The old woman was rough on his scalp, as she always was when she sheared her ugly, gangly sheep. Gole was nervous, and despite how he tried to calm himself, he ended up with the wrath of the impatient shop owner, and she almost seemed to jab him in the ear and in the scalp more than once when he made the occasional, unfortunate movement.
His hair came off of his head, and was gathered with more care than Gole's haircut had been handled. He was told that they would begin to implant his locks into the doll tomorrow, and so Gole was directed back to the kiln room. He was told that tonight would mark the last firing for the doll.
Dread filled Gole's mind, and every step he made towards the back door felt as though it were filled with thick liquid. Since the night before, he had taken the doll's insistence that he go into the kiln with it more seriously. He had also reminded himself of the strange voice that he had heard from the doll when she was newly born. The voice that reminded him, somewhere deep in the darkest part of his mind, of a corpse that he had once seen in the first weeks of spring, locked in time by the ice that had a hold on it, but made material and mortal by the rising heat that had allowed maggots and decay to take it. Black, his face had had a burnt look to it, but looking back, Gole guessed that the corpse had belonged to a transient, who went through the worst of the cold winter.
That was what the voice – the doll – had begun to remind him of.
She was waiting for him, like he knew that she would be.
“Why can't you lie down, and look like a normal doll?” Gole asked it angrily.
The doll didn't answer him, and Gole didn't expect her to. He busied himself with readying all of his instruments and trying to appear annoyed with the doll, and not absolutely frightened of it. As he worked, picking up the pile of wood and putting it under the kiln, putting the furniture in the correct place, Gole was relieved that the doll hadn't optioned to talk. As he came to the understanding that he would have to pick the doll up, and as he turned to look at it, the doll finally spoke.
Your hair... was it cut? Goal was silent, staring at the doll, until it began to speak again. Our time together is ending, isn't it? Isn't it?
Despite his resolve not to, Gole could not help but say something to the doll who looked so beseechingly up to him. “We're going to finish this up, and this'll be the end of it.”
Gole expected a strong reaction from the doll, but instead he got silence. And then, suddenly, the doll wasn't standing anymore, and it was lying on its back, on the ground.
For awhile, all that Gole could do to not start feeling like he could yell was stare blankly at the doll. He could not fathom what, exactly, it was doing, and why it was doing it. Finally, however, he got sick of staring at it – and, secretly, a slow fear began to spread through him – and so he moved towards the doll.
He stopped walking as he stood over the doll. He waited, looking down at it, and decided to reach down and pick it up. Touching the doll, it felt cool, entirely normal and solid in his hands. He couldn't think of a reason to not have believed the doll to be normal in all ways that a doll would, but for some reason, he had expected it to have a different feel to it, a vastly different weight than it had.
He stared into the doll's face. The face was lacking in any of the livelihood that had so characterized it before, and it looked no different than any of the other dolls that were made in the shop. Gole began to shiver involuntarily, fearful of what the lack of livelihood in the doll could mean.
Gole, beginning to panic, started to shout. “Stop playing around with me – hey! Listen to me. I'm sorry, but I can't go in with you, so please... Will you please talk to me?!”
Gole continued to stare at the doll, waiting for it to react. When no reaction came, Gole sank to the floor, careless with the doll, not caring if he knocked it or dropped it. His fingers (a gift from a biological father that he would never know, a man who became a master artisan and whose elegant, long fingers showed his natural leaning for the job) wrapped around the thing loosely. He stared at everything in the room, and at nothing, seeing only himself, a great albino spider that had worked so joyously in the room for the past few days. It had been the happiest that he had ever been in his life.
Silent in the room, a silence that deeply frightened Gole, and caused him to shake more violently. He was so cold, and it only seemed logical that he should begin the process of beginning the kiln firing. To be done with the whole mess would be the next step in this necessary progression. He had to complete the doll, to finish the task he had been given.
He picked the doll up, and his fingers happened to graze the thing's smooth head. He felt his empty hand reach up to caress the equally as smooth expanse of his scalp. He bit back a tear, and was resolved to not look at the thing's face as he walked it to the kiln and placed it in its place, after shutting the heavy slab over the hole.
He gathered the wood up into its correct position under the kiln, and felt numb by the end of it. Cold, depressed, and lonesome. As he went about his work, he came about the idea that he felt more lonesome in the kiln room than he had ever felt before. He had never had a friend before, and oh, how his body ached more after he felt the acknowledgment and the encouragement arrive and then leave him, used up.
He began to weep loudly then, and he reflected on the sorrow he had experienced, as the doll had cried out for him to join her when he had before refused to. His tears were happier then than now, as he trembled, nearly so weak that he could not accomplish this act he wanted so desperately to complete.
He didn't know when, precisely, he began to cry out for the doll to talk to him, begging for it to forgive him, but he began to. He dropped to his knees and crawled over to the kiln, pressing his face against its cold belly, where it sat inside, as cool and cruel as it deserved to be with him.
As he sat, his head pressed against the kiln, Gole heard someone tell him what to do next. He was certain that it came from his mind, but he could not comfortably feel that it had not come from the kiln. He didn't care, whether it came as perfect knowledge from himself, or from somewhere else.
He nearly drooled in anticipation as he readied the fire under the kiln. He built it up proudly, wanting it to be the best that he had ever made. He wanted to do his best at everything that he could, and he stacked the firewood up as prettily as he wanted, and only then did he coddle a fire into its bosom.
He was giddy as he pushed the slab out of the way. He did not think of how he would put it back on when he was finished – it would prove to be almost impossible to pull back when he had finally settled into the kiln, but with a rushed eagerness to pull it back into place, he did it, and he crouched in the complete darkness, a happiness swelling in him so deep and so large that he thought that he would fall apart for the strength of it.
In the dark he became aware of the swelling of his penis, and he felt comfortable – proud to – pull it from out of his shabby, too-loose work pants. With his other hand he groped for the doll, and he pulled her up to him in a gripping, loving, tender embrace. He pressed her against his chest as he stroked himself, hard, rough, and eager, his mouth hanging agape as he felt immersed in the perfection of the moment.
He took longer to orgasm than he ever had before, and he was grateful for that. It was to be his finale, his last defining moment, and why shouldn't it end in such a manner?
In the near-silence of the too-small, too-dark chamber, he heard the wet sound as he hit the ground between his splayed knees mingle with the sound of the fire building under the floor of the kiln. A grateful smile flew across his thin lips, and he sank so that he lied flat on the ground of the kiln, his arms wrapped around her.
She still didn't speak to him, but he could sense her spirit during the last act. It was good enough for him, and he knew then that it had always meant to be all that he would deserve. He ignored the feeling of the sticky wet spot on the ground as it stuck to his shirt, figuring that it would dry, and then warm, shortly.
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