Friday, 03:14 AM, July 6th 2012
I remember sitting on the edge of my bed, fully clothed and with dried tears over my cheeks. I was just so tired. From hunger, from lack of sleep, from just everything all the time. School seemed so far away and yet so close. Would I even be able to handle it if this went on?
I didn’t even notice it at first, until a light breeze ruffled a piece of paper on the table.
My bedroom door was wide open and instead of the hallway, I saw the ice cream truck’s front, standing outside in a random parking lot.
Perhaps I should’ve closed the door, changed and got under the covers, but I couldn’t imagine waking up in the morning and having to do the same shit over and over again.
If I disappeared, that meant that the pressure would also fade with me, right?
I recognized the place by the dead trees on the left; it was an abandoned parking lot, set to be constructed into a skating field by the government. My body moved on its own, compelled by some sort of magic, or desperation.
It was chilly, dark and the only thing lit up was that damned truck. Two silhouettes were already standing on its side.
“Liv!” Owen shouted, grabbing me by the shoulder and shaking me hard. I startled, as I hadn’t seen him since… when was the last time I saw him? “I’ve been calling you for hours!”
“What? Oh, that. My dad took my phone.”
Max hid behind him, scratching his throat for attention. “I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s fine. It’s not your fault, I just… I don’t know what is going on anymore. Everything just went sideways so fast.”
“You can say that again. My brother got arrested for a DUI.” Owen said, shaking his head. “Mom is inconsolable. And now there’s someone waiting for Max’s dad to come home.”
“Wait what?! Who’s waiting around the neighborhood?”
It was like I’d jumped out from the bottom of the pool, finally able to see and hear properly.
“He’s gambling again,” Max responded. “Lost all the money he won last time and then some more.”
“Jesus, we’re all having the time of our lives out here.”
We stayed in silence for a second, before Owen shrugged. “Now what? It’s not open.”
The truck then decided to explode like a popped balloon. The door flung open, the tent rose up violently and the music box started to sing with a booming unnecessarily loud tone. A row of patriotically colored decorations slid across the roof of the van, tied by an invisible hand.
Jack stood inside the brightly lit interior, head resting on his hands. There were three glasses in front of him, each filled with three perfect dollops of red ice cream with an identical cherry on top.
He’d also dropped his disguise.
Max was the first to scream at the sight of him, first a yelp of surprise, then a drawn-out scream of terror.
His eyes were twice as large as they should’ve been and they were strangely slanted, the inner corners dropping down to the middle of his nose. His mouth was too wide, revealing a row of pearly white teeth that looked very normal, despite the fact they just kept going from ear to ear. He was longer too, not thinner or fatter, just tall enough to lean over to fit inside the truck.
I could see his many jointed hands curling and cracking like the snapping of twigs.
Yet not a single blond hair was astray and his uniform was as immaculate as always. He smelled of confectionary sugar as we approached him, all of us screaming and walking at the same time, hypnotized.
Had he not done something to us, I would’ve done a 180 and ran without a second thought. But there were hands, literal, yet unseen hands on my shoulders, six fingered ones, holding me back.
“Jesus! Jesus and Holy Mary! Save us!”
“I expected better from you Owen; don’t you know better than to judge the way someone looks? Max,” He turned to him, who was running in place, held back by the same thing. “Stop that.”
Finally, he turned to me, wrapping his hands around the stem of the glass cup, pinky finger extended.
“I am here to make you an offer, a solution for all your problems. Or a wish that will make all your dreams come true. If you ask for it.”
“Why? What’s it to you?”
“Obviously I want something in return.” A big box stood up on eight spider legs, rattling inside. It made its way up his shoulder, like a parrot to a pirate. “Pandora here needs to be fed. From you, I want a lock of your hair. Small price to pay for a gift, isn’t it?”
“If it’s a gift, then one doesn’t have to pay for it. That’s a sale.”
“This is a bargain.” He winked. It was creepy. “From you, Owen, I want your clipped nails.”
