Grand Obsession (v. 2.0, complete)

[bobquasit]

It hadn't been an obsession, to start. In fact, he'd hardly noticed it. But sometime in the second week at his new apartment, Ed Rakubian realized that he'd heard the same dull thumpaTHUMPathumpaTHUMP before...coupled with the roar of an engine down the street, same as the last time.

It sparked instant annoyance. He knew he'd moved into a slum - it was all he could afford after losing his old job - but he hadn't expected it to be, well, so slummy.

Besides, he'd seen KIDS playing on the street - that afternoon, come to think of it!

That pissed him off. It was bad enough that those damn teenagers were blasting their crappy music at all hours of the day and night, but they were zooming down the street at sixty or seventy miles an hour, at least - and the speed limit was twenty-five miles per hour.

It ruined his evening.

The next morning Ed called the police department.

"-artment, front desk, Officer DeBlaise speaking."

"Hello? I'm calling about the speeders on Oakdale street."

"What about them?"

"Well, it's a twenty-five mile-per-hour zone. They're going fifty or sixty miles per hour, at least!"

"...so what would you like us to do about it, sir?"

Ed's stomach clenched. The "sir" definitely sounded sarcastic.

"Look, there are kids who play in the street there all day. There must be something you can do! I mean, I mean, couldn't you put out one of those speed-detecting machines, at least?"

He definitely heard an exasperated sigh this time. "...those don't work, sir. Not in a neighborhood like yours. Somebody would just shoot it up for fun. Or steal it."

Ed began to feel desperate.

"Well...look...I'm not a police officer. But you must have SOME way to do something about this. How about speed bumps? Or put a police car on the street for a few days, and write some tickets?"

"We don't do speed bumps, sir, and the force is overworked as it is. Tell you what: give me your name and address, and I'll take a complaint from you. That's the best I can do."

Ed hung up without saying another word. His hands were shaking. Goddamn cops, he thought.

Things only got worse over the next couple of weeks. Ed knew he shouldn't watch, but he kept getting drawn back to the windowshade, watching kids - some couldn't have been older than two or three - playing, running in the street without so much as glancing either way. Hearing cars zoom by, speakers blasting, louder and louder. He found himself waking up at night each time a car raced down the street. And it was driving him crazy. At his new job he was distracted and irritable, imagining the thud of a car slamming into a child's body, the little form tossed high into the air, blood spurting, crashing soddenly to the ground.

He'd always liked kids.

He spent the entire weekend watching the children. Had they always been there? Had he just not noticed before? There were so many. Playing ball, running around in the street, and never, never once looking before they ran out. Where were their parents? What was wrong with them?

There was one who couldn't be over two years old who ran - toddled, really - and wore diapers. Diapers and nothing else, not even shoes, in that filthy street filled with broken glass. Once in a while a couple of adults stood chatting in a yard across the street. But they were obviously paying almost no attention, even as cars sped by. Ed found himself so filled with bewilderment that it hurt. Why? Didn’t they care?

He’d never had a lot of friends, but the few he had drifted away. Or he drifted away from them. They hadn't been that close anyway, so he didn't mind much. Besides, they wouldn't understand. He'd broached the subject with Jim, the closest of his friends, and Jim had looked at him. Not so much as if he were insane, but as if he'd made a comment about the price of wheat in Spain. A meaningless noise. Ed dropped it, and stopped calling Jim and returning his calls.

Things got pretty confused over the weeks and months, and Ed was never quite sure when the idea hit him. It was probably at night; somewhere early on he lost the ability to sleep through the sound of a passing car. At the start it was just the speeders that woke him, but before long any passing car had him gasping awake, sweating and shaking.

At first it was just a fantasy. He'd show them. He'd teach them a lesson they would never, ever forget. How would they feel, how would they like it, if they really did hit a child?

If he could find a child-sized doll, hide between cars, and throw it in front of a speeder...now that would be something.

It didn't stay a fantasy for long.

But as time passed, he started seeing problems. A doll wouldn't move right, wouldn't look natural enough. He might startle a speeding driver, but he wouldn't burn a nightmare into their soul.

So Ed found himself doing research. He quickly decided that an inflatable doll of some sort would be the best starting point, and it seemed a heaven-sent sign when a novelty catalog that he picked up on the bus turned out to have a life-sized inflatable Harry Potter for sale at a reasonable price. He ordered three, figuring that he might lose one or two by experimenting.

