The Tire Man

In the spring of '92, i was 15. I was at my friend Dan’s house, with some other friends, named ken and Marley. Dan had a big backyard, but most of it was forest. luckily he knew the place pretty well, and took us for a walk, Dan was leading the way (about 15 feet ahead of us) while i was with Marley and ken was about 5 feet behind us. He told us that we could stop somewhere and have some grub (ken brought some Reese’s pieces and some trail mix). As we walked, we saw a playground. It was about 35 feet ahead of me (Dan was closer). It was very gloomy. In fact, pretty depressing, not just the chipping paint, the pinecones and the trees around it, but the way it was setup. that was very depressing, it wasn’t organized like a normal playground, the jungle gym was off to the side, with a not so merry-go-round in the center (the reason i say that is because the darn thing was on a complete slant and could not be for the love of god spun), and a few springy animals that you rock back and forth on, whatever those are called. Anyway, Dan had had a seat on the plastic boarder of the playground. Right as he had called to us to have a seat, i started to notice he had lost some color. Mainly in his face but it was noticeable in other places too, like his arms. Now when you stepped over the plastic ring into the playground, you'd start to feel a little bit cold, and you'd go pale. I assumed it was due to the fact that the wind had a direct entrance through the top of the tree line into the playground, and the paleness was just a by-product of the cold wind. Another thing i noticed after a bit is there is really no direct entrance to the playground, no pathway or any sign of human evidence that would use it. We were all sitting down, eating our Reese’s pieces. I had got up to "explore" the playground a little bit. I wish i had never done that, because what i saw was, it was just plain disturbing. There were those springy animals (whatever you call them) with frowns, and x's on their eyes, implying that their dead, the thing is it looked as if they were painted over. the next thing was the not so merry-go-round, again it was just terribly built, but there were chalk drawings on the base-plate of the merry-go-round, that depicted things like be-heading, (mostly drawings of babies and children) dismemberment, ant total mutilation. But these drawings looked as if they were drawn by three year olds, not teenagers or some psycho in his 40's. And the last, most horrifying thing, i had ever seen, was this yellow slide. The yellow slide had been, deformed as if heated up, with a lighter. And in perfect rows, there were X-acto knife blades, pushed up through the melted slide. Perhaps the most horrifying thing was that there, were burgundy stains, perhaps dried blood, on the knives. The slide was covered in dried blood too. And at the bottom of the slide, there were blood stains, and bloody footprints, leading back to the ladder, on the jungle gym and back down the slide. And these footprints were repeated, as if this had been done more than once. The show prints were all the exact same. And on the other side of the slide, was written in blood; "REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT, PAY YOUR PRICE IN FLESH AND BLOOD".

We left that place, running back to Dan's house, faster that anyone could have imagined. We never told our parents, and most of all never mentioned that place, to anyone. No police. No kids at school. Not even my wife. I had forgotten about it, well up until last week, when i turned on FOX news. They said they had found two dead kids in their kitchen, in South Carolina (one 4 years old, the other 2) who had (from what their evidence has told them) repeatedly used a food blender to mutilate their arms and legs. And written on the wall in their blood was; "REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT, BACK FOR MORE". A further investigation shows that the blood smeared on the wall, had a fingerprint. The fingerprint was of a man named Derry Reynolds, and they say they have been looking for him. Derry Reynolds was our religion teacher. He had taught all of us the same year, and always tried tell us not to visit the "tire man’s sanctuary". Or something weird like that. Specifically to Dan for some reason. I never used to know what that meant. Lots of people assumed it was a scary joke, or he was just losing his marbles. It’s starting to make sense now, I’m starting to think that the "tire man’s sanctuary" was that playground. During the spring of '92, he mysteriously disappeared. I tried to contact Dan, but it turns out he had been captured by insurgents in Iraq, and hasn’t been heard from. He was presumed dead, they thought they had executed him, or something. but they say two years ago, there were rumours about him killing himself in the prison he was held captive in, "repeatedly" banging his head on the wall with hard hitting force, until he had cracked his skull, and gouged as much of his own brains out as he could before he died on the spot. Something similar happened with ken and Marley too. It turns out, they had gotten together, and ken reminded Marley of that day in the forest. When he brought it up, Marley had started apparently saying "REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT" and continued to gouge out her own eyes, and smashed ken with a lamp in their living room, killing him. This case was called "The blind Marley murder trial". Marley had to have surgery but could not get her vision back. She was killed during the trial when she was screaming "REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT" and tried to rip out her lawyer’s throat out, only partly accomplished. She was shot in the neck by a guard at the trial, was still standing choking on the bullet, and was shot 3 times in the head and collapsed.

Moral of this story, don't go in the playground in the forest behind Dan’s house, under any circumstance. No exceptions. Don't know where it is? Good.

Now it’s been 20 years since then, its spring, and I’ve been filing my nails every day now. I draw blood too much, and I’ve already lost one finger for good. my doctor thinks i have some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder, but it’s not that i can’t stop, i have to do it, i need to, i must pay flesh and blood, i must repeat.