Toys

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

Toys

By Plot Roach

Alice saw the truck a second before it streaked across the street in front of her. She had just enough time to slam on the breaks to avoid colliding with it, though the driver of the other vehicle never stopped. The truck simply sped through the intersection on its hell-bent path to God knew where.

She breathed deep in an effort to control her fear, white knuckles clenching the steering wheel, shaking and weak. It had been a close call. And the meager armor of her little car would not have stood up against the mammoth truck that looked like it had been built back in a time when rednecks considered their means of transportation as semi mobile armored transport.

When she was sure that she had her emotions under check, she eased the car back onto the street and headed for the nearest motel. She had thought to drive all night in order to make it back home by dawn the following morning, but the brush with redneck death made her doubt both her plans and her ability to drive for that stretch of time. A few minutes later she came to a little lodge that sported a small service station as well as a restaurant and mini market all in the same strip of street. She pulled into the parking lot, turned off the engine and pulled out her overnight bag, opting to lug only the most necessary equipment to her room. A few hours here and I should be right as rain, she told herself, as she walked into the main office of the little motel. The humming of florescent lights almost drowned out the sound from a small black and white television set that mumbled the news in the corner of the office. She rang the main bell and waited for the staff to show themselves, anxious to put her head to a pillow and forget the events of the night.

“Can I help you?” drawled a man as thin as a lamppost with watery blue eyes that reminded her of a robin’s egg.

“I’m looking for a room for the night.” she said.

“You’ll be glad we got one then, huh?”

“Uh… Yes, I guess.”

“Room forty five on the corner there. No smoking unless you do it outside though.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t smoke.”

“That’s what they all say. But then the mattress and rug smell like ash for months afterward anyway.”

“I said that I don’t-” but she was cut off as he slammed the keys for the room down onto the front desk and held his hand out. “That’ll be fifty two for the night. Phone calls and cable are extra.”

“I won’t be needing the cable or the phone.” she said. “I just need a place to rest for a while.”

“Yeah, and you don’t smoke, neither.”

Alice handed over the money and trudged to the room, hauling her overnight bag behind her, its wheels almost useless in the dirt of the road. This place is so far away from civilization it doesn’t even have a paved road, she thought. Or decent help for that matter.

She had to twist the key in the door several times for the antiquated lock to click and allow her entry. Once inside she smelled the stale smoke of tobacco and old sweat. She opened the windows and turned down the bedspread, hoping that she would be the only current occupant of the room as she searched for signs of rats and roaches.

Once satisfied that the place was survivable for the night, she luxuriated in a hot shower, the only amenity that seemed to work in this squalid little hideaway. She dressed for bed and no sooner had she put her head upon the pillow as was about to drift off into sleep, then she woke to a startling noise.

A thunderous roar followed by the sound of dragging chains. The beast that projected such a hideous display of aural violence moved across the yard of the motel and came to rest nearest her door, headlights flooding the room in between the little slats of the window blinds.

Alice sat up and looked out at the intruder. It was the truck, the same one that had nearly ended her life on the road mere hours earlier. The driver shut off the engine and headed for the room next to hers. Ignore him, she thought. It’s not worth it.

But then the sound of the television poured through the thin walls, followed by yelling and the sound of breaking glass.

Alice closed her eyes, pulled the pillow over her head and tried everything she could to ignore the brute. She called the front desk thirty minutes into the fracas, and was met with silence. Evidently the desk clerk was right, she thought, even the basic phone service was not included with the room.

She pulled on her coat and headed out the door, determined to give the man a piece of her mind, not only for the noise, but also for the accident he had nearly caused earlier.

She slammed her hand on the door, hoping to be heard, mouth open to begin her lecture as soon as she saw him.

The door slammed open, nearly falling off its hinges from the reverberation. He grinned down at her, a monster of a man dressed in dirty clothes that were stained rust colored in some places, bright red in others. Behind him, on the bed lay a prone form, more blood and ruined flesh than an actual human being.

