Daddy's Little Friend In The Basement Pt. 2 [FICTOID]

At that moment I had this thought:  Daddy’s an inventor!  He’s making a special doll for me as a surprise! 

“Can I call you Dolly?”

She laughed pleasantly.  “You certainly may.  How may I please you?”

“Do you live down here?”

“All the time.  What would you like to do?”

“Don’t you ever go out?”

“This is where I belong.  How may I please you?”

“Can you go upstairs?”

“No.  This is where I belong.  What would you like to do?”

“Don’t you ever go to the bathroom?”

“No.  How may I please you?”

I looked around her sparse room.  An unmade bed that didn’t appear to sleep in it, but still seemed used and soiled from sweat.  A small, cheap nightstand sat to one side; on top of it was a bottle of whiskey and a single shot glass.

“Don’t you have any toys?” I asked.

“I have lots of toys,” Dolly said merrily.  She opened the bottom drawer and showed me what lay inside.  “See any you like?”

They didn’t look like any toys I ever saw before, though I did recognize a pair of handcuffs like the kind the kid next door uses when he plays cops and robbers.

“No,” I said.  “What about clothes?”

“I have lots of different outfits,” Dolly said.

She opened the upper drawer and started taking out carefully folded clothes.  They were all different sorts and styles.  She had shorts and a T-shirt, a darling little pinafore dress, a lacy thing like the kind mommy keeps hidden in her chest of drawers, and something that seemed to be all straps.

“What are you doing down here?” mommy shouted, and for the third time I felt too scared to cry out.

Mommy grabbed me by the arm and yanked me away from Dolly.  “Override command C,” she said.

Without changing her pleasant expression Dolly put everything back and resumed standing where I originally found her.  Mommy turned off the light, locked the door, then marched me upstairs.

She sat me down on a kitchen chair.  I could see she felt terribly distressed, like she was trying to decide what to do.

“…I’m sorry…” I said.

“We tell you to stay out of the basement for a reason,” mommy said.

“I know.  I’m sorry.”

“That…that was daddy’s special…friend.”

“Is she real?”

Mommy paused, trying to figure out how to explain things to me.  “Like a doll is real, yes.  Like a video game, or those voices we hear when we’re calling for information.  To that degree, yes.

“But she’s not a real little girl, she only looks like one.  She’s a machine, a robot.”

“Why does daddy keep her down there?”

Mommy knelt before me, cupping my face in her hands.  “Remember when I told you the basement was dangerous?  That there were things down there that might hurt you?  Well, mommy let daddy buy Dolly so she could protect us.  Dolly is down there to make sure the bad thing doesn’t come upstairs.”

“But I see spiders upstairs.  Sometimes.”

“Not little things like bugs and ants, a big bad thing.  Dolly makes sure the big bad thing never comes upstairs, never get out of the house to hurt other children.

“So you need to understand this, honey.  Dolly is our secret weapon against the big bad things.  You must never go in the basement again.  And you must never ever tell anybody about Dolly, because then they’ll be afraid of the big bad thing and they might try to get rid of it by chasing us out of town.

“It can happen.  It happened before, when you were just an infant.  It can happen again if they find out.”

“But what is the big bad thing?”

“I wish I could tell you, honey.  It…it’s just a big bad thing that goes wherever your father goes.  We got Dolly to keep the big bad thing away from you.  So remember, it’s very important for your safety, for my safety, for your father’s safety that nobody ever knows about Dolly, understood?”

I nodded.

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

I crossed my heart and nodded again.

“Good girl,” mommy said, tilting my head forward to kiss the top of my scalp.  “Oh, one other thing:  Daddy will be very, very upset if he learns you went down into the basement and into his private room.  Now, if you promise to be a good girl and never mention this to anyone, I won’t let daddy know what you did.”

“I promise,” I croaked.

That was eight years ago.  Shortly after I promised mommy never to talk about Dolly, they moved the keyring to a new location that I never found again.

Over time the incident seemed more and more unreal to me, and I started wondering if it was a dream or not.

Funny thing, I developed a phobia about the basement and never went down there again, scurrying past the door leading downstairs whenever I needed to pass it.

I did wonder what the big bad thing was that Dolly was protecting me from.

Today in sex ed class, I learned what a pedophile is.

© Buzz Dixon