Scrap

The big truck rumbled down the road. Her headlights illuminated every moss draped tree that loomed out of the darkness. In this part of Florida, at this time of night, every backroad felt like driving through a tunnel. She was a seven ton dump truck, but was currently weighing in at thirteen what with all the scrap metal in the back. She used to be an emerald shade of green, but you couldn’t tell anymore under all the layers of dust, and the lettering on the sides of the doors looked like fossils embedded in some ancient rock just barely visible to the naked eye. It read GUSTAV’S SCRAP SERVICES.

At the wheel was Gustav, a red-eyed, rage-filled madman. He was coming back from a pick up in Miami, a twelve-hour round trip. It had not gone well.

Gustav hauled scrap metal for a living, but what he wanted more than anything was to be a famous metal sculptor. There was a time in his life where he almost had that. He went to school for sculpting with an emphasis on metal work. He was in the top of his class. All his professors had praised him during those days and told him he was destined for great things. He had a “great eye”, his “hands were gifted”, and a bunch of other bullshit Gustav once believed but now no longer did.

It was a former classmate who he’d picked up the scrap from in Miami, Joey Reznick. Back in the art school days, Joey hadn’t been a blip on Gustav’s radar. He was mediocre in Gustav’s mind and he’d written him off five minutes after meeting him in class. Now, little Joey Reznick — who was going by “Joseph” these days — had a nice house in Miami near the water, with a nice studio, and enough money, apparently, that he could just scrap five metric tons of high-grade steel that was Gustav was now hauling back to his ramshackle home in North Florida. It was really good stuff, but Gustav had the urge to dump it in the swamp as soon as he got home.

Gustav’s hands were raw and red from pounding the steering wheel. His vision was blurry from the tallboy of Steel Reserve in between his legs, and the empties that lay on the floorboards. Every now and then, he shouted a string of obscenities into the stale, smelly air of the cab and jammed the gas pedal down to the floor. The damn truck was so big and carrying so much metal that it barely picked up any speed. The engine just whined and sputtered, much like its owner.

A tall stalk of mud-splattered aluminum, shaped like a palm tree with blue and red reflectors all over it, signaled the entrance of Gustav’s driveway. He mashed down on the brake and swung the big truck onto the dirt two-track that led to his home. The load in the back shifted and crashed against the walls of the dump with a loud bang! Gustav didn’t pay it any mind. He lived in the middle of nowhere. There were no neighbors to complain about the noise at this hour.

The driveway was long and flanked with even more mossy trees. At the end of the driveway was Gustav’s house, barely more than a swamp shack with a lopsided front porch and a rusted metal roof. Surrounding the shack was a muddy clearing in the trees where numerous big piles of metal, most taller than the shack, sat rusting. As his truck drew nearer to his house, the headlights revealed oddly-shaped humanoid figures amongst the piles of scrap. Gustav knew these figures very well; he was their creator. They were sculptures both half-started and half-finished, which represented years of Gustav’s artistic life. How he hated them all.

His relationships with his art projects were never conceived from hate, but from love. Gustav loved a new idea — a new project to get his hands dirty with. But soon enough, the project would become too dull or tedious or difficult. Then Gustav would set it aside to start up a new one, and so on, and so on. These days, he was too beat down by the scrap business to work on anything else after hauling all day. Originally, he’d started this scrap metal business as a way of feeding himself and his art, but it had become a burden too heavy for him to bear. Now here he was, pushing sixty and with nothing to show for it. He was as rusty and beat up as his creations.

The sight of his sculptures welcoming him home lit the fuse on the powder keg of rage he’d been holding the whole way back from Miami. Instead of slowing down at the end of his driveway, Gustav revved the engine of his lumbering beast and plowed into the pack of his misfit metal children. Chunks of aluminum and steel went flying. A bit ricocheted up and cracked the windshield. Gustav didn’t care. He kept driving.

