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It´s been almost two weeks since the blonde girl received that haunting call.
What started as a simple notification of her friend not being able to go to school for a while, ended up with an hour-long call, in which Doll told her everything that had just happened moments ago, in horrifying detail. Her broken voice and her heavy breathing could be heard through the phone, as if she just started processing the events while speaking.
Lizzy had never witnessed Doll in such distress, and she promised her to keep checking on her whenever she could, but with the news of a murder drone near the bunker spreading like wildfire, the colony set a curfew that obliged every drone to stay inside the colony and at home as soon as it gets dark outside. She couldn’t just check on her friend with the risk of staying locked out of her own home.
However, something changed Lizzy´s mind.
During the second week since the call, her absence became more evident. Lizzy was the one always starting the calls on her free time, and most of it felt like talking to the wall, complete radio silence unless the other girl had to give short answers; but in the last two days, Lizzy´s phone filled up with unanswered calls and text messages that were left on read.
Something told Lizzy that grief was clutching her friend in it´s grip, so now, as her bestie, it´s her duty to finally go check on her.
And as soon as school ended that day, she decided to change route towards the grocery store, and then to Doll´s house.
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Lizzy found herself at Doll´s front door.
Once, she and Doll agreed on having keys to each other´s house, just in case something happened and they needed refuge in any of their places. Lizzy searched for said key in her pocket, and so, she inserted it.
The door was still locked.
Upon closer inspection, Lizzy found out some welding marks around the door lock. Doll got someone to change her old lock and replaced it with a remote one. She must have been too scared to take any chances of a murder drone entering the colony and her house.
It was a safe, nice change…
But also, pretty inconvenient.
Now she had to knock.
“Doooooll!!! Are you there?” She knocked the door with her groceries bag in her forearm. “It´s me, Lizzy. Can you like, open up? I brought stuff for you”.
…
Silence.
Lizzy´s core started to sink with worry until she got startled by the distinctive click of an open door. She took her cue and entered the house, not really knowing what to expect.
She stepped in and locked the door closed behind her, taking in her surroundings as she walked past the kitchen.
Instead of the normal, white lights, the house darkened with the emergency red lights installed on the walls, and as she kept going, Lizzy´s sight stayed on the oil-soaked, previously white blanket covering two figures. A hand peeked from under the blanket, and the size of the oil puddle couldn’t be covered by it.
Doll never gave them a funeral/burial, she brought them here and never even picked them up.
Lizzy tore her eyes off the grotesque scene in front of her and kept walking to Doll´s room.
The girl finally opened the bedroom´s door, and the first thing she noticed was a big lump on the bed, facing away from the door and covered in several blankets.
“Hey… bestie…” Her usually bratty tone replaced by a more careful, softer one, even too soft for her own liking.
And after moments of silence, the lump spoke “[Hey Liz…]”
Another moment of silence passed as Lizzy inspected Doll´s room. Clothes cluttered on the floor, chip bags opened and empty, both on the floor and her nightstand, a bottle of energy drink half empty, dust on the surfaces, and a strangely broken mirror. Had she even come out of her dorm room?.
“Girl, you weren’t answering my calls or texts, I thought you, like, died on me or something?”
Doll shrank into herself at the comment, and Lizzy slapped herself internally as she cringed her face.
Too harsh, too soon. Nice job, queen.
She took some hesitant steps forward, careful to not stumble on the trash on the floor, finally setting herself on the bed, right on the space behind Doll
“Ok so, I brought you your faves!!!”. The blonde girl started going through everything she got from the grocery store, displaying them one by one as she took them off the bag. “We have battery chips, voltitos, pringleads, battery acid gummies, and some Dr. Coolant! I also downloaded some movies in my cellphone so we can watch them”
Doll turned around to face the stuff that was placed on her bed, still covering herself whole with her blankets as she peeked one eye out. She shifted to extend her hand towards the food, but immediately retracted.
