Kyle and Joseph each wore an empty jar around their necks as they stood on the side of the road and stabbed trash with their spears. The blazing sun of midday beat down on the back of their burned necks as they stabbed at the scattered litter.

“You know,” Kyle said, “the Church is the one that said we had to carry our souls in jars from now on.”

Joseph shrugged and stabbed a foam cup. “It doesn't make sense to me.”

“Sure, it makes plenty of sense,” Kyle answered. He jabbed a candy wrapper and continued. “The Church wants to see who's sold their soul, so they make everyone carry it in a jar around our necks.”

Joseph shrugged again. “Just because your jar is empty, it doesn't necessarily mean you sold your soul. That's like saying if your garage is empty, you sold your car.” He leaned down and looked at a sheet of newspaper for a moment before he stabbed it.

“What else would it mean?” Kyle asked. He twirled his spear in his hand and ran the wood between his fingers. He stopped and propped his weight against a concrete barricade.

“Well, what if you lost it?”

Kyle shook his head. “No way. Who loses something like your soul?”

“Who sells something like your soul?” Joseph retorted.

“If your jar is empty, then you sold your soul,” Kyle said.

“The Bible talks an awful lot about lost souls, right?” Joseph leaned against the concrete barricade next to Kyle.

“They didn't carry their souls around in jars when they wrote the Bible, now did they?”

“No,” Joseph answered, “I guess not.”

Kyle looked down at his empty jar and then glanced over at Joseph. “Maybe you're looking at this too literally. Instead of saying sold, try replacing it with traded.”

“Okay,” Joseph mused. “If your jar is empty then you traded your soul?”

“That's a better way to look at it,” Kyle answered.

“I never traded my soul,” Joseph said. “I just figured I'd lost it somewhere.”

Kyle looked back down at his empty jar. “The Church says that you trade your soul for any sin you commit.”

“Really?” Joseph asked.

“Really. Hell, with the things I used to do, I had probably sold my soul a hundred times before they passed the law about these damned jars. These things just keep us accountable, I guess. We can't barter with what we don't have.”

Joseph stood and poked idly at a piece of garbage. “Everything fun is a sin though, right?”

“It certainly seems that way,” Kyle said, “but I'm sure that's not the case.”

Joseph shrugged yet again and shook his head. “It's a damned wonder every jar in the world isn't empty.” He stabbed the piece of garbage and sank the end of his spear into the dirt.

Kyle nodded. “A damned wonder indeed.”

Jon felt the dirt under his fingernails and on his hands, even though he couldn't see it. The scalding hot water couldn't get it off of his skin. The antibacterial soap couldn't get it off of his skin. The sponge couldn't get it off of his skin.

He turned the water on again and scrubbed his hands together underneath the faucet. The tips of his fingers were pruning, and they looked like sun-dried raisins. He shook the excess water from his hands and dried them on a towel. He plucked a moist wipe from the container next to the sink and used it to turn the faucet off. He flicked the wipe from his fingers and watched as it dropped into the stainless steel wastebasket next to the toilet.

The toilet.

A festering hole of germs he had to tolerate in his home. His skin crawled and he could see the bacteria, the microbes, the filth, crawling in the toilet. He leaned down and pulled bleach from beneath the sink. He unscrewed the cap and poured pure bleach into the toilet. The smell stung his nostrils and he screwed the cap back on.

A small drop touched his hand.

His heart quicked.

Bleach was poison.

He turned on the filthy water faucet and shoved his hands beneath the water. He held them there until the water grew to a scalding temperature and started to steam. He scrubbed his hands under the water and only reached from beneath it to grab his sponge and antibacterial soap. He scraped his hands together and against the sponge, beneath the scalding water. The skin of his hands ached and glowed a bright red color from the exposure to scalding water.

Jon flung the excess water from his hands and dried them on his towel. A lump rose in his throat. He hadn't changed his towel before using it again.