When steam billowed out from the hood, Gustav put on the brakes and shut off the ignition. He smashed his right hand into the dashboard air vents, cracking them apart. His fingers bled. He didn’t pay them any mind. He hopped out of the cab and walked to the front of his truck. It was Danté, a half-done sculpture made from old windmill blades. It was meant to be a shining, winged gargoyle-looking figure. In his mind, Gustav had pictured a museum displaying it on a tall plinth so that Danté could look down upon the visitors like a bird of prey ready to swoop down and catch one in his talons. Gustav only ever finished the torso and the arms. One of those arms had pierced the grill and the radiator on the truck. The rest of Danté was wrapped underneath the bumper. Gustav cursed loudly at poor Danté, kicking him until his torso was separated from his arm, which stayed lodged in the grill.

When he was finished with Danté, Gustav turned to size up the rest of his creations and wiped the foam that had accumulated at the corners of his mouth. He screamed. How he hated them all. He then informed them that they would soon be bashed to bits and burning in hell just like their friend Danté. He would see to it personally.

But first, he was going to get good and drunk.

He barged in through his backdoor, which opened into the kitchen. To say Gustav was a “pack rat” would be putting it lightly. Every countertop, every table, every surface that he could fit something onto had something on it. In the kitchen, it was mostly dirty dishes and stacks of unopened mail and empty cardboard boxes that once held food — and some that still did. He opened the fridge and a strong scent of mildew wafted out. He reached past an uncovered bowl of chili that was turning blue, and found a six-pack of beer. He drank two in about ten minutes, all the while sulking and feeling sorry for himself and pounding his fist on the chipped formica dining room table. Then, he popped the top on a third bottle and brought it with him out to the back.

Gustav wove his way through the labyrinthian piles of metal in the dark. It was disorganized chaos, but like a rat in a maze, Gustav had learned where each twisting path led and that was good enough for him. The current path he was stumbling down opened up to a dilapidated aluminum shed. Spots of rust covered it like a pox. A swarm of mosquitoes and gnats and moths banged into the amber colored floodlight above the door, many falling prey to the enterprising spiders who’d built their webs in such a prime location.

Gustav pushed open the door and was hit full in the face with the damp smell of mildew. He reached to his right and flipped a switch. A flickering fluorescent tube illuminated the sorry scene inside. Along one wall were shelves loaded up with shit and buckling under the weight. On the opposite wall was a workbench that hadn’t been used for any real work in quite some time. It was piled high with broken tools and empty beer cans. Roaches scurried in and out among the filth. A leaky roof and poor ventilation had allowed black mold to creep in. In the far corner was a mass covered in dirty tarp.

Gustav was looking for his favorite tool, his trusty cordless grinder. That think could rip through steel like it was toilet paper. It was here, he just couldn’t remember where he’d put it. The longer he looked, the angrier he got. He pulled everything off the shelves, letting them crash to the concrete floor. When that didn’t work, he flung his beer bottle at the opposite wall and watched it explode into glass fragments. When that didn’t work either, he clutched his thinning gray hair in his hands and sat down on the floor amongst his mess. That’s when he spotted it underneath the workbench in a nest of frayed extension cords.

He took the grinder firmly in his hands and felt a righteous fury bubble up inside him. He looked to the tarp in the corner and took a deep breath. He ripped the tarp off to reveal a beat up old sculpture of a woman standing atop waves made of steel. It was his oldest piece.

“Claudia,” he muttered. “Is it your time tonight, Claudia?” He pulled the trigger on his grinder and it whirred up to speed. He eyed her up and down. She was covered with spider eggs and cobwebs. Her face used to shine like a mirror, now it was dull and covered in black mold. The waves, which used to move, were now paralyzed with rust. She’d been haunting him for thirty years, taking up space in his shed and in his head for so long. He wanted to cut her down so badly, and yet, there was something still in him that held a space for Claudia, like an old flame he could never get over. He took his finger off the trigger.

“You got lucky tonight, my dear,” he said, “but your friends aren’t getting off quite as easy.” He covered her again with the tarp. The smell of mildew lingered in his nostrils. He kicked open the door to the outside and spied some of his less loved creations. His blood ran hot again. He squeezed the grinder to life once again and got to work.

It took him all night to do it. His fury kept him humming along at a blistering pace — well that and the pep pills he’d popped on his way back from Miami. He carved up his darlings and left them broken on the ground. Then, he dragged out his acetylene torch and used it to melt the features off their faces until he couldn’t recognize them anymore. He wanted them to be unfixable, beyond salvaging. Then he could feel less bad about tossing them into the final scrap pile. But mostly, he didn’t want them looking at him anymore.

