The Toymaker

by Sergio Gomez

  He stopped the car and opened the door. This would be where it started. His revenge started now.

  An early celebration. The pregame, so to speak.

  Jarod saw the kid’s eyes get big, and his body go rigid. It made him feel powerful, and he grinned.

  Twist gulped, then started running.

  “Run, run, you little fucker,” Jarod laughed as he took off after him.

  Twist ran as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast with the added weight of the bags he clutched onto like his life depended on it.

  He looked over his shoulder, and saw Jarod coming after him. His red mullet was blown out by the wind, making it look like he was streaking flames out behind him.

  Jarod cackled into the air. This was a game for him.

  Torment the junior. Chase the junior. Catch the junior. Beat up the junior.

  But worst of all, steal the junior’s groceries.

  That’s what he’d meant when he asked the others if they wanted a cookout. Twist got it now. The bags had given away what he carried, and gave away what was going to happen when he caught him.

  Twist felt the collar of his shirt being pulled on, and realized he’d been right—he couldn’t run fast enough to get away.

  Jarod ripped him to the ground. Twist felt a lightning bolt of pain shoot through his back. At the same time, he felt the bags slip out of his grip. They hit the ground with a wet, meaty thump as their contents spilled out all over the sidewalk.

  Oh fuck. Big Bob is going to kill me.

  But there were more immediate things to address, more immediate things he had to survive before he could worry about what Big Bob would or wouldn’t do.

  He felt Jarod’s knee ram into his belly and one of his hands cupped him under his chin. Twist had closed his eyes when he’d been pulled down, but opened them now, and saw Jarod’s pale face inches away from him. He was grinning, showing neglected yellow teeth.

  “Thought you were going to get away like your brother, retard?” Jarod slapped him. Not hard, but enough for it to be humiliating.

  “I didn’t do nothing to you. Get off me, Jarod!” Twist screamed.

  “You embarrassed me in front of my friends, you little shit.”

  “You called me a retard first.”

  Jarod slapped him again. “Don’t talk back to your elders. Your fatass mom and dad never told you that?”

  “Fuck you. Don’t talk about my mom or dad.”

  Jarod reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade. He smiled, and Twist saw something change in his eyes, like an animalistic instinct was taking over. A chill ran down his spine.

  “Maybe I should cut your fucking balls off and then feed them to your faggot brother when I see ’em,” Jarod laughed.

  Twist tried to squirm away from underneath him, but Jarod pressed his knee into his stomach harder and tightened his grip on his face. “You’re not going anywhere until I want you to, got it?”

  Twist heard the sound of something that was familiar, but in the midst of the panic he couldn’t think of what it was. It was loud, mechanical…

  As the sound grew closer, Twist figured out what the sound was—Tommy’s motorbike. A faint wisp of hope dawned in the back of his mind.

  A shadow fell over both him and Jarod.

  “Not today, Slick.”

  Jarod looked up and saw Tommy Marino standing over him, pointing a baseball bat between his eyes.

  “Back off him or I’ll knock your head off,” Tommy said.

  Jarod grinned at him.

  From behind Tommy, a girl on a bike wearing a helmet said, “He will, too. And he hits hard as crap.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Baby Marino?” Jarod said.

  “You can pick on the junior some other day if that’s what gets you off, Jarod, but not today.” Tommy said to him.

  Jarod shook his head. He couldn’t believe he was getting punked by Pauly’s little brother. But the bat he wielded looked heavy as hell, and he remembered how much of a monster Pauly had been on the baseball field. If Baby Marino had even a quarter of his brother’s swing, he wanted no part of that.

  Add to that the fact that he was outnumbered now that there was another kid he didn’t recognize on a bike besides the girl. Also, for some reason, his retard friends hadn’t come to his side yet.

  Jarod took his knee off Twist’s stomach.

  Twist let out a gasp of air he’d been holding in to make his stomach tighter, and then rolled over, groaning on the ground.

  Jarod got up and grinned at Tommy, who still pointed the baseball bat at him. “Had no beef with you before this, Baby Marino, but now it’s on.”

