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The dollhouse has started to smell.
Scratch must have left food in there, and without him ever returning to clear it out or eat it (probably the latter…definitely the latter) it’s going bad.
She tried to ignore it at first. She didn’t want to…doesn’t want to touch the dollhouse. It feels wrong, like an invasion of privacy. She’s still expecting him to poke his head out of one of the windows and snap at her.
“Remember what we said about boundaries, Moll?”
But he’s not here anymore. And-and she knows that, obviously! She watched him leave! Both times! But, that doesn’t stop the feeling that someone is still there. When she can’t see inside of those tiny windows and doors, it’s easy to…pretend.
(Sometimes she still talks to him. That’s a secret shared between her and her plushies, though).
The area is getting dusty from how she keeps skirting around it. She never had to dust there before, because that was always his part of the room. She tried once, as a show of respect, to at least wipe down the roof of the dollhouse but she couldn’t get more than a few swipes with the dust rag in before getting overwhelmed. Which is silly. There’s nothing there anymore! But her heart had still pounded in her ears and her hands had shaken as though she was attempting some impossible, momentous task. By the time her eyes started itching with tears, she couldn’t bring herself to stay anymore and had rushed back to hide under her covers in a plushie pile. She purposefully avoided looking in that direction afterwards, unable to watch as the time passed around it.
Time shouldn’t be passing. It’s wrong. Not when she’s still frozen on that day, still waiting for their next adventure to start. She knows it is, logically; she moves through the days like an automaton and watches the dates on her school work and her kitten calendar fall away. But it all feels like a dream. In her head, it’s still August 3rd and Scratch is about to pop out of his dollhouse, humming show tunes and blowdrying his cutie bits before asking what time the festival starts.
It’s November now. Just last week it was October and she was already not ready for that. It’s the first year she goes without a Halloween costume, too distracted to think to shop for one.
Mom and Dad bought her a witch costume to try and cheer her up and keep her included but the sight of all the ghost decorations and costumes on the night of made her feel too sick to go out and wear it. She feels bad about that, but not as bad as she should. Emotions these days are more numb than normal.
By this point, the smell is unbearable. She’s taken to broaching his that side of the room just to put up fans directing the smell out of the far window, but that just makes her even colder in this weather. She doesn’t go in her room anymore, except to sleep, in order to avoid looking at it.
Mom is the one who calls her out on it, and it’s not fun.
“Honey, you know I love you and these past few months have been hard on you…but that thing smells like death.”
She was right of course, but the choice of wording made her flinch.
“I don’t want to look inside. It’s Scratch’s space.” And it was the last part of the house left untouched since he left. Whatever was in there was exactly how he liked it and it felt wrong to disturb that.
“But it’s your dollhouse.” Mom had frowned. “And it’s in your room.”
The words sounded off. That dollhouse feels like it hasn’t been hers for several years (though she know’s it hasn’t been that long). The idea that once Scratch stopped inhabiting it, it returned to her felt wrong like he was just- he was just borrowing it. That wasn’t the case. She gave it to him. It was his. It should be packed in his suitcase right now flying to- she doesn’t know- Brazil or something! You don’t just take back a present like that! The room too- that had been his to start with. They shared it. There is no ‘Molly’s room’, there’s ‘Scratch and Molly’s room’- it’s right there on the hatch! He’d even insisted she put his name first on the sign.
It feels like rewriting history to call these things hers now. Like everyone wants to act as if he was never there at all.
Mom is patient with her and says she understands (though she can tell she doesn’t) but she doesn’t drop the subject of the smell. It’s a gentle, but persistent nagging. Like those prickly plant things that don’t really hurt but you keep getting them stuck to your legs when you’re on a hike and they’re impossible to tune out.
Finally, she caves. It isn’t the victorious, massive step for her grief recovery her parents seem to think it is; it’s a resignation. Empty and drained, she gives up and holds her hands out for the cuffs. Time has won and it’s time for Scratch to be swept away with it.
-
Mom’s nose wrinkles as she enters the attic and Molly tries to hold back the biting annoyance. She knows it’s bad, she doesn’t need the drama and guilt-tripping over it every damn time someone comes up here. It just makes her feel worse.
“I’m so glad you’re letting me do this, Honey.” She says, smiling through the stench as she lays out their cleaning supplies. She’s gathered about every type of bleach imaginable and a whole pack of fresh plastic gloves. Normally Molly would insist against single-use plastics but she doesn’t have the energy in her for it anymore. Plus, even she has to conceded that, in this case, hygiene is probably the higher priority.
