D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

I kept waiting for him to drop it like he had Andy’s toy, but he didn’t. I noticed his hand was shaking, and a thread of saliva was dripping from the side of his mouth. I remembered how he had found me after I went walking in the woods with my bear, remembered Andy’s theory that the Thief had tracked me like a bloodhound. Then I remembered the way he had acted after he laid those horrid hands on Andy’s skin, and I knew, somehow, that the two things were the same. He was feeding on Andy, taking something from him, just as he fed on the toys. I thought of Andy’s other forgotten toys, the ones the Thief had left behind, focusing only on the most important, the most delectable treats.

Whatever this… feeding was, it was happening right there in front of me, to my bear, and it must have been a wonderful sensation. Even here, with Andy clutching what seemed to be the Thief’s most prized possession, he still couldn’t easily let go. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I reached forward and snatched the bear away. It felt suddenly dirty in my hands, and I just didn’t want to touch it, so I scooped up Andy’s Superman and slid them both into my backpack. The Toy Thief closed his eyes and sighed, the moment of ecstasy broken.

“Now,” I said as I zipped the bag closed. “Please. Let’s go.”

Another rumble of thunder, this one even louder than before, seemed to wake Andy out of the haze he was in. Slowly, still holding the globe in front, he began to shuffle back down the hall.

“M-mine,” the Thief said, pointing. “Pleassse…”

“No,” I whispered. This thing was pitiful, an awful, bent creature that shouldn’t have existed. And there was pain in that horrible face, miserable pain that might be temporarily quenched by that snow globe. I glanced up at it, saw the tiny family within, saw the silver flakes dancing around them, thought of the boy in the picture. I wanted to give it back, to leave this awful creature to his own devices, but I knew we wouldn’t make it far without something to ensure our safe passage.

“Not until we’re out of here,” I said for Andy. “We’ll leave it outside. You can get it when we’re gone…”

“Puh-puh-lease… is mine. F-from her…”

Was that her in the picture? The thought made my heart break a little, but Andy had different plans. He was shaking, that strange look washing over his face once more.

“Your mother?”

“Yesss…”

“Did you love her?”

The creature nodded.

“Good. That means this will hurt.”

With a single, swift motion, he raised the globe and threw it down onto the rocks, shattering it into a million glittering pieces.

Dad died about six years ago. I was grown by then, on my own, self-sufficient more or less. It was a punch though. One I didn’t see coming. Those are always the ones that hurt the most.

It was his heart, because of course it was. Decades of fast food will do that. He had a massive heart attack on… a Tuesday, I think. Then, on Thursday, when he was waiting on surgery, he had another one. They thought everything was stable, but his ticker was just a bit weaker than they thought. He wasn’t that old, after all. Men his age run marathons and climb mountains nowadays.

I didn’t know what to do. I can be honest about that. I was working nonstop at the time, fresh out of college, carving out a shitty career for myself. All of it, rolling along without a care in the world, when boom, the call came in. What are you supposed to do? What can any of us really hope to do when that call comes in?

You go. You sit. You talk.

“They’ll get you fixed up,” I told him about twelve hours before he died. “They know what they’re doing.”

I spent the entire day sitting next to his hospital bed, occasionally holding his hand when he cried here and there. He didn’t think it was the end. Neither of us did, but he had passed beyond something in his mind. The days of living one moment to the next were over, because he knew that soon enough, there would be no more moments. The last day would be two days away, then tomorrow, then today. I could see him working it out in his mind. I won’t say his life flashed before him, but he was more wistful than I could ever remember him being. Growing up, it had always been about pushing forward, charging into the next moment, making sure that Andy and I were full of food, that the lights were still on, that the bills were all paid. Now bills didn’t mean anything. I was paying my own way and Andy was… well, he was behind bars, the family secret that everyone knew about.

We talked about Mom, and he told me about meeting her, the way she laughed at all his jokes. He told me about what a wonderful mother she had been, and he made sure to change the subject when he saw how uncomfortable it made me. And then, as I knew he would, he talked about Andy.

“I don’t know what I did wrong,” he said, tears on his cheek. “If I had it to do again, I… I just don’t know what I could have done different.”

I never told him about what happened that summer, beyond what he already knew, what everyone knew. There were parts of it that he surely guessed at, the secret that Andy and I shared, but he never knew the truth. How could he? But in that moment, for the first time, I came dangerously close to telling him everything, because I wanted him to know that it wasn’t his fault.

“Dad… what if I told you that there wasn’t anything you could have done?”

He turned, stared me in the eyes, the look of an expectant child waiting for you to give them the answers to every question they’ve ever had.

“What do you mean?”

I stumbled, unsure of how to answer. “I mean that… what if Andy was… too far gone? What if something… changed him?”

The grief in my father’s face deepened. “I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. I feel like my life has been a jigsaw puzzle, and every time I move a piece, another one falls to the floor. Gone.”

“No,” I said, realizing where he was going.

“Yes,” he replied, shushing me. “If your mother had never died, Andy might not have turned out like he did.” He raised a hand to my cheek and added, “But I never would have gotten you.”

I let him cry. Let myself cry. Then I let the moment die and fall into the rearview mirror of the past. Maybe, when we were both old enough to believe in crazy things again, I’d tell him the truth. Maybe I’d get Andy to help me. Between the two of us, we might even convince him.

‘Maybe’ never came, and Dad was dead the next day. They buried him beside Mom. Three times a year I put flowers on their graves: once on each birthday, and then on their anniversary.

The shattered pieces of the snow globe flew, raining down upon the stones like springtime hail. All I could do was watch the glistening shards of glass as they tinkled to rest on the cave floor. I couldn’t quite grasp what I was seeing, and from the look on his face, neither could the Thief. Only Andy seemed in complete control of himself as he defiantly sneered at the creature, whose chest was heaving, his nostrils flaring, his mouth open and soundless. That sight – of a hopeless, desperate thing staring at the aftermath of Andy’s temper – that was what brought me back. I didn’t say a word. I only grabbed Andy’s sleeve and began dragging him back down the hall of toys.

For a moment, Andy resisted, keeping his eyes locked on the Thief, the grim, awful satisfaction of what he had done shining on his face. Then, like cutting a thread, whatever held sway over my brother released its grip, and he turned to run.

The glowing, multicolored eyes of a thousand toys stared at us as we clambered back toward the exit, while behind us, the Thief’s deep, ragged breathing was beginning to break. The sound changed, morphing into something else entirely, a whine that rose to a whistling, high-pitched scream. It reminded me of a mother bird watching her eggs being devoured. I risked a glance back, just enough to see it frantically scraping the pieces together, pulling them into a pile even as they sliced into his bare hands. It was useless of course. What Andy had done would never be fixed, and the whine broke into an insane cry of miserable pain and anger. It would be coming for us, very soon and very angry, and I knew we’d never get out of there unless we did something to slow it down. We hit the edge of the aisle, back into the gloom of the cave, and I grabbed Andy and spun him around next to me.