He shoved his hands under the scalding hot water again and scrubbed them together. He reached out from beneath the faucet to grab his sponge and antibacterial soap. He could still feel the filthy germs crawling all over his skin.

The antibacterial soap didn't clean his skin. The sponge held more bacteria than he liked to consider. The scalding hot water couldn't clean his skin.

He sucked a deep breath into his lungs and pulled his hands out of the scalding water. His heart pounded. He left the faucet running in hopes of allowing the water to get even hotter as he left the bathroom and walked into the kitchen.

He opened the kitchen cabinet and searched beneath the kitchen sink for something.

There.

A steel wool cleaning pad.

If nothing could clean his skin, he would scrub it off.

The ring finger on Isaac's left hand twitched for the third time in a day which concerned him greatly. He stared down at his hand and watched the finger for a short period. No spasm ran through his hand while he was watching, but he was sure that the tiny hairs right above his second knuckle were brimming with excitement. He  squeezed his eyes shut, wrote the movements off as his imagination, and returned to his work.

His ring finger twitched again as he resumed typing.

He stopped and looked down at his hand again. His finger twitched this  time while he stared at it. He reached over with his other hand and pressed down on his finger. He felt the muscle in his finger fight back against him. His finger pulled up against his hand and he felt something in his knuckle pull tight, as if the tendons were being worked from outside of his skin, rather than the inside. Something inside his finger pulled tight, the muscles in his ring finger grew taunt, and then his finger twitched again. 

Isaac pulled against his finger with his right hand and felt the muscle relax. He took a deep breath and rubbed his ring finger. The sensation in his finger was enough to worry him more than usual, unusual enough to have him consider leaving work for the day. He stood up from his desk, and as he did, his knee jerked and banged into his office chair. He reached down and gripped his knee with his left hand. His movements felt jerky, spastic, as if each muscle lagged a half second behind his command. 

He straightened up and walked to his boss's office.

"Sir?" he asked, sticking his head through the door.

Isaac's boss, a fat man with no hair, stared out blankly from behind his desk. "Yes, Isaac?"

"I need to leave for the day."

Isaac's boss shook his head and pointed at the chair across from him. "No. You left early yesterday. Sit down and tell me what's going on."

Isaac walked to the chair and took a seat. As he sat, his finger twitched again.

"Well?" his boss said.

"I don't know what to say," Isaac said. "For the past few days I've been feeling weird. Like I'm going through the motions. I've got no drive, been down." He didn't mention his spasms. He took a breath. "Have you ever felt like a robot?"

His boss laughed. "Isaac, you're a working stiff. You are a robot."

Isaac frowned and looked past his boss. There were curtains behind his boss, something he'd never noticed before. He tilted his head and turned back to his boss. His boss was saying something, but Isaac couldn't hear it past his own thoughts. His ring finger twitched again and his knee jerked. He narrowed his eyes and looked down at his boss's fat hand. From the fat knuckles, a tiny red streak seemed to cut through the air. It was there for a moment, but then it was gone.

Isaac followed the path cut through the air by the red streak, right up to the office's ceiling. For a few seconds, there was nothing there but a typical, boring drop ceiling, dotted with inset florescent lights that bathed the room in a pale, cold white glow. Then, the ceiling flickered in Isaac's eyesight and revealed nothing but a black abyss and a tiny silver wheel hanging from the darkness above.

He turned away from it and narrowed his eyes at his fat boss. The man was still talking, but Isaac's mind focused on other things. He searched his fat boss and happened to see the man's finger twitch.

The left ring finger.

Wavering like the beating sun reflecting off of a desert highway, the room shimmered. Isaac could see thousands of tiny red streaks, strings, running from his boss, up to the black void where the ceiling used to be. He sucked a shocked breath into his lungs and shook his head to clear his thoughts. He blinked twice but the strange sight didn't fade. He followed the red strings from his boss, up to the tiny wheel, a pulley, where the strings converged and ran along the black void to the dark curtains he'd spotted moments before.

