Childs Play 666
(A/N: My first ever Childs Play fanfiction! It's set not long after the final scene of The Seed of Chucky. Hope you enjoy!)
"Damn stupid city drivers!" Francis yelled as yet another jazzed-up sports car cut in front of him as he barrelled down the highway at eighty miles an hour, he was late for a meeting with a seller and Francis knew he wouldn't wait for him. The old Nissan Micra struggled to keep up with the demands put upon it by the accelerator, it revved loudly and spat noxious gases from it's exhaust pipe as Francis sped down the road before turning off onto an exit ramp and heading around a corner, practically sideways. Pulling up outside a small café he got out, the brakes of his car squealing noisily, and ran into the coffee bar and up to the counter. "Did a guy come in here?" He asked the short and rather burly-looking waitress, who glanced at him and resumed her cleaning duties.
"Hon, we get a lot of guys in here." She replied in a rough voice.
"No, I mean, he was tall…long dark hair…"
"Scar on the face?" The waitress interrupted.
"Yeah, that's him!" Francis cried out excitedly.
"Sorry honey, he left fifteen minutes ago." The waitress answered before walking off to serve someone. Francis groaned and left the café; he walked back to his car and cursed under his breath as he got in.
"Just my damn luck…" He muttered. His clapped-out Nissan spluttered and coughed as he turned the key in the ignition before it died completely. The journey from his home in the suburbs to the city centre was too much for the aged vehicle; it had driven its last mile. "Guess I'll have to walk…" He sighed with a heavy heart before getting out and slamming the door, causing a side-mirror to fall off and clatter to the concrete pathway. It just wasn't his day.
Sirens wailed in the background and squad cars zipped past Francis as he strolled down the back street, away from his car and to the nearest telephone box. He hummed to himself and kicked a can down the street, his hands deep in his pockets and his mind deeper in thought, so deep in fact, he almost didn't see the dumpster behind the hospital. He blinked and moved closer to the chain-link fence that separated the street from the hospital's trash compactor.
"What's that…?" He asked himself, staring at a tuft of what seemed to be red hair sticking out of the trash. He then saw an arm with a familiar striped sleeve attached to it. "It can't be-…a Good Guy?" Without a second's hesitation or thought for his own safety Francis started to climb the fence. His pulse was racing, this was the only chance he'd had to even see a Good Guy doll outside of the TV or a magazine, and now that they stopped making them in wake of the Charles Lee Ray and Tiffany murders this would be the only chance to see one for real. They didn't even produce more dolls than was needed to make the movie, which was still in production, in case something happened, like Ray and Tiffany returning from the grave. Francis never believed that voodoo crap, he didn't have an explanation as to why it couldn't be a living doll that killed all those people though, but it was an interesting story and a Good Guy doll would fetch in thousands in cold hard cash if he could find one, and he had a feeling that he just had found one.
Searing pain shot through Francis' hands as he tried climbing over the razor wire that was curled around the top of the fence. But he didn't care, his hands could bare the pain, all he needed to do was get a bandage and some anti-septic cream, this Good Guy couldn't wait, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he could not pass it up because of a few deep gashes in the palms of his hands. Material tore as he dragged his right leg over the fence, creating a four-inch slash in his dirty brown trousers. Francis fell from the top of the eight-foot fence onto the asphalt below and scrambled back up to his feet just as quickly, he ran to the dumpster and stared at the arm. He slowly started to remove the garbage from around it before he realised that the arm had no body attached to it. But still, he knew it was a Good Guy arm because of the trademark clothing. He took it and set it aside before moving the trash around the red tuft of hair, exposing the practically ruined Good Guy doll-head.
"Oh no…no, no, no, no…" Francis sighed as he pulled the stapled and stitched plastic head from the dumpster "someone messed you up good," he then grinned as he picked up another arm and a leg "but I'll fix you." As happy as he was to finally find a Good Guy, there was still the matter of finding the body and remaining leg. After half an hour of digging through decomposing rubbish, the desperate man finally found the torso and missing leg he'd been looking for. Now reeking of trash and god-knows-what else, Francis was satisfied with himself, he'd finally managed to get a Good Guy doll, albeit in pieces, but repairing it wouldn't be a problem for one of the best toy restorers around. Francis grinned to himself and took off his jacket, wrapped it around the doll pieces and tucked it under his arm before walking back to the fence, he climbed over it, ripping his shirt this time. He landed on the path and quickly started his long trek home.
It was several hours before Francis got back to his run-down bungalow in the quiet-yet-crime-filled suburban neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city and it was even longer before he could even begin thinking about restoring the doll he'd just found. He needed the right equipment and material, stuff he didn't have in his house, which annoyed him severely when he came to realise that fact.