There are flies around the dollhouse, which Mom shoos away with a swatter and a sharp misting of bug spray that makes Molly cough. “Honestly, I’m not sure how you sleep in here…” She mumbles to herself, missing Molly’s flinch. She thinks she must be acclimatised to the smell at this point.
“Ok. There are probably more bugs inside, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” She narrates as she pulls on a pair of plastic gloves as far up her arm as possible. Numbly, Molly pulls on her own and kneels next to her. She can’t even bring it in herself to be afraid at the thought. “They’ll be crowding around whatever food he left, most likely, which is what I got these for:” She lifts up a couple plastic ziplock bags and some new tongs from Davenports, still with the tag on. Molly has a feeling they’re going straight in the trash after this.
“Ok.” She says numbly. A few seconds of silence pass before she realises her mom is nodding at her to open the dollhouse. Molly’s hands hover around it, shaking, before she pulls them back like she’s afraid she’ll be burnt.
“I-I can’t!” Why is her voice so shaky? It’s just a dollhouse. “You do it.” She turns to her mom, a twinge of desperation in her voice that makes her sound like a little kid. Her cheeks flush with shame at the sound, but Mom only smiles at her sympathetically and does as asked.
The inside is worse than either thought. Whatever food Scratch had left in there is near unrecognisable, reduced to piles of mouldy mush and blackish puddles swarmed by flies. They gag in unison and Molly feels a wave of guilt as her mom clearly has to physically force herself through the action of scooping up what remains of the food and dumping it in the plastic bags. She holds the things away from her like they’ll bite.
“This is probably some kind of biohazard. Maybe we should have called an expert…”
The words just make Molly’s stomach sink in guilt even more and she feels herself wishing she could just stop existing right here. It’s humiliating. Her own mother is disgusted with her- and who wouldn’t be?
“Yeah…” She mumbles, emptily, as she watches her poor mom do the dirty work of scooping out the food scraps. She thinks one of them might have been a muffin.
“Having it enclosed in here probably didn’t help, heat wise…” Mom complains under her breath again, holding back a gag.
Another flinch, big enough Molly is curling in on herself as much as possible. She feels like she’s being stabbed with every harshly worded reminder. This is why she didn’t want to face this.
She should be helping but everything feels numb and it’s like she can’t move. If she unfurls herself even a little bit the world will see what a mess she’s become. Still, she wads up some paper towels when prompted, like a good little robot, and starts to daub up the mystery fluid staining the dollhouse floors.
They’re lucky it’s made of plastic and not wood. Scratch’s decorations aren’t all so lucky. Anything made of paper was dead on arrival and her eyes sting as she watches Mom scoop up disintegrating scraps of wall decals that had once been Scratch’s paintings, windows, fireplace…
Pieces of his home are being shredded and falling apart one by one. Mom places anything plastic like the fake oven and bath to the side. Molly tries to offer her some of the soft furniture like his curtains or bed and, while she says she’ll do her best to salvage them, Molly can see the way her face scrunches in doubt.
“It might be hard to get the smell out of the fabric.” She warns as gently as possible, as though Molly is a little kid who doesn’t know that’s just code for ‘there’s no chance’. With every room cleared, and more and more contaminated material filling the ziplock bags, Molly’s heart grows emptier and emptier. Mom is smiling and talking about what a relief it is to finally clean this out and how much better she’ll feel with the smell gone, but all Molly can feel is regret. She already wishes she’d not given in, even though she knows that’s ridiculous and unhealthy.
When the house is finally empty, Mom sits back on her laurels with a relieved sigh, throwing off her gloves. “Ah! See, Molly? It’s not so bad now, is it? The dollhouse is still here, we saved plenty of furniture-“ Not enough. “We’ll just give it a thorough rinse down with bleach and you can put everything back!”
“Right…put everything back…” She whispers, her voice dull and empty, like the plastic walls within.
Mom teaches her how to safely and thoroughly clean the plastic, scrubbing hard at the stains where the mystery fluid had once been and tilting the house to make sure the corners and seams are washed out of any grime. She hums as she does so, some old Tina Turner song, and talks to Molly like they’re having a fun family chore day. She nods along, feeling a thousand miles away.
It takes an hour to get the thing spotless. At one point, Mom has to take it downstairs to hose off in the shower to make sure all the chemicals are gone. When she returns, she hums a little tune as she presents it to Molly with jazz hands. “Tada!”