When the massacre was over, Gustav gathered up all the dismembered limbs and melted heads and crushed torsos, and threw them into the back of his truck. The sky was filling with the dark blue that comes just before the dawn. The old truck started right up, even with the broken radiator. Gustav negotiated it through the mountains of scrap, back to the far corner of the property where laid the biggest scrap pile of them all.

Truth be told, this was not the first time Gustav had destroyed his creations. The final scrap pile was a testament to Gustav’s killer tendencies. It was in the furthest recesses of his property, hidden away under a thick canopy of twisting mangroves. The swamp had long taken over this part of the yard. Most of the pile was underwater. Decades of metal skeletons rusting and sinking deeper and deeper into the mud of the swamp. Still, the pile stuck out above the water a good ten feet.

There was a small ledge next to the swamp that Gustav eased the truck onto. Then, he hit the lever to tilt the bed back. He hopped out of the truck just in case the shifting payload caused the beast to slide all the way into the muddy waters, but she held just fine. Gustav watched the broken bodies of his creations spill out and tumble into the swampy heap. This was always the part where the anger lifted off of him like a veil and he would realize what he’d done and would weep bitterly.

And so he did.

____________________________________________________

Gustav left the truck parked where it was, he didn’t even bother to lower the bucket back down. He shuffled back into his house just as the sun’s first golden light peaked above the horizon. He wasn’t in much of a mood for sun. He retired to his room and drew thick curtains over his windows. He laid down on his bed next to a pile of unfolded laundry, and promptly passed out.

____________________________________________________

And then he was at a garden party in an opulent backyard. The grass was mowed so neatly it could have been a putting green. Tall, boxy hedges with strings of twinkle lights formed a border around the party. Gustav could only see glimpses of the outside world through tiny gaps in the leaves; And it was filled with metal.

At the party were all his friends from art school, and his professors too, including some that were long dead. They talked in a big circle, paying no mind to Gustav, which was just as well, since he was too ashamed to let them see him like this. He was wearing his coveralls, which were soaked with a muddy, stinking water that dripped down his pants and puddled at his feet. He clawed at the name tag embroidered on his chest, thinking maybe they wouldn’t recognize him if they didn’t know his name.

Truly, he was unrecognizable from his art school days. Back then, he kept his hair in a coif and his mustache pencil-thin. It was the style of the time. HIs style now was no style. He hadn’t given a shit about his appearance in a long time and it showed.

All the dripping water gave him the sudden urge to pee, and so he went searching for the bathrooms. There were none to be found, but there was a small opening in the twinkle-light hedges, so he ducked through it in search of relief

The hedges closed in around him now like a maze, only he didn’t know his way around this one. Around every corner was another corner. He felt like his bladder was about to pop like a balloon. He gave up hope he would ever find what he was looking for, and that’s when he rounded a corner to see Claudia standing before him.

She looked as she had looked thirty years ago: clean and vibrant, not a trace of grime or cobweb clung to her. She was beautiful. Her waves were working; they moved up and down in a slow rhythm. Her face was a mask of stainless steel, polished like a mirror. Gustav could the reflection of his face in hers. And then, she spoke.

“Why was I never made complete?” she asked. Her voice was like the ringing of a bell.

“I could never make you as beautiful as you were in my head,” said Gustav.

“But I am beautiful,” said Claudia.

“Yes. Yes, you are. But far from perfect.” He reached up and stroked her face, noticing a flaw in her nose that he recalled spending hours trying to remove thirty years ago. He never could get that nose right. “Oh, Claudia, the heights we could have soared to.”

“I am still here. Please, Gustav, it’s not too late. Finish me. Bring me to life.”

Gustav caught the reflection of a man in black approaching him from behind. Gustav recognized the man immediately as his old Metals 303 professor, Pieter Nevins.

Quickly, Gustav snatched a dirty blue tarp that had suddenly appeared at his feet and flung it over Claudia.

