Miss Polly had a Dolly (Emma Frost #2) (2 page)

Nina heard the
ice cream
truck from far away. She turned to look in
the direction of the sound, but none of the other kids seemed to hear it. She
looked in between the houses nearby to see if she could spot it.

Oh how she would like to get an ice cream for
once. Nina looked in her mother’s direction. She was sitting on a bench smiling
while keeping an eye on Nina making sure she didn't get dirty or behave in an
unsuitable way for a young girl.

Nina snorted. She was so sick and tired of
having to act in a certain way and dress the way her mother directed her to. It
took forever every morning for her mother to pick the right dress. When would
she get it through her head that Nina didn't care about those things? Nina
wanted to be able to play and get dirty like the rest of the kids. She liked
wearing pants and a t-shirt and dreamed of the day she’d be able to convince
her mother to buy her a pair of jeans. Nina sighed and smiled at her mother.
No, that would probably never happen.

"Little girls should have long hair and
wear pretty dresses," her mother always said whenever Nina dared bring up
the subject.

Her mother could spend hours just brushing
Nina's hair before bedtime. "A hundred strokes a day makes your hair
beautiful."

Oh how Nina loathed it when she called her
beautiful or pretty. So many times she had wished that she wasn't pretty, that
she could just look ordinary like the other kids. She had even once tried to
cut her hair off, thinking that if she didn't look pretty then her mother would
get off her back.

But her mother had caught her in the bathroom
after she had cut off the first piece of the hair.

"What are you doing to yourself!" She
could still hear her yelling. And the yelling didn't stop for days. Every time
she saw Nina she would start in again. "How dare you. You are blessed with
such beautiful hair. Do you know how many small girls would die to have what
you have, well do you? You should be grateful that God has given you such a
gift. You should cherish it and honor it. Aren't you glad that you're not ugly
like those other children?"

"I want to be ugly, Mom. I don't like being
pretty!" she had said and run off to her room.

That didn't go down so well with her mother. The
next week Nina wasn't allowed to go outside or watch any of her favorite TV
shows or even read the magazines that her mother had bought for her, with
pretty little girls on the front covers. Not that Nina cared much about them,
though. To be honest, she found them to be stupid. Nina had on several
occasions asked her mother to bring her magazines with horses or tigers which
were the things she was really interested in, but her mother wouldn't hear of
it, of course.

Since then Nina hadn't attempted to cut her hair
again. She did however dream of the day when she got to decide for herself what
to wear and what to look like. When that day came, she was determined that she
was never going to wear dresses again. Ever. Her mother would be devastated,
but Nina didn't care. She had gotten her way while Nina was young, sooner or
later Nina would get her way, as well—whether the mother liked it or not.

A boy approached Nina on the playground with a
smile. "Do you want to play?"

Nina shook her head then looked in the direction
of her mother. She was shaking her head as well and signaling Nina to
let him admire you, but don’t let him come too close.

"No. I'm sorry. I can't," she said.
"I'm not allowed to."

The boy shrugged. "Why did you come to a
playground, then?"

"To be seen," Nina said putting her
nose in the sky the way her mother always wanted her to. "At least that's
what my mom calls it."

The boy shrugged again. Nina looked down at her
shiny ballerina shoes. A touch of sand had landed on the top of them. Nina
gasped knowing how angry mother would be if she noticed, then she bent down and
wiped it off. When she raised her head and looked at her mother, she noticed
that she was staring at her. Nina smiled to show everything was fine and her
mother's shoulders came down. Nina looked down at her dolly in her hand.
Little Miss Jasmine
, they called her. Nina
hated that dolly. It had blue eyes just like she did and wore a pretty dress.
Nina suddenly felt like throwing it far away.

The ice cream truck rang its bell again. Nina
looked up and spotted it on a neighboring street. She looked over at her mother
and wondered if she dared to ask her for ice cream once again.

No, not after what happened
the last time.