Isaac stood up and ignored the twitch in his finger, and the sudden jerk of his knee, and rushed over to the black curtains.

"What do you think you're doing?" his boss bellowed.

Isaac didn't answer. He grabbed the curtains, and struggled to force his muscles to obey him as he tried to fling the curtains back. He pulled against the curtains, even as he felt his muscles spasm and struggle to disobey him. The curtains opened to reveal a window.

A naked man, save for black gloves, sat upon a throne behind the window, with millions of red strings running from every direction, each one attached to a muscle group on his body. He deftly worked the fingers of his black gloved hands, plucking and tugging and pulling and stretching hundreds and thousands of tiny red strings.

Isaac swallowed and nearly choked. As he did, he looked down at his twitching finger. Red strings ran from his hands, and his arms, and as he searched, he realized they ran from every portion of his body. The string on his left ring finger was tangled slightly, causing a spasm. He took a sudden breath and stared through the window at the man pulling the strings.

The man upon the throne looked up and locked cold white eyes with Isaac. No emotion was betrayed by his expressionless face, nor did his eyes convey anything. Without a sound or a pause in pulling the strings, the man reached over to a tiny silver tray and lifted a pair of scissors. He isolated a single set of red strings.

He snipped the strings, and Isaac fell to the ground like a rag doll.

The black curtains closed and the man upon the throne continued pulling the strings.

"My greatest weakness? Uh, I've been known to be quite stubborn, to the point of clashing with upper management."

"Oh?" Mr. Moulton asked. He slipped a pair of reading glasses from his jacket pocket and leaned the spectacles carefully against his nose, so he could look over the simple one-page resume. "If you don't mind me asking, how does that usually turn out for you?"

"That's the thing," the applicant purred with a smile. "My last boss actually created a new department and transferred me out so I could head it up. That's where I've been working until just recently."

"According to your resume here, you held your last position for quite some time," Mr. Moulton stated. "Why the career change after such a long period?"

"I'll be honest for a change, because you seem like a fellow who understands the nature of business. My previous position was all about dealing, greed and sin. The truth is, with so many people already out there with these qualities, there's just not that much work for someone like me anymore."

"I'm sorry," Mr. Moulton interjected. "I see several different names and titles here on your resume. What should I call you?"

"You can call me whichever name suits your fancy: Satan, Lucifer, the Morning Star, the Fallen One, Samael - really, it's all personal preference. Everybody's got their own damned opinion."

"I'm just a bit concerned, to be honest," Mr. Moulton said, "because you were in a management position for so long, and this job is a far cry from that."

"That's no worry at all," Satan assured, "I'm a perfect fit for this job, really."

"Okay," Mr. Moulton continued. "Why don't you tell me, in your own words, something your previous co-workers may have found less than satisfying with your performance?"

"You're quite the negative Nancy, aren't you?" Satan asked. "Okay, let's see. Well, my employees and customers alike said I kept the thermostat too high, but to tell you the truth, it just gets hot as hell down south." He smiled and looked at Mr. Moulton with his black and gray eyes.

Mr. Moulton nodded. "I understand that. My own employees complain about my settings on the thermostat here."

"Well," Satan said, "I always figured if my employees weren't gnashing their teeth in constant agony, I was failing as a manager." He smiled and revealed his razor thin teeth again.

Mr. Moulton laughed and shook a finger at the Great Deceiver. "I like you. A funky sense of humor on you."

"Oh, I wasn't joking," Satan said with a friendly laugh. He stared Mr. Moulton directly in the eyes.

Mr. Moulton laughed again. "See, such a deadpan sense of humor, that's great." He shifted in his chair and placed the Devil's resume on his desk. "Let's get down to the real business here. I want to know exactly why you're applying for this job."

Satan sat forward in his chair and met Mr. Moulton's gaze with his own black and gray eyes. "I'm the best salesman in the world. No matter the price, I've always closed the deal. In the interest of full disclosure, I did fail to close one sale. I made my case, a super-tempting offer to my old boss's son, this one time in the desert. He turned me down. Don't ask why he was in the desert. Kind of a long, boring story. But other than that, no matter the price, I always close my sale." He flashed a smile.

