Henry’s Girls

by Marinda Kotze

My friend Henry lives twenty miles out of town in a two-story wooden house that he bought at an auction. He described it as a “fixer-upper,” but he was never one to shy away from handiwork. I missed the dirt road exit from the highway twice, so by the time I parked my silver 2003 Hyundai Elantra in front of his house, the moon was already casting a pale glow over the yard.

Three days ago, Henry sent me a text message which simply read: “It worked!”

I had to rack my brain to figure out what he meant. The last time we spoke was six months ago over a couple of beers at McGinty’s. I don’t remember much of that evening because I probably had too much to drink, but I vaguely remember him mentioning something about winning an auction and that he was excited about it. Something about furniture and shop fittings from Parker’s Boutique in town. He always liked to buy old junk and fix it up.

Yesterday, he sent me another text—an invitation to a party at his house.

He doesn’t have any other friends, other than me, that I know of. But judging by the noises coming from the house, I was clearly not the only one he had invited.

The house is abuzz of activity and excited tones of conversations. Through the curtains I could see vague silhouettes of several people. They are… women? My heart starts to race.

Jeez, Henry. You could’ve mentioned that you were inviting women over.

I heave my four-hundred-pound body out of my car, and the Elantra groans in protest. I reach into my jacket pocket for a cigarette and fumble for my lighter—  

“Hey there,” the voice of a young woman calls out to me from somewhere around the garage.

Years of living with a cleft palate that was never properly fixed, I have learned to avoid speaking to strangers, especially women. The gaping hole in my upturned lip tended to make people uncomfortable. But in the darkness, maybe…

“What’s your name?” the gentle female voice asks. A figure emerges from behind a tree next to the garage.

“Brian,” I answer hesitantly.

“Hello, Brian. My name’s Nancy,” the girl replies. She walks into the pale moonlight. She is beautiful—absolutely drop dead gorgeous. She walks slowly, as if she’s afraid of losing her balance, carefully putting one foot in front of the other. She has a dainty figure, with long arms that graciously sway back and forth in accordance with each step.

Her long blonde hair is tied with red ribbons into two ponytails behind her ears. She’s wearing white satin gloves that go up to her elbows and a red sequin mini dress that sparkles, even in the dim light.

She walks right up to me, leaving only about a handbreadth between us, then stops and gazes up at me.

“Welcome to the party,” Nancy says. There isn’t a hint of shock or disgust on her face. She smiles broadly, revealing a perfect set of teeth and a dark red tongue that juts slightly out of her mouth. She gestures towards the house.

I’m speechless. This is the most attention I’ve received from a girl in years. Henry and I aren’t exactly raking in the girls one after the other. Not even the ugly or fat girls show much interest in the likes of us. Henry’s short, with a rapidly receding hairline. I’m obese, have a facial deformity, live in my aunt’s basement, and have a tendency to get pass-out drunk every weekend.

I drop my cigarette on the gravel driveway and follow her as she strolls up the porch steps and through the front door. She continues through the entrance hall and into the noisy living room without looking back at me.

When Nancy and I enter the living room, there’s a brief silence, followed by a renewed burst of excited chatter.

“Everybody!” Nancy raises her right arm straight up into the air and calls out: “This is Brian!”

Greetings pop up from around the room.

“Hello, Brian.”

“What a pleasure to meet you.”

A petite young blonde woman in a blush pink chiffon dress grasps clumsily at my arm and introduces herself to me with a slight lisp: “Hi, my name’s Alice.” As quickly as she says it, she jerks her hand back, giggles and staggers a few feet away from me.

Another one, a tall girl with bouncy auburn curls and an emerald-green sundress, pushes Alice aside and extends a rigid hand out to me: “Pleased to meet you, Brian. My name is Cassandra.”

Before I can grasp her hand, a voluptuous woman in a figure-hugging navy-blue polka dot dress taps me on my shoulder and says, “Hi, Brian, my name is Lucy.”

“Why, hello, Alice, Cassandra, Lucy. Hello, everybody,” I say and wave my hand awkwardly around the room.

Wow, where did Henry get these girls? And they are so friendly—nothing like the girls in town.

I scan the room and count six young women. Each one is slim and gorgeous.

Except one.

She sits on a recliner in the corner of the room. She’s bald, and a large piece of masking tape is wrapped around the top part of her head. She stares absentmindedly down at the floor while her lips and long black eyelashes twitch involuntarily as if she’s wrestling with her thoughts.

