Coin-Operated Machines (16 page)

LOCKED IN

Brock had to confirm the truth for himself.  The bolt to the hotel room's door was unlocked, but there was a steel square stuck between the door and the wall panel that impeded any movement.  In the middle was the slit opening for a coin. 

"
James, did you see it happen?  Did you see the steel appear?"

"
No."  James grabbed Brock's arm, shaking him.  "You have more change, right?  Tell me you've got more pocket change!"

"Whoa, wait.
So what you're saying is you put a coin in it, and it opens."

"
Everything requires money to function, yes.  I already went over this." 

"
We're like vending machines, but we're not full of candy," Angel chimed in.  Brock recognized her for a moment, the person who could make the weirdest jokes at the drop of a dime, but then she was gone.  Angel was once again his long lost sister who was drunk and craving cocaine.

"
The only way to go about this is apprehending that axe guy," Brock proposed again.  "Whatever it takes, we'll make him answer our questions.  I'll find Hannah, and then we can ask him what he's doing with that money."

"I remember him assemb
ling me," Angel said, thinking out loud.  "I saw body parts all over the place.  I think I woke when I wasn't supposed to.  He was freaked out by my 'wide eyes' looking at him.  He took me apart, then he put something in me, and then rebuilt me.  I don't think he always succeeds in rebuilding people.  That place was a killing floor.  A butcher's block.  Blood everywhere."

"Where were you
when that happened?"  James came to her side and lowered to one knee.  "What else do you remember?  You must tell us everything about that experience. Any details that come to mind, please."

Brock was surprised she
responded to James.  "It was in a room, a dark room.  I can't recall anything else.  After it's done, I wake up in the street, sensing this need to find money, and I end up here, falling asleep on the bed, and then you woke me.  As far as the sleep goes, I also remember nothing.  Nothing at all.  It's pretty much like I was dead in every way."

James
returned to the door, re-attempting to open it and once again failing.  "Damn it, we're trapped.  We're getting nowhere."

Brock went about checking the bathroom.
The door was closed, also locked in place by a steel plate into the doorframe with a slit in the middle.  The access begged to be fed, he thought.  He bent down to check the air vent, also secured by two steel plates.  "No other way out.  It's all secure."

"Fuck this
bullshit!"  James shouted, lifting up a chair and hurling it into the wall.  The connection merely cracked the plaster. Beneath the cracks was solid steel. 

James
pointed at the wall.  "H-how did that happen? None of us heard it change.  It would've been loud, wood being replaced by steel, right?  I've been asking this myself the whole time, so why do I keep on asking now?  There's no Goddamn answer."

"
You still can't give up."  Brock leaned against the wall, trying to think of the next step.  "So we're trapped.  So we think outside the box."

James
wasn't prone to accept positivity at this point.  "We can readjust our thinking all we want.  We're trapped.  End of story."

Angel
expressed the sentiment better.  "We're fucked."

TIM HAWKER'S HOUSE

Uncle Hawker's house wasn't located in the woods when Willy was a kid.  It was actually located along a residential area of older houses the city wanted to demolish almost two decades ago to build a new highway system that connected to the Interstate.  Considering how strange it was the new location of the house, it was also strange the house was here because it had burned down.  Those charred remains were cleared out and the property was used for the interstate project, but that didn't seem to matter today.  Everything happening in Blue Hills kept defying reality, and something else was going to happen soon to further cement the fact.

There was a long driveway a quarter of a mile long that also didn't exist when his uncle's house was first around.  Jenna kept her gun steady in her hand, urging him to keep going. 
Willy feared the house with every turn of the wheels. 

What made the house return?

Willy asked Jenna that question.  She didn't hear him at first, then moments later, she snapped out of her inner thoughts.  Jenna gave him a long stare.  His question had confounded her, so she said, "You know why the house is here.  You know why all of this is happening.  Quit playing dumb.  It doesn't make me hate you any less.  Playing dumb won't save you.  It won't save anyone."

The scathing words didn't hit home like she intended to.  There was fear in her eyes.  Her act was a front, so he
did something bold.  Once they were in front of the house, Willy slammed down on the gas.  The car lurched forward with a jerk, and then he struck the brakes.  Jenna was pushed forward, and Willy braced himself as she hit the dash.  He grabbed the gun out of her hands, stole the keys, and rushed out of the car. 

Willy's hands shook in the pistol's grip.  He didn't want the weapon, but he also didn't want a crazy bitch's bullet in his back either.  Jenna stumbled out with her hands to her face.  Her nose was bloodied.  He was about to apologize
to her, but the blow served to numb her anger. 