Mr. Moulton looked the Morning Star over and pursed his lips for several quiet seconds. The office clock ticked each second off as Satan waited patiently with a smug sense of satisfaction oozing from his expression.

Mr. Moulton leaned forward and extended his hand. 

"Congratulations. You're our newest telemarketer."

Jerry choked on the air and gripped his throat. Someone was putting something in his air.

The sound of the air filters, humidifiers, air ionizers and dust treatments all hummed their constant hum. Jerry eyed each one in turn to look at the power lights, to settle the suspicion that the filters were not working. Red lights, blue lights and green lights all flickered softly in the dark room.

Jerry dropped his hand from his throat and cautiously pulled a breath past his quivering lips.

He felt the potentially deadly air fill his mouth and nostrils first and then rush down his throat to inflate his lungs.

He waited and wiped sweat from the bridge of his nose.

When would it happen?

When would his lungs leap up, sieze, and close, to leave him a breathless husk on the floor of his tidy little apartment?

Would it be this breath?

The air sat in his lungs and fed his body.

His lungs quivered from his own anxiety and his heart ached as it pounded fast in his chest. But his lungs did not burn or itch. His lungs did not swell and close. The air did its work and he let the breath go.

He exhaled heavily and jerked his head away from the position where he had released the burned fuel back into the room.

He waved his hand to clear the air and held his breath until it was safe again.

His stomach trembled and his eyes watered. His body begged for air. Jerry glanced over at the air filters, the purifiers, humidifiers, and ionizers. His stomach burned, his lungs deflated and his brain threatened to shut him down.

He couldn’t take his next breath yet. He sucked in a small bit of air and clutched his throat as he choked.

Would this be the breath?

He surveyed the lights on each of the filters.

He opened his mouth and pulled a deep breath in as he looked outside to the world. Down in the streets, dirty cars spewed exhaust. Smoke churned out into the sky from the smokestacks of a factory just across the street. Planes flew in the skies and rained poison to the world. Slight breezes blew to distribute the poison to everyone.

To everyone but him.

Not him. He stayed ready for the pollution, the poison, the death that floated from every pipe and from every mouth. He kept strong against every irritant, microbe or molecule in the air.

He was ready for it. Someone was putting something in his air.

He was taking it out.

A storm brewed outside and covered the sky with a thick blanket of angry black clouds. Devin pulled on his coat and stepped out into the dead evening.

The wall of humidity from the storm hit him and made his skin feel sticky, but he adjusted his dark wrap-around sunglasses and adjusted his courier’s bag at his side. He clutched it tight and flexed his hands in his fingerless gloves. He glanced up at the sky and checked the cloud cover.

The rain would start at any time, Devin knew, but it was safe to move as long as the cloud cover remained hung over the gray city like a death threat.

The Eyes in the Sky could not see the streets through the cloud cover. For the time during the storm, while the cloud cover remained in place, Devin felt a rare feeling of privacy. The ones that watched from the Eyes in the Sky could not see him now.

He fidgeted with his courier’s bag and started down the sidewalk. Most of the time, the sidewalks were empty and mostly abandoned. With the welcome cloud cover overhead, there were others out, moving down the sidewalks and crossing the streets. Most of the ones that moved under the cover of the thick clouds were couriers of the Movement, just like him.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Seeing other couriers boosted his morale and made him think for once, perhaps the Movement had a chance to break free of the new rules, and to finally be outside of the bubble of oppression erected by those that watched from the Eyes in the Sky. He felt a cold raindrop hit the top of his head. The cloud cover would likely move on after the storm.

Devin knew he needed to move quickly.

A single gunshot ripped through the quiet, cloud-cloaked city.

Devin jerked and looked over his shoulder to find the source of the gunshot.

He saw them before they saw him.

The Troop.

