boy folded in on himself, tucking his legs against his chest like a shield from the whole world. He looked meek, beaten down in a way that I knew all too well. But he didn’t look like he wanted to die. He looked like he wanted to want to die because that would make it so much easier.

  “Do you,” he started, and then he looked up at me from his knees. “Do you know what it feels like to be afraid to wake up?”

  There it was, the wind flying out of me again. This was always so hard because I could relate to so many of these people, but I couldn’t tell them why. It was a mistake, agreeing to do that stupid interview. Everyone already knew who we were, but we gave them faces. We gave them more information than strangers should have known.

  I scooted closer to Bennett, but I didn’t touch him. “I really do, sweetie. I do what I do because I know exactly what it feels like to want to die.”

  He saw what I knew he would see when he really looked at me. What they always saw. Bennett reached out and took my arm, turning it over. His thumb brushed over the ugly scar on my wrist, and then he took my other hand. They were both lined up for him to see, and all it did was send me back to The Dollhouse. To that wretched and wonderful day when we found that nail that almost saved us. If only we knew to cut deeper.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “I know. I know what it feels like when the world is a prison and you don’t remember what hope feels like.”

  I caught sight of a little black smudge on his wrist. I turned it over to see the little x marking the spot. So I took his hand, and I stood up, making him stand too. I walked him along, and he didn’t question me. Too done with everything to fight. He let me bring him to a bathroom that I found after three tries. I closed the door, and made him sit on the counter.

  “Sit there, you wonderfully lanky boy.” I smiled. “Let mama fix this.”

  His whole body twitched, but he didn’t say anything. His eyes shut tight, and I turned the water on. I waited until it was warm before I ran a wash cloth under it. I started dabbing his wrist, being gentle when I saw the yellow bruises on his forearm. I swallowed hard, and I kept my damn mouth shut. I had more observing to do.

  “How old were you?” Bennett asked me. When I looked at him, he nodded to my scars.

  I told him the truth. “I don’t know.”

  He blinked at me twice, and his lips fell open. “How… how do you not know?”

  Because there were no days in The Dollhouse. It was all one, never-ending hell. “I just didn’t remember,” I admitted.

  Once he was cleaned off, I set the washcloth aside and looked up at him. “Will you tell me what happened that made you want to call me today?”

  Bennett broke eye contact as his hands fell to his lap. “It was a really bad morning. Just…” He paused. His chocolate-colored eyes met my dark blue ones. “Sometimes it’s so much. I don’t have people to talk to.”

  No friends. Well, I can fix that.

  “I wanna see your room,” I said, crossing my arms. “We’ll talk in there, and I’ll make sure you feel all better.”

  Somewhat reluctantly, he hopped off of the counter, and opened
the door. Then I was led to the most wonderful room I’d ever been in. It was small, but the walls were totally covered in posters, and I couldn’t see an inch of the wall or ceiling. They were all movies and comics and some random-looking art in frames.

  His small bed had been shoved into the corner of the room, and a dresser sat in another corner. He had one window, fogged over from the cold. The whole house was pretty small. One level and only two bedrooms as far as I could tell. But what I loved was that the bed had Star Wars sheets, and the little shelf thing at his window had Legos from the original movies. And the Falcon. Oh, lovely.

  “Don’t laugh,” Bennett said as we entered, obviously nervous.

  He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, and I walked around his room.

  “This is so cool.” I smiled when I got to his little desk and the old-school lantern lap on it. Laid out were a dozen notebooks, and a few stacks of organized papers. They had title pages on the top, and they were beside sketch upon sketch. My favorite thing was the crazy, old-looking type writer set at the top center of the desk.

  “Umm, what?”

  I turned, and the boy had sat on his bed, and he looked so confused. I smiled wide at him. “Are you a writer?”

  He nodded. “I wanted to be. Want,” he corrected, squeezing his eyes shut again. “I like making comics too, but I’m shitty at the drawing part.”

  I rushed him, and he flinched. Setting aside the sting of knowledge that gave me, I said, “Oh! Ya know what? I have a friend who draws. Adalyn.” I smiled at the thought of her. “She likes making books for kids. I should introduce you to her. And Riley, and her boyfriend Wilson.”

  Bennett looked like he wanted to shove me away, and he scooted back on his bed. I sat down, because there was no way in hell I was going anywhere.

  “Look, you don’t need to take pity on me. I promise, I won’t do what I did again,” Bennett told me.

  Liar. He was a liar. I could see it in his eyes and in the way he slumped his shoulders, and in the bruises on his body. He didn’t want this life anymore. So I would fix that.