Grand Obsession (part 2)

(continued from part 1)

On weekends he watched the children. Had there always been that many? 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 within eyeshot, but they were obviously paying almost no attention, even as cars sped by. Ed found himself so filled with bewilderment that it hurt. Why?

He hadn't had a lot of friends, but the few he'd 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. Meaningless.

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 found he'd 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 teach them a lesson.

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 established 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.

In fact, 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.

Grand Obsession (part 2)

(continued from part 1)

On weekends he watched the children. Had there always been that many? 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 within eyeshot, but they were obviously paying almost no attention, even as cars sped by. Ed found himself so filled with bewilderment that it hurt. Why?

He hadn't had a lot of friends, but the few he'd 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. Meaningless.

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 found he'd 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 teach them a lesson.

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 established 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.

In fact, 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.