(A/N: If anybody has any suggestions, comments, reactions with pacifist or violent intentions, kindly put it up as R&R. I know, i know, the story drags and sucks, but im too used to lengthy plot and character development! D:
I do not own Leatherface or his relatives, i only own Nails and the other people that got eaten. peace! :D)
Ch. 4
Nails wakes up with bones hanging down her face. Though this might have frightened the shit out of most kids, it didn't even remotely surprise Nails. She had been used to waking up to things hanging down her face: Dirty socks, boxers, even a dead rat. Boy's jokes. Sometimes even Fatboy's foot hanging down from the above bunk.
She sits up and brushes the string of bones away. They hung from the ceiling, fashioned as a pseudo-cradle accessory.
She stays put a bit, looks around and calls for Mommy. When there is no response, she calls and calls again.
"Dreyton! What is that?" Aunt Mae says from the kitchen downstairs.
"Wha's what?"
"There! Din't you hear it? Sounded like a baby donkey."
A pause as both of them strain to hear. After a few moments, realization dawns upon Cook and there is a sound of a metal door sliding open. "Leatherface! Get up here!"
A scuffle of footsteps ascending from the basement. A grunt of inquiry.
"What're you doin', not mindin' your pet? Git!"
Leatherface ambles up the stairs as Cook chases him with a ladle.
"This is what you git for keepin' livestock for pets, boy!"
Aunt Mae then cheerfully mutters something about Leatherface keeping a pet can be a good thing and that it can "Teach him the value of responsibility".
"Responsibility? Responsibility? The boy can't even spell 'is own friggin' name for crissake!"
Leatherface cautiously enters the room, first poking his head inside to check if the coast is clear.
Nails sees him but calls out for Mommy again. The sound that comes out of her mouth doesn't even sound like 'Mommy', but strangely enough, Leatherface responds by shaking his head and his hands as if to say Mommy wasn't around. And we know exactly why, but Nails doesn't know that.
And she doesn't seem to care. She likes this new friend so much better than the whole lot of Mommy, Daddy, Boy, Girl or Fatface combined. She gives him a big smile and claps her hands.
Excited, Leatherface kneels to be at level with Nails and pats her head eagerly. Nails mimicks him, and Leatherface proceeds to pat and poke at Nails' head until it annoys her.
"No!" Nails says. It is one among the few words she knows how to say.
Leatherface recoils, angered by the rejection. He begins to growl, but again, Nails says "No! No. No." She's seen Daddy and Boy do this with big growling dogs. They'd say 'no' and the dogs would shut up. And in child logic, saying 'no' firmly over and over to a growling dog applies to every living creature that growls.
"Noooo." Nails says.
Leatherface cocks his head to one side, anger dissipating. No? This was getting confusing. What is she trying to say?
"No." Nails points to the floor. Leatherface recognizes the lack of firm seriousness in her voice, the dreadful, frightening type that was always present in Cook's voice when he was ordering him around. He looks at the dusty floor and back to Nails who keeps saying "No." while pointing to the floor. He kneels farther to see if there is something there and Nails squeals in glee and goes over to pat his head.
"Ub-oi." She blabbers. "Ub-oi!" Good boy. Good boy.
Leatherface, pleased that somebody was pleased with him, jumps up and down in his position and shoves her back slightly, beckoning her to do it again.
They play this game for some time before Cook goes up the stairs and sees them.
"Oi!" he says and Leatherface springs to his feet, shoving Nails back to the mattress in an attempt to hide her.
"You wanna play games all day, boy? Well, lemme tell you somethin'; life 'aint all fun an' games, y'hear me? So git your ass downstairs! Git!"
Leatherface hustles downstairs. Cook stares at Nails, who stares back up at him.
"What're you lookin' at, runt?"
Nails stares at him and notes the curling lip. She tenses and points at him and says. "No!"
"What did you say?"
"No!" Nails says firmly. "No! No no no no!" She draws herself up and points to the floor. "No. Nooo!"
"What the hell--"
Nails begins jumping all over the room, distressed that Cook didn't follow as easily as Leatherface did. "No! Nonononono!"
"What the fuck are you doin'? Why you little--Dun touch that! C'mere!"
Nails hops swiftly about, evading capture, all the while screaming "no!" much to Cook's displeasure.
"Shut up you little runt! Shut up! Yer gonna wake Grampa!"
"No!" Nails slips through Cook's legs and past the door where she is chased, screaming (no!) down the stairs and around the kitchen table by Cook.
"What are you--stop that nonsense!" Aunt Mae says. But stop they did not; Leatherface joins in, in an act to protect his new pet from Cook. He finally manages to isolate Nails in a corner and play block-the-Cook for a bit before he picks Nails up with one hand and pretty much shields her in his arms.
"Nnn! Nnn!" Leatherface groans, shaking his head as Cook tries to reach Nails with the ladle.
"What? You fersakin' me for that little brat? You choose the livestock over family, Bubba?!"
Leatherface shakes his head, comforting Nails who was curling up to make herself smaller.
"Dreyton, sit down. You're overreactin'!" Aunt Mae says. "Now you leave that poor thing alone and start actin' your age. What kinda grown man would chase a little wee child aroun'?"
Cook grumbles and but says nothing aloud. Breakfast is therefore silent, for the first part anyway.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There's somethin' wrong with this here child." Cook says out of the blue. Aunt Mae looks up and rolls her eyes, throwing her hands in the air.
"For crissake, Dreyton, leave the kid alone!"
"Naw, see here Aunt Mae," Cook leans in closer and Aunt Mae listens hesitantly. "Lotsa kids go nuts without their parents around. Lookit, she ain't even a spot upset."
