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“Nat…” Toby said. If he was going to say anything else, he didn’t. Clockwork tightened her grip on the steering wheel and fought against the need to glare at him. She needed to keep her eyes on the road. If she got in a crash, Toby might’ve be brought back to life by virtue of still being useful to that thing but it doesn’t hold the same reservations for her. A small crash, one which would destroy the car but not her, wouldn’t even be worth it to show Toby just how pissed she is because she’d have to pay for the repairs.
Toby got the message anyways because he turned towards the window and watched the world fly by, occasionally knocking his banging his head against the window. Clockwork’s grip didn’t loosen on the wheel until ten minutes later, at a junction where she had to turn her head to compensate for the clock that left her half blind. It’s at times like this she wanted to cuss out her younger self for not thinking anything through. The aesthetic hadn’t been worth it and half the time in her newly rebranded and failing ‘normal life’ she has to wear a realistic prosthetic anyways.
Clockwork doesn’t usually drive in these situations. If she’s not alone, her partner is always driving. It’s safer ninety percent of the time and the risk of being in the car while Jeff drives outweighs the risk of telling Jeff he’s the one exception to the “Clockwork shouldn’t drive unless necessary” rule. Since moving out of the forest, she’d been relying on public transport and only had a car for long distances. But Toby can’t drive, everyone else is busy and Clockwork has a debt to pay off . That’s why she was driving and why she was tolerating being in the car with her ex of four weeks.
They were five minutes away from the cheapest motel in the suburbs when Toby tried again. “Clocky.” She wanted to ignore him but they’d been told the kill should take three days at a minimum between gathering information on the victim, planning the kill, killing, cleaning up the kill as much as they deem necessary and to leave. It would be an incredibly long two weeks if they didn’t speak.
“Toby.”
He didn’t say anything for a second. The silence hung heavy between them. She could see his hand twitching over the volume button. The radio had been muted for most of the drive. Clockwork considered turning it up herself. The roads are quiet enough but if they don’t talk now, she didn’t think they ever would.
“Spit it out,” Clockwork said.
“I think Slender might have only booked us one bed.”
Clockwork very nearly slammed her foot on the emergency break. “What?!” She asked. She couldn’t turn around and try and gage what Toby’s reaction to this was. The car was already slipping out of her control. She swerved them back into the correct lane and held her middle finger up when someone correctly honked them. “Say sike right now.”
“I didn’t tell him we broke up.” Toby said instead of ‘sike’ or ‘haha I’m just joking!’ He’d treated it more seriously than Clocky expected he would anyways. The Toby from four weeks ago would be laughing about how it should be more careful about possible baby proxies. Since Clocky’s a girl and Toby’s a boy and all. The Clocky and Toby from four weeks ago were still dating though. The break up could have slapped him back to reality. That’s a good thing, she thought.
“And you didn’t tell him we wanted two beds.”
“Extra money.”
It had money. This kill had probably been ordered because someone had commissioned it on the dark web. There wasn’t any firm proof that it had money but they always had unlimited money for groceries (Tim had spent a small fortune on cigarettes consistently before he left.) They could stay at fancy hotels if it made the kill quicker. There was no money being spent on rent or taxes or utilities by virtue of it being an eldritch creature in the middle of the woods. It had the money to spend on two single beds. It had chosen not too. Clockwork could feel a headache forming thinking about it.
“Just because we’ll be sleeping together, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“You could take the floor if it’s going to be that big of a deal.”
“And if you even look at me romantically, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“What? How can we share a room if I can’t even look at you?”
“You can look at me just…” She rolled her eye, unsure how to describe the slimy way she felt when some people looked at her, how to define what it was that made it predatory, “No staring.”
They lapsed into silence again. The hotel was in sight when Clockwork thought to speak again. “We’re putting pillows between us on the bed. So you can’t do that thing where you roll onto someone else’s side of the bed and claim you didn’t realise.”
“It’s because I’m fucking sleeping. And you’re sleeping on the floor!”
“I’m not sleeping on the fucking floor. We can deal with this like mature adults and build a pillow fort between us.”
“Oh because building a shitty pillow fort is mature.”
“More mature than not even wanting to take the floor yourself. Since you’re making such a big deal about it!
“You’re the one making a big deal about it!”
Clockwork parked as quickly as she could. She climbed out the car. The car took up one and a half parking spots. Not many people were staying at the hotel. She’d fix it later. Clockwork slammed the door and walked towards the hotel.
