All Dolled Up!

Charlie

“...and so the thing is,” I said, “I told him that I would think about it and get back to him in the morning, but I’m seriously thinking of accepting his offer.”

Charlotte had looked a bit disappointed at not being able to stab someone initially, but now I couldn’t even read what her expression was trying to convey. “Alright then.”

“...really?” I asked her, quite surprised. She was letting strangers into her house? It was the one thing that I knew she absolutely detested.

She shrugged. “If you think it’s a good idea, I’m willing to put my trust in you. As it is, you’ve sunk quite a bit of money on my behalf, haven’t you? If this helps you recuperate it, I can’t see a reason for me to object.”

“Well, it’s not really for the money,” I told her. “Well, I mean it is partially for that reason, but that isn’t the whole thing. What I really wanted was whatever they had dug up on the house, which is stuff that I haven’t been able to figure out for so long. I did set some conditions though - they’re only going to be in the house for two nights, I didn’t want the actual address of the house leaked or anything put out that could be used to identify it. Yes, I know if it’s a local person watching they’ll know what they’re talking about, but I think most of the locals know about the house anyway. I also wanted to see everything they had dug up, which is what I was really after. He said he’d think things through as well, but he was pretty sure that it would work out. As for the money, that’s just the cherry on top.”

“And when will this be happening?”

“Oh, I’ll be in the house the whole time,” I reassured her. “It’ll be next weekend.”

“...so if you think it’s that good of an idea, go ahead,” she said. Her expression didn’t change much- was this just one of those situations where a woman’s ‘go ahead and do what you want?’ was a trap? I had nearly fallen for it many times in the past, but then again, Charlotte’s face was nearly expressionless and I couldn’t read the true intent behind these words, if there was any. This was all assuming she didn’t mean what she said, which I had no idea as to whether that was the case or not.

“Are… you sure?” I asked her, having no other recourse to get an understanding of what she was saying other than asking her directly.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “If you said it’ll be fine, I’m sure it will be.”

“Uh, hey - I don’t want you going along with this just because I’m saying so.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Listen, this new world is foreign and difficult to understand. I’ve tried doing things on my own - but you haven’t led me astray once, despite many opportunities too. I trust you enough to think that you know what you’re doing.”

Those words struck me - in a way that her earlier ‘I love you’s hadn’t.

She trusted me. Then again, I guess the same could be said the other way around.

After all, it would be easy enough for her to slit my throat in the middle of the night if she wanted me gone. The blood would dry off her hands by the morning, and she probably wouldn’t leave any fingerprints on the knife either. It would be the perfect murder given no one would suspect a doll. And yet, knowing that, I had left the door to my bedroom open a crack in case she needed to wake me up for some reason. And it had been that way for several weeks before she had confessed her feelings to me and we had become a couple.

Of course, this cut both ways. I could’ve thrown her out at any time during the day outside the house and there was nothing that she could do to prevent that. And yet, she continued to cooperate with me.

“I, I mean - thank you for saying that Charlotte,” I said. “That really means a lot to me.”

“So, how should we play this?” she asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, they’re looking for supernatural stuff, right - and I’m here. Do you want to maybe… have me do something?”

“For the sake of the show? No, please don’t Charlotte, and please remember that they owe us the money even if they don’t air the episode,” I told her. “So no need to do any of that. We want them to think our house as uninteresting, remember?”

“Alright,” she said. She was watching an episode of ‘Supernatural Sam’ on her phone. “This looks fake, but on the off chance that these people are the real deal and somehow figure out what I am, what’s the plan?”

“I don’t think that’ll happen,” I said. “But I do have a plan for that. I’ll keep them far from your room, I promise. Only thing is that you can’t go - I’m sorry, I know it’s annoying to keep you like that…”

“No problem,” she said. “You can lock my door from outside so I can at least pace around my room in peace without worrying about someone peeking.”

“Definitely,” I said, quite relieved that she was so accepting of this plan.

But her trust instilled a new fear in me. What if I was wrong in some way? Ironically, I had been more sure of my idea when she hadn’t agreed with me. Now, scenarios in which it all went wrong started to play in my mind. And then I’d have no one to blame but myself - and I could imagine the accusatory look Charlotte would give me if things did go south.

I was thinking about all these things during work as well the next night, and I almost forgot to confront Matt about what had happened until I saw him during break and remembered that I needed to talk to him.

“Matt, did you talk about my house to someone?”

“Huh?” Matt asked. He looked thoroughly confused.

“To this show called ‘Supernatural Sam?’” I asked.

His eyes then widened. “Oh right, yeah, I had told them about it - why what happened?”

“They showed up at my house is what,” I told him, before describing the events of the previous night.

“Whoa - oh, I’m so sorry man, I didn’t think it would get to that point,” he said. “I got into this argument with my cousin during the party, and I ended up reaching out to them just to prove him wrong. Sam actually reached out back and he was slightly interested and…. oh, I ended up giving him some info on you. Sorry about that.”

“It’s, I mean, I don’t appreciate it,” I said. I wasn’t too mad about it as it seemed to work out in my favor. “I mean, I agreed to talk with him and let them film some stuff in my house, but if you were going to reach out to them, I’d have appreciated it if you told me first before doing this.” If I had known about it beforehand, I wouldn’t have even agreed to it.

“Wait - did you say they’re going to be filming in your house?”

“Yes but-”

“-wait, are they going to interview you too?”

“I guess so, they said they wanted to speak with me, but I don’t know if the thing will even make it as an official episode or not,” I told him.

“Whoa, that’s crazy man!” Matt said. I was slightly annoyed with him, and that feeling grew given he wasn’t taking my complaint seriously. “Hey - do you think they’d want to talk to me too?”

“I don’t know, they said they would also want to speak to some people around town,” I said.

“Well, that’s really something, I mean, I’d love to be on it,” he said.

“Well, if you want to reach out to them, you can give him a call,” I said. Sam had given me a phone number, and though I’d hesitate to share someone’s number out like that, I guess it was tit for tat given how Sam had just shown up at my house uninvited. “Maybe you can add something to it?”

“Whoa, thank you man,” Matt said, behaving as if he’d just won the lottery. “I won’t forget this you know.”

“And please don’t do anything like this again!” I said. “I don’t want people knowing my address or tourists showing up to take photos of it, okay?”

“Right, right, I get that,” he said. “My lips are sealed.”

“They won’t mention my address on the show either, just that it’s a house somewhere in this state,” I told him. “Remember that if you do agree to an interview.”

“Gotcha man!”

The rest of the week passed with me continuing to think of ways that this could go wrong, and how I could go ahead and try to mitigate potential problems that might come up. No matter how many mental gymnastics I did, scenarios in which it would all blow up in my face kept haunting me.

I really did hope that this wouldn’t end up backfiring on me - or even worse, end up impacting Charlotte in a negative way.