Dead Wait

That was the beginning of a nightmarish journey for Orin. This hot little girl had him wrapped around her finger. All he had to do for her was electrocute some clowns dolls.

Later, when he got of the mental institutions, when he thought his nightmare was over, he discovered it was just beginning.

Before the doctors found meds that worked for me, I used to have nightmares while I was awake. Some of the psychiatrists said that my waking nightmares were primal terrors and aggressions that broke past my inhibitions. Others said other things. All of them thought that I was crazy. None of them said quite that. What I was doing with Melly was real, and as I strapped the first clown into the wires and straps and metal that she called "her little electric chair" after we pulled the drapes, I knew that what I was doing would classify as nuts. But Melly felt good.

She had put her electric chair on a rubber mouse pad, and wires ran from the device to a switchbox that was plugged into the wall.

"You take them off the wall one at a time," she said, "and put them in the chair and strap them in. I don't want to touch them. But I'll throw the switch."

"Why don't you want to touch them?" I had asked.

"I just don't," she said.

"Why?"

"Because they'll try to hurt me."

"What about me?" I asked.

"They'll hate you," she said back, "but they can't do anything to you. Most of them are just... half alive. One of them is him. I just don't know which one."

"It wouldn't be the one with the little handcuffs, would it?" I asked.

"I think that's a devil. It might be Collin, though. I'm not sure. But I'm not taking any chances."

"Why did you put the black tape over their eyes?"

"I got tired of them watching me," she said. "And when we do it, you can't take the tape off their eyes."

"Why?"

"Because their eyes can make you do things."

"This is crazy, Melly."

"So?"

"Maybe I should leave."

"You chicken?"

"I think so."

"Good. Go get me a prisoner."

I removed the nail from the first victim with the claw end of a hammer, and it must have been nailed into a stud, because either the wood or the clown doll shrieked as the nail came out.

There were tears painted onto the doll's ceramic face. They were red and made me think of blood. I saw one drop of red at the corner of its lips that I wasn't sure was there before I had pulled out the nail. I tried not to look at it while I did the reverse-stake thing.

"Hurry," she said. "Put it in the chair before it wakes up. It takes them a while to start moving because they're still in shock."

When I had wired the first one in, I stepped back, took one of a few amber bottles from my pocket, and shook out a med. I wasn't sure if I was following the schedule, but I was feeling stressed. As Melly squeezed a little water onto the clown from a washcloth, I swallowed the pill dry. I thought that it was the one to keep me calm, but the label had fallen off the plastic bottles, and I wasn't sure which one was which. With what was going on, I wasn't sure that it made a difference what type of drug that I took.

Melly said something in Latin or some other language with her eyes closed and then threw the switch. The sparks must have bounced the clown up in the chair before it started to smoke, because it jumped enough that if it wasn't the sparks, it was the clown arching its back.

"It's going to burn," I said.

"In Hell," she replied.

"This is crazy, Melly," I said.

"Next clown," she said back at me.