The sight of the plain white walls, fresh as the day it was bought, makes her burst into tears.
Instantly, Mom’s expression falls. She places the house on the floor hurriedly, shuffling over on her knees to get to her. “Molly? Are you okay?” Her hand gently cups her cheek, lifting it from where she’d buried it in her knees, and Molly swears she sees a person’s heart break for the first time. “Oh, Sweetie…”
“I-it’s not th-the same anymo-ore!” She chokes out, breath hitching uncontrollably with her sobs. She collapses against her mother’s front, finally uncurling from her foetal position to reveal her whole ugly, messy insides. “It’s not his anymore, it’s not-! I liked how it was how he left it! I wanna go back! I wanna go ba-ack…!”
“You can’t go back, Honey…” Mom whispers reluctantly into her shoulder and her sobs grow louder in pitch and more desperate. “You can’t go back from these things, you need to keep moving forward… Scratch wouldn’t want you living with that in your room.”
“N-not my ro-oom. Ours…” She whimpers out the end of the statement, fingers fisting in her mom’s cardigan.
“Right…” She agrees, sadly, stroking her back. “I’m sorry, Molly.”
“It doesn’t look like his house anymore…”
“I know. I know… But we couldn’t just leave it like that. Maybe if we’d have cleaned the food out sooner…”
That just makes something in her, something she’d been quietly thinking but refusing to voice, burst. Her sobs start coming out faster, more frantic and hurt like a wounded animal. She can’t breathe well through them.
“STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!”
It’s enough to make Mom pull back in surprise.
“Stop telling me I messed up, I know I messed up! I know it’s gross and I know it’s my fault we had to throw all his stuff out, stop it because I know ok?! You don’t have to keep reminding me and- and telling me how gross I am!!”
“Molly, I…I never said you were gross…” Mom frowns, looking suddenly taken aback and worried.
“Yes you did! When you kept- you keep- talking about how awful the house is and how it’s so nasty to clean like I-I’m some dirty pig! A-and I know I am but when you say it- it just- it just ma-akes me feel worse…!”Her breathes come out shaky and loud as she hugs her stomach in self loathing. The tears are pouring down her cheeks in waves now and the salt stings, leaving sore red streaks. She swipes roughly at her face with the bottom of her shirt, coming away with a wet spot of tears and snot on it. Mom quickly hands her the paper towels they brought as cleaning supplies and she grimaces as, again, she’s being a dirty mess about this.
“…I don’t think that about you.” Mom reaches out to place a hand on her shoulder, looking like she’s going to cry herself. “I know you’re grieving and this was…just how you coped with it. I don’t blame you- oh, Sweetie-“ Molly’s snotty, teary face is pressed into her shirt as she’s pulled into another hug. She sniffles, worrying about staining it, before the warmth of the embrace overpowers that thought with the base instinct to just curl up and cry. “I didn’t mean to make you think those things. I’m not disgusted or angry or disappointed in you, Molly. Nobody likes cleaning up dirty things, but I don’t blame you for it. …I should have been more careful with what I said around you. I suppose I got so focused on tackling the physical threat of the biohazard I forgot that I still need to be careful around your mental wounds… Which sounds like something your Dad would to say…” She scoffs and, even through her tears, Molly can’t help but join her. “But it’s true…I’m so sorry I haven’t been considerate enough about how hard this must be for you…”
“I’m sorry too, Mom…” Her voice comes out waterlogged with all the tears. “I wish I let you clean it earlier…then maybe we wouldn’t have had to throw away so much…” She trails off sadly, filled with the same dawning grief she felt watching that bus drive away and realising… Oh. It’s Over.
There’s no going back.
A fresh wave of tears falls from her eyes and burns her sore cheeks, but inside she feels nothing. Just a wave of sobering emptiness overtaking her and cooling away the heat of sadness. It’s less like a balm and more like a stiff breeze after spending too long by the fire.
She pulls away sniffling, rubbing at her face frantically with anything within reach- first her palms, then the paper towels. She feels exhausted and she probably looks horrible. Still, Mom smiles at her softly.
“…What do you want to do?” She offers, laying the choice entirely at Molly’s feet. “We can take a break and finish the dollhouse another day, or we can give that furniture a soak. What sounds best?”