“Ah, Gustav!” Professor Nevins said with a beaming smile. He always greeted people as if he’d been waiting all week to see them. He clapped a rough hand on Gustav’s shoulder and squeezed tightly. The Professor was a slight man, but held a lot of strength in his hands. He always wore a black turtleneck sweater and styled his white blond hair up as tall as he could make it. He looked quite a bit like Andy Warhol, which was intentional on his part. He’d met Andy at a party once, high out of his mind on LSD

“So, How is Claudia, Gustav?” asked the professor.

Professor Nevins had taken quite an interest in Gustav during his art school days. Being from another country himself, Gustav found a kindred spirit in Professor Nevins. They would often chat long after class was over and occasionally Gustav would drop in during the Professor’s office hours. After graduation, Nevins would sometimes reach out to Gustav to offer advice or encouragement. Gustav appreciated the calls, but eventually, as he grew more and more frustrated in his artistic career, or rather, the lack thereof, he stopped answering the calls and the letters. Nevins still hounded Gustav up until his untimely and sudden death in 1986. It was a brain aneurysm. There was nothing that could be done. Gustav received an invitation to the funeral from the Professor’s widow. He didn’t go. He had made up an excuse that he was just too busy at the time, but he wasn’t. His shame wouldn’t allow him to face his old mentor, even in death.

“She’s… not quite finished, Professor,” Gustav stammered and looked at his feet. The water dripping off his coveralls was pooling now and rising up past his ankles.

“Shame! I am dying to see her, Gustav. I know she will be great, I have no doubts.” He flashed a tight smile at Gustav, showing his tobacco stained teeth. “Whatever you set your hand to, my young friend…” He trailed off as the hedges parted behind him, revealing the party once again. “Well, I have to get back. It was good seeing you. Let me know the next time you are in the city and we’ll go out for dinner. My treat.”

Gustav watched his old mentor saunter back to the party. There was the happiness Gustav craved. “I could be like that,” he said, watching his old friends laugh and drink and carry on. “I should be right there with them with a drink in my hand and joy in my heart. That’s where I belong.”

A flash of light burst behind Gustav and as he turned around to behold the source of the light, he almost fell face first into the rancid water. It was up to his knees now. The light was coming from inside the tarp, and it had the same color and intensity as a raging inferno. Gustav pulled his arm up to cover his eyes, but the light was so bright it shone through his arm.

Claudia’s voice came to him once again. She said, “I will take you to where you belong.”

____________________________________________________

He woke up with a start. An orange beam of sunlight had infiltrated the one hole in his blackout curtains and found its way directly into Gustav’s left eye. He sat up, rubbing his eye and felt the liquid slosh around in his bladder. Red alert. He rushed to the toilet and sat down while he emptied his contents. He pondered his strange dream, already dissipating into fragments. He didn’t usually remember any of his dreams, but this one had stuck with him.

The sun was low in the sky; as low as it had been when he went to sleep, just on the other side of the horizon. Another whole day gone. That’s what I get for popping pills. He sighed and pulled up his pants. He didn’t flush or wash his hands.

Gustav needed something in his belly, so he padded into the kitchen and rifled through the cupboards for anything edible. There were stacks of canned veggies, but he didn’t feel like putting an effort in. He settled on a stale bag of tortilla chips. He shoved handfuls in his mouth, stuffing his cheeks like a squirrel and washing it down with a cold remainder of the six pack he’d cracked into the night before.

His eyes drifted out the window above the sink, to the backyard, and what he saw made him stop cold. He dropped the bag of chips and stepped out onto his patio. The dirty concrete felt cool against his bare feet. It was oddly chilly for Florida this time of year. Gustav didn’t notice. He was too preoccupied with the miracle that had taken place in his backyard.

There stood all of his creations, back from the dead. They were finished and they were glorious. They looked better than Gustav ever could have imagined. He remembered his dream again and how vivid it had been. Maybe it was still happening. He slapped himself in the face. Then, thinking that was too cliché, he slapped his chest and belly and calves as well. He felt it all. This was real. This was real?

He ventured out into the yard. Never a good idea barefooted, but he didn’t care. Besides, he was all caught up on his tetanus shots. There stood Danté in all his glory. He had legs now, and a head, and a face. He was still missing an arm though, but Gustav thought it looked better that way somehow. God, he was beautiful to look at, and frightfully tall.

