Barbie Doll



           I’d been working maintenance for a few years by the time I got done with college, mostly just garbage pick-up and stuff like that at apartment complexes my dad was in charge of in central Arizona. Pay was okay and I got my own little place where I was live with my girlfriend. It was all pretty good in its own right, but I wasn’t making too terribly much and we’d never been able to take a vacation or anything on our own.

           It was on a Wednesday when I saw an ad in my city newspaper for a pool boy in a little place a few miles out of town for almost twice what I was making doing all the other maintenance work I already was. I almost immediately called the number the paper mentioned and was greeted by a calm sounding man, probably in his mid-forties. When I inquired about the job he seemed to become even happier and we set up a meeting time.

           That Saturday we met at his place, a big, open house with lots of windows and all the latest appliances. He seemed to be a pretty nice guy, rich too, obviously. When I asked why he was offering so much just to monitor his pool, he replied that he had just let his last guy go and his pool always needed surveillance because he had a young daughter and she had a lot of friends, that sort of things.

           I accepted the job almost instantly and was gladly up at his place right after my two week notice passed at my dad’s. Work was pretty smooth for the first few weeks, my new employer being much more understanding of circumstances than my old man was allowed to be, due to rules and regulations every employee had to follow at his complex- I could go in and cool off when it seemed to hot outside, he always kept his fridge stocked with water, it all seemed exceedingly comfortable. I would occasionally make small talk with the maid. She couldn’t speak English very well, but one day when I asked her, she told me the boss was a cosmetic surgeon, obviously a very wealthy one at that. As a personal rule, I’m generally against that kind of stuff and admitably grimaced at the prospect of working for someone whose money came from boob jobs. Still, he seemed like a nice, settled in family man, and the pay was good, so I let it be.

           About two months in I was clearing some sand and other sorts of residue out of the bottom of the pool, faintly hearing the sound of a piano inside. The doc’s window was wide open and he was overseeing his daughter practicing. I try not to snoop, but work was taking longer than expected and the music was pleasant until it suddenly stopped. I could hear the doc calmly explaining to the daughter what she did wrong, but in an instant she was screaming at him that she wanted to stop. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that she had been playing the entire morning. This in mind, I couldn’t help but listen in just a little over the sound of my pool vacuum. He started shouting and threatening to ground her, to take her dolls away. I caught something that I didn’t quite understand, something about her “big Barbie” or something like that. When I began to hear the music again I went back to cleaning out the pool, trying to forget what I had just heard.

           Though I tried to make good on this attempt, I decided I’d be on the watch for this kind of thing in the future. I know parents snap at their children and all, but if this turned into abuse, someone was going to hear about it.

           Sometime thereafter, I was inside getting a drink when I got a good look at a photo on the refrigerator I had never noticed before, showing the doctor, his daughter and two other women, one in her forties or fifties and the other a teenager. Judging by the doc’s youngest daughter, it looked fairly recent. I asked the maid about it, and in the best broken English she could give me, she said the older woman was the doctor’s wife, the younger, his older daughter. I hated to keep asking questions, given her difficulty speaking to me, but I pressed on just a little more to ask why I never saw them around. Now with difficulty not only speaking but recalling, she told me the doctor’s daughter was killed in a car crash a year ago, his wife killed herself shortly thereafter. This shocked and horrified me, and suddenly I couldn’t help but feel a new sense of compassion for the doctor and his daughter. Soon as I was hydrated, I went right back to work, wondering if I’d ever seen much sign of grief from the two. Maybe that’s why the doctor was so uptight about some things with his daughter, maybe that’s why she clung to her toys the way she did (I cleaned out bits of Barbie toys from the pool on what seemed like a weekly basis). It was a lot to take in.

           Time went on and my work continued. I had never imagined doing what I did as a year around job. I used to live in the Midwest, pools usually closed around Labor Day, but down here they were open all the time and the doc’s kid and her friends just kept coming over.