For months, long, lonely and near-starving Francis used every penny he could spare to repair the broken toy. Nothing was more important to him now that getting this Good Guy back to his original state. He'd managed to repair the dolls tattered clothing, you wouldn't even know it had been in a condition less than perfect unless you'd seen the doll before Francis got his hands on it. The arms and legs had been re-attached and also looked immaculate, all that was left now was to repair the head and re-wire the voice box and mechanisms to the neck. He picked the head up off the wooden worktop he'd been using to work on the Good Guy doll, examining the stitches and staples in the face of the toy he realised they weren't real.
"Shit…" He cursed. He'd been hoping to take out the sutures and mould the face back together, but if they were already moulded as part of the head then he couldn't do much about it. Francis set the head down and switched the radio on, leaning on his elbows. His workplace was dusty and full of equipment, strewn around the room were small pieces of fabric and paper; he had very little time for cleaning. A dimming 60-watt light-bulb hung from the ceiling by its wiring, lighting only a small amount of the room. The radio crackled as a news reporter spoke; reception was never very good in that particular room.
"Access Hollywood has just revealed that the studios producing the upcoming movie based on the killing spree of Charles Lee Ray and his girlfriend Tiffany have called off the search for the missing dolls." Francis stared at the radio, then quickly averted his glance to the doll which lay before him; had he found the missing Chucky doll? "They said that 'It has been taking far too long and wasting too much police time and resources to look for them, we can always make another pair.'" Quickly, Francis looked around and spotted the black connector that was previously attached to the dolls back.
"So that's what it is…" He mumbled to himself. He had no idea what it could have been when he took it out, all he knew was that it wasn't on the original Good Guys, so it had to go. He shrugged and set it down again, the doll was perfect without it, and there was no visible sign of it being there. Thinking of the toys perfect state, his mind came back to the matter of replacing the head; there was no way he could use what he had now, it wouldn't look right. He had to find another head, but where? And how much would it cost him? He switched off the radio and hurried to his living room, there had to be someone on the Internet with spare doll-parts.
After a whole year of non-stop searching on auction and hobby sites, Francis came up with nothing. There was absolutely no one anywhere in the world with a Good Guy head that he could use. Plenty of people had made their own, but they were not very good at all and besides, he wanted an official head, not some cheap recreation. Then, he was struck with an idea, something so simple he couldn't see why he didn't think of it before: go to the abandoned Good Guy factory, if it was still there.
After the murders that surrounded and ultimately demonised the Good Guy doll franchise, the factory was abandoned; no one wanted to go near it, not even to demolish it. It became somewhat of an urban legend, like a haunted house or something. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to Francis, it had been burned down by arsonists, who were then later discovered to be the family and friends of the victims of the maniacal doll known simply as Chucky. Francis donned his old brown duster jacket and left his home in search of the old factory, hoping that even if it had been demolished, that there was still at least two-halves of a head remaining, he could work from that.
The sky had turned a sickly orange-purple from the mixture of the setting sun and pollution caused by excessive vehicle and factory emissions, it was getting late and Francis had only just reached the area where the Good Guy factory once stood, the charred rubble was still there, piled up against the odd remaining wall or twisted support beam. Francis meandered through the rubble and other bits of the old factory that had survived all these years; he kicked small bits of rubble and moved large pieces of wood and metal, searching for the elusive head he'd been longing for. But all he found were dead rats, melted plastic and burned fabric; no head at all or anything, for that matter, that even remotely resembled a Good Guy doll. After nearly an hour of looking, Francis had found nothing.
"I might as well give up," he sighed, "there aren't any dolls here." It had gotten a lot darker by now, bad seeds came out at night around these parts. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and decided he'd get the bus home; it would be a lot quicker than walking. He walked across the wasteland that was once a factory over to the sidewalk and from there walked down towards the nearest bus stop, again he was deep in thought and again, like the dumpster, he almost didn't notice the road turning off and lowering, going underneath the factory, like a multi-storey car park. After a nanosecond of thinking about it, Francis decided it'd be worth his while to investigate; he could always catch the next bus.
The road disappeared into the darkness of the underbelly of the old Good Guy factory and while Francis wanted a Good Guy head more than anything, at that moment he wished he wasn't so desperate for one; going into such darkness inside a factory that has so many ghost-stories about it wasn't exactly good for his nerves.
"Wish I'd brought a torch…" He muttered before tripping over a large piece of rubble. He stuck out his hands to grab onto the metal shutter in front of him, his hands slipped and he fell flat on his face. Getting up on his knees he sighed heavily and looked around. "Great…just great…no way in." Just then, a car went past on the road above, its headlights on full-beam. The light from the car illuminated the space Francis was in, lit up the shutter and the rusted padlock that kept it fixed to the ground. He got to his feet, picked up the rock he tripped over and threw it at the padlock, breaking it off the shutter.