Then, he saw Polly, whom he’d abandoned right before starting on Danté. She was meant to be a commentary on war and the orphans it left behind, but he never felt like he got the message just right, and so he had orphaned her. Now, here she was, and yes, the message hit him in the heart this time, just like a brick to the chest. He welled up with tears.

The line of abandoned sculptures went on and on. Walking through them all was like walking backwards in time. He could see all his periods, his changes in style and form. There was his blue period, of course. He dropped those projects because he couldn’t find just the right shade of blue. His cubist period came and went when he realized he didn’t have the patience for right angles. For a while, he experimented with dadaism and made absurd sculptures from appliances and cast iron bathtubs he’d salvaged, but he’d deemed them too silly and embarrassing to ever show publicly, so he trashed them all. That was all “once upon a time”. Now, he had them all back and they were perfect — just the way they were meant to be.

Then he began to see dollar signs floating in front of his face. He’d struck it rich overnight. All he had to do was call his old contacts, the potential buyers to whom he promised product, but had never actually delivered on those promises. He fished into his pocket for his phone, several generations out of date and cracked to hell. He dialed the only number he still had memorized, it was for a Mr. Marty Young. Marty had been a fellow barfly down at Skinny’s back in the day. He ran a little roadside antique emporium and art market and had always pestered Gustav to give him something he could sell on consignment at his store. “I do take twenty-five percent of the final sale, of course,” he always made sure to mutter at the end of his pitch. He could never be talked down from that number no matter how sauced he got. Not that it ever mattered. Gustav never gave him a thing, and when Marty found Jesus and got sober, Gustav stopped seeing him altogether. The booze was the only thing they had in common.

Oh boy, but now Marty would trip over himself to get his hands on the artwork gracing his backyard now, thought Gustav as the phone rang and rang.

Finally, a voice answered. “This is Young and Sons. I’m sorry, but business hours just ended, so you’ll have to check in with us tomorrow. We open at—“

“Marty, Marty! It’s Gustav!”

“This isn’t Marty. This is Marty’s son.”

“Is this little Jimmy?” Gutsav bellowed. “You sound so much like your father. When did you get so old?”

“I’m sorry, who is this?”

“Gustav Gorges. I’m an old friend of your father’s. We go way, way back. Used to drink together every — oops, but I suppose he doesn’t want to talk about that. Still, can I speak to him? I’ve got some pieces that I think he’d very much be interested in.”

“Well, uh… Dad died eight years ago.”

Gustav fell silent and all his joviality drained from him like a wrung out washcloth. “Oh, I didn’t know,” he said after a pause. But he did know, he’d just forgotten. He’d been invited to that funeral too. He didn’t attend that one either.

“Gustav, you said?” Jimmy’s voice cut in. “I don’t see you here on the vendor list.”

“Marty and I were more friends, really. It wasn't a business relationship. I was going to do some sculptures for the shop at one time. Then things got a little busy. You know how it goes,” he laughed and it rang hollow. “Er — but I have them now! Yes, lots. And if I may brag, they’re gorgeous.”

“One moment, please, sir,” came little Jimmy’s curt reply. Then came the hold music, a dreadful, distorted version of “Greensleeves”.

Gustav switched his phone to speaker and began idly pacing down the winding path that led to the old work shed. Claudia, he whispered to himself and lit up with excitement. He quickened his pace.

Twilight had set in and the amber flood light above the door was glowing softly. Gustav got an image in his head, a flash of a brilliant orange light, so bright it fried his corneas and burned the skin off his face. And then it was gone just as soon as it appeared. There were no bugs swarming around the warm glow of the floodlight tonight, and the spiders had abandoned their carefully crafted webs. Gustav didn’t take any notice of these things. He was giddy with anticipation, the same way a groom feels standing at the altar, hearing the wedding march pouring from a church organ. Only there was no church organ, just a cell phone blaring fuzzy hold music.

Gustav pushed open the door and flicked on the dying fluorescents, but there was no Claudia, just the tattered tarp and a few desiccated lizard corpses. Gustav was puzzled, she should be right there, but then again, the normal rules of reality weren’t really at play anymore. She must be waiting for me somewhere else. Gustav then imagined her in his kitchen fixing him up a nice warm meal and the absurdity of the thought brought a smile to his face.

