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He smokes to take the edge off, a desperate attempt to calm his nerves by force. The vice grip he’s got on the joint pinched between two fingers reveals as much.
He’s actually got a card for it. He’s pretty demonstrably sane -- sane enough to pass a mental health check when legally purchasing firearms. But he wouldn’t give up the killer doll story and realized that doctors, like any other authority figure, were eager to shut him up by any means necessary. He’s got anxiety, PTSD, real bad trauma, doc, and “I hear it really can help” -- like he hadn’t been self-medicating since he got back from Kent. But now he gets his pot the legit way, and the cabin reeks like skunk, and that’s the way he likes it.
He reclines in his chair and exhales, lets the smoke dissipate into the air and fade away. Lately, he’s been very into the idea of things fading away. Wouldn’t that be nice? If once he was done with something it just went away forever?
But of course, he isn’t done with Chucky. Might never be. As near as he can figure, Chucky can’t die, not in any meaningful way. So every day he spends making his life miserable, well, that’s doing the world a service.
And Chucky isn’t done with him either, that much is apparent. Or else he wouldn’t be here at all. And he especially wouldn’t be here, taking his time in the reprieve, not appreciating it, but trying to needle under Andy’s skin as much as he could. Little prick. Severed head with nothing to do but run his mouth.
“What the fuck happened to you?” He calls out from across the room, trying to get a rise out of him.
He doesn’t bother looking up. “I was six when we met, and sixteen when you last saw me. I grew up.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know how time works, I mean when did you go fucking insane? You answer the door with a shotgun? I mean, Christ. Blew me away in more ways than one. You’ve gone full psycho.”
“Just prepared.”
“What? For me?” He laughs once, sharply. “How’d you know I’d come back?”
He turns to face him finally. “Because you always come back.”
Chucky seems undeterred, and rambles on. “This place is right out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre!” Andy rolls his eyes. “I mean it! With all the knives and the guns… and the torture. You’re fucking sadistic. Though I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise.”
He raises an eyebrow. “And how’s that?”
“Well. Mommy gets sent to the nuthouse, foster parents never want you for long. Only one real reliable adult presence in your life. Only one who ‘always comes back’." He grins, and it's more blood than teeth. "I fucking raised you.”
“Then what took you so long?” He doesn’t mean to sound so annoyed, so desperate. Like he was waiting for it, or wanted it. Like a kid watching the window for when their parents’ car is gonna pull up into the driveway. He doesn’t like the way the crack in his voice betrays him.
“You weren’t priority.”
“Right,” he scoffs, "and how else did you spend your time?”
“Between being dead? Barclay, I’m getting older. Is it so hard to believe that maybe I just wanna settle down with my girl? Have a kid, start a family?”
Andy chokes, a startled laugh escaping him with a cloud of smoke. “You had a kid?”
“Mhm.” Nonchalant, as if it’s nothing.
“How?”
“What, Karen never taught you the birds and the bees?”
He considers that, and then decides he really doesn’t want to hear the details of doll anatomy. “Boy or girl?”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it,” he grumbles.
Andy waves the questions out of his mind like the smoke out of the air. “So you wasted a little time playing house.” Chucky thinks he should be glad that one Tiffany Valentine-Ray isn’t here to hear him call her a waste of time. “I really, honestly, don’t believe you could just settle down. Judging by the fact that you came back. Like always. Why’d you come if you’re so ready to settle down?”
“A guy can’t visit his best friend without having a reason?”
He fixes him with a skeptical look.
“Alright! So I’m trying to tie up some loose ends. Cross a couple things off my bucket list. Tiff’s got me on that self improvement shit -- accomplishing goals. You ever accomplish anything besides becoming an alcoholic before you were old enough to drink?”
“So you did come back for me.” He crosses his arms and leans back once more, satisfied.
“Wipe that smile off your face, weirdo. You sound like you wanna get possessed. Is that it? You want it?” He taunts him the way one might talk to a dog while dangling a treat in front of his face. “Lay down, we’ll play hide the soul. Like old times.”
“You didn’t bring the heart.”
“Don'cha remember? You’re the first one I ever told the secret to. I don’t need it.”
Something stirs in him at that. He thinks it’s fear -- that there really is nothing in place to protect him, that he’ll always be vulnerable. Which, of course, is why he spent so much time becoming the survivalist he is now. The idea that a series of random events on his sixth birthday could not only change his life, but connect him to this long, ongoing sprawling web of murder and bloodshed. It’s ugly, splattered across several states and towns, haphazard like a Jackson Pollock. And he’s standing in the middle of it, somehow untouched. He can’t deny that it makes him feel important.
