nosleep
r/nosleep
2
The costume I was forced to wear as mascot for Derby's Fun Land was not built for warm weather or user comfort. I was sweating profusely as I stood outside in the noonday sun, a silent prisoner in my oversized getup as I put on a fake happy voice, dancing and capering with visitors. All the while, dying inside.
This wasn't what I'd pictured when I'd decided to become a character actor.
The costume had the oversized head of a cartoon dog whose gaping mouth I peered out from within. The character wore a blue sailor outfit, a blatant rip-off of a popular duck character created by another brand - a fact which I was heckled for constantly.
"Hey, Derby! Duck!" a little kid yelled, tossing his hot dog at me and staining my costume yellow with mustard across the front.
It was the third time that morning I'd been assaulted by a child, which was my cue to take a smoke break. I began stomping away when someone called after me angrily.
"Hey, asshole! My kid wanted a show, where do you think you're going?"
I turned around and saw a red-faced man with a large camera strapped around his neck, wearing a fanny pack and an Ed Hardy shirt. The devil-child’s father, I presumed.
"Whoops," I said, gritting my teeth and looking down at the obnoxious twerp who'd just branded me with mustard. "How do you Derby-do, little fella? Are you havin' a great day at Derby's Fun Land?"
The kid leered up at me, grinning a gap-toothed bully's smile.
"You wrecked my Derby Dog! Now I want a new one! No! I want an ice cream cone!"
I only left my son alone in the car for a moment. He hit me with his signature gap-toothed smile to let me know that would be alright. I forgot my wallet on the counter. I didn’t need to get pulled over without a license. I rushed inside, grabbed the diaper bag, found his rattle, then stopped to put on a jacket. My mind raced through the prototypical checklist that every parent knows when they plan to go somewhere. By that point, I would have forgotten my keys if they weren’t attached to my belt loop. I turned the deadbolt extra slow so my wife wouldn't wake up from the click. I avoided cursing at the creaking steps. I sprinted (quietly, if possible) down the driveway to our old hatchback, slipped inside, and we were off.
In and out in under two minutes.
Liam giggled at the winding off ramp for the parkway. I knew what that meant from experience. Usually at this point in our routine, he asked for Baby Bum, or Cocomelon, so I switched on the soundtrack to one of his favorite nursery rhymes and caught myself humming along with the chorus. I took stock of the upcoming day and its stresses. Daycare first, then work, then lunch with clients, then daycare again. I needed to make sure there was enough time in between for some actual sales in between there. We needed money at the time. Not that we don't still now, but, we did then too. Kids ain't cheap.
Li fell asleep at some point past exit 66. The snores got to be as routine as the songs. We brought him in to have the former checked (as we did with almost anything) but the doctors claimed kids could only breathe through their mouth when they slept. I stretched out and glanced back to check his breathing, for what must have been the first time in the trip. Liam’s crop of messy black hair moved slowly up and down. I wrapped one finger into his curls and did my best to keep one eye on the road.
Suddenly, second small shape shifted in the third row.
I didn’t recognize it immediately. The jackets and junk back there formed awkward piles which made it tough to see anything. I never managed to keep a car cleaner longer than a week. My son's toys amplified that problem. For a moment, I assumed that some of it just got caught up in the blast from the air conditioning, or a stray open window. But then it moved again.
“Turn the fuck around.”
My stomach dropped to the gas pedal.
“Don’t look back here.”
The deep, gravelly tone made this all the more unsettling. I didn't recognize anything about it. He couldn't have been a local. But he could have been old, young, native to this country or otherwise. I just couldn't pull any other details.
He had a fetish that ultimately caused his death. But that's not this story. This story is about what happened after.
Freddy the Fish, so called by his friends because he drank too much, was an alcoholic. And not your average run of the mill Alco, no, Freddy was the king of the glitter mile.
A stretch of water so glittery that the stars were jealous. The 'glitter' riding the surface was from a peculiar practice called dunking. Freddy the Fish was the best. Freddy could dunk for five minutes and seventeen seconds at the best of time. Even after imbuing twenty pints and copious whiskeys.
But again, this isn't about his heydays. This is about his last day. The time he attempted to throw all the other glamorous glitter queens in their showgirl bathers, out of the water.
Freddy, ever rambunctious, entered the water amidst the backhanded comments and snide looks. Someone had stolen his glory and lasted longer than he. What Freddy didn't know that night, was that the glitter king had been out maneuvered.
When Mr Fish dunked his glittery head beneath the cold waters, that someone was waiting for him.
"So Freddy. Why do you think that you are addicted to this practise?"
The man in front of me was more amphibian than man. His green skin was boardline translucent and his eyes were lidless and elliptic. He shifted uneasily on the seat. Dank water plinked on my office floor.
"I just…" he shook his hairless head. "I'm addicted. You know. I've tried to stop but it's hard."
5
It is quite unsettling to think about how someone’s life can be forfeit by something so banal as a kick of a ball. Indeed, it was a kick of the old, worn out leather ball that spelled out Ray’s demise. He was the happiest kid in the world when his parents gifted it to him for his eight birthday, two years prior.
Growing up in a small town, you have to be content with little entertainment you get. We kids had no arcades and parks to keep us occupied. Instead, after school, we’d spend our days in the backyard of one of us, playing board games and messing around.
When summer came along, though, things got a bit more interesting. We’d spend entire days casing around our small hometown, walking through the forest and riding our bikes down the streets. If we were particularly lucky, we’d find one of the homeless people to bribe to buy us some cheap beer from the convenience store. The four of us would pool our money together with great difficulty, yet the absolute triumph of getting away with something like that offset the feeling of financial setback.
The four of us had known each other since early childhood. Ray, Edgar, David and I were inseparable.
As I said, we spent entire summer days together doing various activities, but we were energetic boys, and even as night grew closer we did not want to conclude with our games and our parents would have to call us one by one to get us inside.
Usually, we would gather on our street and play some football with street lights illuminating our playground.
It was during one of these nights that our lives would forever change, that one of us would die. I do not remember the date. In fact, it took me many years of therapy to even be able to retell this event in such a calm manner.
It was a warm night like any other. We were at our usual spot on the street dividing our houses from the cornfield on the other side. We had just elected the teams, which was always a point of contest for us, and began playing.
Right off the bat, David and Ray scored a goal and Edgar and I made an unspoken agreement to play more aggressively, signed by both of us with a silent nod.
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