Our Larger Rooms
"Our Larger Rooms" by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece
Issue 3.15
The ads appeared in our local papers on the eve of the new century.
Dollhouses to match your own. Closely measured, meticulously crafted. Welcome home, again.
Brief copy followed by telephone exchange and number, a digit longer than ours. Still, we knew the connection would hold.
We weren’t as naïve as you think. Most of us realized that things were not headed in the right direction. We said as much when the poll counters rang our doorbells as we were putting the baby to bed and eyeing the decanter. It was too hot and then it was too cold. Strange portents streaked the sky. The ghosts of unusual animals moaned at the window.
Yes, there was trouble in the world and we had much on our minds. But the bottle of curiosity knows no cork. The hounds nip at your heels and you spend your evenings searching for moonlight on the pond. Here in the city, flickering streetlights still glimmered on anything that puddled in the gutters.
More of us called than you would expect. All things being equal, the company managed the influx well. No one waited more than a week for an appointment. We tenderly placed the receiver in its cradle and entered the date into the calendar with a permanent marker.
The promise of an upcoming visit lent lightness to our days; whimsy, fantasy, remember that, we mused. Feels good. Then the baby whined for attention.
The company was never late. Precisely at the appointed time, a representative knocked on a door and was welcomed in by a resident.
Some of us knotted our fingers together in excitement. Some of us talked too much. Some of us followed too quickly on their heels and nearly tripped them flat on the threshold between foyer and parlor.
We laid out thin slices of plum cake and carafes of bitter orange juice, sesame wafers and mineral water, egg sandwiches and black coffee. The good china, for once. The representatives accepted nil by mouth, so we ate our own preparations and thought of a snake consuming its tail.
The representatives made no small talk. Instead, they nodded their sharp white chins, poking the tips toward their chests like birds in the sand. Their eyes were shrouded by elegant trilby hats perched on top of their shiny black hair. They wore ivory knitted gloves to protect their fragile fingers. They took off their overcoats and tossed them over a shoulder insouciantly, which led us to try to joke with them.
But that was it for play.
Shall we begin, they asked. Without waiting for an answer, they unrolled snappy yellow measuring tapes with flat ends. They were the kind that curled in at the edges and that you jumped from when they retracted for fear of getting sliced on the whip.
The representatives bent a single knee, the other extended long behind them. They looked like peculiar ibises, not the fowl itself but a hieroglyphic form. When their pants legs drew up from their ankles, we noticed they wore spats marred by rust and grime. It was the only mark of dirt on them. We found such an old-fashioned choice odd, all the more so for the filth incongruent with the rest of their appearance.
At first, we watched them closely for any slip. But the representatives took great care with their movements, such that they were as illegible as dances from a thousand years ago and the rhythm your feet were meant to follow.
They inspected each corner and compared it to the one next to it and the one across. They ran their tapes across ceilings, hallways, behind the corners of toilets. They tiptoed over our shoes and studied the baseboards. They wrote nothing down but muttered constantly to themselves in exotic mnemonic devices.
Soon we grew bored and went back to our chores and our squalling baby and our ledger tallying.
The measurements took several hours. The sun had gone down and the moon had risen. We yawned, opened the breadbox to see if there was toast for dinner. At last, the representatives rose from the last corner and bowed once, the ritual complete.
A week, the representatives said, and though we could not know it at the time, they all spoke in unison across the city. They all blinked, once, and it was the only time we saw their sunken eyes glitter underneath their hats.
And then they left.
Seven days stretched our patience to the breaking point. Never mind that we had only just learned of this product; our eagerness was inflated to a terrible pressure by the representatives and their unusual behavior. We felt like overblown balloons about to burst. We felt like children anticipating Christmas. And Christmas loomed just ahead on the calendar.
On the sixth night we could barely sleep. The baby snuffled and we dreaded catching its cold. When we finally dozed off, it was well past midnight. Stray cats yowled on the fences separating our garbage cans from the street.
We woke, bleary but eager, to sunlight burning our faces through the blinds we had forgotten to shut. There was one short, sharp knock on the door. We threw on our dressing gowns and ignored the baby’s cries, knowing he would be fine for five minutes because he always was when we shut the closet door behind us and cried into our brandy.
A large parcel sat on the mat. It was wrapped in butcher paper and tied with a dark red ribbon. The ends were sealed with a sticky substance that oozed onto the neat folds. It left a faint smell of broken tree root and raw organ on our hands.