But a child hit by a car needed to have some mass, and it needed to bleed. Ketchup was no good; the smell would be an instant giveaway. Likewise, red food coloring in water would lack the characteristic smell of blood...and he needed that.

There was no way around it: he needed blood. A fair amount of it. Nothing else would do. He still needed to work out how he'd use it, but the first step was to get a decent quantity of blood.

Eventually he remembered a sign he'd seen in Portuguesetown: LIVE POULTY FRESH KILLED.

Just to be on the safe side, he did a quick Google. The fifth result for "chicken blood" was "Chicken Blood Rice", which was, to his amazement, a traditional Portuguese recipe! Ed felt a flush of vindication. Finally things were going his way.

The place smelled...strange. The woman behind the counter was fat, and had a mole. But her English was excellent, and she didn't seem at all surprised by his request for eight pints of chicken blood. He'd thought about it carefully, and decided that requesting pints sounded less suspicious than gallons. And he could always come back for more. Blood was dirt cheap.

Ed's first thought was to fill the doll with a sort of blood gelatin. Unflavored gelatin was cheap and easy to get, and he went so far as to pick up a box of a hundred packets. But he wasn't at all sure that you could make gelatin by simply replacing water with blood in the instructions, and a few abortive experiments revealed a more serious problem: the blood gelatin was just too heavy. Harry (as Ed thought of him) would simply collapse if he was filled with blood gelatin - that is, assuming he didn't split at the seams.

Could he work up some sort of internal support structure?

He could cut open the doll - in fact, he'd have to, which is why he'd bought a number of vinyl repair kits - and insert some sort of bony structure. The best solution would be to get some sort of skeleton, of course. That could add a huge dollop of realism to the project. It would be hard to find something that was close enough to the right size, though. And he'd have to make an enormous hole in Harry; he'd have to cut him open pretty much from the crotch down to the instep of both feet. The repairs might not hold for the short time he'd have to stand Harry up before flinging him in front of a car.

Wait. Could he freeze Harry? That would give him the internal support he'd need! He could still pack in some chicken or beef bones, enough to enhance the post-accident gore and horror without making it necessary to build or insert an elaborate skeletal structure.

But frozen gelatin wouldn't look or smell right; children aren't filled with frozen blood, after all. Stalemate.

What about selective freezing, of just the joints? Say. with a simplified bony structure - maybe he could buy some large beef bones, and fasten them together somehow. Perhaps with dry ice applied at the right points, he could get Harry to stand up, or at least not look completely unrealistic...

But Ed had worked too hard on the project to fool himself. Harry just wouldn't fly, not that way. The weight problem was killing him.

The answer, when it came, was simple and obvious.

Sponges.

He could pack Harry with sponges.

The more Ed thought about it, the more advantages leapt into his mind. He could pack the sponges in through a relatively small hole, and then push them into the right places by shaking Harry or squeezing from outside. Then he could simply add blood perhaps an hour before deployment, to allow it to soak in throughout the body. That way the blood wouldn't coagulate or go rancid. He could warm the blood in the microwave before adding it, and that would improve the speed of soaking. Sponges were available in all sorts of colors, shapes, and stiffnesses - and even he, no artist, could easily sculpt sponges into all sorts of bizarre, organ-like shapes. He was pretty sure that there were specialized sponges with relatively smooth surfaces, if he wanted to simulate a liver, for instance. Although it almost certainly wouldn't be necessary.

Open-cell foam would be another useful component for Harry. And even, perhaps, styrofoam; he could carve it into bone-like shapes, manipulate them into position and surround them with sponges, all without any need for a big hole. Would styrofoam absorb enough blood to look realistic? Perhaps not, but he could easily paint or tint it. And all that could be done days or weeks before Harry made his flight.

He could still throw in real bones, if he wanted, come to think of it. And suddenly Ed chuckled with sheer delight. Why not prepare and seal Harry up completely in advance? With a long-needled hypodermic, he could place hot blood throughout the body while making only small puncture wounds, holes that he could repair in seconds.

It was brilliant.

Ed was considering ways to craft veins and arteries - perhaps unlined ziti and thin tubular pasta, boiled in red food coloring (or should it be blue?) - when his common sense took over. There was no point in getting carried away, after all; he couldn't maintain the illusion of reality for more than a minute or two of close examination. But that minute should be more than enough to make a very good, very slow driver out of someone, for life.