  “I don’t want any beef,” Tommy said. “But you’re messing with my business right now. Capiche?”

  Jarod glanced over Tommy’s shoulder to where his car was, hoping to see Poochie and Blake trudging down to his side, to turn the tables on these little shits. Only the passenger door was open, and neither one of those two were doing such thing. He saw movement through the back of the window, but from the looks of it, it was Blake and Shelly locking lips.

  As if that wasn’t annoying enough, one of them even had the audacity to have turned the music back up.

  Fuck those guys. Jarod put the switchblade back into his pocket, and circled around the group of kids, keeping his eyes locked with Tommy Marino. Marino moved his body to mirror Jarod to make sure he didn’t try any funny stuff, while the two juniors he was with stared him down.

  He had to step off the curb to go around them, and as he did so he laughed and pointed at Tommy. “You’re gonna pay.”

  Jarod looked at Twist, who was still on the ground. “Your little friends here just made what’s coming to Jamie that much worse. You hear?”

  Jarod powerwalked back to his car.

  When he was at the side of the car, Poochie emerged from behind some bushes in front of someone’s house. He had a goofy grin on his face, and Jarod wanted to punch his mouth until he broke the metal out of the braces on his teeth.

  “Where the fuck were you, Poochie?” he yelled over the metal music.

  Poochie’s grin deflated into worrisome. “I had to take a dump, Jarod. What’s up?”

  Jarod pointed behind him. Poochie’s eyes darted to the group of kids and bikes that seemed to have materialized out of thin air in the five minutes he’d gone to take a crap in that person’s yard.

  Jarod smacked him in the back of his head. “Get inside the car, and don’t touch anything with your shitty hands.”

  Poochie complied without uttering a sound.

  Jarod slammed the car door, then jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed that door as well. He glanced into the rearview mirror to see Blake and Shelly making out. Blake had his hand up her shirt, and figured he’d chew his ass out later.

  Never fuck up a man’s game, he thought, as he put the car in drive and peeled off down the street.

  After they helped Oliver up to his feet, they all flipped the Ford off as it sped by them.

  “Fucking assholes,” Twist said at the tail end of a coughing fit in his throat.

  “We got here in the nick of time, huh?” Tommy said.

  Twist was on his feet now, but bent over to brush some grass off the knees of his pants. “Yeah, thanks guys, but my dad’s going to kill me.”

  Gina and Jack had gathered up the scattered meat and put it all back in the bags. They’d brushed off any grass or dirt from the packages. With any luck, Twist’s father wouldn’t notice anything had even happened.

  Twist took one of the bags,

  Jack and Gina carried the other two.

  “How’d you guys find me, anyway?” Twist asked them.

  “We were coming to your house, actually,” Tommy said. “How’s about we walk you the rest of the way?”

  Twist nodded.

  They all started walking their bikes back to Twist’s house, with Tommy and Twist at the front. Gina and Jack hung in the back.

  “So what�
�s up?” Twist asked Tommy. “Why were you coming to our neighborhood, anyway?”

  “We thought it’d be a good idea to go down to Lake Myers again,” Tommy said.

  “Uh, why? There’s nothing to do besides—”

  “You haven’t felt it, huh?”

  Twist stopped and looked at Tommy. “What?”

  “There’s something going on in Dutch County.” Tommy, and the others as well, had stopped. He turned toward them to include them in the conversation. “Gina and Jack felt it last night. I feel it now. Something in the town has been woken up.”

  “What the fuck?” Twist said.

  Gina put a hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t a gag, Oliver.”

  Twist stared into her eyes. She was serious.

  “It woke me up this morning,” Jack said. “Well, let me start before that. Last night me and Gina were out in her yard and Mr. Gibson let us borrow a dummy he made.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Well, this morning my dad tried to take the dummy back to him. And…” Jack paused, because the idea sounded ridiculous no matter how much he believed it. He sucked his lips in to wet them and tried again. “This morning, something woke me up. Like there was something there. Only there wasn’t. Like a ghost was shaking me awake, telling me to stop Dad from taking the dummy back.”