There weren't any lights in the hotel, leaving them standing in the dark room with only streetlights that could be seen from the windows guiding their way. There wasn’t anyone at the reception so Clockwork rang the bell. She gave the receptionist five minutes to come and talk to them but time was ticking. Toby paced up and down the hallway, stopping occasionally to crack his neck or see if anyone was on their way. After five minutes, she climbed over the counter and unhooked a key from the chain. She jangled them in front of her, waiting for Toby to finally turn and look at her.
“What room are we in?” Toby asked while still pacing. Clockwork looked at the key and read out the number. Without turning to face her, Toby headed towards the stairs and began to climb them.
Despite not being in the room assigned to them, there was still, only one bed. Clockwork wanted nothing more than to keep trying more keys until they found a room with two singles. Or to go and grab another room just for herself. She didn't. She’s on a job. This wasn't a date or a fun outing like it used to be. This is a job and she has to remain professional. Toby held no reservations. He immediately fell onto the bed in a starfish position. Natalie smiled, dumping the bags on the floor. Briefly, it felt like before. Then the anger came back. She rooted through the bags for her clockwork eye and his muzzle. The muzzle was placed on top of the bags while she went to the bathroom.
In an ideal world, Clocky would want somewhere clean to replace her prosthetics. Before the Slenderman, her eye had got infected. The house hadn’t been much better but they had medical care she didn’t have anymore. Dirt covered the bathroom like a sick joke and the ceramics had turned a pale yellow. A fly landed on the mirror. She swatted it away.
She teased the eye out, looking up and grabbing the bottom of the eye with her nails. As she looked back at the mirror, the eye slid back out, leaving behind the hollow hole where her eye had once been. Clockwork left the eye in a glass jar, meant for holding toothbrushes. She washed the clockwork eye under the water until it reflected the light. Then she shoved her nail in the hole and let the watch slide in.
Clockwork blinked twice as it slid into place before she came face to face with her own reflection of the killer. With nothing more to do, she left the bathroom.
Toby had fitted his muzzle over his face and grabbed the hatchets from his bag. There were new damages to the bed frame and half the carpet had been torn up.
“We’ll have to pay for that.” Clockwork said.
“They won’t know it was us who did it.”
He was right. She didn’t give him a response, which was response enough for him to start laughing about something. Clockwork ignored him. She shrugged on her years old coat and stuck her hands in the pockets. The knives, all small but sharp enough to hurt, were still in there. Toby stuck his hatchets on the utility belt, which was then covered by his hoodie.
That night was supposed to be for scouting out useful information. She'd planned it out to minimise the time she had to spend with Toby, away from work and the amount of time she could spend thinking about how easy it would be to just go back. The drive had been long. She hadn't let the journey and the individual roads merge into one because that would mean the hours getting away from her. It was night. They needed to do another few hours to reach their victims in the suburbs.
Clockwork pulled the hatchet out of the bedframe and threw it to the other side of the room. Toby glared at her, she stared back. Toby ticced, breaking his stare. Clockwork snickered as she turned her back to take her coat off. She left it on the floor before she turned back to the bed.
"I'll take this side." she kicked the frame she stood by before climbing on.
"Are you not going to sleep on the floor? I'm not giving up the bed."
"What's the worst thing you can do?" Toby looked toward the hatchets before looking back at her clockwork eye. "Exactly." Clocky said. "I'd hurt you before you even tried anything."
She rolled over and shut her eyes.
Sleep didn't come so easily. She laid stock still for half an hour, hyperaware of how the mattress shifted whenever Toby moved about. He rolled over, hairs tickling the back of her neck. Natalie bit her lip and waited. He whistled lowly, his head turning in every direction quickly every few seconds. He hit her shoulder. The tics stopped. Clockwork kicked him back over to his side of his bed.
She grabbed the second pillow from her side and the cusions from the chairs and piled them in a barrier. Clockwork only had a quarter of the bed left when she finished but that was okay. She didn't move much in her sleep.
Sleep was washing over her, hours later, when she heard Toby speak.
"Why'd you quit?" He asked. "I know people's times are stilling running out. You're on the news now."
Clockwork thought of herself, the version of herself from before. She tried to picture what Toby looked like before the monster carved it's presence into his life and left no room for anything else. The few pictures Liu kept in the bottom of his bag of a thirteen year old Jeff and alive parents. "I'm too tired. Ask me in the morning."
Clockwork was driving again. She wanted to go faster. The speed limit was 50 kilometres per hour but 70 wouldn’t have felt fast enough. The time they desperately needed was slipping through their fingers. Her foot was on the accelerator. She needed to slow down. There was nothing besides a crappy hotel bed waiting for her. She wasn’t losing any time that she couldn’t get back by getting up earlier in the morning. Time was on her side, for once. Getting caught speeding would just send hours of the precious time she had in her life spiralling out of her control. She relaxed her foot on the accelerator; the world could go past her at 50 kilometres per hour there was no need to rush. Toby sat beside her, nattering away. He was looking straight ahead and hadn’t seemed to mind Clockwork’s silence.