Chucky seems to pick up on the way he shifts, somewhere between cowering and puffing his chest. “Oh don’t go getting a big head about it. Just ‘cause you’re first, doesn’t mean you’re special.” As if by way of elaborating, he says, “You watch the news? You hear about the Pierce family?”
“I heard about what you did to them.”
“Then you know you’re not the only one out there who has it out for me. I have a life outside of you, you know.”
“You’re the murderer here. Pretty sure you’re the one who has it out for me.”
“No, see, there it is. This is not a vendetta, it’s a petty grudge.” He’s just a severed head, but Andy can picture the body language he’s trying to project, like he’s got him in a trap. Fly in a web. “You wanna know why I didn’t show up for so long? Because you’re not important. Because you don’t matter. You invented this whole fucking thing in your head. The idea that I’m obsessed with you. You’re crazy like Nica. Crazy like mommy.” From the way Andy flinches, he can tell he struck the right nerve. Dealing with Andy these days is a lot like handling a broken piano -- slamming down roughly on all the keys at random, just hoping for the one that’s gonna produce a note. And once he finds it, he’s content to try and drag a song out of it. He pushes. “You’re desperate. For a friend. And that’d be a fine enough sad orphan story--” He considers interjecting that his mom is very much alive and in fact expecting him for dinner next week. “--But you’re also obsessed, and unhinged, and violent . You’re the one who gets off on the sound of screams. A real chip off the ol’ block, huh? You’re not a murderer yet. But you like pain too much to be sane. You’re a danger to yourself and others, and you oughta be locked up.”
Andy thinks about therapists’ offices, trauma specialists, children’s “play therapists” who balked when he was too scared to even touch the toys they laid out, drug pushers who figured the right pill could fix him and letting side effects roll over him like waves in the ocean, weight gain and moodiness and not being able to get it up. He thinks about the frustration, the groans, that even the best reviewed psychiatrist in the state would drop her head into her hands when months into their time together he still wouldn’t let up on the “my doll is alive” story.
“Andy,” she’d say, “does that sound very logical to you?” No, it didn’t. “So we can assume then, that it didn’t happen?” Well, lady, you know what happens when you assume -- makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’ She didn’t find it funny.
He thinks about narrowly avoiding being institutionalized -- learning to say what they wanted to hear, when they wanted to hear it. It gave him an even worse problem with authority than he already had and a diagnosis of “crazy but harmless”. Both of which he finds himself doubtful of.
Chucky seems to read his mind, because he goes on ranting. “I don’t know how many shrinks you’ve seen to try and fix what I did to you. But here’s my diagnosis: You want to just be Andy from the ‘killer doll murders’ urban legend, news story, whatever. It’s all you know how to be. A fucking victim. I mean, it’s the first thing that comes up when you Google your name, why else do you think all your dates walk out on you? Couldn’t even make it work with that military chick. Because everyone takes one look at you and they know that the people close to you end up dead or worse. And they know what you won't admit: that it’s your fault. That you’re fucked in the head. That you’ll never be anything more than the scared little six year old on the cover of a newspaper hugging a good guy doll and bawling his eyes out because his bitch babysitter bit the dust. I figure if you were done with that, you’d be calling yourself Andrew by now. Pushing 40 and still Andy.” He spits the nickname with an almost impressive amount of disdain. “Face it, kid. You got older, but you didn’t grow up.”
He stands abruptly, shoving the chair away from him in the same motion and filling the cabin with the awful squeal of wood against wood.
“You wanna see something?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. “You’re gonna love this.” He returns to the cabinet that housed a majority of his guns, and bends down to one of the lowest drawers, another that’s sealed with a lock much like the safe that Chucky’s head resides in when he’s not around to watch him the whole time. The door unlocks with a beep from the lock and the hissing sound of it coming unstuck. He yanks the drawer out with a rumble, and proudly produces a plank of wood, on which there is the body of a Good Guy doll, missing only its head, front side down, nailed in place by each of its limbs like some kind of back-alley crucifixion, still squirming. “Look familiar?”
“Fuck you.” It’s horrifying, frankly. He’s always had a little bit of appreciation for the good old “and show it to you” trope, but like many things, he’s found a distaste for being on the receiving end of it.
“I’ll show you what I've been up to. It’s not all fun and gun shows. Did a lot of research. I’ve been reading up on voodoo. At this point, I probably do more voodoo than you do -- hey, that rhymed.” He takes a second to laugh, a full body wheezing chuckle that doubles him over for a brief moment. It’s the kind of thing that’s really funny when you’re stoned.