“Ohmgodthicecreamsmadewithnails!” he whispered in terror.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Do you know how unsanitary that is? God knows where a preteen boy’s hands have been.” Jack waved him off. “From you, Max, I want a vial of blood.”
His eyes rolled back and the poor boy passed out cold, held midair by both Owen and The Other Thing.
“Who are you?”
“You already know my name. Let me explain to you the process of service for our little establishment, hm?”
He pulled his leg over the counter and rolled out from the truck. He was easily 7 feet tall, towering over all of us and making me feel very, very small.
“You tell me what you want: A solution for all your problems or All your dreams coming true. You pay me in what I require of you. You eat the ice cream. You go home and you’ll never see me again while I’m alive.”
“You’ll leave?!”
“Yes. I always do.”
“I’ll take it!” The words rushed out of my mouth before I had the time to mull it over. An end. Finally, an end to all of this.
“Hold on a minute. While you’re alive?” Owen interrupted. For all his bravado, I could see it in his face, he too was lured in by the idea. Or was too desperate to care.
“Smart boy,” he said. There was a hint of anger in his eyebrows, or the place where they were supposed to be. The more I looked at him, the more his features seemed to melt off. His skin was wrinkly at the seams, like he was wearing someone else’s face as a mask. He probably was.
The monster stared down at Owen, but lowered Max to the ground. The grip got loose enough for me to reach behind him and help him settle on a flat surface.
Whatever he was saying, I couldn’t hear it. Their voice suddenly came through as static; They just opened their mouths and spurts of crackle spilled out of them. My best friend since I was four began to cry violently, crumpling down as if was a used cheat sheet.
I ended up holding both of them, the back of my throat raw and hurting. I was just so hungry. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want them to get hurt.
“Just leave us alone. Please. Please!”
“Tell me! Tell me! Tell me what you want, you little bitch and I’ll go!” He got so close to my face that I could smell his breath. I recoiled. An infection. He was a goddamned infection and he smelled like it; of rotten food and pus.
“I want- I want a solution to all my problems.” My words quivered, unsure, but he didn’t go away. His face stayed an inch away from mine, morbid eyes unblinking. His Lovecraftian arms reached for one of the melted ice cream cups and a pink plastic spoon with a heart shaped handle.
It was warm to touch, too warm and steaming. Whatever was inside, it was no longer pretending to be a nice treat. It was the color of wine, ready to drag me into delirium.
I swallowed.
A light sniff had me flinch back from the concoction. A steady stream of blood began tricking from my nose. Sharp. That poison smelled sharp and it stained my shirt.
I brought the spoon to my lips and with it, a pair of scissors mimicked the motion. The were open and brushing my ear. When they closed, they were bound to take a chunk of it with them.
In that very moment, Max took off.
I whipped around, shocked, as he ran through the lot without blinking an eye. The creature was on to him in a second. Its legs were uneven and it took three awkward steps before it bent on all fours and started to stalk it.
It did odd zig zags and screamed with a high pitched screech inspired by a toddler throwing a tantrum. Something must’ve gotten to Owen, because he also ran in the same direction for some stupid reason.
The creature caught up to Max, tripping his feet and crawling on top of him when he landed with a crack on the dust. It tapped it claws over his thick belly, mocking him for being a pig, an elephant, a whale. He sounded so much like my father that my fingers automatically clenched around the glass, afraid that he would take it.
Owen got to Jack, body slamming it off balance. He didn’t have anything to defend himself with, but I did. I had a cup that I could break and shove it down his horrid giraffe throat.
It overpowered them easily, but it concentrated too hard on breaking their ankles to see me coming. Unlike Max, I could run faster and without dropping anything. Unlike Owen, I could give him a kick where his balls were supposed to be. It must’ve been male, because it howled with pain.
“Now who’s a little bitch?”
His head unscrewed itself, fangs reaching out to take a bite out of me, but Owen pulled at its hair to try and stop it. He didn’t have the strength to actually do that, but it was enough. Enough for me to spill the contents of the glass straight into its mouth.
Max crawled and made himself a human speed bump, tripping it as karma for what it had done to him just seconds prior.