They were clothed in black tactical gear from head to foot and armed with pistols on their hips and tactical rifles in their hands. At their feet, a pool of blood trickled from a fallen courier.

Devin ducked quietly into an alleyway.

How did they know that courier’s for the Movement were out? he wondered. The clouds are too thick; the Eyes in the Sky couldn’t have sent an alarm.

He glanced down at his satchel and closed his eyes. There was no rain in the forecast for the next two weeks.

The package had to be delivered now, under the cloak of the cloud cover. Devin’s breath caught in his throat and he choked on his uncertainty. The cloud cover was now useless, clearly.

But how?

The Eyes in the Sky shouldn’t have seen anything under the clouds.

Devin ran out of the alley and darted down the sidewalk in a jagged, erratic path. He knew The Troop would see him, probably alerted by the heavy, panicked, determined slams of his shoes against pavement.

He darted back and forth as he ran with the satchel rising and falling against his side with his movement.

A gunshot ripped through the gray city.

Devin fell.

Pain radiated through his back and his eyes bulged. His erratic path had done nothing, he realized as he rolled over onto the stick wound in the center of his back. His legs jerked and his temples felt as if a stick of dynamite exploded behind both in unison.

A faded black tunnel closed in on his sight.

The Troop closed in on him and the leader stepped forward to collect Devin’s satchel.

Devin struggled against pain and fading control over muscle function.

“H-how did you see? Th-through the clouds?”

Blood pooled around him as he watched The Troop collect his satchel.

The Troop leader stepped forward and looked down from behind his tactical mask. His voice crackled from behind the mask, as static cleared his radio.

“We see everything.”

Tick.

Samuel sat surrounded by his clocks, with a bottle of glass cleaner at his side. A bottle of wood cleaner sat next to the glass cleaner. Twelve rolls of paper towels sat next to the glass and wood cleaners. 

Tock.

He grimaced and looked around at all of his beautiful clocks, each one attractive for a different reason. Some, he'd purchased because of the manufacturer, others, because of the typeface used for the numbers, and others still, he'd purchased simply because they were clocks. Each clock hung on the wall or sat on a shelf and ticked and tocked dutifully in the job it was created to do.

Tick.

But the dust never stopped. Even when the power went out, or the batteries died, and his clocks stopped keeping time, time continued and that was evidenced by the tiny specks of dust floating and falling and coating his world.

His clocks.

Tock.

He squinted and choked down the rising anxiety. The thought of the dust that dared to touch his clocks brought his stomach to sick lurches. He bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted pennies.

Tick.

He started to count his clocks and tapped his pinkie finger to his thumb with each number he counted through.

"One, two, three, four," he started.

The numbers flew off his tongue faster and faster as he found his rhythm and his fingers tapped together until the tip of his pinkie and the base of his thumb ached with the repeated touch.

Tock.

He continued to count and felt his stress rise. His heart pounded in his chest and sweat pooled in his armpits. He wanted to look down and make sure his paper towels and cleaning supplies still sat next to him, but he couldn't break his rhythm. If he didn't make eye contact with each and every clock, he might lose it in the shuffle.

Tick.

Each number carried stress and a tremble on the sound and his breathing grew erratic. His cheeks turned red and his lips ached. His hand jerked and he fought his physical response with the mental stress. He struggled to get his tapping fingers back in time with his verbal count.

Tock.

He saw it as he counted. The dust fell; each speck weighed a ton, and held onto the surfaces of his clocks like beasts dragging an imaginative child under the bed. He swiped his free hand over his forehead and strained his voice to continue the verbal count. The dust, though, built its strength, and started to distract him.

Tick.

He kept up with the count, turning around the room as he ran out of clocks on the walls and shelves of the first and second wall. His count numbered in the hundreds, and the dust - the dust numbered in the billions. He could see it, strengthening their numbers, carrying filth and disease with each nearly microscopic speck. His throat tightened and his stomach lurched. His knees wobbled and lost strength. He nearly collapsed beneath the weight of the rising voices screaming to him in his ear. Too much dust, the voices said, too much dust, you have to clean now.

