D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

No! I heard the voice say, loud and strong within my head.

“No,” said another, this one weak and pitiful, echoing from the Thief’s throat. I realized what I was seeing. A fish, caught from a pond and thrown cruelly onto the dry bank to die, and all the flopping and thrashing in the world could do nothing to save it. The Thief reached for me, for my neck, trying to choke me as he screamed both within my mind and without, but the once-iron fingers were weak and helpless, and the hands fell limply away, shriveling, turning to ash on my skin. Blood spewed from the stumps of my fingers, coating my chest and neck with a thick red stream stenciled with a black essence that dissipated as I watched, both curious and detached.

“No,” Andy said desperately. “Please, no.”

He was doing something, digging around behind me, but I was too mesmerized by the sight of the Thief to notice. He was almost deflating, the eyes falling in on themselves, the lips receding, the already crisp skin tightening. He was, before my eyes, going from alive to dead and beyond, all of those years hitting him in the span of a few seconds. The skin shriveled, cracked, and sloughed off in tiny pieces, dead leaves falling away. Soon there was no skin at all, and even the bones seemed to shrink as what was left of the creature fell to the carpeted floor in complete silence. It was impossible – the years, decades, all of it passing in the span of ten seconds, reducing the once terrifying Toy Thief to a pile of ash and old clothes.

My other hand fell free as Andy cut me loose, and I felt a rush of warmth as the blood pumped back into it. Then the belt was gone, and I could breathe and talk, even though there wasn’t much I wanted to say. I was floating, hovering above the carpeted floor, and my body didn’t feel a single sensation beyond quiet peace. I could have died then, probably should have died, and I wouldn’t have given the matter another thought. Dying would have been just as pleasant as anything else. There was Andy again with one of his t-shirts in hand as he took my mutilated fingers and squeezed them tight. That brought me back – the pain of my brother saving my life.

“How?” I asked him. “How did you know?” My voice was like the tread of boots in a gravel pit, but Andy understood.

“He told me,” he said as he tended my deformed hand. “He didn’t want me to know how vulnerable he was when going from one person to the other, but I saw it all the same. He wanted you, but he had to be whole to do it. Half was in me, half was in him.”

“But how did you know… my fingers…”

A guilty look swept across his face, and I knew. He hadn’t had some grand plan. He’d only wanted it out of him. And once it was, he was enough himself once more, and he found his will to fight back. It wasn’t romantic or brave, but it would do. He bound my hand up and wrapped the belt around it as tightly as it would go. The pain was real now, almost blinding, but I came to long enough to see him staring at the empty clothes, the last remnants of the Thief. He looked back at my hand, then down at the knife, and I saw the truth in his eyes before he even said a word.

“I… I’ve got to go,” he said as he reached down and began to gather the clothes.

“No,” I said, already crying. “You can’t.”

“I have to,” he replied, and I knew it was the truth.

“We could… make something up. I can do it, I can fix it,” I said, blubbering.

“No,” he said honestly. “You can’t.”

We were just kids, and no story we could make up would save my brother. He had sliced off two of my fingers. That was the only truth that mattered. Any evidence that might have saved him had shriveled up and disappeared, and a wad of old, dingy clothes wouldn’t change anyone’s mind.

“Andy,” I begged. “Please.”

He shook his head. “I might not see you again. Maybe not for a long time. Maybe never.”

I nodded, because there was simply nothing else to be done. This was the end of the lives we knew, and there was no fighting it.

“I’m sorry,” he added, gathering up the musty black clothes and holding them against his chest. “Sorry I wasn’t myself. Sorry I wasn’t what you needed.”

“You did your best,” I said. “That was pretty good.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he added, but there was no fight in his voice. “But I’m glad you said it.”

“Just go,” I said through my teeth. “Go while I’m still awake.”

“Goodbye then,” he said weakly before kissing me gently on the cheek. Then he was gone, leaving nothing behind but a blood-soaked carpet and a warm spot on my cheek. I heard the steps down the hall, heard the door slam shut, and listened to my own labored breath coming in harsh wheezes. Andy was gone, his last bit of work still ahead of him, and now it was my turn.

I drew myself up, stumbled into the hallway, and walked to the door to Dad’s room. I never went in there, but on this occasion, I let myself right in. It was always darker than the rest of the house. I flipped on the light and saw him there, looking small and strange curled up in his bed. He stayed on the left side, keeping the right side more or less untouched. He was on his feet in less than two seconds, the skill of a longtime parent. Then he stood there, blinking, seeing me but not really seeing anything.

“Jack,” he murmured. “Whatissit?”

I knew the lie, knew what I had to say, but I faltered.

“Daddy,” I cried, holding my hand in front of my face, and finally, he saw.

“Oh God,” he said, grabbing my wrist carefully. The t-shirt was red now, lighter on the outer edges and dark crimson in the center. One look and anyone could see that it wasn’t doing much to stop the bleeding. I’d never before or since seen Dad so speechless.

“What did you do?”

I?

The question confused me, but after a few seconds, I understood. This was an accident. It had to be. Daughters could scrape knees, burn themselves with hot cocoa, get beat up or knocked up. They could do these things and a million other things that fathers might fear, but they didn’t get attacked in the night in their own house. That was unimaginable.

“It wasn’t me,” I said, the guilt rising like bile in my throat as I anticipated the moment that had to come.

“What?” he said. “What is it, baby? Tell me.”

I shook my spinning head and blinked my welling eyes.

“It was Andy.”

I woke up in the hospital, surrounded by beeps and the smell of piss and antiseptic. I remembered everything almost at once, and I raised my bandaged hand in confirmation. For the longest time, all I could do was stare at it.

“Easy,” the nurse said as I inspected the almost spherical ball of white. “Don’t move it. Everything’s patched up, but it will take a good while to heal.”

I was still woozy, feeling drunk from the morphine that had kept me sedated while they patched me up.

“Id idges… idges.”

I held my free hand up and pretended to scratch my mangled paw.

“Oh,” she said. “Itches?”

I nodded.

“Yes, that’s a common thing. They call it phantom pain. You’ll probably be able to feel those fingers for a long time. Years even.” I rolled my head to one side and stared at the wall, disgusted.

Most of the other facts are out there. The news picked it up. The papers printed it. A writer in town even wrote a book about it. True crime, she called it. I looked it up one time and found out that she’d only sold about seventy copies. That made me smile.

According to the news, Andy tied up and attacked his sister. That’s me. There were dozens of theories as to why, the most popular being that media had had some sort of effect on his mind. Metal music, videogames, horror movies. The unholy trinity. It could have been a dabbling with satanism. After all, he had tied me up and sliced off two of my fingers. It sounded positively sacrificial. After the deed was done, he stole my father’s truck and tore out across the neighborhood before, thankfully, wrecking it a few miles away. The old truck was found in a ditch next to an abandoned stretch of field, the tailgate dropped, the radiator smoking. It only took the cops a few minutes to find it after Dad called them, but it took the better part of an hour for Andy to come marching out from the woods beyond the field, finally giving himself up. And that was that.