The sponges...that would really work. And he could cut them into all sorts of organic shapes; some long and stringy, some rounder and lumpy, some even pre-torn for the "accident". If Ed had looked in a mirror at that moment, he wouldn't have recognized himself. He hadn't smiled for months, and now he was grinning like a demon.

The weeks that followed were happy ones. Ed combed the web, looking for unusual sponges. Weekends, he searched stores of all kinds. And his work paid off; at one small regional overstock store, he found large styrofoam skeletons left over from Halloween. They broke up into bones that fit perfectly through the three-inch circle he'd cut in the sole of Harry's foot, although of course he wasn't able to use the skulls. At an "Everything For A Buck" he found some beautiful sponge-rubber Valentine hearts, smooth-surfaced, which could easily be carved into a very respectable imitation of a kidney or liver. A mattress store down the street even sold scraps of various types of foam at incredibly cheap prices - he could have filled up ten Harrys for almost nothing.

Getting a long-needled hypodermic was also surprisingly easy, although he had to wait for two weeks before it arrived in the mail.

And he spent a lot of time experimenting. There were so many things to learn! Which sorts of tools were best for cutting different types of foam - in some cases scissors were acceptable, in others he found that Exacto knives or even straight razor blades worked best. It was important, too, to determine how well different types of foam absorbed and held blood, both on pre-existing surfaces and on newly-cut areas.

Ed even spent some time looking up photos of internal organs. He knew, as he was doing it, that he was going a little overboard; after all, he wasn't likely to catch a doctor speeding in his neighborhood. Still, the first time he held up a "kidney", dropping with blood, he felt a real thrill of pride in his handiwork.

The final assembly of Harry was almost an anti-climax. When he finished stuffing in the last sponge and sealed up the foot, he found himself as proud as he imagined a parent must be...but also a little sad. He might do this again (would he? probably), but it would never be quite the same.

The next step, naturally, was clothes for Harry - kids in his neighborhood didn't go around in wizard's robes, after all. The robes (cheap nylon) and glasses (plastic) had been easy to remove, but in order to get new clothes for Harry it had been necessary to wait until he was fully stuffed, get his proper measurements. Then, with a list of sizes in hand, he went to the local Salvation Army, Goodwill, and finally to Wal-Mart for a few garish logo items. They turned out to be the most expensive part of the project to date.

Spurred by a last-minute thought, Ed also bought a plastic soccer ball. It would look much more realistic if Harry were chasing a ball out into the street. Ed was pretty sure that he could kick the ball out while staying out of sight between the cars, and then fling Harry out as if he were trying to make a catch.

It would be beautiful.

Ed dressed Harry that evening. He looked...perfect. There was no way to see how he'd look once blood was added, since Ed was pretty sure that the blood would go bad within a day at most. Still, there was no denying it: Harry looked damned convincing. Oh, he'd still do it at night, but Harry looked realistic enough to pass for real in the day. For five minutes at least, maybe even more.

And now it was time to decide. When should he do it? Ed was surprised to find himself a little nervous. Still, there was no reason to delay. Saturday night was guaranteed to have several speeders tearing up and down the street...but maybe the street would be a little too busy that night. Better to pick a quieter night, when there was less chance of pedestrians walking down the street. Friday? Why not?

Very well, then. Friday would be the big night.

But there was one last step: pinholes. On Thursday afternoon Ed suddenly realized that he might get a few more seconds of belief out of the speeder by putting small pinholes in Harry's eyes, nostrils, ears, and a series of them across the mouth; that way the head might give way under impact in those pre-stressed areas, making the eyes and other orifices bleed - and even, Ed hoped, dribble bloody sponge bits.

He thought he'd never get to sleep Thursday night.

* * *

Dressed in a black sweatsuit, wearing a black woolen hat, Ed crouched between a parked SUV and a pickup. The autumn night was cool. Blood-filled Harry was surprisingly warm in his hands; he'd considered wearing black gloves, but decided against it. He'd need full control of his hands to carry this off. Harry’s vinyl skin was more supple than usual, but all the patches were holding. The soccer ball rested against the curb, ready to go.

Ed waited.

A car turned onto the east end of the street and gunned its motor. With a SCREEEECH! of burning rubber it roared down. For a moment Ed panicked, and then suddenly he was icy calm, everything going into slow motion. The car was accelerating down the road. A hundred feet away...ninety...eighty...seventy...sixty...fifty...forty...Ed used the side of his foot to kick the ball out into the road...thirty...twenty...staying low, Ed threw Harry on a low arc towards the ball. The front grille took him when he was two feet off the ground.