Tock.

His count felt as if it lasted all day, but it finally came to its end. He stopped, and repeated the total number of clocks to himself, 12 times. The dust had gathered their legions, and it was time now for him to prepare for battle.

Tick.

He reached down and lifted the bottle of wood cleaner in one hand. From underneath, he grabbed the yellow rubber gloves. He put the wood cleaner down and pulled on his gauntlets of battle, pulling each rubber glove up to his elbow. Sweat rolled down his forehead as he glanced around at all of his clocks and all of the hiding places for the dust.

Tock.

The dust practiced a mixture of overwhelming numbers and guerrilla warfare. Samuel sucked a deep breath in through his nose and coughed. The dust could be airborne. He reached down and lifted the glass cleaner, to pluck the dust mask from beneath it. He pulled the thin yellow strap over his head and positioned the mask over his mouth and nose. His helmet.

Tick.

He grabbed the wood cleaner, the glass cleaner and the first of twelve rolls of paper towels.

Tock.

He walked to the first wall of clocks, placed his finger on the bottle of wood cleaner, and started his assault.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

The silent sounds of his daily war filled his home.

Trevor arrived home after he received the call from his landlord and found the situation exactly as she'd described it. Red boxes with white lids lined the hall from the entrance and blocked several of the other tenants' doors.

39 of them, his landlord had screamed in her bitter, broken, cigarette ravaged voice.

He looked at the stack of boxes closest to his door and pulled the white packing slip from the top of the teetering stack.

"File."

The glossy sheet of paper shined in the dim light of the hallway and reflected differently in certain places. Trevor realized the paper had a watermark.

He tilted the paper and squinted at the lightly shaded watermark. An "A" surrounded by a triangle. There was a single word beneath the triangle, in a sans-serif font. A straight, angular font with angry, sharp letters.

"Archive."

Trevor leaned back and looked down the hall lined with the boxes. He searched the boxes for a phone number or something to identify the sender, the delivery service or the contents of the boxes. 

Nothing.

Despite the hot day, Trevor broke into a cold sweat. The bright, solid red clashed with the plain white of the box lids and made his stomach shift. He opened the top box, still clutching the plain white sheet of paper in one hand.

On the top of the papers packed into the box, Trevor saw his birth certificate. A cold shiver ran through his teeth, as if he'd just bitten a metal spoon after a new filling. He peeled up a corner of the certificate and his breath caught in his throat until it became uncomfortable.

Under his birth certificate, his social security card looked up at him. His stomach churned and he realized he couldn't swallow. His hands trembled and his body tingled.

He shoved the top back onto the box and started the long job of moving the boxes into his apartment.

---

All of Trevor's furniture and home decor lined the walls, shoved there haphazardly. He sat in the middle of his living room, surrounded by paperwork, photos, contracts, documents, emails and phone call transcripts.

He'd already thrown up several times, but he could feel it rising again.

His life surrounded him, a sea of surveillance; 39 boxes contained his 31 years of life. Photos, hundreds, possibly thousands, contained countless private moments.

He trembled and turned to the last box. The only box not opened sat just in front of him. He leaned forward and closed his eyes as he pulled the white lid from the blood red box. The box was mostly empty, except for a pale sheet of paper and a black box beneath it.

He lifted the sheet of paper out of the box and looked at it.

"Date of death."

It was his death certificate. The date on the document was two years away. His heart choked on blood in his chest and skipped a beat. His mouth dried up like a sponge in a skillet.

He painfully opened his mouth and sucked a deep breath into his chest.

He leaned over and opened the last item. He opened the black box and looked inside.

The box contained a book and a pistol.

Trevor picked up the book and opened to the first page. 

Script: Trevor Winters.

He flipped through the pages and exhaled. Each scene, he recognized. It was his life in nearly perfect words. The book flopped over, and his eyes fell on the last page. 