But it’s true. There's a copy of Voodoo For Dummies in one of his drawers, and his search history almost definitely has him on multiple watch lists.
“And what I’ve figured out,” he continues, “is that a soul is like water. You pour it into something, and it takes the shape of its container. So when you possess something, you possess the whole vessel. Every part. You can’t isolate it. You can’t sever it. So this,” He gives the board a shake for emphasis. “Is still you. It’s just as much you as… well… you.”
“Uh huh” he deadpans, clearly unimpressed with these findings.
“If you need a demonstration…” he trails off. With his free hand, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pocket knife. In a fluid motion, he flicks it open and jams it into Chucky’s left leg, smirking as it draws blood and, in tandem, a haggard scream rips its way out of his head. For as many times as he does it, the pain never hurts any less, and the reaction is never any less satisfying. Like watching an old episode of a favorite cartoon.
He rips the blade back out with more force than necessary, and pauses, lets the cabin fill with the sound of desperate strained breaths and a string of expletives. A beat too late, he remembers to smile again, and so he indulges in one last exhale, straightens his shoulders, and gets back to what he was explaining.
“But it’s not just the supernatural angle. I needed to know how the hardware worked too. I had to get my hands on every model -- you know, to be thorough. The 1988 original, the 1991 new batch, the 2013 set. After that goddamn movie came out, they started selling them at Hot Topic. For the record, I like the kid they got to play me for the flashbacks. Real cute. I hope his parents got him out of showbiz. Anyway,” he tries to steer his train of thought back to the matter at hand, “You have no idea how many of these fucking things I bought and dissected. They come with a bunch of different names. 50 of ‘em. Tore up a lot of Tommies and Johnnies and Oscars. Andy, actually, was on the list of names, funny enough. Fucking surreal experience right there.” It would feel both horribly wrong and disturbingly right to see them, and even more so to cut them up. Like some kind of reverse possession, the kind of imagery that was present in his childhood nightmares. Sometimes he couldn’t bear it and took out the batteries. Sometimes, maybe as some twisted little self-punishment, he’d make them say their names over and over again. “You’d be happy to see the price gouging going on for Chuckies, though. Everyone wants a Chucky. People are crazier for them than they ever were for Cabbage Patch Kids. I never shilled out for them. I was already paying fucking insane amounts to Chinese toy collectors for classic models. You’re a Chucky and a classic, which means I’m wasting valuable eBay cash here.” He pauses as if considering, and then shrugs. “Worth it.”
“But it’s not about the names. It’s what’s on the inside that counts. I had to keep getting all the different versions because I didn’t know which one you’d come in. But the good news is that the lazy bastards at Play Pals almost never updated their tech. Can you believe it? I would’ve thought they’d have the Good Guys running on AI by now. But nope, same old reliable buttons and batteries.” To punctuate this, he pulls the doll’s overalls aside, revealing the flesh toned plastic panel in the back of the body, which he flicks open with ease. Inside are two D batteries, which he points to. “These shits will last forever. Especially when you’re not going anywhere or doing anything to run them down.” He closes the panel and readjusts the outfit while he keeps talking. “So here’s the thing, there are these two pressure points on the side of your torso. You squeeze ‘em, like a kid does when hugging it, and it pushes a button which activates your little voice box. Good Guy dolls say three original phrases,” he parrots from the commercial. “All of this is to say… I figured out I can do this.” He squeezes the midsection of the body roughly in one hand.
From across the room, Chucky’s features still, looking distinctly more plastic, and mouth drops open as the prerecorded childlike voice says “Hey. Wanna play?” He lets out a sputtering cough, and then another squeeze draws out “Hidey-ho!” and a fake laugh.
“And then,” Andy continues, once more brandishing the pocket knife, “this, I think, is the best part.” He sticks the knife in the same wound as before, slotting it in neatly, drawing a fresh stream of blood over the already drying first one. He gives it a twist, feeling it scrape with resistance.
Chucky screams again, but halfway through, he tenses and it becomes the mechanical “I like to be hugged!” that’s pre-programmed into the goddamn doll he’s stuck in.
When it ends, and the knife is removed from the body, Andy says “So, just to let you know. I don’t have to listen to you talk, and I don’t even have to listen to you scream,” over the sound of heaving breaths. As he puts the body back where he got it, he tries not to think about what it means that he has a supernatural serial killer in his home, an incarnation of pure unapologetic evil, and he’s scared of him.
“What the fuck was the point of that?” His anger has him sounding almost feral.
Andy turns to face him once more.
He shrugs.
“I just want you to know that I can fuck with you.”