The hold music quit and little Jimmy was back. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to call back again some other time. We’re trying to close up for the night. If you can, send photos of the work to our email, which you can find on our website, and someone will get back to you in a few days.”

Well, Gustav didn’t know how to do any of that. He could barely work his phone enough to make calls. Being shunted off like this, like a nobody, riled him up. “Listen, your old man and me had an understanding. I didn’t have the product before. Now I do and I think you need to honor that deal, or do sons not have any respect for their fathers anymore, hmm? Any respect for their elders.” His rage was a boulder rolling down a hill now. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, you told me earlier — goodbye, sir.”

“Gustav Gorges. Remember that name because it’s going to be everywhere soon. You think you’re the only shop in Florida? You’re not. And your father must be turning in his grave knowing that his son is a moron who just missed out on greatness!” But little Jimmy had hung up long ago and Gustav’s rage was spilled out into the void of a dead receiver. He jammed the phone back in his pocket and left the shed, slamming the door behind him loudly. The poor shed shook with the force.

It was fully dark now. The sun went down fast this time of year. With the heat of the sun extinguished, the teeth of the night’s cold began to nip at Gustav’s unclothed body. He wrapped his arms around himself and rubbed heat back into his chest. He was determined to find Claudia.

He set off down the path back to the house and from there he figured he’d wander down another tendril of the maze. There was something more than the chill in the air that was giving him shivers; it was the sculptures. Were they always looking in this direction? When he had walked this path before, they had been in different poses. Hadn’t they? How could they be looking my way now when they had been looking my way before? It’s like they all had moved.

It was as if he could feel their eyes crawling across him. They were watching him. A shift atop one of the piles sent a tiny avalanche of metal sliding down. It nearly gave him a heart attack. It’s been a weird night, Gustav. Just calm yourself down and take it slow. He decided it wasn’t so important to find Claudia tonight after all. His mind was a mess of paranoid thoughts and all he wanted now was to be in his warm, cluttered house with the blankets of his bed pulled up tight around him.

After a few more paces, he stopped and felt his guts curling up inside him. The path was blocked by a line of his sculptures. They gleamed in the moonlight, like a row of knives in a kitchen drawer. What the fuck were in those pills? He was standing at the hub of the maze, and could see clearly down every path that branched out from this central junction. Damn near every path had a line of guardians blocking the way, motionless and terrifying, every path except the one that led back to the swamp with his big, beautiful truck parked right beside it. Gustav thought he’d never seen such a beautiful truck in all his life.

He could hear metal footsteps shuffling behind him. He felt his knees start to quiver. His knees were no good, he knew that. He’d aged them something terrible with all the heavy lifting he did. He said a silent prayer to his knees. Then, hearing the footsteps hasten and multiply he tense up all the muscles in his flabby body and bolted into a dead sprint.

Gustav cursed his decision to not put shoes on as he tore off down the path. He could feel every stray piece of metal. The soles of his feet in tatters, he pushed through the pain, spurred on by the sound of many, many pairs of feet marching after him. If I can only get to the truck…

A figure leapt down in front of Gustav. It was Polly. She took the stuffed animal formed from steel and swung it at Gustav’s knees. He danced backwards, dodging her first swipe, but he could not gather his momentum to move past her quick enough, and she caught on his right calf with her backswing. He hobbled forward, the pain stiffening in his leg like the worst charlie horse of his life. He looked back over his shoulder at Polly, who continued her pursuit, along with the rest of the army which looked to him like a horde of shimmering zombies hungry for a feast. He was that feast. Seeing them all moving like this in a mass put a black hole in the pit of his intestines. The fear pushed him past the pain and he sped up, not watching where he was speeding toward.

He tumbled ass over ankles in the basin of his bathtub sculpture, which he had never given a name, only ever referring to it as Bathtub. Bathtub had a long slender shower line that extended up six feet, and at the top the shower head had been replaced by a big meat tenderizer. He wasn’t sure what he was going for when he came up with that idea originally, and he didn’t have much time to analyze it as the tenderizer came down like a gavel ready to administer justice. It did. Gustav blocked the first two blows with his forearms, which now bore neat little matching grids of puncture wounds. When the hammer came down a third time, Gustav was ready and he snatched it out of midair. Gustav was not fast, but he was strong. He used the gavel as leverage to pull himself up out of the bathtub and ducked as Bathtub tried to land a final shot, which missed and hit Polly instead, sending her sprawling.