Trevor read the suicide scene and mouthed the last words on the page.

END SCENE.

He closed the script and stood up just as a man in a black suit walked into his apartment.

"How did you get in here?" Trevor asked. He backed away from the man and held his hands up in defense.

The man in black held up a gloved hand. "The key," he said, flashing the bronze key in his grip.

"Who are you?"

The man in black looked like a cancer patient. His skin clung to him tighter than wet plastic wrap on good leather. "Oh, forgive me. You can call me the Playwright. You see, I'm responsible for the script you have in your hand. We've been watching to make sure you follow the script."

"What is all of this?" Trevor demanded. He dropped the script and glanced into the last box, at the gun.

"This," the Playwright said, "is your life. Every gloriously crafted second of it. Except the boring parts. The good writers skip the boring parts."

"Just -- just get out of my house," Trevor said.

The old man looked around at the scattered contents of the 39 boxes and shook his head. "I came to get what belongs to the Archive. You weren't supposed to see this, you see? With the amount of paperwork we deal with, there's bound to be a clerical error or two."

Trevor dived for the gun.

The Playwright watched as Trevor lifted the gun and pointed it at him. He calmly reached into his coat pocket and frowned. 

"I knew those last few scenes weren't going to work out," the Playwright said. "Looks like I have to make a few edits."

Trevor trembled and pointed the pistol at the Playwright. 

His finger tightened on the trigger.

The Playwright pulled his hand from his pocket and produced a sharpened pencil. He stepped toward Trevor and closed the distance between them.

"Stop," Trevor ordered. He pulled the trigger and heard the disappointing click of an empty gun.

"That's a shame," the Playwright said.

He jammed the pencil into Trevor's throat.

A particular doll stood out from the cluttered shelves of the old, dusty toy shop. The toy cars were missing wheels. There were tattered and stained stuffed animals. The wind-up chimps no longer clashed their cymbals in an everlasting pingpingping of insanity-inducing, alcoholism-encouraging buyer's regret of racket. But only the doll on the shelf caught Evan's eye.

The doll sent a shiver down Evan's spine. He stepped toward the doll and ignored the pile of toys on the floor that shifted and fell.

The doll's black eyes stared at him, and its rosy red cheeks puffed out in a forced, strained, porcelain smile. Ruffles poked up around the doll's neck and a dainty, girly dress flowed down over the doll's body. Her little hands were clenched into tight fists. Her tiny little feet were covered with discolored socks that were white, once upon a time.

Evan frowned and stopped, surrounded by toys long forgotten by the children that once owned them. Those children, the ones that once owned and played with these toys, were likely long gone. Dead or back in diapers and drooling like babies too young to play with the toys.

He shivered again and looked at the doll. He stepped over another fallen toy in the aisle and grabbed the doll by her midsection. He picked her up.

He grunted softly at the doll's surprising weight. Her black eyes stared up from Evan's hands, into his locked gaze.

He placed the doll on the shelf, carefully placing her with her back to the store, looking away from him. Her black eyes set loose a fire of unease in him. He turned to look toward the front of the store.

When he turned back, the doll faced out into the store. Her porcelain smile seemed relaxed. Her black eyes seemed the slightest bit wider.

Her rosy cheeks, paler.

Evan stepped a bit closer and looked into the doll's black eyes. He leaned down to stare, and looked right past the black glass that made her fake eyes. Behind the glass, the inky black eyes, something moved.

Round, like a pupil.

Evan narrowed his eyes.

A soft whir of something strange hummed from inside the doll's porcelain head.

Evan looked closer at her black eyes. Something sat just behind the black glass eyes.

He lifted the doll and looked at her porcelain frown. He scratched at one of her black glass eyes.

The doll's head hummed, like the sound of an old television's high pitched whistle.

Evan scratched the doll's eye and forced the edge of his fingernail behind the black glass eye. He pulled.

The doll's lips were locked in a porcelain grimace, her rosy cheek's sunken like a drug addict.