It couldn't have been more perfect.

Blood exploded out of Harry in a crimson mist. He tore into two pieces, his limbs flailing hideously. Ed was amazed; he knew Harry, he'd built him, and even he was horrified. Brakes squealed as the car skidded left and right, leaving bloody rubber skidmarks as it slid to a stop down the road. Harry's upper half was still on the hood of the car; his mangled legs were mostly at the impact site. Chunks and ropes of blood-soaked sponge were everywhere.

Ed moved like a ninja along the sidewalk, staying low behind the parked cars. It only took seconds to get closer to the stopped car; he knew it was dangerous, but he could no more have stayed away than he could have stopped his heart from beating.

The car door opened, and the driver got out. He was young, with piercings and one of those weird goatees; he looked ghost-white as he stared at Harry, who had half-slid off the car's hood.

The moonlight made everything magical.

Harry steamed from the great opening at the base of his torso. Jagged white bone jutted upward from here and there. His head was flaccid, but chunks of white styrofoam protruded from the split-open mouth. And the eyes had exploded outward perfectly. One had sponge literally sticking out through it.

The driver fell to his knees in the middle of the street without a sound.

As the driver slowly rolled to his side and drew his knees up towards his chest, Ed felt a deep feeling of peace enter his soul. Now, at last, he could sleep.

* * *

At least, that's how Ed hoped it would go.

* * *

...staying low, Ed threw Harry on a low arc towards the ball. Harry hit the car a little high; most of him hit the windshield. He split with an odd splatting sound and bounced up over the top and behind the car.

Brakes screeched. Car doors flung open while the car was still rolling. Ed heard footsteps, shouts. He saw big, tough-looking kids and a slutty-looking girl. The girl spotted him and shrieked, pointing.

"GET HIM!"

Ed tried to run, but he was too slow. The largest of the three boys grabbed him from behind and dragged him out into the middle of the street. As they pinned him up against the back of their car and tore into him, he felt strangely calm. Time passed, but it didn't seem to matter. Everything faded away by the time they were done with him. As they drove off, his broken body pitched to the filthy street. Face to face with Harry, Ed's last fleeting thought was an impulse to apologize.

* * *

...staying low, Ed threw Harry on a low arc towards the ball.

Harry hit the ground just in front of the car, bounced upwards, flipped end-over-end, and was caught in mid-air...by the red and blue lights on the top of the squad car.

Ed didn't wait a second. He started running, as fast as he could, into the darkness. Three terrifying months later he slunk into a small village in a particularly rural part of Mexico. He can be seen there to this day; look for the shambling drunk gringo who dances for drinks every afternoon, just after siesta. Once in a while he earns a few centavos doing odd jobs, usually something unpleasant.

But despite that, Ed is happy. No one in the village can afford a car.

* * *

...staying low, Ed threw Harry on a low arc towards the ball. The front grille took him when he was two feet off the ground.

Or it should have. Instead the car swerved violently and smashed at full speed into a telephone pole. The driver shot like a rocket through the windshield in a shower of glass, bouncing off the pole and landing on the street with a sodden thump.

Ed felt as if he'd been struck by lightning. From the way the neck and spine were bent, he knew that there was no way that the driver could be alive.

He wanted to run away, but couldn't help himself. Step by step, Ed came out into the street light to stare down at the boy. Harry lay not far away. To Ed's stunned eyes, the resemblance between the two was nearly perfect...except that Harry wasn't broken and bleeding...

* * *

...staying low, Ed threw Harry on a low arc towards the ball. The big front grille took Harry head-first. For a moment he compressed, feet and head squeezing together, and then he exploded.

The car screeched to a halt.

A door opened. A man in a long black coat got out and stood there, mute, staring at the carnage. Ed, peeking cautiously over the back of the pickup, was mystified; were boys wearing that sort of hat these days? He wasn't up on teen styles, but he didn't think so. The driver turned back to the car, bent inside for a moment, then backed out again, holding something.

The driver put the object to his head. Ed's horrified moment of realization came a fraction of a second too late; his shout was drowned out by the shot. The driver pitched sideways to the street, the hat rolling. Wispy gray hairs waved in the cold breeze on what was left of what had been a balding head, moments before. The old service revolver lay in the gutter near the driver's outstretched hand. Numbly, Ed watched as blood dripped down the "Veteran" license plate.

