"Vin, help Papa with somethin'."
"Yes, Papa?" I ask, my hands behind my back as I fidget with my fingers nervously.
"Help Papa understand. How could it be, y'know? I give Miss Coraline here everythin' a girly could want. Nice clothes, nice shoes, food, the whole nine-yards."
I tilt my head.
"I give Miss Coraline a future. And, y'know Vinny, I can't have kids. Doctor said it ain't happenin'. Many doctors, a lot of 'em. No matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, it ain't happenin! So is Miss Coraline here personally insultin' me when she goes off and gets pregnant?" He turns to me, waiting for an answer.
"No one would dare," I lower my head. I can feel Papa's sharp gaze staring me down.
Coraline, meanwhile, is already denying everything. She denies that she'd ever insult Papa, that she would ever be pregnant, that even if she was it was due to an unspeakable act she had no say in. I watch her carefully, trying to discern fact from fiction as she becomes increasingly hysterical.
She falls to the ground, begging and pleading for forgiveness for something she may or may not have done. Big green eyes glance between Papa and I, praying for mercy. I can't. I can't help her. If anything, in this moment, I find her repulsive.
"They always fuckin' get like this. This is why you don't ever trust a woman," Papa exclaims tiredly. "This is what Ledger's gonna do to you if he catches ya fooling around."
The lumbering man shoots me a pointed gaze and it takes all of my willpower to not crumble right here and now. Dread is eating away at me.
"It's worse than infidelity. She's makin' fun of me by gettin' pregnant. I don't like bein' made fun of. I don't like when worthless little shits I take under my wing take me for fuckin' GRANTED."
Papa ends his sentence by kicking the kneeling woman in the stomach. Coraline yelps and sputters, her arms crossing over her stomach as she pleads for him to not harm her unborn child. Despite desperate attempts to disconnect from reality, I feel the painful urge to jump out and protect her.
I wince as Papa grabs her by the foot, dangling the petite woman like a bird ready to be strung up and slaughtered. Then, he drops her. Her cries echo along the walls of the quarry, deep into the abyss where no one might hear. When he picks her up again, he lifts her above his head and tosses her in the direction of the mined chasm.
Gravel and bones crack and crunch as he does it again, then again. He picks up the wailing woman, tosses her, then walks closer, then tosses her like a weightless ragdoll. When he nears the edge of the cliff, he beckons me over.
Each step I take I hear the ground shattering beneath me. Visceral sobbing stabs my ears as I look down on a creature abandoned by the heavens, just as I had been at one point. Papa's control is determined, a fate you deviate from only if you're willing to give up your life.
"Do a magick trick for Papa."
I look up at him, examining a distorted face I can't make out the features of. I can never read his expression, and that frightens me more than anything in the world. Is it wrong to take comfort in recognizing the pleading face before me? A bruised, battered woman who is begging for me not to kill her? The familiarity, a sight I've seen before a dozen times, the scent of cold air mixed with blood. I can't stop this.
An abyss opens within me, my hand outstretched in staggered stiffness. It must be Ledger's magick that I'm calling upon in this moment, given the unrecognizable torment that's rising from the bottom of the pit before us. Dark water springs up like a geyser, grabbing like hands at the living corpse writhing at our feet.
It pulls at her, ripping her apart without my command. Her screams are silenced by a stream seeping into her lungs, her limbs disappearing into red liquid before the rest of her follows. Papa seems amused enough, meanwhile all I can do is stare in horror at whatever this thing is I've created. Tendrils vaguely creating the shape of hands reach up for me as twelve or so more manifest to drag the ripped apart pieces of the woman off the cliff, down back into the abyss they came from. I step back to avoid the one reaching for me, only to stumble backwards as it suddenly grips my ankle.
Though it's attempting to drag me down with it, I can't sense a hostile presence. Rather, it seems lonely. It's beckoning me to join it. Desperately it tries and, before it can accomplish killing me by accident, I take the hand in on my own and absorb it into myself. A leftover space in my soul feels vaguely warmer as a result.
When I look up, Papa is already gone. He's tapping the hood of the car, waiting impatiently for me to catch up. I scramble to my feet and return to him, ready to adhere to his next whim.
Ah.
I'm just a doll,
Aren't I ?