Finally, he made it to his truck, panting heavily. Thankfully, the doors were unlocked. He hoisted himself up into the cab and reached to pull the door shut, but a cold, metal hand reached out from below the gas tank and gripped him by the ankle. It was Danté’s missing arm. The hand squeezed so tight that it broke Gustav’s ankle like a dry twig. His tendon snapped in two like an old rubber band. Gustav shrieked in pain. He saw the metal mob closing in. He grabbed at the seats and tried to wrench himself free. It was no use. That’s when his fingers brushed against the handle of his grinder and he knew what he had to do.

He took the tool in his hand, laid the coarse grinding disc against his shinbone and pulled the trigger. The disc cut slowly, dulled by the previous night’s use. Gustav smelled his burning bone and marrow as the grinder chewed its way through his leg. He almost passed out from the pain. Finally, the bone broke off. Gustav tugged and the last of his calf muscle tore away. He was able to swing himself up into the cab and slam the door shut.

There was no time to catch his breath. His zombified creations were only yards away. He keyed the ignition and floored the gas pedal with his remaining foot. The pedals and the floorboard were slick with the blood spurting out of his other leg. The truck belched black smoke and lurched forward slowly. Through the cracked windshield, Gustav could see them staggering towards him. His only way out was through. Once again he prepared to plow his truck into his masterpieces. But this time, they leapt out of the way as he sped toward them.

Gustav snuck a glance to his sideview mirror. They were all still there, pursuing him like an army of the undead, but even more ominous was the scrap pile in the swamp. It was moving. It thrashed around like the head of an alligator in a feeding frenzy, and it began to rise out of the water. A blood-red glow emanated from its guts and poked out through the holes in the scrap. It looked like the pile had a million scarlet eyes, all looking at him. Gustav felt his skin crawl up his back and jammed on the gas pedal even harder.

The sculptures couldn’t keep up with him. Gustav watched them fall further and further behind. The driveway was just ahead, and the road just beyond that. Just a little further and he would be free. He would drive as far as he could. With a busted up radiator, it probably wouldn’t be very far at all. But even if it was just a few miles, it could buy him some time; it could buy him some safety. If he reached the gas station on 246, he could get help, maybe call the police. And tell them what?

It was a very good question, but one that suddenly became moot when Gustav looked over to the other side of the truck. A tidal wave of scrap loomed over his truck, taller than the treetops, ready to snuff him out. The wave rolled into the truck with a deafening crash and crushed it like a tin can. Then everything went black for Gustav.

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When he came to, Gustav found himself floating, looking up at the stars. He could have sworn he was dead, but then the throbbing pain coursing through his entire body told him he was not so lucky. He tilted his head and saw he was being carried on the shoulders of his creations. They held him firmly. He could not break free even if the metal wave hadn’t broken nearly every bone in his body.

They were walking to the back of the property. Gustav craned his head around to see the swamp and the enormous pile rising out of it. It opened its great maw, and the red light from its throat blinded Gustav for a moment.

When his eyes adjusted, he saw the sculptures that walked at the front of the pack marching themselves into the maw, letting themselves be devoured and added to the wet, rusty guts inside. Gustav saw the silhouette of someone swaying in red glow within the monster. The figure felt familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it as he witnessed more and more sculptures sacrificing themselves to the angry swamp god, adding to its size.

Finally, it was Gustav’s turn. The sculptures brought him into the water. It was cold and it stank. It smelled like blood and decomposition. Now he was close enough now to see clearly the figure standing in the maw. It was Claudia.

She held her hand out to him just as she had in his dream, only this time it was skeletal and sharp. Her beautiful polished face, too, was cracked and covered in a patina of mold. “See, Gustav, it is just as I promised. I have brought you to where you belong.” And as she laid her cold, rusting fingers on Gustav’s forehead, the jaws of the giant scrap monster snapped shut, and sealed Gustav in his watery grave.