They stood together in silence, the car
the only thing between them. 

"What do we do now?'  Willy demanded.  "If I would've gone along with your plan, what would you tell me to do
next?"

Jenna didn't seem to care.  "My job's done.  You're here."  Her
hands trembled at saying this next bit.  "I'm through with my part."

"You're...
through
?  Through with what?"

Jenna wore a sarcastic smile.  Then the expression crumbled into one of intense loathing.  "Life isn't much when you think about it, Willy.  You're given a few chances to really appreciate it, and when you do appreciate it the most, that's the moment it's about to be taken away from you."  She dabbed a tear out of the corner of her eye.  "Not everybody can say they truly appreciated life when the end comes.  I should count
it as a blessing that I had that chance to experience that moment of clarity."

Her explanation was cut short.  He heard the uncoiling of a spring, like rusty metal scraping against rusty metal.  What had happened to Tally suddenly happened to
Jenna.  An unseen force popped off her head from the neck with a splitting of skin and a gush of arterial sprays.  Her arms spat out of the sockets, launching them across the lawn.  They landed like two planks of stiff wood.  When her legs went out from under her, Willy ran for the car.

"Fuck this!" 

Willy gathered up the keys, dropped them, and had to get on his hands and knees to scoop them up from the ground.  His body had gone stiff with fear.  He reserved his mental capacities for one goal.  Drive the hell out of there. 

He managed to pick up the keys and
guide them into the door's lock.  It scraped metal and wouldn't go into the hole.

"What the
—!"

The key hole was blocked by a square of steel.  

Willy shattered the window with the butt of the pistol after four blows.  He cleared the glass from the edges and reached in to open the door.  It came open, and he cleared the glass from the upholstery the best he could before sitting down. 

The car's ignition was blocked by a piece of steel. 

Without knowing why, the car tipped backwards.  Both back tires popped, startling him.  The smell of scorched meat, the iron in blood, and tang of something ripe, wrong, and dead caused him to gag and cover his nose and mouth.  The car lowered itself.  Willy saw it happen in the rearview mirror first.  The back tires were sinking into a puddle of boiling hot tar.  Soon, the car tipped upwards like a sinking cruise liner into the ocean.

Sprinting from the car,
Willy was surrounded by the boiling tar.  The only place he could run was towards the front steps of his uncle's house.   Once there, he inspected the tar better.  There were color swirls and tints to the substance, lots of reds, greens, blacks, and flesh tones.  Willy kept smelling something offal.  It turned his stomach.  He wanted to puke, yet his fear kept the urge at bay.  His senses refused to let down their guard.  Danger surrounded him.

Staring harder at the burning black stuff, various bones began to surface.  Boiled clean skulls and human spines mostly, each boiling in the mess, and soon, sucked back down with a short burst of noxious bubbles.

All along the yard, high pressure puffs of air cut up the grass, slicing it up into thin clods that shot up head high.  The remains of Jenna's body sank into the damaged earth as the black tar pooled up from the holes and melted the human remains in seconds.  What used to be his old girlfriend was now dissolved. 

The yard was filling up with the black as more of the turf was blown away by pockets of surging air.  Willy wasn't sure where to run to.  The entire stretch of the yard was boiling in black.  He stood on the cement walkway, waiting for the black to reach out to him and pull him under and kill him. 

Voices on the air arrived out of nowhere and everywhere.  The words caused his skin to prick and pang.  Willy went stiff taking in what they said to him. 

"
Hello welcome/good to see you again, Willy/come inside, we have a lot of catching up to do/this is all for you, Willy/please come in so we can reacquaint ourselves/just step inside where it's safe, Willy/come on in and we'll talk.
"

The black sledge edged towards the concrete steps, causing steam to rise.  He wasn't sure if the house was safe, but it was better tha
n dying right here right now.  Willy dodged the black stuff by opening the door and entering the house. 

PLANNING AN ESCAPE

Brock returned to the problem at hand.  "Do we know anything else about this axe guy?"

Angel said,
"He was once a fireman."

"
James already told me that." Brock was annoyed.  "Was he possessed?  Did he go crazy?  What made him do the things he's doing now?"

Something occurred to James
suddenly.  "He's not possessed or crazy, I don't think.  But when he's close by, sometimes I notice he's got that oil on him.  The oil that comes up from the ground.  The oil's full of bones and it reeks of death.  Maybe that's what changed him.  The oil."

"You're saying the dead are inside him?"

"I'm saying I don't know anything about the oil.  I'm just guessing.  Whatever it is, it's obviously bad."