Metal creaked and groaned as Francis struggled to lift the shutter up enough to get through, he quickly placed the rock under the shutter and rolled under it before it slammed down, leaving a six-inch gap between it and the floor. Francis got up and looked around, finding that it was darker in here than outside. Another car rolled past and some of the glow from its headlights slipped in under the shutter, allowing the middle-aged man inside to see what was in the room. He smiled, it was the storeroom, and it had been untouched by the fire that had ravaged the rest of the plant. Boxes filled the corners of the room, stacked against the walls from the floor to the ceiling. Francis ran to the nearest one and grabbed it, his smile faded as the box fell apart in his hands and the mouldy plastic arms fell out onto the floor. He cursed and picked up another, and another, and another, all of them disintegrated and all of the plastic contents were mouldy and useless to him. Then, after digging through piles and piles of boxes, he found one that wasn't as decayed as the rest. At the bottom of the pile of boxes in the corner of the room was an almost completely dry box; he opened it, dug through the Styrofoam inside and brought out a near perfect Good Guy head and mechanism.
He grinned and hid his findings under his jacket before running back to the shutter, he lifted it up and rolled underneath again before moving the rock and letting the shutter slam down to the concrete. The bus rolled down the road above him, fearing he'd have to wait for the next bus Francis ran as fast as he could up the ramp, onto the sidewalk and ran down to the bus before diving on as the doors were about to close. He paid the driver and sat down, sighing with relief.
When he got home Francis went straight to his workshop, grabbed the Good Guy body and sat as his desk, setting the head and mechanism next to him. He opened up the body and fixed the mechanism inside the doll before attaching his own battery pack and soldering it all together; all that was left now was to fix the head and it was done.
It took several hours of careful calculation and soldering, but Francis finally managed to fix the brand new Good Guy head, which he had cleaned up, to the body he'd found. He'd been waiting years for this, and now he'd managed to make his own from different parts. With excited and shaky hands, he slipped two batteries in the pack of the doll, closed it and turned the doll around.
"Voice activated…right…" Francis uttered to himself before clearing his throat. "Hi, what's your name?"
No response.
"Ok…weird, the mechanisms brand new and I wired it up to the head properly…" He decided to try again. "Hi, I'm Francis, what's your name?" Exasperated, Francis put the doll on his worktop and moved to get up before the doll's head turned and looked at him. He stared at it, frozen on the spot.
"Hi! I'm Freddy, and I'm your friend to the end. Hidey-ho! Ha, ha, ha!" Francis laughed and picked the doll up.
"You do work!" He shouted before heading to his living room. "You're staying in here, for all to see!" Francis sat the doll on the mantelpiece above his fireplace and sat down to watch television. And that's where Freddy sat, for four long years he sat on that mantelpiece with Francis cleaning him up, inside and out, every week. The Chucky and Tiffany movie was released with mixed reception: outrage from the families and friends of the victims, as well as those who were offended by the movie and it was also met with open arms by those who simply loved horror movies and didn't see the problem, after all, they'd made movies about Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy and other killers, why not Chucky and Tiffany?
Documentaries were made by the dozens, trying to figure out the psyche of someone like Charles Lee Ray, or trying to discover the voodoo secrets behind the dolls coming to life. Francis found the idea of voodoo funny, because it sounded to stupid.
One night, he came home drunk after meeting up with an old school friend. He'd told his friend all about the Good Guy doll he'd found and made himself, they laughed and joked about it coming to life like Chucky did. As he stumbled around his living room, laughing to himself in a drunken stupor, he thought it'd be a good idea to put that coming-to-life theory to the test. The documentaries had naively said several times what voodoo incantation was used, and had even recited it themselves. Francis wondered why it hadn't worked from the TV, but he guessed that it must be said in person or something like that. Either way he'd memorised it from recordings he'd made, he always was good at memorising things. He stood in front of Freddy and hiccupped, swaying slightly.
"Ade Due Damalla." He started in a slurred voice. "Ade Due Damalla. Give me the Power I beg of you! Ade Due Damalla. Give me the…Power I beg…of you! Leveau Mercier du…Bois Chailoitte. Secoise Entienne…Mais pois de morte. Ade Due Damalla. Awake!" The doll sat there, staring blankly ahead. Francis shrugged and walked off to the kitchen, he got a bottle of whiskey and wandered back into the living room and over to Freddy, sipping his whiskey. He lowered his face to the dolls'; it still hadn't come to life, and chuckled as he thought of the movie. He reached up with the hand that held the bottle and poked Freddy in the forehead, still nothing happened. "Pfft…based on a true story my ass…what a crock of shit." He muttered. Suddenly, much to his horror, Freddy blinked and thrust his hands forward, clutching Francis' throat and wrist tightly. The doll sneered and glared at him before speaking in a rough Brooklyn-ish accent.
"A lil' lesson for ya bub, always believe what you see in the movies." Francis screamed as the doll quickly snatched the whiskey bottle from his hand and smashed it over the human's forehead, knocking him out.
(A/N: Hope you liked, if you have any suggestions or constructive criticism just say so in your review if you choose to leave one. And yes, Freddy the doll is a homage to A Nightmare on Elm Street.)