Cabbage Patch Kids

That unscratchable itch over came him again and Clay Rollins found himself loading his nondescript, white 1974 Chevy van with all the necessaries. As he sat behind the wheel, he glanced in the mirror and saw the six dolls, all hand-crafted to look like the popular Cabbage Patch dolls, each neatly seated and properly restrained on the side seats.

“They still creep me the fuck out,” he thought.

He’d bought them at a church’s craft fair during last years big Christmas push for the authentic item. He’s seen the many national TV news stories of ‘grown ass-adults,’ as he called them, fist-fighting one another for the last remaining doll on the shelf.

“Don’t want any part of that stupid shit.”

Tonight, if successful, he would make his sixth kill. After murdering the child, he’d offer an incantation, transferring the youngsters soul into one of the dolls. While he hadn’t seen any results from his black magic spells, he continued the practice anyway.

“Besides, it kinda satisfies my obsessive-compulsiveness.”

The hunt underway, he found his victim only a few minutes after the sun had officially set. The girl was playing hop-scotch on the sidewalk in front of her home.

He slowed the van, stopped lifting one of the dolls up, it appeared to be peeking over the edge of the open passenger window at the child. Within a minute, the little girl noticed and came happily skipping up to his van.

“I have five more in back, wanna see’um?”

He popped the door open and she willingly crawled in. Within a second Clay had his large hand over her tiny mouth and was nonchalantly driving away.

That night, a few minutes before midnight, after performing his incantation, Clay buried the now-dead child in the gray sand dunes of the beach, near his other five victims.

“My own cabbage patch of kids,” he chuckled at his joke.

He returned to his van and lay on the floor between the two row of seats, reliving the nights events. To his way of thinking, “It had been a good night.”

The was sound was so small, that even had Clay had recognized it, he would have had no chance to react.

About seven-thirty, the following morning, a police officer noted the van. He’d seen it the night before, but because he’d been busy on other calls, it has sat there the entire time, in violation of city ordinances.

“Come on, time to get your ass outta here,” the cop shouted as he rapped his night stick along the van’s side.

With no answer, he looked through one of the rear windows, where the curtain was partly drawn back. The officer discovered Chase Rollins, covered in dried blood, dead.

In the seats, properly belted in, sat six look-a-like Cabbage Patch dolls, also soaked in drying blood.