I posted this on a Goodreads forum and received a couple of positive responses, so I thought I would share it here. My original intent with this idea was to bulk it out and make it into a short story, but making it a much shorter work was a good exercise for me. Feel free to let me know what you think (good or bad) in the comments.
Enjoy!
Warnings
The toy fire engine had seen better days, but Johnny loved
it. He pressed the siren button
non-stop, except to switch to the radio button.
It wailed and called out commands in what was definitely not an inside
voice. Johnny's dad hated the toy, and
had a small smile as the siren slowly changed from a screech to a muffled
warble, and the voice became a mumbled whisper.
Then one day, it happened. The
toy was silent.
"What's wrong with it?" Johnny asked, a small
hitch in his voice.
"The batteries must be dead," Dad replied.
"Can you fix it?"
"It's not the kind of batteries you can
replace." He had no idea if it was
true, but if he didn't check then he wasn't really lying. Johnny sniffled, but didn't cry, and pushed
the toy to a corner of the living room. Johnny's
dad felt bad at first, but a fire engine free evening went a long way to making
him feel better.
The toy sat in the living room, silent for over a week. Then, one morning while the family was
getting ready for work and school they all heard its louder than ever, deep
voice announce, "LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING THE STREET." The family walked slowly into the living
room, and it announced the same warning again.
"You fixed it!" Johnny said, giving Dad a big
squeeze, then dashing over to the toy.
"No," he admitted.
"Must have been a little juice left in the batteries," he
added, noticing it wasn't responding to his son's button mashing. Johnny soon gave up and sat down for
breakfast. The fire engine made the same
warning while they were eating, then bellowed it out one last time as they were
leaving the house.
By the time lunch time rolled around, Johnny's dad had
forgotten all about the toy, and was headed out to his favorite food truck for
some spicy tacos. He exited from the
back of the building, like he always did, but his ringing phone stopped him
from walking blindly into the alley.
Caller ID showed his home phone number, which was odd because no one
should have been home. He clicked the
button to answer and a car raced down the alley, the wind rippling his dress
pants. "Hello?" he answered
hesitantly, a little shaken by how close the car came to hitting him, but the
line was dead. By the time he got home
from work, he had put the incident out of his mind.
The next morning they all received another warning from the
toy. "DON'T TALK TO
STRANGERS." Again Johnny was
excited, but couldn't get any more response from the toy. It made the same announcement two more times
before they left the house, but Johnny's dad pretended not to hear it.
At lunch time he looked both ways before crossing the alley,
but it was empty, like always. Well,
except for the day before, of course.
The entire day was uneventful and he had forgotten about the toy's
warning by the time it was time to go home.
He was walking through the parking deck towards his car when he saw
someone approaching him.
"Can you tell me how to get to Main Street?" the
smiling stranger asked him.
Johnny's dad's phone rang, and he put a hand up to the man
as he saw it was a call from home.
"Sorry," he said, "It's my wife. Give me just a minute." The stranger stood there as Johnny's dad
answered the phone call. "Hello?" he answered, and received garbled
static as his reply. "What?"
he said, putting a finger in his ear, and moving away trying to get a better
signal. "I can't hear you," he
said as he reached the edge of the deck, and then the line went dead. He looked back at the stranger, still waiting
on him, and shrugged. The stranger
shrugged back, then was plowed over by a driver coming too fast around a blind
corner. The stranger died instantly, and
right in front of Johnny's dad. He was
late getting home, and while he talked to several police officers that night,
he didn't talk to any strangers.
The next morning Johnny's dad felt like he was holding his
breath, waiting for the warning. There
was only silence. Johnny tried the
buttons again, but the toy wasn't talking.
Breakfast was quiet, and no voice called out to them as they left for
the day. Johnny's dad looked both ways
before crossing the alley at lunch, and made sure he stayed out of the lane in
the parking deck when it was time to go home.
He checked his phone for any missed calls, but there was nothing there.
When he got home he noticed the toy wasn't in the living
room corner. "Where's Johnny's fire
truck?" he asked his wife as casually as he could manage.
"Oh, it started talking again, so I made him play with
it outside."
He grabbed her shoulders, "What was it saying?"
"What?" she said, trying to wriggle free from his
grip.
"What was it saying?" he repeated, squeezing her
harder.
"I don't know," she said. "Something about calling 911 in case of
an emergency. Ow! That really
hurts!"
He didn't hear anything else she said. He just ran for the phone dialing the numbers
even as he heard the screeching tires outside.
