Dolls Don't Die

Another present was received by dawn.

A simple wooden box, dropped right in front of Viktor's iron gates. No one watched them bring it. No one was recorded doing it by any camera. It was there, as if a ghost had just dropped it there.

Viktor did not wish for Lila to view it initially.

He did not want Lila to see the box so simply.

But, she did.

Her name was scribbled across the top, in the handwriting she knew immediately — the same handwriting that used to sign her body over on store receipts in her parents' filthy ledger.

This writing belongs nowhere else.

Dmitry's hand.

She knelt alongside the box, bare knees scraping on concrete, fingers quivering and trembling slightly as she touched the lid. Viktor towered over her, jaw clenched in a tight enough knot that it might well break through.

Inside was a doll.

But not just any doll.

It was her doll — the one she had ever had permission to keep in the brothel, the one she used to grip and clutch in the dead of night whenever the floorboards and heavy boots creaked across it. It was dirty, the skin of it stained by years and fingerprints, yet it was hers.

Metal handcuffs, small in size and appropriate for a child's wrist, were wrapped around the doll's neck.

Nested and tucked alongside it was a photo, yellowed at the edges.

The picture was of Lila when she was thirteen, standing next to Dmitry in a shabby and cheap hotel room, her smile painted on, her eyes expressionless and dead, his hand on her back.

Scrawled across the bottom were the ominous words:

"Still my little doll".

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lila didn't scream.

She didn't cry.

She stood there, gripping the doll so hard that the seams burst, the stuffing spilling between her fingers. She breathed harder, her breathing becoming jagged gasps, but her eyes remained dry—fixed on that image as if gazing upon it enough would reduce it to cinders and burn it to ash.

"Take it inside," he whispered, but she remained still, didn't move.

"Lila," his hand grazed and brushed across her shoulder.

She turned on him so quickly it caught him by surprise. "He stole this from my room," she explained in a hollow voice. "I had hidden this doll under the floorboard when I departed. No one had any idea that it was there."

Viktor's belly curled in anger, coiled with rage. It meant that Dmitry had accessed her room—again in the brothel, perhaps even after she had departed. Burrowing in her childhood like a scavenger stripping meat off a corpse.

He is not simply watching. Lila's voice shook in anger and trembled in fury. "He's rewriting my entire fucking goddamn history." 

Viktor attempted to grab the doll, but Lila clutched it closer, holding it to her chest as if it were a lifeline.

"I need to know," she breathed and said. "He took what else? What else does he own?". 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

That evening, the second present was received.

This one was placed on their bed.

A flash drive, covered in lace panties that Lila had not seen in years—those that Dmitry had purchased for her himself.

Viktor plugged in the drive in his laptop, which would prove to be a bad decision and he knew that it was a mistake. But some poisons you have to drink just to understand the sickness.

The screen came to life and displayed old footage—grainy, black-and-white surveillance footage from a nameless motel.

Lila, at age fourteen, is sitting on Dmitry's lap.

She was smiling, leaning in to his caress as if it were the norm. As if it were love.

"Stop," broke Lila's voice as she took a step back. "Turn it off."

But it continued to show.

Dmitry's tones echoed through the room, a snake-like whisper. "You are my favorite, little doll. You always obey Daddy."

It was the voice of the foreplay that Dmitry loved!

Viktor slammed the lid of the laptop shut, gasping like a bull on the prowl, like a bull before the charge. Across the room, Lila had her arms clasped around herself, her skin crawling with memories that she tasted on the back of her throat.

"He isn't coming for me," she whispered. "He's coming to remind me of who I was, who I used to be."

Viktor took two steps across the room, grasping her chin hard, and made her meet his eyes. "And what are you now?"

Lila blinked, shuddering beneath his hold. "I'm yours,"

"No," Viktor's thumb outlined her lower lip. "You're nobody's doll anymore. You are the queen that should be feared."

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

But fear was a capricious emotion.

For when the third gift arrived, even Viktor was taken aback.

Left directly on Lila's pillow was a bundle of sheets, freshly cut from the bed of the brothel where she grew up.

They were still warm—because Dmitry had murdered the girl lying there now, a new victim, a younger girl in a wig that was styled just like Lila's hair was.

Pinned to the sheets was a wedding invitation.

"Dmitry and his doll — together again."

The date: in 48 hours from now.

The location? That very motel where the video was shot.

Lila did not breathe. Didn't blink.

And then, she laughed.

A hollow, shattered and broken sound, the type of laugh one makes after there has been too much agony to contain. After too much pain.

"Unfortunately, he believes this is still a game," she whispered. "He still believes that I'm a weakling." " He still thinks I am weak " 

Viktor cupped her face, pulling her in towards him, his tone a growling whisper. "Then we'll show him how wrong he is."

Lila's smile sharpened into something feral.

"Let's get married," she whispered and said to Viktor.

Viktor asked her. When?

Lila answered, "At his funeral."

Let's give that motherf**ker what he wants!