It began to convulse violently, smoking and melting into bones that jittered around senselessly. It hissed and the surrounding world hissed with it. Six eyes burst from its body like popped pimples, rolling with intent. They seemed to be conscious enough to look at us and know we’d killed, or at least heavily injured, their owner.
The spider box skittered around, opening up with a squeaky sound. Inside there were more eyeballs, veiny and yellow. It freaked me out when they went towards it. What if he could respawn from those things and come after us with interest?
I jumped on it. The crawling legs broke beneath my weight, but I didn’t stop until the hinges snapped off and it fully stopped moving. Max seemed to get the hint and got back on his feet, waddling to squish the little orbs, who weren’t quick enough to escape. His arm was bent where it wasn’t supposed to and he was still crying, but at least he was able to move around.
Owen, on the other hand, laid with his feet backwards from their original position, completely silent. The shock had gotten the best of him and he was giggling like a maniac on cocaine.
We’d won. Somehow.
“We need to call an ambulance.” Max said.
“I don’t have my phone.” I repeated.
“Mine’s dead.”
“Guys,” Owen butted in. He was still in hysterics, but his face was tight with fear and he was fixated at a point beyond us. “I don’t think we’re at the construction site anymore.”
There was nothing surrounding us, it was true. The only object I could make out was the ice cream truck, open and ready for business. Otherwise, a looming darkness swallowed all that remained.
There was no way we’d find our way home like this.
What was left of Jack was now a foul stain on gravel, except I was now noticing that it wasn’t really gravel. It was… It was like a badly carpeted floor, full of bumps and tears. Where the hell were we?
Fear made a knot in the back of my throat. I hadn’t thought that maybe the thing could teleport us to an alternate universe. If we were lucky, maybe we were simply in a place we couldn’t recognize because it was night, but who knows. The only reason why neither of us wasn’t feeling any pain was because we were disassociating in shock, but that wouldn’t last long.
“Maybe there is a phone in the van…” Max said, pointing at it. “It’s not like we have any other options.”
I shrugged. We needed some fabric to put his arm in a sling and maybe a way to twist Owen’s ankles the right way around. “You carry his legs; I’ll do the rest.”
It took us a good fifteen minutes with short breaks to reach the lighted area. My muscles ached with overuse, but we were so close that I didn’t want to give up.
“I won’t be winning any sports medals any time soon! Dad’s gonna be real disappointed.” Owen said, his head just hanging off upside down.
“It’s going to be okay buddy.” I wasn’t convincing anyone, but it was an automatic response. What else could I do? “We should get in the van and try driving off. See where we land.”
“Can you drive?”
“I know where the gas and brake pedals are?” I answered, uncertain. “It can’t be that hard to figure out.”
We’d left behind a trail of disturbed dust and blood, but we made it. The driver’s door was locked, but the back was only kept together by a sliding chain. It opened to reveal a hallway similar to one of a cheap hotel.
“That’s not how an ice cream truck looks on the inside, right?” Max said, eyes wide. He let me hold Owen, now unconscious, while he rounded to see the open mouth where Jack had come from.
I didn’t dare look down at my friend, afraid I’d lose it the second I thought too much about it. My chest was tight like a heart attack and I fought to hold back the tears. The tip of my nose hurt with the effort. I couldn’t imagine what Owen was feeling right then.
“It looks pretty ordinary from over there… Should we go in?”
“What choice do we have?”
“But what if there’s more of him?”
“What. Choice. Do. We. Have. Max?”
“You go in first,” He suggested. “You’re the strongest.”
I nodded. He was too cowardly to go in, but I didn’t blame him. Nothing felt real and he was injured. Jack could pop in from behind us at any moment, or someone similar to what he was.
The hallway’s walls had a yellow diamond pattern, paired by dull brown doors and floor. Each door had a handwritten note stuck below a number.
📷 The Cooling Room.
📷 The Organic Flavor Room.
📷 The Binding Room.
📷 I Told You To Stay Out Of This Room.
📷 The Murder Room.