“…I think…” She glances at the dollhouse and winces away from how bare it looks. “…I think I want to finish the furniture. It feels wrong to just leave it like that.” Like leaving someone’s BnB room empty, she thinks, distantly. It’s just rude.
“Alright.” Mom smiles supportively, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you take a minute to recover here while I reorganise our supplies?”
Molly nods and watches numbly as Mom packs up the cleaning materials they no longer need into their basket and carries them downstairs. When she returns, she’s wobbling on the ladder, holding a bucket of soapy water that threatens to spill over. Molly takes it from her before any damage can be done, beyond some water splashed on their clothes, and slides the heavy thing over to their spot.
The plastic furniture floats and bobs around inside the water like some kind of strange soup. Molly swirls her finger in it, absentmindedly and watches them move with the waves.
“I always found cleaning relaxing.” Mom says quietly, as they’re scrubbing a tiny oven and washing machine respectively. “Me and Grandma Nin used to clean the shop together every Friday after work. It was the only time I really ever spent with her one-on-one…”
Molly hums in acknowledgement, glancing up every few seconds to show she’s listening to the story. Mom’s face is nostalgic but melancholic as she gently rubs at a salsa stain on the fake hob. “I used to hate it as a kid. I never understood what she meant about it being relaxing until I got older. Now I find it clears my mind.” With one last dunk in the bowl to wash the suds off, Mom buries the fake appliance in a hand towel. Thoroughly dry and clean, she places the item into Scratch’s tiny kitchen, adjusting it with her finger so it’s in just the right spot. A lump grows in Molly’s throat.
“…I don’t like the idea of it being a dollhouse again and not…his.” She says slowly, drying her own item. She keeps it buried in the towel for longer than necessary, staring at the floor, lost in thought. “It doesn’t feel like I have the right to change it.”
“I know. But you’re not alone in that.” She snaps her head up, surprised. “Lots of people don’t know how to navigate a loved one’s house after they die. You never know what’s safe to move, there’s this pressure to do right by them…and the idea of selling it and someone else moving it and making it their space feels wrong. Like you’re erasing something.”
“Yeah…”
“But you’re not.” With a sad, yet supportive smile, Mom looks up from her own work to meet Molly’s eye. Her hand lands over the one redrying the washing machine, stilling the anxious motions. “They’ll always be here. Items can help us remember people, but they aren’t the most important part. Our memories of Scratch are up here,” She gently taps Molly’s forehead. “Not in there.” A point to the dollhouse. “I know why it hurts, but I promise you: nothing can take Scratch from you.”
…That just gets the tears flowing all over again. Mom rolls her eyes as Molly starts sniffling again, though it’s all pretend and she opens her arms widely for a hug. They end up staying there until the water goes cold.
-
The house is redecorated, albeit far more empty than before. It feels strangely silent as she looks upon it before bed. It’s strange to even see the insides at all since Scratch disliked the hinges being opened and exposing his home.
Molly runs her fingers over the smooth, squeaky clean floors, frowning. It still feels wrong. Too white, too plain, too clean. But when she closes it and sees how untouched the outside still is, it makes her soften. She traces the fortuitous ‘S’ on the front, mouthing his name to herself. Whatever it stood for originally has been lost to time. A part of her was worried its new namesake would be too.
But she won’t ever forget Scratch.
After a whole day of letting the room air out, she finally allows herself to close her windows and turn off the fans. The smell is largely gone now, though she’ll probably have to do this for a few more days to truly weed out the last of it and get a good air flow going again. Shivering with the cold, she piles on another night cosy and tucks herself tightly into bed. It’s…nice to feel clean for once. Dad had offered to change her sheets for her and Mom had encouraged her to have a long bath after all that cleaning. She’d used one of Scratch’s remaining bath bombs for old times sake and her skin still smells like strawberries.
He wouldn’t mind her using that, right? No, of course not. He’s…well he doesn’t remember her for one, but for another he would want them to go to a good home. It’s not like he’ll come back if they just sit around gathering dust.
That’s what she tells herself, but she still feels guilty about it. Maybe that’s normal. Mom says a lot of what she’s feeling now will fade with time. It’ll become easier to breathe and to be happy again. At the very least she won’t feel so sentimental over every little thing…
But she’ll keep the dollhouse. She’s only ready for so much change right now.
As she drifts off slowly to sleep, surrounded by plushies and the smell of strawberries, she holds on to what Mom said about the memory of Scratch being with her. If that’s true, then maybe they really will be best friends for all eternity.