“They’re what?”
“Voodoo dolls.”
“I don’t know about this one Blair.”
The two plastic dolls, resembling the girls themselves in only the most general way possible, lay on the table. The girls were Blair and Tiffany, recent graduates living together in the city. Blair worked as a waitress and unpublished writer, Tiff as a paid intern for an architecture firm.
“C’mon, I got them at Charlie’s,” said Blaire. “They’re guaranteed to work.”
“And how,” said Tiffany, “does that make them okay? Remember the last thing you got there?”
“It was a … mask.”
“A mask. That’s one way to put it.”
“Okay, it was a mask-cream.”
“And you said it was …”
“Face-cream.” Blair broke down laughing. “And you put it on, and your face became a mask.”
“Which I didn’t figure out until my face came off that afternoon.”
“Oh c’mon, it’s stuck back on now, isn’t it?”
“You wore me on a date.”
“Yea, I did. Look.” Blair picked up one of the dolls and handed it to Tiffany. “We each get one. So this way, it’s more even.”
“More even. Explain.”
“Well, I guess I know more about how they work. A bit like the mask-cream thing.”
“Uh-huh. Well I’m not playing unless you tell me how these work.”
“Okay, so the lady said, we each put a hair on the dolls head, then it’s bound to us. But it’s not like, we stick a pin in the doll and we get stuck in real life. More like, if we do something with the doll, it lets us do it for real. At least, that’s the gist of it I got.”
“Well. You go first then.”
Blair rolled her eyes. “Chicken.”
“Whatever. Go.”
“Okay.” Blair pulled a hair from her head and dropped it in the doll’s hair. Nothing seemed to happen.
“So?”
“So that’s it. Now it’s my voodoo doll.”
“And?”
Blair smirked at Tiffany and held up the doll for her to see. She pulled the head off of the doll and set the doll’s head on the table.
Tiffany said “I don’t see what—” as Blair pulled off her own head, and set it down next to the doll’s.
Nobody said anything for a few seconds.
“So you see,” Blair said quietly, “It um… well, this is how it works. And if I put the doll’s head back on… Well, I can do mine too.” Blair stuck her head back on her shoulders.
“I um… wow. Okay, so it works.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Well, I guess I shouldn’t be, since I spent the better part of a week with a face I had to stick on with tape, but it’s just. I don’t know. It’s been a while, things have gotten back to normal, that’s all.”
“That’s kind of why I went back.”
Tiffany pulled out one of her hairs and dropped it on the doll’s head. Nothing dramatic seemed to happen. She pulled off one of the doll’s arms. Nothing happened. She pulled off the other arm. Again, still nothing.
“So how does it? Um…”
“Well, taking the doll’s arms off doesn’t just cut off your arms. But it makes them like, detachable.” Blair reached and pulled on Tiffany’s shoulders, neatly detaching both her arms at the collar-bone.
“Hey now. I don’t like where this is going.”
“You severed your own arms, dummy. Where’d you see it going?”
Tiffany gave an exaggerated pout.
“Here, this is cool. She told me about this.” Blair took her own doll and detached its arms as well. She then took the arms from Tiff’s doll and stuck them on her own. Her own arms suddenly dropped limp at her sides as she dropped the doll.
“I didn’t think of that…” she said, laughing.
“What … what happened?”
“Well, I stuck your doll’s arms on my doll, and lost control of my old arms…”
“So now what? I’m armless and you can’t use your arms? Great job.”
“Relax. I can still use yours.” Tiffany’s detached right arm waved at her from the couch. “See?”
“Okay. Sorry, I just … well, I assume the worst. Just a habit I guess, after, I don’t know, reading ‘Wears off in five to ten days’ in tiny print on the back of some face-severing cream that I just accidentally put on.”
“You just won’t let that go will you?” Blair giggled, leaning down so she could reach her self with the arms on the couch. She pulled of her limp, useless arms, letting them fall on the carpet, then, with a bit of adjustment, was able to connect one of the arms, then the other to her shoulder where they stayed put. Blair ended up sitting on the couch next to Tiff.
“It was just a bit, oh, surprising.”
“Well, here’s what you can do. Go pick something out there, and I’ll try it. I won’t even ask what it does.”
“Yea, but … I don’t know. It scares me a little, that’s all. What did you say you tried when you first went in there? When you bought the cream?”
“A guillotine. I chopped off my head so I could try on a different one.”
“Right. So that’s creepy.”
“It only sounds creepy.”
“Because it is.”
“Uh-huh. Do you want me to give you arms again, or what?”
“Yea, arms.”
Blair, now equipped with Tiff’s thinner and lighter-skinned arms, took her roommates doll and reattached the other plastic arms to it, then did the same for the girl herself.
“Now,” said Tiff. “Can I have a go?”
“That’s more like it.”
Tiff picked up Blair’s doll and looked at Blair, defensively, before taking off the doll’s legs. She then quickly pushed Blair’s butt over a foot, easily knocking off both her legs at the hip.
“Haha, it worked.”
“Well, sure it did. Now what?”
Tiffany pulled off the doll’s head, then detached Blair’s.
“I don’t know, I just think it’s funny to do this to you.”
“So you do like it!”
“Well, I like doing it to you.”
“Same difference.”
“In fact, I think I like you better like this.”
“Like what?”
“Just a head. In my hands. Completely under my supervision.” Tiff stuck out her tongue. Just as she did this, she felt her own head detach from her shoulders, and her point of view whirled around until she was watching her own body, holding Blair’s doll and severed head, from her own head tucked under Blair’s arm.
“How did you?”
“I groped around on the table for the doll while you were talking. You should have set it out of my reach.” Blair held the doll-head up in front of Tiffany’s eyes.
“Just for that…” Tiffany set Blair’s head facing away from her own body on the table, then before Blair could tilt her head away, she detached all the pieces she could from the doll she was holding. She reached and pushed Blair gently, the arm holding her head detached and landed on the couch. From where her head lay, Tiff was able to see her own body, which suddenly fell into about a dozen pieces.
“You think you thought of that first?” laughed Blair. “I got you at your arms, legs, hands, feet, even your boobs. Did I mention there’s a button on the back that detaches everything?”
“Why you little… I told you this would happen?”
“What? What are you blaming me for?”
“We’re a pile of bits! How are we going to get together?”
“It’s under control. We just build ourselves back together again. One piece at a time. It’s like a puzzle!”
“Oh god.”