📷 The Play Room.
The corridor split into two directions, left and right. They were both identical, leading down to wide mirrors with golden elaborate frames. I swallowed and briefly thought about turning back around but couldn’t.
The thought of Jack being there when I spun around frightened me so much that I had to make a decision. I choose left, the same way my father had told me to do when we were in the corn maze. If I only went left, I’d be able to find my way back.
The walk was long. Far longer that it should’ve been. My reflection got larger and larger, but there was no sign of it jumping out and attacking me. There was only my terrified face and messed up hair.
My shirt was unsalvageable. I was apparently missing a shoe and hadn’t noticed a thing. My nose was still dripping blood all over and I’d probably lost a bucket of it on the floor at that point.
There was a handle on the mirror and by some miracle, the key was still on the hole. It took one push for me to reach the front seats of the van.
It was a relatively normal interior. There were two worn down leather seats, a wheel, a mirror and a pair of furry dice dangling off of it. A Hawaiian dancing doll had fallen next to the gear shift and the place was drowning in torn plastic wrapping.
Beef jerky. Chicken breasts. Fish sticks. A gallon of spoiled full fat milk, half finished.
It must’ve gotten tired after working in an ice cream van because there wasn’t even a hint of candy bars anywhere.
The best thing I found was the speakerphone radio. I could hear my own voice outside, telling Max and Owen to get in and head left. The very back of the truck shut close.
The engine roared to life after I put my seatbelt on, impatiently waiting for them to reach me. When they got in, I was practically crying with relief.
Max laid Owen down, cushioning his head with legs. He looked a lot older than he was somehow, but held himself together. There was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Hope.
“I think we actually won.”
“Don’t jinx it,” I said, giddy with the idea of being free at last. We would go to a hospital, talk to the police and get a solid day of sleeping in. Maybe it was a good thing the monster showed up in the middle of summer; we wouldn’t have to take off time at school!
I couldn’t see where I was going, but my foot slammed on the gas and we went flying to whichever direction we were in. There were a lot of buttons on the compartment, each doing something stupid.
I had to stretch to reach each one and see which would turn on the long lights because trucks just aren’t made to be driven by eleven year olds anymore.
When I did find it, the road ahead turned out to be some kind of dirt path, with corn fields on either side. A speed limit table sent a rush of relief through me. Surely Monster Land wouldn’t limit its vehicles at 60 miles/hour, right?
We followed the road until we saw lights and signs of civilization. My eyes were completely focused on the road, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. Max nudged me with something cold.
“Drink,” he said. “We need to save our strength for now.”
He held the plastic water bottle for me while I swallowed the whole thing down greedily. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I’d been until that moment.
“Are you sure we should’ve drunk that? I mean, this is Jack’s truck.” He asked.
“What?” I turned around to face him. He’d been right beside me half a second ago, but I saw he was still sitting with Owen on his lap, holding two empty bottles. Their injuries were gone and I realized that my nose was no longer bleeding. “Max, did you move from there?”
“No?”
“How did you hand me the water then?”
“You handed me the water.”
“How? I’m driving!”
The realization struck him the same time that it hit me, but it was too late. It was Owen’s turn to scream. “LOOK OUT!”
I whirred around just in time to see Jack in the middle of the road. We were going too fast for me to stop, so we crashed right into him. The windshield shattered on impact, splattering glass all over my face. Between the blood raining down my face, I saw him sprawled on the hood, crawling up.
He was smiling widely, like a cat that got the cream. His eyes were brimming with joy and satisfaction. We were right across each other when he lifted up a pair of scissors.
The only thing I could do was put my hands up and close my eyes, but no impact came. Instead, a snipping sound next to my ear jolted me awake, in a hospital bed.
Jack was resting on a chair, now fully humanoid. My mother was asleep next to him. He smiled again, beautiful mask on and held a long black snake in his hand. It was my braid. He’d cut it off.
“It was nice doing business with you, my dear. Nice try though.”
And just like that, he got on his feet and walked out, closing the door behind him right as my mother stirred awake.
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