We dragged it into the parlor and tore at the paper, first with letter openers and butter knives, then with our nails. The box inside was the color of a tombstone. It was smooth all over, but at the top our fingertips grazed invisible embossments that spelled out our addresses.
We tore off the lid and there they were: our houses. We lifted them from their mock graves and placed them on the rug.
Wondrous, we said. Magical.
They were perfect matches for their models. Every detail, every measurement. Everything down to the patterns of our china, off of which the representatives had not eaten. But we saw now that they had consumed everything with their eyes, committed it to memory with their incantations, and regurgitated it in their workshop with ultimate precision and skill.
We crowed with pleasure. There were the books on our shelves, the quilts on our beds. There were our torn curtains that begged for replacing. There were our umbrella stands, our candlesticks, our cribs and our decanters, our snow boots and our snow globes, our ungiven gifts hidden behind our ironing boards.
We stared into our houses, transfixed. If we stared long enough, would we see ourselves? It was an intoxication that, once we locked into it, we found very hard to break.
Those of us lucky enough to have a dollhouse made called our friends. You must do it, we said, it’s marvelous. You can find the money, it’s there somewhere, what are we saving for? Look in your deposit boxes, look underneath the bed.
And then look at the bed, remade in miniature. You will see that it’s worth it, then, you will understand.
Our friends listened to us; they were friends with us because we knew things before they did. We wondered if they truly knew us or only valued our exteriors. But did we truly know them or only value how they absorbed our words?
The representatives, on the other hand, knew our insides. For their wise demonstration, they were worth the price.
Friend spoke to friend, colleague to colleague. As interest grew, we asked more questions:
What if I live in an apartment?
(yes, a single-level dollhouse is possible)
What if I have a barn?
(yes, we can create outbuildings if they are within the city limits)
What if there is land on which my sheep graze?
(these are dollhouses, not animal paths)
There must have been an infinite supply of representatives, all of whom looked exactly alike and wore the same uniform. All perfectly kept but for the dirt-flecked spats. All with hooded eyes that sparkled darkly in the light.
Soon the entire city had or awaited a miniature house. We had parties with champagne and paper streamers to welcome our newest addition: the recreated space located within the extant space. We announced the arrival like we once had our newborn’s. When our friends came to see it, they clasped their hands in honest joy, delighted that we too were experiencing the comfort of witnessing our most private lives from the outside.
As quickly as the celebrations rolled out, they dissipated. For the fascination with one’s miniature house could not really be shared with another; a friend or neighbor’s miniature house was just an indulgent folly.
But one’s own miniature house, that was an object of endless fascination. We counted up the cans of soup in the cupboard and matched the number with those in the miniature kitchen. We studied the nose prints on our fourth-floor windows and peered at the same ones through magnifying glasses. We brought home a new roll of aluminum foil and crowed with pleasure when a tiny version shone dully in the tiny pantry.
We stared into the tiny rooms from our larger rooms: is that my record player? There is my lamp! The ways they matched hypnotized us, the mise-en-abyme of miniature wallpaper that mimicked our full-scale wallpaper, even to the point of spots that peeled from the drywall.
We became obsessed with the symbiosis. We imagined the dollhouses and our houses spoke to one another, somehow. They were linked by the formulas that governed both spaces; the company representatives were scientists uncovering the knots binding one to the other. When we looked into the dollhouse and didn’t see ourselves, we felt the electric tingle of discovery: the rules that underpin the physical universe laid bare by the sorcery of mysterious company.
We tried not to move anything in our larger rooms so as not to rupture that tie. The representatives had made their measurements once; we did not want to imbalance the completed procedure.
We stopped eating dinner in our dining rooms and balanced our plates on our knees in front of our miniature dining rooms. We speared pieces of brown meat and studied the surroundings that also surrounded us.
We stopped reading so as not to disturb the bookshelves. We wore the same clothes day after day. We washed and put our dishes away as soon as we used them until we realized it might be better simply not to eat at all.
The baby cried in his crib and we didn’t bother to rise. The crib in the dollhouse was right side up and everything else in the nursery looked normal, therefore the baby was fine.
We didn’t see our friends any longer. All we wanted was to look inside our houses and see if maybe, this time, we might see ourselves. But our friends wanted the same for themselves. And so they too stopped calling.
We no longer answered the door or the telephone. We knew whoever it was would give up in short order. We only wanted to look into our windows and watch the films of our lives.
There was no one on the streets and no petty crime. We left things unlocked. The memory of fear was just a weathered flyer fluttering at a gate.
