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Alarmingly Strange Stories The Return Of Mr. Sockforahead by Joshua Blanc |
| Sockforahead. The world seemed to drop away the moment the word was spoken. It echoed through the desolate halls of his mind and found its way to a padded cell where it grew louder and louder as it bounced off the walls around him. With it came a thousand sickly and evil feelings. With the utmost willpower he remembered the treatment, and took a series of deep, controlled breaths. The feelings bubbled, just beneath his skin, and were gone. "Sockforahead? So that's what this is?" she pointed to the box. "Man, I didn't want to touch it. I thought it was some kind of perverted sexual aid or something." The clerk took out a tattered, charred, and moth-eaten object vaguely resembling a cotton sock. "Mr. Symes, you may have been a sick and twisted children's entertainer - and Lord knows I wouldn't let you within ten feet of my children - but you're a free man. Good luck to you sir, and hopefully I'll never have to see you again." But Daniel hadn't heard a word. He was six months in the past, strangling the living crap out of a sentient cotton sock, and, in effect, his own hand. He thought he'd won, that fateful afternoon, but the bastard wouldn't die. He'd cut Mr. Sockforahead in two with his own teeth and set him on fire before the cops had turned up and arrested him - for disrupting a child's Birthday party, among other things. After psychological evaluation, it was deemed he had an extreme case of paranoid schizophrenia brought on by a combination of sexual frustration, self-loathing, and an innate fear of mascots. Strenuous treatment had totally wiped Mr. Sockforahead from his mind. But, somehow, here he was. Daniel picked him up. The two halves of scorched cotton had been crudely darned back together, leaving hideous jagged holes. The button eyes, which Daniel had ripped off and pissed on, were back in place - but melted and freakishly crooked. It seemed whatever morals the sock may have possessed were destroyed. The evil, warped death-masque was all that remained. "Mr. Symes?" It was the clerk again. "Your shoebox?" "Keep it," said Daniel, distantly. "Just give me the keys, and the wallet." The lady smiled and handed him the articles. He accepted them with his right hand, and dropped them with a start. The sock had somehow slipped itself onto his hand! "Christ!" "Man, whatchoo doin'?" "Sorry, sorry," said Daniel. |
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