  Twist scanned each of their faces. They were all serious. If this was some elaborate prank, he wouldn’t even be angry at them for having him going like this because it would be the most perfect acting he’d ever seen.

  “We met at the tunnel—the same one me and Tommy went into yesterday,” Gina said as she took over the story, “and we both felt a presence in there with us.”

  “Like a ghost?” Twist said, trying to keep up.

  “More like an energy.” Jack said, looking at Gina for approval. “Like a presence.”

  Tommy still didn’t like it that those two were so close now, but he ignored it like he’d been doing. “There’s something going on here, Twist. No B.S.”

  “Why do you think the dummy has anything to do with it?” He still didn’t understand that part of it.

  “We don’t get it, either,” Gina said.

  “I do,” Tommy said.

  “Then tell us.” Twist said.

  “We need Vic first,” Tommy said. “It’s easier if I tell it to you as a group.”

  Gina shrugged. “Right. You can call him, can’t you Twist?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Twist shifted the bag of meat to his other hand. “As long as it gets you guys to explain whatever the hell is going on.”

  Chapter 2

  Any beef he’d have with the Marino Bros would have to wait until after this, because this purchase was more important than a little confrontation with Tommy.

  It would be his ace in the hole if breaking Jamie’s face didn’t work out.

  In the southernmost part of Dutch County was the Adamson Trailer Park, where Pauly Marino lived. More importantly, it was where Pauly sold his supplies. Apparently, from what Jarod had been told, Baby Marino did the same thing at his school. Pauly’s little brother sold cigarettes and test answers out of his locker to younger kids who couldn’t get those things by themselves, but Pauly was who you went to when you wanted the good stuff.

  His innocuously named “supplies” consisted of drugs, drug paraphernalia, stolen electronics, fake IDs, and what Jarod was coming to him for—unregistered, untraceable guns.

  Sure, Tommy had just embarrassed him at the end of a baseball bat, but it didn’t matter. Around here, Pauly was the only one who could get him what he needed. The great equalizer.

  Jarod turned the music down, out of respect or something like that, as he pulled the Ford in front of the trailer next to a beat-up Honda with a rusted rooftop and no hubcaps.

  He’d dropped off Blake and Shelly at Blake’s place, but brought Poochie with him “just in case.”

  Climbing out, Jarod said, “Stay in the car, Poochie.”

  “Jarod, what’re we doing at Pauly’s place?” Poochie’s perpetually slackened jaw made him look more frightened than he was when his eyes bugged out, but this time he actually was as scared as he looked.

  “Shut the fuck up, Poochie.”

  Poochie slouched in the passenger seat and stared straight ahead.

  “I’ll be quick,” Jarod said, slamming the door.

  He was nervous—he always was when he met up with Pauly. Maybe it was just paranoia, but he felt like the cops were always staking out the place and were going to charge in as soon as he stepped into the trailer.

  Wouldn’t that be some shit, Jarod thought. Getting arrested and thrown in jail the day he was supposed to get his revenge. At least there’d be turkey in jail for Thanksgiving.

  Jarod rapped on the door with two knuckles.

  The trailer door opened, and Pauly Marino stood on the other side. He wore a crisp, clean wifebeater, a gold necklace, and his hair was spiked up on his head.

  “Jarod Crimp, my main man,” he said, sticking his hand out.

  Jarod shook with him. “What’s up Pauly?”

  “Nothing much, my man.” Pauly waved him inside. “Come on, come inside before I catch a cold.”

  They went inside, and Jarod closed the door behind him. He was sure he was going to hear helicopters over the tunes of Jimi Hendrix playing on the radio any second now.

  Laying out on the couch with her hair spread over the armrest was one of the most gorgeous girls Jarod had ever seen. She’d had her eyes closed, with a joint in one hand, but the sound of the trailer door closing made her open her eyes and look over.

  She waved to him, and Jarod thought about waving back, but wasn’t sure if he was worthy. Wasn’t sure if he was even worthy of being in the same planet as this girl.