“Did you see his car as well? God, it must have been so expensive. We should break into it, take it for a spin before going back home." He stopped, whistled. "Jeff would crash it – obviously – so we can’t take it to the Manor. I guess you could take the car but you couldn’t insure it. Since its stolen and all that. Do you have to fucking insured your shit now? I guess you can’t just steal anything you want now when the old shit breaks. Is insurance expensive? Fuck, I imagine it’s expensive.”
“Toby. Shut up.”
“Why? I’m not saying anything new to you. Or has living like a normal bitch made you forget what having fun is like? Maybe Slendy needs to invite you on missions more often. You need to fucking loosen up and remember how to smash shit and have fun. Who are we gonna hurt? Besides that man and his family. But they were dead meat as soon as Slendy set his sights on them.”
Clocky checked her wing mirrors. There was no one behind her. She smiled and slammed her foot on the emergency breaks. Bracing stopped Clocky from slamming into the steering wheel like a long dead sister. Toby slammed against the front before the seatbelt caught him and threw him back into his seat with equal force.
The past hovered over them, Toby still ,for once, in the car seat, Clockwork settting her sights on something greater than others ideas for her. The present hitting Clockwork was Toby’s fist. Thankfully, not a hatchet.
“Why the fuck would you do that!?” Toby screamed. He threw his hands in the air, blocking Clockworks sights besides him. In the middle of the motorway, there was no where she could look besides at him.
She met him with equal force, throwing his hands back to his side. “You couldn’t fucking shut up!”
“And that’s a shit fucking reason to crash the fucking car!”
“I hardly crashed the car!”
“Oh! I’m sorry! Just push the emergency breaks for no reason! You know! Hell forbid you talk to me!”
“All you talk about is how great that fucking thing is! And murder! I have other things going on in my life now! Why don’t you ask me about my legal job Toby!”
“You haven’t fucking asked me how the Manor is since you left!”
“Because I don’t give shit about the manor!”
“Then I’m allowed to not give a shit about your job!”
Clockwork scowled. She pressed her foot the accelerator and started the car, speeding straight to eighty miles per hour. Who cares if they crashed? It’d only be Natalie who died and that would only mean she never had to collect her debt.
They made it to the hotel in one piece. Toby refused to talk to her. He’d gotten back and star fished over the double bed. The hatchets lay on the bed, inches away from his fingers which gripped the bed sheets like he thought the axe was there. Natalie snatched one of the four pillows from the bed. Without another word, she went into the bathroom, locked the door and climbed into the bath, clutching the pillow close to her head.
That night Natalie dreamed that everyone at her job was replaced by metal. Their arms, their legs and when they let her get close, she discovered their hearts were metal too. She’d press her fingers in their eyes and pull them out, holding it close to her own prosthetic, as if she could tell the difference. Her co-worker laughed and told her the fake eye was very detailed. They only hoped to afford a prosthetic like that. Then their cold metal hand slid to her real eye and pulled down her eyelid, the motions mimicking how she replaced her prosthetic.
The slam of glass against the wooden counter stopped them from plucking her eye out. Natalie turned around to serve the customer only to see they were made of flesh, similarly to her. It was Toby, requesting a pint of beer despite looking under age.
Looming over his shoulder was the pale man in the suit. He was made from flesh as well. Despite his lack of facial features, he looked more human than her co-workers.
Natalie woke up. A drop of water fell on her forehead. She sat up and looked around. The light was blinding. She opened the bathroom door and looked at the main room. The curtains were still closed. The online alarm on the left of the room said it was five am. Natalie woke up a lot later on work nights and most of their hunting was done at night. She went back to the bathroom, turned the light off and went back to sleep.
They ate a late lunch, later breakfast at an expensive restaurant using a card Toby pulled out of nowhere. Clockwork shifted in her seat, trying to hide the beaten nature of her coat and the stained jeans from the leering eyes of rich men.
“So.” Toby said, placing down the overly expensive sandwich back on his plate, “How are you?”
“I have an ache in my neck from last night. It’s what I get for sleeping in a bathtub last night.”
Toby’s face twitched at the mention of the night before. Clockwork went back to her sandwich, taking a bite and letting him decide how he was going to react. He’d started to bite his lip. Clockwork slapped his hand, catching his attention and taking it off the bad habit.
“What?”
“Biting your lip. Besides, how did you sleep last night?”
“Incredibly well actually! The mattress was basically made of feathers!”