The longer I look at her, the more I realize something.

I stumble backwards.

Now, in the bright fluorescent light of the living room chandelier, I take a closer look at Nancy. She smiles and blinks at me. First, her right eyelid dips, then the left eyelid dips, then both eyelids spring back up again. I can almost swear that I heard soft clicking sounds when she blinked… but I can’t be quite sure.

Cassandra reaches out to me with stiff arms as if to embrace me.

“What’s the matter, dear?” she asks. Her voice sounds concerned, but her face remains frozen in a sultry gaze.

I dodge her advance, but in the process stumble into Lucy. Lucy’s body isn’t soft, as the curves of her lovely body suggest. Instead, I stumble into something very hard.

Like something made of hard plastic or fiberglass.

Like a mannequin doll.

Like the mannequins that used to stand in the window of Parker’s Boutique?

I let out an involuntary shriek and take a few steps back.

“Brian, will you please, pretty please, take us for a ride? We would so very much like to see the city lights,” Nancy says in a sweet voice.

Sounds of agreement emanate from the others.

“Where’s Henry?” I ask as I take another cautious step back.

“Henry said we’re not allowed to go outside. That made us sad,” Alice’s childish voice replies from the corner of the room.

Nancy reaches out to me with an awkwardly bent arm. “Brian, don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you.”

“Uh-uh, no,” I back further out of the living room.

As I turn around and start down the hallway, I hear one of the girls say: “Where’s he going?” A flutter of conversation ensues.

The floorboards creak under my weight as I move through the house. The kitchen’s a mess—dirty dishes piled high, takeout containers everywhere.

No Henry.

Upstairs, most rooms are empty, thick with dust, except for one bedroom. Women’s clothing litters the floor: dresses, blouses, all with price tags still attached. A laptop glows on the nightstand, lines of code scrolling endlessly across the screen.

Still no sign of Henry.

I return to the entrance hall and make my way out to the garage. Henry’s pickup truck sits outside, and next to it, yellow light spills from an open workshop door.

The sweet scent of lubricant mixed with the acrid smell of burnt plastic hits me square between the eyes as I step through the workshop’s wooden door. The workshop’s interior looks like a cross between a carpenter’s studio, a computer lab and a clothing store stockroom. Stainless steel clothing racks are huddled together to my right. To my left is a PC with a flatscreen monitor, circuit boards, and other electrical equipment that I don’t recognize. Cables snake across the floor to the middle of the room. On a large vinyl-covered workbench in the middle of the room, the head and torso of a department store mannequin lay supine. One of its eyes looks up at the ceiling while the other stares in my direction.

Propped up against the workbench is Henry. A large blood stain blooms across his baby blue golf shirt. He groans and lifts his head.

“I did it,” Henry’s voice cracks as he speaks. “But keeping them happy is a full-time job.” Henry’s chuckle gives way to a cough.

“What the hell happened?” I ask.

“There’s some code that I need to fix.” Henry gestures to the laptop. He tries to lift himself up but winces and drops back to the floor. “They’re not as… compliant… as I would’ve liked.”

The workshop door swings open with a drawn-out creak.

It’s Nancy. The others are crowded behind her.

“There you are,” Nancy says. “Will you take us now?”

A flash of light from her hand catches my eye.

It’s a bloodied butcher knife.

A faint mechanical noise stirs from the dismantled mannequin behind me.

“We just want to see the city lights, that’s all,” Nancy says.

I look at her and then back at Henry. His eyelids flutter. He looks even paler than he did a few moments before.

A row of tools hangs from a pegboard on the wall next to me. I eye the hammer and consider my options.

Nancy takes two scissor-like steps in my direction and tilts her head at an odd angle as if she’s trying to read my mind.

I reach out to the workbench with my right hand while holding my left hand up in a defensive gesture. “Let’s take Henry’s pickup truck,” I say. “It is bigger than my Elantra. We’ll all fit in there nicely.”

The girls start to cheer. A smile forms on Nancy’s face, but her eyes remain locked on my hand grasping the keys of Henry’s truck.

“But we have to take Henry with us,” I say. “He’s in really bad shape; he needs a doctor.”

“As long as you take us to see the city lights,” Nancy says and follows the other girls who have already ambled out to Henry’s truck in the driveway.

“Of course,” I say, bending down to help Henry. He moans as I half-lift, half-drag him to the car.