           One day, doing my usual work, I noticed a large splotch at the bottom of the pool for what must have been the third time. I was irritated and reluctantly accepted normal chlorine wasn’t going to do the trick, I had to shock the thing (use a form of “super choline”, several times stronger than the average stuff). I checked the doc’s notes and they did indeed confirm that he had some of the stuff I needed, it was kept in the basement. Seemed like an odd place for it but I digress, maybe it was to keep it out of his daughter’s hands.

           Speaking of the doc’s daughter, my eye caught her and a couple of her friends about to jump in the water. I had to shout at them to stop and she through a fit at me for doing so. I just figured the splotch in the pool would be a bacterial breeding ground, I was not letting little kids in it.

           I found my maid friend again and, now frantic to make the pool clean for the boss’s daughter, asked her where the basement was. She responded with a confused look. I tried several other phrases, my high school Spanish long lost, until she recognized the word “Cellar”. She led me outside after I mentioned it and pointed me to a dingy little trapdoor in the ground connected to the house right next to the hose. I had never noticed it there before, and it was tightly bound with what appeared to be shiny new chains, very little dirt on them.

           I tried to ask her how I was supposed to open it, but we both lacked the vocabulary to communicate properly. I was about to bitterly accept defeat, leave the doc a note and tell him to not worry about paying me that day until his daughter walked up to me. She said she had a key to the cellar. I was confused by this right from the get go, and even more so when she mentioned I couldn’t tell her dad that she did, but I wanted to get back to work, so I agreed to her conditions.

           I was in the dimly lit cellar a few minutes later as she shouted at me to not play with any of her toys.

           Why did she have toys down here? Was this where the doc kept her stuff when she was in trouble? Was that why she wasn’t supposed to have a key?

           I fumbled around in the dark for a while, the light from outside only helping me so much, desperately looking for a light switch. As I continued to wander around, I ultimately felt myself pushing up against something. It felt like a wall, but there was no weight behind it. Not entirely sure what I was doing, I pushed against it and suddenly toppled into another passage.

           Confused, disoriented and growing increasingly frightened, I felt around for a switch again and quickly found one on the wall. Despite the short time I had spent in the cellar, I was briefly blinded when I switched the thing on.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           But moreso when I got a good look at the room.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           That was not just some dingy cellar I had walked into, the thing extended beneath the house and was filled, to my shock and slight disturbance, with oversized pink and while furniture. My jaw was agape as I searched around, finding a fully functioning bathroom, den, everything. The rooms were much smaller than they had been upstairs, but they were still comparable to a decent hotel’s.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           Why on earth did the doctor have all this down here?

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I wandered through just a little more, too shocked by what I had seen to turn back, when I came upon a bedroom. Of course everything was still pink and huge and this room even included a closet full of clothes, but the most notable feature present was what appeared to be a giant cardboard box sitting in the room’s center. In sloppy handwriting the box read, “My favorite Barbie”

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I didn’t want to open the box. I swore at myself for dropping down and grabbing the bottom of the cardboard cube, my conscious screaming to put the damn thing down and find whatever I had come for, I couldn’t even remember anymore. But I just had to know what all this was for.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I wish I’d never taken that job. I wish I’d never gone into that cellar. I wish I’d never opened that fucking box.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I screamed and scrambled away the instant I saw what I did. Standing before me, at almost my exact height was a Barbie doll.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I struggled to catch my breath as I stared at the thing. I was full of doubt Matel had made anything like this, but the likeness was nearly perfect to the dolls I’d been seeing around the house. Her eyes were wide open and green, she had long blonde hair and bright pink lips smiling. Still trying to take it in, I noticed the doll was naked. It had oversized breasts without any nipples, and that seemingly impossible figure that led down to a solid patch of skin where the genitals would be.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           Heart pounding, I noticed something along the doll’s back. I slowly went behind it to take a look, seeing a large, bulbous thing sticking out of its back, almost like a button. Letting curiosity defeat me once again, I gently pressed it.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           “HELP ME”

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           The doll screamed in a shrill voice. I ran from it towards the door, not even so much shocked by the scream as what I had felt.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I had touched flesh.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           No, I thought, that was impossible! This thing appeared to gleam like plastic a moment ago! That wasn’t real!