“Good to hear. I hope that doesn’t mean you want to spend longer here than you have to?”
Toby clicked his tongue, “You didn’t seem already for our job last night.”
Clockwork narrowed her eyes, “Things change. I want to get this over with.”
It was by pure luck that in their break in, the night before, Toby had found a calendar. Their victim was a businessman and kept his time well organized. By the time they’d have finished their lunch, found the car and drove to their destination, they’d have an hour before their victim was supposed to be anywhere. It was worse odds than Clockwork liked but Toby lived for the thrill of getting away before anyone noticed. They’d both killed more people, fighters, in a shorter time window. This would be a standard drill.
Yet, as Clockwork climbed over the broken window and into the house, anxiety curled deep in her gut. She’d left her Clockwork eye at home because she hadn’t anticipated the short turnaround from late lunch to the murder. Most of her essentials were left at the hotel. They’d have to take a detour on their way back to pick it all up. Her biological eye glowed faintly in the dark, enough that she could see the tip of her nose and no more. The air conditioning was on, blasting cool air in the house so Clockwork pulled her coat closer, pressing her cheek into the faux fur.
Home decoration had never been Clockwork’s passion so she let the details of a middle class life pass her by as she walked up the stairs. The issue with early evening murders is that a guess wasn’t always good enough. Toby had gone after the primary victim, the Father. He’d claimed the kill as soon as he slipped into the backseat. He couldn’t kill the young daughter, citing déjà vu so dangerous the thing thought it best to keep him away. Clockwork thought the déjà vu was clarity and that’s why it kept them from killing anyone too similar to those held dear from the before. If Clockwork saw it ever again, she’d hold her middle finger up at it, tell it to suck her dick and then laugh at how it failed to understand clarity came from empathy and empathy wasn’t isolated to figures from the past.
The daughter, Clockwork didn’t bother to learn her name, it made it easier, was in the bed as expected. Clocky nudged the door open, staring through the crack and waited. When the daughter gave no sign of noticing her, she entered. Heading to the wardrobe, Clockwork tore the fabric off a dress. She did so twice. The strips looked like bandages.
Clockwork turned the young girl so her face was smothered by the pillow. She brought one of the knives out of her pocket. It was a smaller knife, sharp sides and a duller tip.
Clockwork drove the knife into the little girl with all her strength. Blood splattered across her face so she wiped her face, smudging it. The toy giraffe that lay discarded on the side, was close enough that blood started to drip down the girl’s side and onto the stuffed animal. Some of the thinner stab wounds began to clot the longer Clockwork went on. The girl remembered how to scream around half way through. Her Mother and Father had been silent. Clockwork hoped it was because Toby was efficient. The girl screamed for her Father. Natalie wondered how it felt to think he’d come to help.
Clockwork had lost count of how many stab wounds she’d left. Her arm felt weak. Her clothes needed a wash, desperately. The girl was asleep, Clocky didn’t know when she’d passed out. The knife slipped from Clockwork’s hand.
She acted quickly. Clockwork tied the scraps of clothing around the deepest of the wounds, ignoring how immediately they got stained. They’d plug the bleeding enough to last an hour or three, enough tine that someone should come to check in. Clockwork picked the knife up and cleaned it against the girl’s cheek before she headed out. The knife tucked into her pocket.
Toby was outside, waiting for her. Clockwork refused to meet his eyes. She headed straight for the car and climbed in. The engine revved. Toby followed her into the car. Half way through their journey to the hotel, a slew of police cars sped past them. Clockwork looked at Toby, saw him frowning, just a little, and focused on the road again.
The hotel stop was brief, she grabbed her stuff and handed in the room key, turning away before the receptionist could try and charge her for stealing a room.
Clockwork opened the passenger door, “Get out.” She told Toby. “I’m driving back home.”
“But the-“ Toby started.
Clockwork rolled her eyes, “It can teleport. It can come and pick you up. Or you could get a taxi. But I’m driving that car whether you’re in or not.”
Toby still didn’t budge, smirking at her as he buckled his seatbelt up again. Clockwork didn’t particularly want to be stuck with Toby but she wasn’t about to fall for his bluff by not leaving. She climbed in the car and started the drive home – setting off on the longest route with a small detour. Toby asked to be dropped off at the closest gas station once she got onto the motorway.
“Can you get me a soda before you leave?” Clocky called once Toby was out the car. She watched through the windscreen as Toby grabbed the first bottle out of the fridge and paid for it. He returned, throwing it at her. Clocky caught it and stared at the label, 7-up, her least favourite. She laughed and flicked the engine back on. Natalie didn’t check behind her to check up on Toby before heading back onto the main road.