"He's only guessing, Brock," Angel said, twisting her head at him
and giving him that manipulative smile.  She could con charity out of its life savings with that evil smile.  "Why don't you back off of us?  Nobody knows what's really happening except that we'll either be asleep or dead soon.  I'm sure that axe guy knows we're here.  He'll chop down the door and clean us out of money.  End of story."

"But why do it at all?"  Brock expected Angel's snappy response
.  "I know, I know, Jesus, nobody knows why, but I'm asking anyway.  Why make people operate on money?  It's ironic."

"Ironic," Angel scoffed.  "You're ridiculous, Brock.  Are you sure you're clean?  You're
talking like an idiot."

"I mean it's
like someone's joke or statement about society."

James
understood him.  "It's been planned, it seems.  I get what you're saying.  But who is pulling it off?  Whatever means it would take to pull this off, it's incredible."

"We must find that
axe man and shake him down."

Angel shoved
a pillow in her face and stifled a scream.  "This is ridiculous!  You guys are talking in circles.  And if you go against that man, you're going to get yourselves killed."

Brock was angry. 
"That man hasn't done anything to me.  I'm not a machine yet.  I can fight him."

The information served as a slap to her face
.  "Oh please.  You'll be his next victim.  You're a fucking pansy, Brock."

"You guys must hate each other,"
James said, a smile crossing his face that Brock wanted to punch off.  "Dysfunction city."

"That's what the Richards family is famous for."  Angel stood u
p.  She was tired of resting on the bed.  She moved closer to James to better spell it out.  "Big brother joined me in snorting our way through millions.  It was our father's fortune.  You've heard of Gene Richards, haven't you?"

"Yeah, he was as funny as David Letterman on his late night show.  The human petting zoo was his funniest
bit.  Funnier than Leno's "Headlines.""

"Yeah, funnie
r than "Headlines,"" Angel said sadly.

"So b
ig brother lets me get addicted to coke, watches me fuck any stranger I could get my hands on, and lord knows, I could've been raped and he wouldn't know it and wouldn't give a shit either."

"Angel, it's complicated," Brock
insisted.  "You're right.  I'm a terrible brother.  But I'm trying to change.  I have changed."

James
asked them to help him try and break through the door again.  The attempts were futile.  They smashed the mini-fridge into the door, and the grain wasn't dented or broken.  Using that disappointment, they dismantled the bed, twisting the legs off and using them as clubs, and as they beat against the door, doing more harm to their bludgeons than the door, Angel searched for change underneath the square of carpet that was revealed.  Cursing after coming up empty, she rubbed the dust bunnies off her arms and sat down in the corner chair, shaking her head at them disapprovingly. 

Brock
snarled, "Instead of giving up, why don't you help?"

"Because you're not getting out of here without money."

James was out-of-breath and plopped onto the floor in a defeated pile.  "Fine, you're right.  I can't do anymore."  He joked to himself, "I'm too old for this shit."

Brock sat down next to him
.  "It's not good for the back, these life and death situations."

The room was still for a moment, all of them turning over their own thoughts, struggling with the situation their own way, until Angel spoke up.  "There is one good thing about our predicament."

Brock couldn't wait to hear it.  "And what would that be?"

"I haven't had the craving.  It's as if I've never had cocaine before.  The memory of it is there, but the physical part of it is gone.  It's very strange, but I like it."

"I got through my morning without coffee," James joked.  "I can drink an entire pot in a day, easy.  I'm retired.  That's what I do.  I drink coffee.  I've taken up whittling.  Owls, turkeys, chickadees, any Virginia fauna I could dream up with my knife, I'd create.  My wife would keep feeding me coffee out on my back deck facing the woods, and she'd say, "It's coming along, isn't it" no matter how good or shitty my projects turned out.  I'd sell the good ones at the annual state fair. How silly is that?  Don't I sound retired?  I'd make three to four hundred dollars in a good year.  That's a
good
year."

"That's not
silly," Angel said, though she was still spaced out on her own thoughts to care too deeply about James and his whittling.  "Not silly at all."

"Maybe not, but I could be doing other things.  My
wife wanted to travel more.  I thought we didn't have the money.  It's stupid now, considering all of this.  She's gone forever.  We could've traveled to every spot in Europe, seen Egypt, and I worried about money.  It's such a waste of life."

Brock rested his hands agains
t his knees and faced the floor. That's when he closed his eyes for a moment.  Relaxing enough to steady his thoughts, the easy going moment was ended when James suddenly shrieked in agony.