Spooky Writing Contest Honorable Mention: “The Tiger Machine” by Rebecca Bohn

The machine had stopped. Seventy-two plastic tigers had appeared in breakneck succession before the breakdown, each with a significant flaw: no stripes, teeth as long as their legs, bushy tail of a mule, etc. These were simply not the sort of plastic tiger that would interest a small child. Worse, they might give the impression to the child in possession of one that tigers actually, for example, had a row of spikes down their backs. 

“Well, if they did have spikes down their back, it’d make ‘em more fearsome,” said First Machine Attendant Hector Fryxell. 

“What! What nonsense!” the Factory Manager, Mr. Gallstable, spluttered. His tremendous mustache shook. “Tigers are black and orange, with proper tails and teeth and claws. Make this machine make them properly, or you shall lose your job.” 

“Both of us, sir?” asked Second Machine Attendant Charlie Loughty, who’d carefully kept to the side of the machine nearest to the now-empty belt, and away from the heavy, locked iron door of the tiger machine’s awesome furnace, which nonetheless dribbled smoke onto the floor about their feet. “Or, or just him?” 

Gallstable’s mustache suffered a minor earthquake. “Both,” he hissed as he stalked away. 

Charlie waited until Gallstable was sufficiently far enough before he moaned, “Why is it always this machine? Why can’t it just act like the elephant machine, or the whales?” 

Hector had nothing to say about the elephant and whale machines. It was well known that the tiger machine was the most difficult to operate in the entire factory. Why, the elephant and whale machines almost operated themselves. It took no skill whatsoever to keep them popping out respectable elephants and whales. 

But the tiger machine, that was a different story. It took an experienced machine attendant to keep it working. The machine growled and rumbled throughout the day, the oven in its belly needing constant stoking with chunks of coal large as a man’s hand. Even well fed, it would

frequently erupt in fits, shaking and booming until its rivets loosened, snarling to be free. Its wheels and bearings always groaned, eager to snap. It’s belt would stop--just like now--for no reason at all, before suddenly screeching into motion just as an attendant examined its head pulley. 

Four attendants had lost fingers; one, an eye. 

The plastic tiger reigned in sales, even over the elephant, which is a very popular animal with small children, and even over the lion. The lion machine seemed not to care; it produced tawny plastic lions all day with identical airs of disdain about them. The zebra machine quivered, mostly because it was situated on the factory floor so close to the lion machine, and zebras nearly galloped off its belt and into waiting crates. And the monkey machine, neighbor to the tiger machine, occasionally squealed and thumped and shot bolts and clouds of oily smoke in the direction of the tiger machine, but otherwise churned out rakish chimpanzees and regal silverbacks with ease. 

Hector crossed his arms and stared at the belt, where the defective tigers had been plucked and dropped into a bucket to be melted down. He lifted the bucket, inspecting the seventy two bad tigers inside. For a moment, in the tangle of limbs and tails and spikes, something scarlet flared bright. Frowning, he reached into the bucket. 

His fingers paused, inches above the errant plastic beasts. He set the bucket down. He turned to his Second Machine Attendant and handed him a long wrench. “What’s this for?” asked Charlie, eyes wide. 

“What’s it for? You know what it’s for! Look in that machine and find out what is wrong with the damned thing.” 

Charlie pouted, curly hair falling over his face. “But I don’t want to. Not this one.” 

“Listen! I’m your boss, and I’m telling you to look in that machine and see what is causing it to make the bad tigers.” 

“They’re not so bad, really…” In the pocket of his baggy coveralls, Charlie had slipped a purloined tiger with horns like a bull. He thought his sister might enjoy it. Or he might put it

on the dash of his old Comet, a replacement for the bobble-head puppy that currently sat there. The puppy, after all, hadn’t managed to snag Charlie a single date all summer. Maybe he needed something a little more...fierce. 

“No, no, they’re not too bad,” murmured Hector, almost to himself. His gaze drifted to the bucket again. “But they must stop, and good tigers come out. So find the problem. I’ll be over here.” And Hector leaned against a metal railing and stroked his own mustache, which he’d only stopped shaving two days ago, and which already surpassed the Factory Manager’s in verdancy and shine. 

Charlie turned to the rumbling machine. 

It wasn’t his job to decide what a tiger should or should not look like. It was his job, however, to fix the machines when they broke. Even this terrible, terrible one. He was a Second Machine Attendant, after all. Though maybe, if he fixed the tiger machine, he could ask for a promotion. Then he’d be the one handing over a long wrench. 

He removed six bolts and took off a plate which revealed the inner workings of the machine. The hot breath of the machine blasted his face as he leaned close, stinking of bubbling asphalt and rancid leather. Inside, he could see the conveyor belt taut, motionless, and the gears and axles overhead paused in the very act of turning out a tiger: blind and half formed, open-mouthed, front legs stretching from a dark pipe into the heat of the contraption. Here was the tiger that had stopped it. If he removed it, perhaps the machine would start up again. 

He put a hand out, paused, and held his breath. Quick like a bunny, he told himself. Just what he told his little sister on school mornings, when she dawdled washing her face or getting dressed. 

His arm darted inside. 

For a moment, he froze in surprise. For beneath his fingertips, the pliant plastic gave and rose. As if the toy breathed. And there, as he grasped it now, he could feel – yes, it felt like – was it – a heartbeat? He pried the unformed tiger out of the tube, twisting it, in his hand two legs, a thick neck, a blob of a head that turned… But it couldn’t turn, it couldn’t, and yet,

there it was, rotating in his hand, eyes opening, a plastic layer peeling back, mouth widening as if preparing to roar for the very first time. 

A searing needle pierced his hip. Charlie yipped, glancing down to see specks of red spreading from his pale blue attendant’s coverall pocket, before his gaze was ripped back to his hand, where the open tiger mouth latched, vicious and sharp, on the pad of his thumb. A roar sounded then, and it might have been in Charlie’s head, a wretched roar that shook the factory. With a vast huffing breath, an iron arm edged in steel teeth came crashing down, slamming through blood and muscle and sinew and into bone, into Charlie Loughty, Second Machine Attendant. 

And thus Charlie became the sixth man to feed the tiger machine. 

His screams echoed alongside the screech of stopping machinery. Falling onto the grates, Charlie grabbed at his missing arm, the tiny prick of little horns against his thigh lost in the sea of pain. 

They carried him away and left his arm, and the machines quieted, except for the tiger machine, which panted and panted and then finally fell quiet too. 

The next day was Sunday, and the factory was closed. On Monday, they reopened, and Hector looked at the machine, purring and humming; waiting, waiting. 

He put a hesitant hand to the ON button. He thought of his daughter, whose own toy tiger stood silent on a shelf in her room, in a line with all the other animals. A faultless plastic tiger, orange and black striped, not strange in any way. Not a bad tiger. 

He pushed. The button glowed red, and the tiger machine rumbled and clanked to life. And all day, it produced absolutely perfect plastic tigers.