Nina's mother didn't let her have ice
cream—or anything else she considered unhealthy—since she needed to
watch her weight and maintain a healthy complexion. Apparently that was very
important in life. Her mother had never taken care of herself and
see what she looked like now
?

Nina didn't care. She thought her mother looked
fine. She had considered cutting her face, scaring the cheeks once, to get her
mother off her back, but she wasn't allowed to play with knives or scissors
ever since that incident with her hair.

The bell rang again and Nina was getting hungry.
She was sick of having salads for lunch and never having any dessert. She
wanted ice cream and candy like normal kids. Nina looked at her mother again
and noticed that another woman had approached her and they were now talking.

"Probably talking about me, how
adorable
I look," she mumbled to
herself bitterly, thinking that would be the only reason for her mother to want
to talk to any stranger that approached her.

Nina looked in the direction of the ice cream
truck again, then made her decision. On her way across the lawn she dropped
Little Miss Jasmine and never cared enough to go back and look for her.

Nina stormed in between the houses and ended up
in a small street. She spotted the ice cream truck a little further down the
road and ran towards it. It had stopped and was ringing its bell. Nina was out
of breath when she caught up with it. A woman stuck her face out and smiled.

"Hi there you pretty little thing. Would
you like some ice cream?"

Nina wasn't supposed to talk to strangers so
instead she just nodded.

"Look at the sheet and see if there is
anything you'd like," the lady said and blew a bubble with her gum.

Nina pointed at the biggest one with most
chocolate on it.

"Ah, that one, huh? Nice choice," the
lady said. Then she disappeared for a while and came back and handed Nina the
nicely wrapped ice cream. The golden wrapping was sparkling in the sun. It had
a picture of the ice cream on the outside of it. Nina couldn't remember ever
feeling happier than in that moment.

"That'll be ten kroner," the lady
said.

At once Nina froze. Money. She hadn't thought
about money. She felt how the blood left her body when she realized that the
dream of ever tasting this small piece of heaven was still as far away as it
had always been.

"I…I…I don't have any money."

Nina was ready to give the ice cream back and
walk with bowed head back towards her mother who was probably angrier than ever
now.

"You don't have any money?" the lady
said and tilted her head. She chewed heavily on that bubblegum. "Well you
know what?"

Nina looked up with her big blue eyes. Was there
still a way? Was there still a possibility that she might get the ice cream
after all?

The lady looked to the sides, then whispered.
"Come around the back. I have some extra that we usually don't sell but
keep for ourselves to eat."

Nina nodded eagerly, gave the glittering ice
cream back to the lady who winked at her before she closed the hatch to the
magic ice cream truck. Nina looked carefully around to make sure her mother was
nowhere to be seen, then walked behind the truck. The lady opened the back
door, and peeked out.

"Come on inside, it's in the back."

Nina felt like she had somehow found an escape-way
to heaven and was filled with excitement as she took the first step inside the
truck. The smell inside was incredible, she thought and she never noticed the
door being locked behind her.

It wasn't until the truck started moving that
she realized she wasn't going to taste the ice cream any time soon.

Patrick felt
like he was
losing control again. It scared him a
little, but also filled him with excitement. The frightening part was that he
sometimes found it hard to know what was reality and what was his fantasy.
Patrick had always had many fantasies, but lately he had begun living and
acting them out and that caused him to lose control of reality from time to
time. Simply because he slipped into a world of his own and then there was no
knowing what he was up to.

He looked at the Asian woman he had just picked
up from the street. She was small, and he liked them small. He liked them young
too, but he couldn't always get everything, now could he?

He accelerated in the small BMW convertible that
the TV-station had rented for him while he was in town.

What town was it again?
Viborg, that's right. Gotta keep track of what's going on around you, Patrick.
Can't lose complete control.

