That night was Gole's night to clean his hair. Water was boiled, a special soap mixture was prepared, and Gole was made to lean into the bucket of boiling water and harmful soap mixture so that all of his hair could soak. He tried to minimize the closeness of his skin to the searing heat and to the caustic chemicals, so he ended up leaning over the edge of the bucket, pitched forward so that he had nothing to look at but the unsettlingly crystalline blue water that his hair was in.
He stayed in that position for a while, until his bones ached, and he had to turn over. Carefully maneuvring, Gole flipped onto his side, wincing as his sore neck protested to the awful added weight of his wet, long hair and to the feeling of the bucket pressing against it.
Gole contented himself with staring into space – looking blankly at the blank expressions on the store's dolls that surrounded him. He recalled how he had felt the first time he was propositioned to work in the boutique.
Dolls? When he started working, he had no particular fondness for the extravagant little creatures, and up until he met the doll, he had started to loathe them all. Truth be told, he was frankly more than a little unsettled by their eternally youthful little faces, and seeing the spinsters of the store – the ones who were unlikely to ever find a little girl to belong to – he found their spider-webbed little bodies disturbing. It somehow made it so much worse, when he took into consideration that the black-haired ones had his own essence in them.
Thinking about the doll's dark little collection of his own cuttings only succeeded in worrying him in the near-dark of the abandoned shop, so he tried to glance around a little more, trying to find something pleasing to rest his gaze on.
From their different positions, the dolls, stared idily at Gole, mocking him in their hand-made little dresses, perfectly pale skin, and overlarge, angelic eyes. Gole scanned over them, until he had to turn over onto his other side, his neck becoming too sore. Turning, he nearly missed the sight of the naked, partially made doll that stood next to the normal dolls.
A strong reaction seized Gole then, as he felt a liking so powerful for the imperfect little doll that he could very well have believed it to be his first exposure to love. They both stared at each other, until Gole goth the courage up to speak to the doll.
“What do you want?” Gole challenged, trying to put off an air of bravery, despite the awful stutter that his heart had.
I was just watching to see what you were doing. The doll said softly. Maybe it was the near-dark of the shop making it appear so, but her eyes seemed to glisten, so like those of a real girl's.
“You could've said something.” Despite his best efforts, Gole's voice came out sounding defensive, childish.
“Your hair will be taken?
“...Yes. It'll be woven into your head, once you're finished.”
The doll was so silent for so long that Gole thought that it had fallen asleep, or whatever it is that the doll did as a way of sleep. Finally, though, it spoke back up. Will I be put into the kiln again?
Gole was silent then, at a loss for what was the right thing to say.
The doll began to climb down the table, and it began to walk awkwardly over to him, looking far too real, and at the same time, unreal. It walked over to the bucket and rested its hands against the bucket's outside wall. I'll be lonely again. Will you come with me this time?
Gole looked away, breaking his gaze into her eyes. “I'll be burned alive, if I do that. You care about me, like how I care about you, right?”
Gole was surprised at the strength of the doll's tantrum. And with its strength, as it nearly ripped the bucket of rapidly cooling water and lye up, if not for Gole's grip on the bucket. It howled in rage, throwing itself to the ground, and refused Gole's hands as he tried to comfort it.
The doll cried for a long while, and Gole was left to wonder – and hope for – an end to the tantrum. His ears and his heart ached as he heard it carry on, but the only thing he could do was to occasionally look over at the doll, and feel lucky that it had no real lungs in its body, as its endless weeping worried Gole that the doll would run herself out of breath.
Eventually, the doll stopped, right around the time that the water in the bucket had grown unbearably cold. It made a very feminine sniffle, and when it lifted its head up to look up at Gole's, he was shocked to see a return of the reddened, raw face that he had first seen when the doll had broken through its first “face”. Its eyes had lost their luster, instead looking then like ugly, beady black spots.
You must come with me. She said to him, with a surprising amount of authority.
“I'm a human, I'll burn and die in the kiln.”
It was silent, staring up at him with its awful, uncertain features, until it made its way back to the back room.
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