They look at Nails, whose sausage hops off the plate as she skewers it all wrong with a fork too big for her small hand. Leatherface makes odd wheezing noises: he is laughing.
"You don't reckon she's sick?"
"Prolly jus' stupid." Cook says and Aunt Mae scowls at him.
"Maybe she's just special," She says with a smile, "Jus' like our own darlin' Bubba. Ain't tha' right, Bubba?"
Leatherface looks up and nods, not really knowing what she was on about. Cook merely scoffs.
Shortly after breakfast, Aunt Mae leaves for the day. Half an hour after her, Cook follows.
"Now you go do your work proper, Bubba. I dun' want you playin' games all day." He says by the door. "I wanna see the 'lil ones chopped up an' ready fer t'morrow's barbecue. Y'hear what I'm sayin' boy?"
Leatherface nods furiously, hands clasped together.
"Right. See if y'can go on up to the woods an' see if we got some drifters."
"Unhm." Leatherface mumbles good-naturedly.
"Awright. An' you make sure that little runt of a pet o' yers dun' wander off an' escape! That'll land us in deep shit, boy!"
Leatherface nods and lingers around the front porch to see Cook off and when he and his truck were but a prick in the distant haze, he closes the new door gently.
Nails is in the living room, taunting a brown hen in a cage with a rib bone. She looks up when Leatherface passes by and he gestures for her to stay where she was before going back down to the basement. Nails follows him down there anyway.
Skinned limbs of her former family members hung on hooks everywhere, but of course, Nails did not recognize them at all. They were just meat on hooks now, not the people they once were. On the slab is a mummified body Leatherface is stitching up. (In accordance to the first two TCM, this mummified corpse is Hitchiker).
Nails hoists herself up the slab so she can see. Feet hanging a few feet off the floor, hanging by her chin and arms, she points to the corpse in fascination. She thinks it's a big ugly dummy. What is it? What are you doing with it?
Leatherface shoves her off the slab, only for her to pop up again, insistant. He grunts in exasperation and lets her watch him.
Nails reaches out for the needle. Let me do it!
"Nuh-uh." Leatherface mumbles. "Nuh-uh" Silly thing. She'll prick herself. Leatherface himself had pricked himself so many times over he'd developed calluses so thick even when kitchen knives prick him, he wouldn't feel a thing.
Then he had an idea. She could sew skins together!
He picks her up and sets her down next to the sewing machine. He shows her how to put thread right through the needle and how to make the skins stick together by sewing the thread between them. Nails couldn't believe her luck; it's the first time in a very long time that somebody has actually taught her anything. Awkwardly at first, she sews two of the rubbery wet cloth together (she is unaware that it's skin; whose skin it is; it's probably Mommy's) and finds that if she was extra careful she could make one stitch look exactly like another one, and another and when they were all lined up and looked alike, the cloth didn't tear up easily. When the stitches covered the entire seam, she scurries over to Leatherface and holds it up. Look! Look what I did!
Leatherface looks and claps his hands. It's the first time he's actually taught anyone anything, and the rewarding feeling of success made him feel...good. In truth, both of them were so overcome with unexplained joy that for a moment, they were jumping and dancing around before a scream goes off in the distance and Leatherface stops.
He holds down a hop-happy Nails and listens. Nails notes the growing apprehension and stays still.
Again, a scream.
Leatherface jumps and freaks out. He takes Nails in his arms like a doll and scurries outside, yelping and darting around the house, looking out the windows in fear.
Nails does not understand why he's freaking out. She wiggles out of his arms as he crouches by the window and inquires, in her imitation of human speech, what the matter was.
Leatherface puts a finger to his mouth "Ssh. Ssh. Ssh." And he pushes her to sit down and looks out the window again. Panicking, he covers his eyes and ears in succession, eyes darting around the place for any solution...
Nails remembers long ago, to a time before Mommy or Daddy or Boy or the others...when she panics, a pair of hands would calm her down by caressing her face and hands. Again, in child logic, she applies this to Leatherface. Calm down.
Leatherface, meanwhile, pauses in his panic. He looks at this dirty-looking child trying to comfort him. Nobody shows him affection like this, not much anyway.
Inevitably, he calms down. For a while they sit there, with him thinking of how to deal with the problem outside. Would he wait until they stumble upon the house? Or should he venture outside and chase them? But chasing was such a fickle, fickle process and desperately needed the smarts for if he'd do something wrong, the prey would end up escaping to a main highway. Waiting for them to get in the house was just as troublesome....see what had happened to the door the last time that happened! He gets flashbacks of Cook prodding him with his cooking spoon for ruining the door when he is distracted by Nails, who again in her version of human-speak, pats his hand and asks if he was okay.
Leatherface nods. He's okay. He gestures for her to stay still, takes the leather covering of the sofa, drapes it over her, then puts a throw pillow on her head.
But Nails doesn't want to play this game again. She begins to take the cover off but stops. Play fair, a memory reminds her. She pouts and sits still. She jumps slightly when she hears a loud buzz coming from the basement. It stops and Leatherface emerges with his trusty old chainsaw and ventures outside, looking back twice to make sure Nails wasn't following him.
Curious, Nails peers through a gap in the leather. Why is he leaving? He can't leave! That's not playing fair!
Feeling cheated, Nails takes off the leather sofa cover and hurries to the door. It is locked; Leatherface had been taught (constantly, and quite painfully with the old spoon by Cook) how to always remember to lock the front door. Frustrated, Nails groans and sits on the floor in resignation.
She hears the bones hanging from the ceiling shift and knock against each other. Nails looks up. How is it that they move? She looks at the window. The wind. The window.
She goes to the window and pushes it open. Wind hitting her face, she jumps off the window ledge and runs off after Leatherface.