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           But as I continued to back away, my fears were confirmed. I could see the doll’s chest expanding and contracting.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           The doll was breathing.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           The doll was real.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           My jaw was dropped, tears starting to well up in my eyes. This was not happening. What the fuck was I even looking at?!

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           Struggling to accept all that was before me, I darted around the moment I could hear footsteps over my pounding heart. There was the doctor, just a few feet behind me, holding a syringe.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           “Well then,” he muttered, “I guess you found our playroom.”

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I gently slid a hand into my pocket as I screamed that he tell me what was going on. Ensuring he couldn’t see, I managed to worm my cell phone out of my pocket.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           Without a hint of sadness or remorse in his voice, the doctor told his tale, chilling me to the bone as I managed to trigger the video camera on my phone.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           The doctor told me that he desired the same thing any other parent does, to have the perfect child. He told me how though it all seemed to be going well with his older daughter, she started to rebel in her teenage years. Her grades started to slip in high school and he caught her having sex on the living room couch. He was so overwhelmed by her misbehavior he was ready to give up on her entirely.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           He told me he was convinced if he pampered his younger daughter, surely she would behave right. A Christmas before last he asked her what she wanted. She said she wanted a big Barbie doll that could do anything she told it to and that would play with her all the time.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           The doctor told me how he spent a month and a half planning what he’d do, planning how to pamper his younger and punish his older.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           “My wife found out at one point… All for the best though. I was planning on just bringing some fat and collagen home from work, but I think she worked out much more smoothly.”

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           He told how he staged the disappearance of his daughter while he sedated and put her under the knife. He spent over a week getting everything just right before he surprised his younger daughter with the playmate she always wanted.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           “In exchange for just being my perfect little angel.”

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           My jaw was slack, too horrified of it all to move.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           Why was he going on and on? Was he bragging about this disgusting accomplishment? He talked and talked, about how she’d been living off juices and purees he made, how her eyes were glass and hand painted, how he’d tried to just leave in the originals but she cried too much and her younger pointed out her toy didn’t blink, and how she had little chips throughout her body that would give her a brutal shock if she used her vocal chords and you didn’t press the button first.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           “You’re going to fry you sick son of a bitch!” I shouted. “You… What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           “Well of course I wouldn’t tell you all this if I was going to let you leave,” he said with a smile. “I’ve needed a matching Ken doll you know.”

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           “Now, come here and take your medicine!”

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           He was unexpectedly strong and managed to tackle me quickly, knocking the phone out of my hand. The needle came deathly close, but despite the momentary advantage, I had the weight edge to force him off of me and grab my phone.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           Much as I wanted to help the poor, mutilated girl, I had to save myself first, running fast as I could out of the basement and to my car. Fast as I’ve ever driven in my life I pulled out of the doctor’s driveway and slammed the gas the moment I shifted into drive. About a minute later I could hear the sound of a shotgun firing in the distance. I managed to make it back into town, cars everywhere, long before I saw anything of the doctor in my rearview.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I pulled into the police station and flipped open my phone, searching out the evidence to incarcerate the insane bastard, only to find my SD card had been destroyed when he tackled me. I had nothing to give the police but my testimony, and even in my head I knew it too mad to be true.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I drove to my parent’s place that night, the house empty, I assuming they were gone on a date or something, searched around in my dad’s room and found his revolver.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I don’t remember much more of the night, but my girlfriend tells me I was extremely on edge, constantly looking out the window.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           Three days after my horrifying discovery, I drove back to the house, armed, ready to pay the doctor back for his crime against humanity. When I arrived however the house was entirely abandoned. No sign of anyone anywhere, and when I checked the horrors of the cellar, the “doll” and its box were gone.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I found one of the doctor’s business cards while snooping and made a call to his office that night. The receptionist said he had left on a very short notice with no real explanation.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           That was about a year ago. I’ve spent I don’t know how many nights sleepless with what I had experienced in this basement.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">           I am only mentioning this now because I on a Yahoo.com’s newsfeed, I found an article about a pool boy in southern Florida mysteriously disappearing. In the video attached, there were tearful testimonies from his family and his employer, speaking all the while with his daughter within audible range, bragging to her friends that she was getting a Ken doll for her favorite Barbie.