Ellen Datlow - Off Limits

His mouth flaps, he shifts the suitcase from one hand to the other. Grey folded eyes, dull as dreams. He speaks, wiping fingers to his mouth: “I’ve a… I’ve a hankering for regret.”

The Man says nothing. Stands there, looking. A bug skits about the light.

Smith cannot swallow. He should turn and walk away, should never have had those old thoughts. And then he remembers. He must ask. Request. “Hair,” he says, “I like hair.”

“Room eight. Top floor,” says the Man.

Smith, toward the stairs.

Somewhere, someone breathes.

When he has his foot firm on the bottom step, he throws a fleeting glance round at the Man: Eyes in the shadow of the brim of his hat. Smith tells him, “I’m not proud of what I do.”

The Man would laugh, but has forgotten how.

Smith climbs the stairs. The decorative dead haunt the walls: Faded red roses on withered wallpaper. He reaches the first floor, turns down a corridor, passing a door behind which he hears a rustling sound, a voice whispering, confetti in the mouth, repeating the word, “ sorry ,” over and over. He hurries on.

On the second floor there is a room in which all that hangs in its wardrobe are flypapers.

He lingers outside a room, hearing the stroking of sepia photographs. The pornography of nostalgia. The passion for shadows. On the fourth floor he can smell burnt blossoms.

It is rumored that there is a room up on the seventh, full of moths, where one can spend frail moments wrapped in a silk shroud awaiting the delicate mouths of moths, nibbling… devoured by hours.

The top floor is webby. Dust has shattered mirrors. Clocks have drowned in the dampness. Room 8 stands before him.

Smith pulls the door open, steps in. It is a little room of dry plaster walls, there is a bunk, a wireless, a candle on a table, and in one corner there stands the Doll. The door flaps shut behind him. A burnt-out light bulb hangs from the ceiling. He lights a match, and soon there is candlelight burning in an old tin cup.

He hears movement in a room below, pipes rattling, water running. Someone weeps, prays, washing away life with soap.

He takes from the suitcase a stoppered vase full of rain. A stolen puddle. He produces other things also.

He approaches the Doll, crouches before it, will not let himself touch the porcelain smooth face or fragile white hands. It was an early model, almost antique, but then he liked the past, the old thoughts of rain and hair and…

The Doll is four feet in height, the usual perfect face of lips and lashes. The modest pigtail of coarse grey hair. She wears a blue dress, blue as eyes. And beneath, he lifts the hem, the garment of grey. Smith strips her, touching only clothing.

The Doll is naked now in her whiteness, with just the hint of shade in the rounds of her contours, and there, behind, between her legs is the simple apperture, the slot for the coin. Stamped above it, the ancient logo of RAMPION INC.,and beneath, the word or command, “ENJOY.”

He rummages through his pockets, pulls out a fist of copper pennies. Careful then, behind the Doll, dropping loose change into the slot. The coins clatter, collect internally. Little machineries grind softly, cogs whir and twitter, her hair begins to grow, coiling out from the hole in her head. The more money installed the more hair grows. He will not look, cannot. His hand shakes, he turns away, unknowingly brushing by her, nudging her into motion. She topples light, from foot to foot. Side to side. Unseen Forward.

He switches the wireless on. There is the hum of old electricity. A machine warmth and cadmium yellow glow fill the room. He reads at names on the wireless tuner, remembering. “ Brussels, Helsinki, Luxembourg …” A soft trumpet breaks in through static, and then a piano with crooner crooning, blending a melody. He removes things from the suitcase: Bible pages, torn, stained. A dried daisy chain.

He cannot hear the Doll as she teeters toward the door, coins rattling heavy inside her, buying the growth of harsh grey silk from her white hollow head.

Smith wants to look, to see her standing there, her hair about her, tumbling to the floor, but he will wait and concentrate on the music until he can wait no more and then he will turn and read from the fragments of Isaiahand Deuteronomyand he will drape the dead daisies over her eyes and…

The Doll has tottered into the door, nudged it open, continued out. A draft of air snuffing the candle’s flame. She has taken the light with her. There is only the dim orange glow of the wireless now. Wax smoke shifting in the gloom.

Turning quickly, Smith sees her hair vanish from view beyond the swinging door—

She has walked out on him.

“No, not again.”

He hears his own voice in darkness. The wireless band plays on. He rushes after her.

She has teeter-tottered along the hall to the stairway, and tumbles now, from side to side, weighted with coin, pulled back by sprouting mass of rough grey pigtail. Tumbling down the stairs, foot to foot on the narrow treads.

And here is Smith chasing after—

Her hair is getting longer, he can see it growing, pouring from her head. Racing down the stairs now, he’s reaching out for her, but she’s always thirteen or so steps ahead.

The carpet underfoot is crumbling; damp as candy cotton, the banisters rusting away, the walls seem to sweat. He cannot hear the wireless playing anymore, just coins clattering inside. Funny, he can’t remember climbing up all these stairs. There are no hallways, no landings, just a staircase stretching down into darkness, as if it has no end.

She does not slow in her tottery descent, but goes faster, an impossible speed. Her hair skkrittching out, thin strands of grey like old comic book speedlines. But Smith can’t reach her—

thirteen or so steps ahead—

He tumbles, headlong, reaching out, deaf to rattle of coin and his own screaming.

No longer running down, merely falling down.

Down to a darker silence.

Down.

Dolly Sodom came scene for scene and almost word for word in a dream. It was written in an afternoon whilst listening to the Tubeway Army album.

Sherry Coldsmith is a former musician and computer programmer who has lived in London (too cold), Austin (too hot), and Long Island (just right, except for the many signs of an emerging zombie apocalypse).

Coldsmith lives with her husband and daughter in a cottage near the rising sea levels.

“…I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.”

THE LONDON TIMES , THE New York Times, bad times: in Barcelona in 1937, I had expected to see the stigmata of all three. I’d certainly noticed the reporters; randy and cocktail-loaded, they roamed the Hotel Continental freely. But they had been the only blemish on my visit. The perfect round of fresh linens, good meals, and hot baths had made me wonder if there really was a civil war on. My only acquaintance with the war was through the Spanish newspapers I translated for Dickie. The fact that I knew Spanish was a sign of Dickie’s good old English pragmatism. If he’d wanted a woman whose skills were limited to the boudoir, he would have brought his wife along. Yes, Dickie did everything quick and on the cheap. Even dying. He’d had his heart attack in the time it takes to lose at cards. And now I was packing. The bad times were here.

I was tying the ribbon on my hatbox when I heard the porter’s knock. I reminded myself of Loyalist etiquette—don’t tip, call him camarada and not señor, and if you think he’s a Fascist and you want to expose him, insult the Virgin.