The Dollhouse

• Ashley Bell, Grade 10, Devonport High School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Write Along 2018' competition

A dollhouse with walls painted pink to match the flush only ever seen adorning young girls cheeks. A kitchen filled with teacups smaller than a thumbtack, and rooms with pictures of the perfect family dangling from its walls. Living rooms with wooden couches and untouched cushions, proudly posing as queens atop their thrones. Bedrooms embellished with plastic covered beds and perfectly placed blankets draped across the foot. A dining room with perfectly placed plates and plastic food painted to perfection, never to be eaten off.
There behind closed curtains the dolls come to life. Youthful girls with wild imaginations dreaming of their own perfect family and their own perfect life, heads laid down on pillows filled with dreams and hope. The reality of life, a daughter heartbroken with the seamy life her father hides from his seemingly perfect family. A son ignoring family and health, breeding an ever increasing litany of mistakes using highs to paper over the panorama of a broken and misguided family. A mother ignoring the fractures occurring within her family, a beautiful ice mural, stoic and steadfast in her belief that ignorance is bliss. A father constructing a façade masking the truth from a wife and children that have always known too much.
Father and mother, husband and wife, enemies unbeknownst to their plastic children. Skin against skin, plastic against plastic. A hollow voice begging for forgiveness for mistakes never made, a scream devoid of any emotion, and eyes replaying a different version of the same story – always with the same ending. Her body covered in shades of purple and blue, a matching accessory to the bags under her eyes borne from fear overruling sleep nightly.
A brother and son, noticing yet seemingly ignoring the fissures forever occurring throughout his family, hiding from the facts with constant highs in hopes of never having a low. He hides his fears amongst friends that care more for his bottomless wallet and his bravado when faced with the authorities.
A sister and daughter to a family claiming they love each other unconditionally, whispering to her parents of the secrets she should not know, too scared to scream of it, always a constant and never-ending fear of yet more secrets which might float up from the depths of the ocean which is her family. Her father’s hidden life and her brother’s constant struggle with seeking a never-ending high haunt her morning and night.
As the young girls awaken and wish to play perfect family with their perfect dolls with perfect hair and perfect outfits, but most importantly perfect lives, the dolls become rigid once again. They play the role the young girls admire, a family smiling for a perfect picture. Brother and sister standing in harmony, unaware of the bruises which adorn their mothers body and brain and the secrets their father continues to hide. As daylight breaks so does the constant act of the perfect family.