  He hesitated too long, and the girl turned her head and closed her eyes again.

  “What’re you lookin’ for? Weed? Coke?” Pauly walked over to a dresser where there were some dime bags ready to be sold and picked one up. “This is good shit right here.”

  Jarod was still too tongue-tied from the girl on the couch to speak.

  “Ain’t that right, Marissa?” Pauly called over to the girl.

  The girl named Marissa kept her eyes shut, but nodded.

  “I’m telling you, it’s good shit,” Pauly said again.

  “No, no, Pauly. I’m looking for the other stuff.” Jarod said, getting his composure back.

  Pauly Marino turned up an eyebrow, as if he didn’t know what he was talking about. Then it hit him, this request was a rare one, but it was a part of his business. Pauly winked at him.

  “That explains all of the…” He reached out to touch the sweat on Jarod’s brow, but stopped an inch before touching him. Better not to touch a greaseball like him. “That explains why you seem nervous.”

  “Y—yeah.”

  Pauly Marino waved him on, and led Jarod toward a bead curtain covering the back of the trailer. “Come on, over here.”

  Jarod followed him. The beads knocking against one another behind him sealed them off as if they’d entered another realm. A realm within the trailer that only a few had ventured into.

  In reality, it was a nook of the trailer with a skinny filing cabinet that almost touched the ceiling.

  The space changed Pauly Marino’s attitude. His grin vanished from his face, replaced by a darker expression. Jarod felt like a man coming to the mafia for help.

  Shit. Pauly kind of is like the mafia of Dutch County. What the fuck am I doing?

  Then he remembered the calendar in his glove compartment, and Jamie. Jamie Harper, who’d stolen his girl. Fuck that guy.

  “What’re you lookin’ for? Self-defense? Shit to scare people off? Kill someone?”

  Jarod turned the question over in his mind. His mouth had suddenly gone dry, so he licked his lips before he spoke. “I—I’m not sure.”

  “Okay.” Pauly shifted his weight to his other leg. Pauly had been known as a hothead on the footbal
l field back in high school, so Jarod regretted not giving him a straight answer. “Let me try this another way. How much you got?”

  Jarod reached into the pocket of his sweatshirt and pulled out a bunch of twenties. “Three hundred.”

  Pauly nodded. “Three hundred. Ain’t bad.”

  He took a key out from his pocket and walked over to the filing cabinet. He unlocked one of the cabinets near the top, then pulled out an automatic handgun and a box of ammo. He put the box of ammo on a table next to the skinny filing cabinet.

  Jarod’s eyes fixed on the gun. He’d never been this close to a real one before, but it looked even cooler than in the movies. And this was just some rinky-dink thing.

  “Serial number is scratched off, so it can’t be traced to anyone,” Pauly said. He held the gun up with both hands like a gameshow host showing a grand prize. “Three hundred for the gun and the box of ammo. Non-negotiable.”

  Negotiation wasn’t on his mind at all. He’d been saving up his money doing roofing over the summer with his uncle for this very moment. Jarod forked the three hundred over to him. Pauly set the gun on the little table he’d put the box of ammo on, then took the wad of cash and counted it aloud.

  “…Trecento,” he said, satisfied. “One last thing…”

  Pauly unlocked a bottom drawer that had a spray bottle and a pile of wash cloths. He sprayed one of the wash cloths and then closed the drawer. With the wetted cloth, he picked the gun up and began wiping it down.

  He stared into Jarod’s eyes as he did this—and Jarod felt a chill run through his body.

  “No trace, means absolutely no trace back to me. Got it?” he said.

  Jarod nodded.

  “Good.” He finished wiping down the gun and handed it over.

  While Pauly wiped the box of ammo down, Jarod admired the gun. It was heavy, cold, and already made him feel powerful. A true killing machine.

  He had so much power in his hands. So much that he could have taken the ammo Pauly Marino was about to hand him, load the gun up, shoot him in the face, and take his money back.

  Unstoppable power.

  Jarod snickered.

  “What’re you planning on doing with this, anyway? I like knowing where my babies are going when they leave into the real world, is all.”