The girls walk out ahead of us. I can hear them chattering about the city lights as they climb into the truck, while I silently pray that we’ll make it to the hospital in time.

Nancy takes the front passenger seat and immediately starts to admire herself in the rearview mirror. Alice, Cassandra and Lucy clumsily climb into the back seat. The bald girl and a blonde in a paisley-patterned dress hurl themselves with difficulty over the edge of the back of the truck and land on the truck bed floor with two loud thuds.

Alice waves at me and shrieks excitedly when I open the back passenger door.

“Do you girls mind making some space for Henry?” I say as I lift Henry off the ground.

Cassandra and Lucy shimmy to the other side of the truck and chime in unison:

“Of course, Brian.”

 “Whatever you say, Brian.”

“I love you, Brian,” Alice shrieks before she slaps her hand over her mouth and giggles.

“Alice! Behave yourself!” Nancy hisses. While her body still faces the front of the car, Nancy’s head turns 180 degrees around to glare at Alice.

“Sorry,” Alice whispers and cowers into the corner of the back seat.

I place Henry as gently as I can into the back seat next to Cassandra. His head rolls lifelessly from right to left. He whimpers, and it almost sounds like he wants to tell me something when Nancy interjects: “Come on, Brian. We don’t have all night!” She smiles at me through the rearview mirror and taps the open driver’s seat beside her. I obediently close the back passenger door and climb into the driver’s seat.

When Henry’s pickup truck roars to life, the girls cheer. Nancy slips her satin-clad hand onto my thigh and squeezes it. I try my best to ignore the bloodied butcher knife lying in her lap and try to focus on the road. I try to figure out where to take them—on a route that includes a hospital so that I can at least drop Henry off first. But it’s hard to concentrate because the girls have started to sing. None of them can really hold a note well, but that doesn’t stop them from singing as loudly as they can.

Meanwhile, Nancy keeps squeezing and massaging my thigh. The highway is quiet and mostly empty. We pass endless stretches of dark corn fields and a gleaming cross that someone erected on a hill next to the side of the road. Henry groans behind me, but I can’t make out what he is saying above the girls’ singing.

About eight miles from Henry’s house, I notice flashing blue lights behind me. A wave of relief washes over me.

Thank goodness. The police will help me.

I pull the car off the highway and bring it to a standstill on the rough gravel shoulder.

The police car comes to a stop right behind the pickup truck. Through my side mirror I can see a police officer getting out of the vehicle, with a flashlight in his hand.

At some point the girls must’ve stopped singing. Now, the only sound I hear is the footsteps of the police officer as he strides across the gravel. I roll down my window.

“License,” he barks and peeks down through my open window, using his flashlight to survey the inside of the car.

“Yes, officer,” I reach for the glove compartment and realize that I left my license in my Elantra. “My license is—”

But I don’t get to finish my sentence.

“Get out of the car. Slowly.” The officer’s flashlight darts between the back seat and the front of my shirt. I look down and see Henry’s blood has soaked into my t-shirt, forming a dark stain across my chest.

“Officer, I can explain. My friend… he was attacked by these… by these women. I found him like this in his workshop. He needs a hospital.” I try to keep my voice steady as I open the door and step outside.

“Hands in the air where I can see them!” The officer yanks me away from the truck and slams me against the hood. The cold metal bites into my cheek.

As he cuffs me, I twist my head toward the windshield. Nancy sits perfectly still, her head angled slightly downward. Behind her, I can see Cassandra and Lucy. They sit upright, staring blankly ahead of them. Alice leans halfway over Lucy’s lap, her blonde hair obscuring her face.

Why are they all so… quiet… all of a sudden?

“Stay right where you are,” the cop says and walks to the back of the car. He opens the passenger door, and in the skewed beam of his flashlight, I can see the cop checking Henry’s pulse.

“He’s dead,” the officer says, more to himself than to me. He grabs his radio, calls out for assistance and then steps over to the front of the car.

“The girls,” I stammer, “they did this.”

The officer ignores me.

“They are alive!” I’m screaming now, my words echoing across the empty highway. “The dolls…they attacked Henry! They wanted to see the city lights! They were singing! They were…”

The officer reaches into the driver’s seat and slowly pulls the butcher knife from Nancy’s lap. Nancy sits lifeless in the passenger seat, but as the cop brushes past her, one of her eyes lazily winks at me, and for a brief moment, a slight smile forms across her rigid mouth.

© Marinda Kotze, 2026

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