Unmanned airplanes swarmed the skies. Explosions sounded not far off. We didn’t think about it. We let the laundry sit in the sink. We didn’t notice when the tap sputtered out rusty water, then nothing at all.
The representatives called on a Wednesday to confirm our satisfaction. We knew it was them because only the tiny phone in the dollhouse’s parlor rang. We wouldn’t have picked up in our full-size living room. We pinched the receiver between forefinger and thumb and spoke in whispered tones.
We lauded the perfection of the houses; they were exquisite, we said, they were very special. Down to the last detail, an entrancing success. But when would the rendition be complete, we asked?
Patience, the company said. We will send someone.
We went back to our observations.
Several days later, knocks rang out on doors across the city. The crisp sound of sharpened nails on brass plates. And then the representatives walked in.
They wore the trilbies and the knitted gloves, their eyes shone behind thick black fringe. Their suits were as neatly tailored as before. And just as before, their spats were crusted with filth. This time, though, it was red and brownish with the odor of abattoir.
What had they stepped through on their way to our houses? Did the streets run with sewage or something else?
We let such thoughts linger for as long as anything did before the dollhouses replaced it. Not long.
The representatives glanced around the room. If we had space to worry, we would have thought they judged us. Where was the food to greet them that they wouldn’t eat? Where was the week’s mail sliced cleanly with the letter opener? Where were the baby’s cries?
We were past all that now. All that mattered were the tiny windows and the tiny rooms.
But we were also growing desperate.
Tell us, we said. When will the process reach its zenith?
Of course, we had no leverage. The representatives would never believe us if we tried to return the houses. They were well aware that we didn’t want to go back to how it used to be.
We never longed for the jewels we had sold for moldy bread. We were never hungry for the food that wasn’t available. We never listened for the baby anymore.
We were well past the point of politesse.
Please, we begged them. Please let us in.
The representatives grew taller. The tops of their smart hats brushed the plaster ornaments in the middle of our dining room ceilings that had been covered so many times with dusky white rental-grade paint. Still, they stood out in relief, though we never noticed until now.
Odd, we thought. They are in the shapes of plants and animals unseen in the city limits in our lifetimes.
The representatives took up the entirety of the room. Their faces loomed above us like dark moons. But no, an illusion; it was us growing smaller.
We felt little as we shrank, just a whistle of air around our compacting bodies; we briefly found that curious. The floorboards were coated in months of grime. Lint the size of boulders swarmed around us. The chatter of thin mice and the chitter of fat cockroaches rose up around our ears.
Our ears were so much smaller but it was very loud on the floor. The representatives’ feet were like steam shovels lifting up then down again, taunting us just a little bit.
It was too much, we wanted to scream out loud, we clapped our hands over our ears and our eyes to drown out the feelings. But in the moment that it all became unbearable, the representatives knelt down like holy angels and gently opened the dollhouse doors.
We opened one eye. We stepped forward. We crossed the threshold, both bride and groom in one body, every body in the city turned to one tiny body. And once we were inside, all terror fled, supplanted by a chilled ease like a lemon slice in ice water.
We were home at last.
We sat at our tables, our plates in front of us. We sat in our armchairs facing the empty fireplace. We lay down on our backs, stiff-armed and fully clothed, while invisible fingers pulled the bedsheets up to our necks. We kept our eyes open because they no longer closed and spent long nighttime hours staring up at the ceiling until the light changed.
We never saw the representatives again. We never heard the baby again.
Several measures of outside beyond us, the skies blackened with shining black drones and the glittering bombs they let loose on the city. The pavement heaved up and split apart. The train tracks were littered with animal bodies.
We sat at our tables. We sat in our armchairs. We lay down on our backs.
Green tanks rolled through the alleys and pumped poison fumes into the air. Men wearing snouted masks followed, pointing wide-barreled weapons at anything that moved.
We sat. We sat. We lay down.
The men knocked down our doors and climbed our stairs. They entered apartments, parlors, bedrooms. They retched when they found the nursery, they shouted for us to show ourselves. They stormed from room to room until they found our real houses. They knelt down like angels and looked inside. They gasped. They lit matches and scattered them throughout.
Flames pleated the air around us.
We. We. We.
The fires grew hotter.
But we would not leave our larger rooms, for we knew infinity.
—
Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece is a Bram Stoker Award-nominated and World Fantasy Award-nominated writer of the strange and surreal with work in places like Weird Horror, hex, Waxen, Pale Grey Idol, night shades, Exacting Clam, and others; her novel, Poltergeist, is out with Apocalypse Confidential.
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