Evan clawed and pulled.

The black glass eye popped from the doll's wide socket and bounced on the toy shop's floor.

plinkplinkplink.

A soft gray mass rested inside the doll's porcelain head. Evan narrowed his eyes and looked around to ensure the shop owner hadn't seen his actions.

He looked back down.

The doll's smile met him, wide and genuine. Her one black glass eye stared up at him.

"Hello Daddy."

For this week's fridayflash, I'm doing something a bit different and outside of the genre I usually do for #fridayflash. Maria A. Kelly wrote a fantastic story called Telescope Moment and created a truly frightening character. With her permission, I've explored that character a bit further. Please read her story, Telescope Moment, if you have not.

***********

Breathe. Pan across. Adjust focus.

No telescope separated him from Ms. 610 this time. Just his eyes.

He shivered from the smell of her bathwater as he stood in the bathroom doorway. 

Ms. 610 finally made the fatal error. When she left for work, she forgot to lock her door. He slipped in minutes before she got home, and waited quietly in the closet.

He'd watched long enough to know her routine. Come home, turn on soft music, run a bath.

She closed her eyes and leaned back in the bathtub. His stomach fluttered with butterflies and his body shivered with anticipation.

Inhale. Exhale.

He stepped from the darkness and into the bathroom. He carried the syringe of sedative in his right hand and injected it into her neck in a single, practiced movement.

He reached down and tenderly cradled her head as she opened her eyes and looked up at him in shock. Moments later, Ms. 610 fell into his hands. 

Right. Where. She. Belonged.

***

"You can call me Mr. Slivers," he said from the foot of her bed as she stirred and tested the bindings constructed from the silver duct tape.

He squirmed. He could smell the sweet lavender soap from her bath as it dried on her body. The veins on her hands bulged and the skin turned red. The duct tape inhibited her bloodflow.

Ms. 610 moaned under the homemade gag he'd stuffed in her mouth. He smiled, a cruel expression. He enjoyed the terror in her eyes as she choked on the cloth.

"That's my underwear in your mouth," Slivers droned.

She moaned again and stuggled against the bindings that held her in place.

His voice, cold and monotonous, lifted in the darkness at the foot of her bed again. "None of my girls have broken the duct tape yet. But feel free to keep trying. I like when they struggle."

His hands, gloved in black latex, opened garbage bags one at a time.

"I like to use as many things from the household as I can. It keeps my travel light. It's a shame, you've only got 13 gallon bags. I'm used to working with 33 gallon bags."

He shrugged and stepped around to look down into her terror-filled eyes.

"You know the ones I mean, right? The ones that you put leaves in after you rake them into piles? The bags that they decorate with the god-awful jack-o-lantern faces around Halloween."

Ms. 610 struggled against the duct tape again and tried to spit the gag out of her mouth.

"Shh," Slivers droned. He caressed her face and continued. "I usually use a knife to do it. But you're just too pretty."

He reached down to his pants and adjusted himself into a more comfortable position. 

His latex-gloved hands wrapped around the girls throat and squeezed. Ms. 610 writhed under his grip and fought to break free. 

He moaned aloud. "Yes, just like that," Mr. Slivers whispered down at her. He thrust his hips against the air.

She strained her wrists against the duct tape and released a muffled scream through the underwear stuffed into her mouth.

"It's okay, darling. You remind me of my first." He leaned down over her and kissed the air above her forehead. He thrust his hips again against the air and grunted.

His eyes widened as he found release.

Ms. 610 found release.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and capillaries burst in her cheeks and eyes, flushing her face with a beautiful rosy complexion.

He shook and shuddered over her. His breath caught in his throat and he clamped his hands tight around her breathless neck as the final washes of pleasure rolled through him.

He leaned back and looked down at her.

So peaceful.

He adjusted his pants and felt the sticky mess left over from his release. He looked down at the tiny garbage bags with disdain as he pulled his knife and saw from his bag.

He had work to do. Smaller bags meant smaller pieces.