As usual they were only in for a week, then off
to a new town. It was like that all throughout the season of the show. Patrick
loved it when a new season started and they toured around in the country. It
was the third year the TV show had aired and every year it grew more and more
successful. The first three episodes this spring had had the highest ratings
any reality show on Danish television had ever had, so it was fair to say it
was a success. He was a success. Patrick had been the host for the show since
the beginning and his face was synonymous with it to the viewers. When he
walked out the door he represented the TV show, they told him. They expected
him to act like it.

"Where are we going?" the Asian girl
asked with a slight shiver when she noticed they were leaving town.

"I know a place outside of town," he
said. "More private like that."

The Asian girl closed her mouth and nodded.
Patrick looked at her voluptuous lips. They were painted pink. Patrick didn't
like that, he didn't care much for pink, in fact it gave him the creeps. He
found a napkin and handed it to her.

"Here wipe that lipstick off. I don't like
it."

She did as he told her. Now that was much
better. Now her lips looked real. He had offered her two hundred for an hour.
Figured she wasn't worth much more. She had accepted and jumped in his car
without anyone seeing Patrick's face. He always made sure to use a back
entrance when he left the hotel where his fans camped along with the paparazzi
and he disguised his face by wearing a hat or a hood from his sweater, since he
was, after all, representing the TV show. The girl had recognized him once she
was in the car, naturally, but that didn't matter.

She was never going to be able to tell anyone
anyway.

Patrick spotted the right place, a rest area far
enough from town to be completely left in darkness at night. Not a soul would
ever see them. Patrick was beginning to feel worked up, almost high, by the
thought of what was about to happen. It wasn't something he was able to
control, it just kind of happened, came over him, like a wave inside of him. It
was a rush of emotions, of maniac ecstatic feelings that got him so high he
could no longer control himself.

"What are we doing here?" the Asian
girl asked as he took the exit towards the rest area. Patrick turned off the
car’s headlights and let it roll into the area. It was empty alright, just as
he had expected it to be. He found a spot and parked the car. The Asian girl
looked at him and smiled. He could see the contrast of her white teeth on her
brown skin in front of him. He fought the urge to knock them out, to smash her
face in.

"So you want to do it here?" she asked
with an accent.

"Yes, I
want
to do it here
," he repeated mocking her accent.

"Okay," she said and took off her
small jacket that barely covered anything. She was chewing gum and blowing
bubbles while arranging her stockings.

"So what do you want to do first? Do you
want me to blow you or do you want to get inside of me right away? Remember, I
don't do anal. That's off limits. But tell me your fantasy and I'll try and
make it come true. After all, you
are
my first celebrity."

She blew another bubble. It annoyed Patrick
immensely. Patrick reached over and grabbed her neck. She shrieked. He put his
fingers into her mouth and pulled the gum out, then dropped it in her hair.
With a finger he pressed it into her thick black hair.

"Hey!" she yelled and tried to remove
it, but it was already stuck. Now it was on her fingers as well. "Do you
have any idea how difficult it will be to get that kind of thing out of my
hair? That's gonna cost you extra. At least fifty more."

Patrick laughed manically.

"You think it is funny, do you? Well it's
not. Why are you being so mean? I always thought you were a nice guy. You seem
so sweet on TV," she said, pouting now.

Barely had she finished the sentence before
Patrick couldn't hold himself back anymore and he punched her in the mouth
hoping it would make her shut up. She screamed and spat out a tooth. Blood was
gushing from her mouth. She seemed dizzy from the blow. Her lip was broken and
bleeding, too. Her head was spinning and her eyes were rolling up like she was
about to fall unconscious. Patrick laughed, mainly because he was happy that he
had finally made her shut up. Then he leaned over and kissed her, licked off
the blood from her lips and drank from her. She tried to push him away but her
small Asian arms were strengthless. Patrick fumbled with his hand in his pants
and pulled out his knife. She didn't see it, but protested slightly when he
leaned over and held her down. Very close to her ear, he whispered:

"This is my fantasy."