“You can take it! It´s for you girl, besides, I don’t know how long it´s been since you ate last time, but you look like you’re about to pass out”
Lizzy felt the bed shifting as the other girl started to move, and so, still very hesitantly, Doll uncovered her face to sit on the bed. Her face looked dirty, her hair was tangled in several knots, and her eyes were lost in space, as if she was just half there, with eyebags and tear marks that refused to fade. It stinged so much to see her like this.
The pink-eyed girl swallowed the feeling down as she silently handed her a bag of chips. “[Thanks for the food… and sorry about my room… it´s so gross.]”
“Don´t worry about that, I mean, I can help you clean while you eat”
A pang of regret struck Doll “[N-no, you don’t have to do this-]”
She was cut off as a can of coolant was shoved to her free hand. “As your best friend, and leader of the cheerleaders, I command you to eat, drink, and not worry about the mess.” She had already started picking some of the trash up from Doll’s bed. “You can pick a movie and watch while I do this.”
“[Thank you— uh, cheerleaders?]” Doll tilted her head.
“Talked with my dad about it, he’s talking to the principal to make us official”
Doll raised a surprised eyebrow. She remembered all the times she had practiced with Lizzy and Rebecca after school, and all the times the two of them gushed about forming an actual cheerleading club at some point. Doll never disliked the idea; the news gave her a tiny warmth in her chest.
With that in her mind, and silence filling the room, she had noticed that Lizzy started cleaning, and so, she took her cellphone to pick up a movie.
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Surprisingly, Doll picked a horror movie. An adaptation of a book she’s read a couple of times already, and one she didn’t have the chance of seeing before.
Something about movies like those always calmed Doll down, and she could never pinpoint what exactly it was. Maybe it was the null possibility of most of those situations happening in reality that made them somehow amusing, or maybe it was the fact that the humans and their beliefs are long gone.
It makes for an interesting documentary of what humans feared the most, Doll thought.
Now, the human girl in the movie had just discovered the power of moving objects with her mind, and was playing with them in her room.
How nice it would be to have those, to do whatever you want with your mind. To move books, a bed, weapons, people. It might’ve even saved her parents when they went out that night.
This was supposed to be a bit of a fun night, from what Lizzy told her, but now she started to remember that night, and she felt herself slipping into her memories.
She tried to look at anything else, blink a few times, shake her head a little, focus on the movie, but the noise of Lizzy cleaning and the movie itself became more muffled in her audials.
Suddenly, the memory became more prominent, and she stayed still.
-
It was around 3 pm when she came back from school that day.
Her house was filled with the usual noise of her dad repairing a car in another room, and her mom cooking something in the kitchen. The sizzling of a pan and the scent of something being fried invaded her senses as she approached her mom to be received with a hug.
She remembered going to her room to change into more comfortable clothing before her mom finished lunch. She chose a short-sleeved pajama with bear patterns on it before combing her hair in front of the mirror.
Right as she was done detangling her hair, a symbol appeared in her right eye, and the mirror shattered in pieces.
She remembered the terrified look in her mother´s eyes as she tried to gather the information Doll just told her. She hurriedly explained the long-haired drone some things. Something about an “Absolute Solver”, about a host, about the visions her old friend had, about a lost crucifix they needed to find.
All the things Doll still struggled to understand entirely.
They heard the news of a huge storm roaring outside the bunker, so the family had to wait for it to stop.
They waited for hours, and hours until the news finally announced the storm had stopped completely. The time was 8 pm, and it was already dark; dark enough for the angels of death to wake up from their daytime slumber.
With a loud hissing noise, the bunker doors opened to let the family´s van outside. The fog of the place made it hard to see, and the makeshift road around the left worker drone corpses was covered in snow.
Without knowing a certain way to return safely, anyone else would have turned around. It was Yeva´s urgency on finding the crucifix patch what kept them going.
Why didn’t she trust her gut feeling? Why didn’t she say no?
