Scavenger Hunt

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

Scavenger Hunt

By Plot Roach

The last rays of sunlight crept over the edge of the buildings, their shadows stretching into the coming darkness. A battered and dusty truck pulled up to the curb of one of the streets, belching a black cloud into the city as it rattled to a stop. Six human figures leaped from the bed of the truck as two more exited the cab.

The old woman handed out bags to each of them, keeping one of them for herself. They each knew what was expected of them this night. And what items they were required to collect.

“Time is fleeting“, the old woman reminded them as night kissed the city and she wandered over to the first house. As she stood upon the porch, she began her transformation. Her hair became thick and dark, dispelling the grayness of her age. Her breasts filled and became perky, as the wrinkles melted from her like snow during a spring thaw. She rang the doorbell and began to chant. The man who answered the door did not know what hit him. She walked past him as if he was nothing more than her manservant, and she the owner of the dwelling. She surveyed the contents of the house and nodded her approval at his prized buck that was stuffed and mounted at the corner of the living room. “Nice rack.” she said, running her fingers along one of the tines of an antler.

“I was about to say the same for you.” he laughed, closing and locking the door behind him. His mind filled with the promise of what they might do together once properly introduced to this temptress. But all thoughts of sex were gone when she pulled the skin from his still living body.

A few streets down, a small boy knocked on the door of another house. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am.” he said to a young mother. “But I’m lost and I don’t know where my mom is.” He looked shyly down at the baby blue tiles that lined the floor.

“Oh, you poor boy!” the mother said, “You come in and we’ll find her. You just sit down and I’ll get you something to eat.” she said, ushering him into the kitchen where she put a plate of freshly baked cookies and a tall glass of cold milk in front of him. She called her other children into the room to keep him company and picked up the phone. “I’ll just call the police and I’m sure that they will find her in no time.”

“That won’t be necessary.” the boy said, an odd gleam in his eye. “I’ve found what I was looking for.”

Moments later a man, no longer playing the boy, looked shyly down at the kitchen tiles, stained red instead of their original baby blue.

In yet another home, a police officer was interviewing a man regarding some vandalism in the neighborhood. The officer remarked on the man’s glass eye and asked him about it.

“Oh this.” the man said, sighing. “I got this back in my college days. Some friends and I were at a party. When we left the driver was too drunk to drive. We ended up in a car accident and I lost my eye. Still, I got off lucky compared to a couple of the others who never made it out alive.”

“How much would you sell it for?” the officer asked.

“Oh,” the man laughed, “Its been with me for over twenty years now. I wouldn’t give it up without a fight.”

“I was hoping that you would say that.” said the officer, his eyes glowing in the lamplight.

All through the city, different homes were subject to a scavenger hunt of the morbid kind, as their residents gave up their lives as well as their belongings. As the darkness thinned into the first hours of dawn, the men (and one woman) reconvened at the truck, lugging their bags with them. They emptied the sacks of their contents and the woman sorted through them in the bed of the truck. Beside the animal trophies she had gathered, there were various bits of jewelry, and other effects of the dead as well as several fresh human skins. They would need these for future transformations and future forays into the human world. In order to look like those that they had killed, they would need a personal item from each, and in some cases, even their skin.

While they had walked in this neighborhood looking as they had, Coyote had taught them that they should never use the same skin twice should they be recognized as what they were and hunted by mankind.

“Oh” said one young man as he pulled something out of his pocket. “I almost forgot about this.” He tossed the glass eye into the mess. “He put up one hell of a fight.” he said, rubbing a black eye.

Meanwhile the woman held up a mummified lizard and demanded to know who had brought it.

“It looked neat.” one man admitted. “And doesn’t Lightfoot have a spell for making gold that requires a mummified corpse?”

“But a lizard?” the old woman asked.

“The spell doesn’t say what kind of corpse, just that it has to be mummified.”

The old woman shrugged and put it back in the pile. She placed the items back into their respective bags and the men piled into the back of the truck.

“What I want to know is what’s up with the stray toaster?”

“Brokenclaw killed the last one, so we needed a replacement. Said the old woman.

“How can a toaster be a ‘stray’?” asked another man.

“Do you see a collar on it? No. It belongs to no one. Now it comes with us, the rest of the strays.” said one of the men.

“It’s a toaster, not a dog.”

They laughed as the truck pulled out onto the street, once again belching its toxic fumes into the air. They gave no last looks or thoughts to the civilized, yet unprotected, world they left behind. The men scratched and pulled at clothing that felt too tight. Limbs began to throb from their shape changing. And each agreed that it had been a long, if fruitful, night. The sun was rising and their desert retreat felt far away. By the time the truck returned to their ramshackle home, the woman was the one driving. She was forced to unload the night’s plunder herself as her companions had already escaped the confines of the truck. She watched them with a crooked smile on her wrinkled lips as they raced across the hot desert sands, howling at the sun as their tails streaked out like flags behind them.