[#030] What a Dummy

His mouth dropped into a silent scream as I tore him from the box.

He was perfect, right from the heavy, wooden shoes to the sheen of his parted hair. I turned the dummy over and pulled aside the back of his crisp tuxedo to reveal the triggers and switches lined up along his core, and I dashed to the bathroom to try him out in the mirror.

One trigger opened his mouth and lifted his eyebrows, while a lever tied to his eyes swept his glassy stare from side to side. My heart leapt when my fingers met the little pull-rings attached to the sides and I discovered I could lift his arms, and I spent at least ten minutes gibbering at myself and flailing the dummy's little body around like a cartoon.

By the time my arm grew tired and I realized just how heavy he was, I carried my new friend back into the bedroom and set him up on the little rocking chair I'd purchased for him from the yard sale down the street.

Then I turned back to the shipping container, and a little glossy flash at the bottom caught my eye. I reached into its depths, shoving aside heaps of packing peanuts and pulling out a stack of Polaroids.

"Are you kidding me?" I grinned. "This is so old-fashioned! Who even takes these anymore?"

I glanced back at the chair. Had the dummy's eyes moved? I was sure they pointed straight at me when I set about cleaning up the mess, but now they gazed at the bookshelf to the left. They seemed to comb over the titles of my photo albums and wander over the many large knives displayed around them in their elaborate sheathes.

I shrugged it off and turned back to the photos, expecting some evidence of the piece's supposedly storied history. After all, the auction page suggested he had performed in every corner of the country for decades on the hand of a small-time performer. I flicked through the pictures slowly, sifting through old cars in dark parking lots at sunset and messy closets turned upside down, always with a view from somewhere low and cluttered.

But the dummy didn't show in any of them.

Instead, you'd see bits of a person. Perhaps a pair of legs in front of a kitchen sink, or the back of a head in a driver's seat. The subjects always seemed preoccupied and unaware of the observer. I could feel my own jaw slacking open as I flipped through more and more, and eventually I fell upon a rear-shot of a man typing on a computer. I squinted at the screen and recognized the fuzzy Ebay layout. Then my gaze flicked to the shiny, plastic hand projecting into the image from the bottom of the frame, and I realized at last who had taken these photos.

I glanced back up at the dummy, and his stare had shifted to the right. He was glancing over the trophies mounted near my bed, the wooden shoes and glassy eyes I'd cut from the subjects of my own hunts and arranged into a neat shadowbox I'd picked up at the mall.

I grinned and crouched before him as he turned to look at me, his own eyes growing wider by the moment as his tiny, hollow brain processed the situation around him.

"S'awright, Charlie?" I asked as I tugged the blowtorch out from under the bed. "Rethinking your life choices?"

[#029] Chime

I sat up at the first bell and glanced around the room.

Light from the television played across the heaps of ragged clothing strewn across the couch along the wall. The smell of trash drifted from the kitchen corner, where food had spilled from the refrigerator and sat on the floor so long it began to rot. Tiny claws scratched at the dishes in the sink where a rat dug for something special between the crusty stacks of china.

Somewhere in the distance, I could hear a siren wailing through the streets. Was it the sound of rescue? Was it a warning?

I shrugged as the final bells of the old grandfather clock died. I stretched back out on the couch and spent the last of my strength lifting my frail, skeletal arms and tightening the strap on the plastic goggles wrapped around my eyes. I reached across the divide toward the end table where the controller waited, and I pushed the button to resume the simulation.

[#028] Shackles

I turned the bottle over and read the long-past expiration date on the back. Clearly she hadn't needed the Pepcid in a long time. I set it down too quickly on the counter, knocking over the other two vials I'd placed there earlier. I froze and watched the bed as the pills rattled to a halt in the corner. Through the doorway I could see her turn over and mumble something before the loud snoring continued. My breath returned reluctantly, and I nearly gave up the search right there.

But I had to know. If I was taking her back, I had to know she hadn't given up again.

I turned back to the medicine cabinet and dug out another of the horde of bottles scattered across the shelves. A fungal reek sliced across the bathroom as I worked, uncovering everything from lingering empties to an odd smelling rag stuffed into the blackened, moldy corner of the metal box. A foil bag of something dark stood on the highest shelf, the top snipped off and rolled up like a sack of chips, but more concerning were the three tubes of amber plastic I found at the back: one anti-psychotic and the others chemical names I could never hope to recognize with an education based on Hollywood movies.

All of them sat in a row, half-full of the bits and bobs she hated, the shackles she put around her own legs to feel normal.

All of them were long expired.

*Are they extras?* I thought. *Wouldn't having extras mean she skipped a day?*

I glanced over my shoulder at the heaving blanket on the bed. The snores had grown softer, and I took great care to minimize the noise as I sifted through the bottles lined up on the counter. As old as the pills at the back were, all the empties were even older. Why were they buried in the rear? Was she hiding them? And, more importantly, where were her recent prescriptions?

I couldn't believe she wasn't taking them. She'd suffered so much for so long, ignoring the voices she heard in the night, staring down the shapes she saw in the shadows, all the many hours of self-inflicted pain and...

...And insomnia...

The room was deadly silent. I drew a deep breath and slid the mirrored cabinet slowly closed...

[#027] Dawn

The wind roared through the rising sun as the last ember dies. You've made it through another night.

You rise from the bushes and toss the rifle in the burned out car, crawling into the backseat behind it to curl up for the morning. You're so hungry, but the hunt can wait. After all, there could be stragglers.

Slumber weighs on you, and the air begins to sizzle as the glaring sun beats down on the overpass. Something crashes beneath you, rattling your bones as your hands dig into the fabric of the seat. A great mass knocks into the road from below, cracking the asphalt and sliding the car just an inch towards the edge.

Do you grab your gun and fight? Do you pull your ragged blanket up and wait for the thing to pass? Your fingers graze the rifle stock as a pair of massive eyes pop out from beneath the overpass and bend backward on their stalks, gazing around the highway and passing right over your ruined shelter. Your eyes meet for just a second, but it doesn't seem to notice you.

Does it?

After a moment, the creature crawls out from beneath the overpass and begins to unfold itself to a mountainous height. It takes so long your mind is screaming out in agony for it to finish, for it to turn and smash you into bits so you do not have to wait and see if it knows, if it smells your fear as you wallow in the soiled cushions of the car you once drove to your own wedding.

But it doesn't attack.

It towers above you, swaying in the high winds for a moment like a skyscraper covered in mottled, bruised arms of sinew and shattered glass. It screams into the sky like a hurricane blast, ripping apart the peaceful morning and nearly deafening you as it begins to walk away, massive steps smashing into the earth and vibrating in your very skull. You can only watch as it lumbers away, impossibly huge, impossibly hungry, impossible to kill, already the king of your damaged world. It reaches the horizon, still taller than you can imagine, and begins to clamber over a distant mountain.

Just before it disappears on the other side, one eye flips back around the crest, and it meets yours one last time.

It winks.