After around 10 minutes into the fateful trip, the car suddenly stopped on top of a big and soft layer of snow. Her dad tried everything to get the wheels to move, and every effort only seemed to settle the car deeper into the snow pile.
She remembered her parents cursing to themselves before both of them decided to go out to see the problem. Doll wanted to go with her mom, but Yeva told her to be quiet, to be still and to not go outside, no matter what happened.
With trembling hands and stress lines under her eyes, Doll agreed to her promise with a nod and an uncertain hand squeeze. Her mom closed the van´s door shut.
The next thing Doll remembered was a single gunshot, followed by a guttural scream.
The angel of death caught them.
Doll saw everything unfold through a crack by the van´s door. The sound of a crazed laugh accompanied by claws slicing through metal limbs, the squelch of the beast biting and feasting on it´s victims and the distinctive oil odor that filled the area. Her dad´s polaroid camera flash he activated in a desperate, yet vain try to blind the monster to escape.
The silence of the aftermath, louder and much heavier than the noise from earlier at her home.
She couldn’t take her eyes away, she froze and choked on the tears she couldn’t let out just yet as her whole body trembled—
-
“Ow!!” A yelp came from the corner of the room, interrupting her stream of thought entirely. “How did you even break this mirror?”
Doll didn’t realize when she had started crying, and luckily, Lizzy didn’t seem to realize either, too busy cleaning the little drops of oil from her pricked finger with a piece of cloth.
She cleaned her visor with her forearm. “[Left it in a bad position… it fell]” She lied, hoping Lizzy didn’t notice the cracks in her voice either. God, the frequent crying has begun to wear her off already.
The blonde girl hissed through her teeth as she kept wiping the oil “Ugh, ok—ow… I´ll bring the broom, wait a sec.”
With that, Lizzy left the room, leaving Doll with her thoughts again.
The remnants of her brain fog faded enough to just have the static in the corners of her vision; still, it was good enough for her to finally focus again on the movie she was watching. The human girl in the movie was already bloody, taking her sweet time at revenge against the ones who hurt her.
Did she zone out that long?
A part of her told her the humans in the movie deserved their fate, “you reap what you sow”, as her mother used to say, and all of them ran out of the party room as the girl saved the only person who´s been good to her.
She´s selective, how sweet to have something in common with the protagonist.
Her mind still wandered around that night. The polaroid photo, the silver hair, the laugh and the oily claws. If the powers her mother explained were actually available for her, then she would have more in common with that human girl.
This movie was a good idea for the future.
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After an hour of cleaning, the room came back to its previous glory.
Doll was now changing into her pajamas by her newly organized wardrove (She really owed Lizzy something after this) while Lizzy, having already changed into hers, was putting up her old movie projector to officially start the gossip/movie night.
She didn’t pay much attention about how she ended up on the bed, covered by a small blanket, feeling the softness of a brush combing through the tangles of her hair. She didn’t even have the energy to do something so simple.
With some guilt building up in her chest, she pushed away the thought to focus on the other movie. This time, it was Lizzy´s choice, of course. The scene played two pairs of blonde sisters in what seemed to be an insult competition against their mothers.
A particularly clever one made both girls crack a laugh.
“Dooooll… didn´t you hate these kinds of movies? You´re laughing!!” The pink-eyed girl, still trying to catch her breath, tried to bend in front of Doll´s face to see her.
Doll shied away from her sight. “[It´s just a one-time slip, not happening again]” She doesn’t have any bite in her words.
This only made the blonde girl laugh more, as Doll tried, and failed to stifle her own laugh.
With an excited gasp, Lizzy spoke again “OH GOD, this reminds me—” having finished combing Doll´s hair, she took a seat next to her. “Do you remember that one party last year Thad invited us to?”
“[The one where everyone got horribly drunk?]”
“THAT ONE. Oh god, Rebecca was WILD. Did you hear how she insulted Kenzie???”