* * *

...staying low, Ed threw Harry on a low arc towards the ball. The front grille took Harry when he was two feet off the ground.

The car slowed for a minute, and then kept going. Once it was out of sight, Ed moved fast. He grabbed up every piece of Harry that he could find, dumped them on the sidewalk, then ran to his house for a trash bag. Shoving all the chunks into the bag, he dumped the bag into a garbage can out back. Then he ran into the house for a bucket of water, sluicing down the most bloody areas on the street and sidewalk. Ten minutes later everything looked pretty much normal.

Ed went into the house, took off all his clothes, and put them in the trash too. Then he took a long cold shower, followed by a warm one. Then he got dressed, took the bag of clothes and got the bag of Harry out of the garbage can, and dumped both bags into two different garbage cans on the back side of a supermarket parking lot when no one was watching.

Then he drove home and settled down to wait. And wait. And wait.

He's still waiting. And even he couldn't tell you what he's waiting for.

But he knows nobody cares. And he never looks out the window any more.

* * *

...staying low, Ed threw Harry on a low arc towards the ball. The front grille took Harry when he was two feet off the ground.

The car slowed for a minute, and then kept going. Ed stared in amazement. Didn't they care? Were they drunk or something?

Well, he wouldn't give up. Harrys #2 and 3 could be ready to go the next night. Ed cleaned the street and went back to stuff sponges.

The next night Harry #2 made the first flight, and it was nearly as perfect as before. But again, the car just slowed for a moment after impact and then went on. For a moment, Ed thought he heard something... laughter? He gritted his teeth and went back for Harry #3.

Half an hour later on a poor pitch, Harry #3's torso went under the wheels of a speeder, his ass exploding with a loud bang. Again, the car slowed for just a moment...but this time, Ed noticed something. This was the first car again. Car #2 had been different, but this car was the one that had hit Harry #1!

Suddenly, he heard laughter. Where -

"Hey, mister!" came a voice from behind him. Ed nearly jumped out of his skin. Five mean-looking high school kids stood watching him on the sidewalk, grinning.

"We loooove your dolls," said one of them.

"Yeah, what are they, your boyfriends?" sneered another. They all snickered.

Ed stared at them, frozen.

"Okay, look," said the shortest, his voice suddenly businesslike, "we'd like to make a deal..."

The next day Ed withdrew his name from the temp agency. He and an unending string of Harrys give "performances" every Friday and Saturday night. He charges $100 per car, and clears about five thousand a month, tax free. It's a good living, and the business has plenty of room to grow; the kids love the show. He's even thinking of hiring an assistant. And now, when he hears an engine roar, Ed smiles.

Even in his sleep.

* * *

...staying low, Ed threw Harry on a low arc towards the ball. The front grille took him when he was two feet off the ground.

Harry's seams split lengthwise, from armpit to ankle. Steaming sponges in a great mass slid out of him. The empty and obviously fake vinyl skin snagged on the windshield wiper for a moment, then blew off.

The car slowed and stopped. Ed quickly flung himself to the ground, crawled with desperate speed behind some shrubs, and took to the back yards of the neighborhood. Several times he heard footsteps, but finally, after an hour of silence, he slunk home.

For several days he shivered at the thought of the incident. But slowly the fear faded, to be replaced by a nagging thought: Harry wasn't real enough. I need something more real.

He drifted back into his old habits. As he was watching the neighborhood kids again - what was wrong with their parents? - the idea hit him: what could be more real than the real thing? And it wasn't as if their parents cared about them...

At first he was horrified, and pushed the thought out of his mind. But it kept coming back. Ed wasn't the strongest person.

And so, six months later, came the sensational string of child-murders which have been exciting the media so much of late, and brought Oakdale Street national fame.

* * *

Ed woke with a start, coated in sweat. It was Friday morning. Hands trembling, he looked up a number in the phone book and called it. After booking an appointment with a psychiatrist, Ed drove to the mall and bought the best and loudest white noise generator he could afford on his credit limit. He installed it in the bedroom that afternoon. After three months of therapy and medication, Ed carefully disassembled all three Harrys and threw the components away. The chicken blood he thawed and flushed down the toilet.

He's now saving as much as he can towards a first-and-last-and-security-deposit on an apartment in a better neighborhood. He's even dating; the girl he's seeing has her own issues (they met in group therapy), but she can tolerate Ed's quirks. And she drives very, very slowly.

Which is as happy an ending as anyone could expect, these days.

- end -