“Well lookie here,” He said. “I got me another toy for the night.” He reached out and knocked her over the head with what looked to her like a small Billy club. She was in and out of consciousness as he dragged her to his truck, dumped her in the bed amongst empty cans of beer and lengths of chain. She felt the rumbled of the engine come to life and was spirited away into the night. When the truck stopped, she snapped awake, but found herself unable to move, still too weak from the blow she had received from at the motel room. He dragged her into a shed, and though she tried to look about her for any recognizable signs of civilization, she found none. All she saw besides desert scrub and rocks were the morbid displays of crudely malformed toys that stood guard over his desert shack, as if some demonic army set on patrol.

Once inside he flipped on a generator and the overhead lights hummed to life. The walls of the shack were littered with bits of unidentified debris that Alice could tell from the smell had once been alive. More chains, ending in manacles hung from every possible corner, most stained an awful rust color.

He took her to one of the far corners, chained her against the wall and left the building, locking the door closed as he left. Time oozed by like pus, and she was aware of the passing days only by the feeling of hunger and thirst as they clamored within her as well as the path of the sunlight that filtered through the cracks of the shed as they crept across the dirt floor.

She heard the engine of his mechanical best and knew that the truck had returned to the shack. He laughed and she heard barking in the distance. The door swung open, and the bloodied madman strode forward. Alice had been caught off guard back at the motel, but vowed not to again. She stretched out her legs and spread them wide, waiting for him to make a wrong move. He walked over to her, unhooking her manacles from the wall without unchaining her. Once done, he grunted and looked down at her, as if weighing his options.

Quickly she pulled her legs back against he body, pulling one of the man’s legs out from under him and sending him sprawling into the dirt next to her. She rolled on top of him, and locked a manacle around his wrist even as he fought. She kicked and threw dirt into his face, crawling away from him as he sputtered obscenities and tried to wipe the grit from his eyes. She kicked the thick ring of keys from his belt across the room, out of his reach. But in her effort, they slid down a makeshift drainage tunnel and out of her reach.
She left the shack, locking the door behind her with a simple padlock he had left hanging on its hinge. She looked at the truck, loaded in the back with a mongrel dog that looked like a German Sheppard, chocolate Labrador mix more teeth and bones than canine, as it gnawed on a body. Another broken doll for the madman’s collection.

He was trapped, for the moment in the killing shed, his keys were gone -so how would she drive the truck? He has to have a backup somewhere, she thought. Even she had taped an extra key to the underside of her car. So where would this man hide his spare?

She saw the doll’s head on the trailer hitch and smiled, though it hurt her cracked lips. She pulled the plastic head off and fished around the inside for the key, almost missing it in her eagerness to be free of the place. The dog began snapping at her, forgetting its meal, and she heard the man yelling from the shed. “I’m not done with you yet, little doll. And when I get out of here…”

She crawled into the driver’s side of the truck, dragging her chains with her and started the engine. It backfired, scaring her more than the barking dog, but she got it working and followed the trail of tire marks in the sand to find her way back to the main road. She heard the screaming from behind her, thinking the man had somehow broken free and followed her. But it was the body in the back, reacting to the movement of the truck. The door to the bed had been left open and his next victim tumbled through and onto the ground, the dog snapping at the chain which had them tethered together. A small link welded to the side of the truck kept the line hooked to the back of the truck. But under the strain of the now screaming body, the link snapped sending the hound after its intended meal. Now the truck trailed two bodies that banged and screamed in the wake of the truck.

Alice panicked and still did not slow the vehicle, sure that somehow the madman had caught up to her and was about to reach through the back of the vehicle to finish the job he had started back at the motel. The screams of human and canine victims faded as flesh was stripped of bone and spirit fled the body, but the chattering chains haunted every inch of the truck’s escape. Her only companion in the exodus the phantom of the madman that screamed “I’m not done with you yet”, and a doll’s head bobbing by the rearview mirror, its empty eye sockets the only witness to her crazed flight through the desert.