Doll snorted at the memory of Lizzy trying to separate an incredibly intoxicated Rebecca from the crowd “[And her boyfriend was also drunk on the floor]”
“Who? Darren?”
“[The previous one--]” Doll felt one finger shutting her mouth.
“Don´t even mention him girl, that guy SUCKS”
“[Never even helped her]”
“Not a single finger lifted!!”
The pair of girls kept talking about anything they remembered, though, it was mostly the sound of Lizzy´s voice that filled the room. Doll usually had little to bring to the conversation, and, if she were honest, she was ok with just listening to what the blonde girl had in her mind.
It was strange, Doll always thought.
Lizzy was talkative, she was quiet; Lizzy was social, she was introverted; that girl knew about every single fashion trend, and Doll was still confused about terms like the “Matcha tea girl” Lizzy showed her. What even is a matcha tea?.
Both of them were so different. How did they end up being so close?...
It seems like it happened overnight, Doll couldn’t even recall the moment they actually became close, it’s like they’ve been friends since forever, and Doll didn’t know how different her life would have been without knowing Lizzy.
Without her, the classes would have been silent, without secret text messages while the teacher explained; or no sleepovers where Doll got the hottest gossip available; no one to fill the room with sound when everything felt awfully quiet.
All the things she thought she would never like, became something so present in her life. Having nights like these not only felt like a fun once-in-a-while event, it’s more like it became normal as the time passed.
And maybe, it’s the only normal thing left in her life.
Oh, what she would do to make everything go back…
Everything had changed so much in these past weeks, from the complete, eerie silence that bathed her entire house, to the fact that she´s feeling a certain, unsatiable hunger she´s never felt before. Having another drone nearby only exacerbated it…. Another drone like Lizzy…
Again, she pushed the thought into the back of her mind, not wanting to linger on it any longer as Lizzy kept talking to her. She felt a bit bad for getting lost in the conversation, hopefully it wasn’t something so important.
Lizzy still shared the gossip from all the time Doll had been absent from school, and as the movie kept playing, both of them decided to lay on the wooden headboard of the bed, covered with a bigger duvet, and still sharing snacks.
Having nothing to share, Doll just listened to her as the movie became background noise in her audials. Her eyes already feeling heavy, she still tried to focus on what Lizzy said.
--
Maybe Lizzy focused a little bit too much in the movie to not notice that the room fell silent a while ago by now.
For some reason, she always loved the dance battle scene at the disco. It made her wonder, could anyone ever pull those breakdance moves? Maybe Thad, he tried once, but went straight to the nurse room after banging his head hard against the floor after trying one of those moves with his sports buddy.
Doll was there too on that day, and after the scare for their friend´s wellbeing had passed, she let out the weirdest laugh Lizzy had ever heard in her entire life. Every time she pointed it out, Doll just laughed more, it almost felt like she was choking.
Will Doll ever be able to laugh like that again?
Maybe it was too soon to want something like that, and maybe, that would never happen again. It was something that Lizzy thought from time to time since Doll´s parents died, and, to be honest, it kind of scared her.
Still, she tried to break the silence. Maybe it would give Doll another nice time to laugh about.
She picked up a snack from the bowl “Girl, remember the time Thad tried thi—”
Lizzy stiffened as she felt a weight on her left shoulder. Carefully, she turned her head around to see Doll leaning on her shoulder, seemingly deep in slumber, as a “Sleep Mode” sign covered her visor.
A warmth in her chest creeped it´s way to her visor, making pink blush lines appear, and Doll´s temperature only contributed to the warm sensation. Lizzy couldn’t help but notice Doll is warmer than usual. Did she catch a virus she didn’t tell her about? She could even hear the other´s fans over her own, trying in vain to cool her down.
Maybe she should ask tomorrow.
With that, Lizzy lowered the speaker´s volume, and shuffled a little in the bed, trying to get as comfortable as possible without disturbing Doll´s sleep. She continued watching the movie until it became background noise, her eyes unfocusing more frequently as she also gave in to sleep.