Legos

A short fiction about how one should build a lego house, or else.

When I was a kid, I used to play with this bucket of Legos I had all the time. My mother was away for work pretty often, and my father had died in a lab accident when I was pretty young, so I spent a lot of my time with the babysitter who would sit on our couch, talk on our phone, and watch our tv. To be sure, though, I was not really spending time with her.

I had a sort of continuing story going on with my blocks. The little man with the overalls was a scientist like my dad was, and the woman with the blue dress was a reporter, like my mom. I would build them houses, cars, pets... You know, the sort of thing that kids build when they have a big bucket of Legos. One thing always stayed the same, though, no matter how many times I built something differently: The house would always have two doors. One to come in, and one to go out. You could only go in the "in" door, and out the "out" door, obviously, because one was for going in, and so on, I would explain whenever the babysitter would get off the phone for a few minutes. I never knew why I had to build the houses that way, but it just felt like it was wrong otherwise.

One day, when I went to get my blocks out, though, the second door piece, the out door, was missing. I looked EVERYWHERE for that piece, but try as I may I could not find it. I got sort of upset, of course-- I could not build a proper house that way, you know. The babysitter just shrugged and said that the block people would not care this time.

She was wrong. I built the house normally, but only with one door. The IN door faced the same direction it always did, but there was just a wall where the OUT door would be. I started to continue the little drama that I was so fond of acting out with my little family of two, but something was different. I tried to ignore it, until my mother came home and I was put to bed, like I normally was.

Only that night was different. At around midnight, I got up to go pee, and when I walked around the corner into the hallway where both the bathroom and my mother's room were, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. On the little filing cabinet my mother kept the bills on, there stood the poor reporter Lego girl, missing one arm.

Now, I was always careful to never misplace the people in my bucket, let alone allow them to lose their body parts, but there she was, standing on the cabinet with only her left arm attached. Annoyed that someone must have been messing with my blocks, I grabbed at her to put her back in the bucket, but then she was just... gone. Maybe I was hallucinating, I thought. Maybe I just thought I saw her, and it was because I was sleepy. I did my business in the bathroom, and headed back to my room. Just when I got to my door, though, again, there she was, lying on the floor at the foot of my bed, missing that arm. 

I did what any rational third-grader would do, and screamed for my mother. I spent the night sleeping in her room. When I had her go check to see if the Lego woman was still there, it was obviously not.

The next day I found the door piece, but I did not play with the blocks. In fact I had not touched the bucket for days, somehow afraid of what would happen. What did happen, however, was worse than what I had expected.

I started seeing the Lego woman everywhere-- on the kitchen table for just a fleeting moment, on the schoolbus sticking out of some other kid's bag, at the sweets shop nestled in with the gummy bears. She was EVERYWHERE, and I could not get away from her. It culminated one day when I got back from school to find the bucket overturned on my bed, a house half-built, and the door piece laying next to the pile. Lying just outside the IN door was the missing arm, and the woman was placed facedown near the part of the wall where the OUT door would usually go. Scrawled in scattered pieces on my bedspread were the words "LET ME OUT."

Was that was had happened? Was that why she had been everywhere I was? That one time I had built her the house without the OUT door. She was trapped in the reality I set for her, was that it? Feverishly I jammed together the blocks to finish the house, OUT door and everything, and then tore everything apart. "I'm DONE playing!" I shouted, and grabbed my comforter, yanking it off the bed and scattering all the pieces everywhere.

I still see her sometimes, hidden here or there, but now she has her arm, and she has the scientist to keep her company. Now and again I can hear that characteristic clattering sound of Lego blocks tumbling over one another in a bucket. The doctors told my mother that I was having hallucinations, and that I needed help.

My cell here only has one door, and I think it's IN. They won't let me OUT, you know. They forgot to put in the second door.

Author's Note

This is a thing I wrote for the infamous /x/ board on 4chan some two or three years ago.

Reviews

[550AU]

wonderful. I love it. If you expanded it a bit you could drop hints about the big reveal at the end, and maybe lengthen the reveal so the reader gradually realizes where the narrator is. Either way, I love it. (I confess, I love lego, too--my kid has tons. BTW we live in Sendai, not far from Fukushima).

[Valkyrie Warrior]

Wow this is very powerful. I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!