Some parts of the world reveal their pieces for what they are: paper and buttons and wine bottles. Others are perfect imitations in miniature.
From far away they look like what they are meant to represent but as Zachary gets closer the textures are wrong. The artificiality bleeds through.
A farmhouse is surrounded by balls of cotton pretending to be sheep.
Above him folded-paper birds flutter on strings. Hanging, not flying.
As Zachary continues walking the buildings grow more frequent. He loops through streets as the space becomes a city filled with tall cardboard buildings lined with unevenly spaced windows. He walks past a hotel and through an alleyway lined with lanterns and banners, decorated for a festival that is not occurring.
The city becomes a smaller town. Zachary walks down a main street lined with buildings. Stores and restaurants and cocktail bars. A post office and a tavern and a library.
Some of the buildings have toppled. Others have been reconstructed with tape and glue. Embellished and expanded and empty, even the ones that have figures posed within them, staring blankly out of windows or into wineglasses.
This is the idea of a world without anything breathing life into it.
The pieces without the story.
It’s not real.
The emptiness in Zachary’s chest aches for something real.
He walks past a lone doll in a tailored suit with too-big stitches resting facedown in the middle of the street.
Zachary tries to lift it but the porcelain cracks, breaking the doll’s arm, so he leaves it where it lies and continues on.
At the top of a hill, overlooking the town, there is a house.
It has a large front porch and a multitude of windows clouded over in amber. On its roof is a widow’s walk that would provide a view of the sea. Someone could have seen him coming from there, but the balcony is currently unoccupied.
It looks more real than the rest of the world.
The world that has been constructed around it with paper and glue and found objects.
He can see the hinges on the side of the dollhouse. The lock keeping its facade in place.
The lanterns on either side of the door are lit.
Zachary walks up the steps of the dollhouse to the front porch.
There is a humming sound. A buzz.
The door is open.
He has been expected.
A sign hanging above the door reads:
know thyself and learn to suffer
The buzzing grows louder. It multiplies and changes and chatters and then resolves itself into words.
Hellohellohellohellohellohello.
Hello Mister Rawlins you are here at last hellohello.
Hello.
excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins