The Mad Little Toaster

Sue has a worse than usual encounter with a misbehaving household appliance.

For weeks, Sue had suspected the toaster was out to get her, but not until she caught it loading itself with slices of C4 was she sure. She stood in the kitchen for a moment, watching its fumbling efforts to manipulate an oily, gray slab with the 3-fingered metal claws that extended from either side of its chrome body. Good thing she’d forgotten to grab her grocery list off the counter. How long had this damned thing been in her house? How had it found her stash of C4?  Did it have a detonator yet? Having seen enough, she said, in a voice that could wilt steel, “How the hell did you manage to get past the sensors?”

The toaster gave a start and whirled to, she assumed, face her, dropping the slab of C4. A metallic voice said, “Ah. Yes. I, you see... sweet mother of Babbage, what’s that behind you?”

Sue rolled her eyes. “For gods’ sake, that didn’t work in fourth grade, and it’s not going to work now. Though it answers the question of who sent you, at least. ‘Look behind you’ was always Xander’s desperation defense.” The toaster, which had produced a throwing knife to bury in her exposed back had she been fool enough to expose it, slumped. Sue pulled a compact bundle of tubes from her purse and aimed it at the toaster. “If you’re in communication with Xander, tell him he’s going to have to come up with something better than you to take me down, even if I am retired. Oh, and speaking of me being retired, tell him the next time he makes a move on me, I’m going to track him down and crush him like a cockroach on Jupiter.”

The toaster tipped to one side a little, looking confused.

“You know, Jupiter. High gravity? So if you stomped on a bug, you’d be stomping really hard?” The toaster made a sound rather like a robot snorting. “Oh, screw you. I’m a doer, not a talker.” She squeezed the tubes and a blob of thick purple gel shot toward the toaster, but it was already in motion, launching itself straight up on springy legs that shot out from its underside. The gel scorched a pit into the tile surface, and while Sue cringed inside, outside she was throwing herself to the right. A pair of gleaming silver darts embedded themselves in the counter where she’d been standing. Sue tucked and rolled, coming up with her gel-thrower pointing at the ceiling. The toaster was scrambling sideways on six spindly black legs, small claws leaving a trail of holes gouged into the surface.

Sue gritted her teeth at the sight, and sent a few more shots after it. The toaster dodged each one, weaving a complicated pattern that left bits of sheetrock raining down in its wake. The metallic voice returned. “You always were a lousy shot, Sue!” it cackled.

“Xander, you a*****e, I’m retired now! You’re way out of line!” Sue got off one last shot before the toaster leaped from the ceiling to the mantelpiece to take cover behind the couch.

“I don’t care if you’re retired! I would be King of Nevada right now if it weren’t for you! Do you have any idea how much money I could be making just off of Burning Man alone?” Sue moved to take up a position behind the kitchen island, trying to judge the toaster’s position, but it wouldn’t keep still while it talked.

“Your plan was idiotic, Xander! Your robot soldiers were a joke, for one thing! I read your plans, they wouldn’t have lasted 24 hours in Nevada’s heat! Not to mention that it all hinged upon the citizens being so disgruntled with the state government that they’d flock to you as their new leader. They have legalized gambling and prostitution, moron! They’re the most gruntled citizens in the nation!” She tossed aside the gel-thrower and pulled a small rail gun from her purse. Her own invention, it accelerated titanium balls to blinding speed without the hassle of gunpowder or other explosives. She continued to fumble through her purse while she talked, but she couldn’t find her EMP pulser. Crap, didn’t she use it in that Best Buy last week when they wouldn’t stop playing dubstep on the PA? It must still be in the basement, recharging.

“My plan was perfect!” came the voice from behind the couch. The metallic overtones made it even more annoying than Xander’s usual nasal whine. “My loyal subjects would have rallied to my side when they saw my plan for the state’s future!” It sounded like the toaster was staying in one place. Sue decided to pile on the aggravation.

Sue laughed. “Loyal subjects? You’ve never had a friend you didn’t build in your basement, and even they only pretended to like you because you controlled access to the power source!” She slowly rose from behind the island, gun trained on the end of the couch. “Say, did you ever hear from your LoveBot after she ran away with your mainframe? Bummer about it downloading itself into that cyborg body you were building to hold your consciousness, huh? Too bad you didn’t get around to giving it your face--that probably would have kept her away from him.”

With an angry cry that sounded like a tangle of lengthy vowels crossed with a couple of variations on “b***h,” the toaster sprang from behind the couch, a fusillade of darts stitching across the far wall and ventilating the fridge. Sue had time for one shot that grazed the toaster’s side, blowing off the handle in a spray of sparks, before throwing herself to the floor. Xander was an a*****e, but he was right about her not being the best of shots. That, of course, is why she had built certain defenses into her home, so where the hell were they? The toaster ran along the couch’s back, claws throwing up tufts of fabric in its wake, and leaped for the kitchen counter. Sue rolled onto her back, missing another few shots aimed at its underside, and scrambled to her feet, diving into the hallway that led to the front door.

She could hear it running across the counter, knocking pots to the floor as it went, probably on purpose. Sue yanked down the painting that covered the control panel for the house’s systems, pulling the door open and pressing her palm to the ID scanner. It quickly verified her identity and brought up the overview screen, which showed all the house’s defenses off-line. “What the f**k?” Sue muttered, the stress of the moment overwhelming the G-rating filter she’d imposed on her speech since the twins had been born. She was sure they heard worse in fourth grade every day, but the habit had stuck.

From the kitchen, she heard the sound of breaking glass and a wicked cackle. “Oh, Sue, did I forget to mention that my little bread-burning friend here interfaced with your systems last night? I’m afraid your defense grid is a little compromised at the moment. Pity, too--it was a lovely system. No comparison to mine, naturally, but then I would hardly expect you to be able to keep up with me.”

Sue grimaced. If Xander had been able to compromise her systems, it was because he’d had help. After this, she was going to have a long and probably violent discussion with the consultant she’d hired to do the bioinformation scanners, the one aspect of her defense grid she’d needed help with. The prick must have hacked his way into the rest of her systems with what access she’d allowed him. She hoped for his sake that Xander had forced the information out of him, because if he’d put her family’s safety up for sale, he wasn’t long for this world.

Gun trained on the door to the kitchen, Sue quickly scanned through the diagnostic screens. There had to be a way to get things back on-line, but she wasn’t finding it. She heard another crash, and that taunting voice again, “Oh, I’m sorry, I hope that Cuisinart wasn’t one of the pricier models!” Sue shook her head in frustration, but at least she knew now that Xander was directly controlling the toaster. No autonomous robot would be that much of a dick. She gave up on the diagnostics and sank into a low crouch, slowly creeping sideways to get a look into the kitchen. The crashing and banging had stopped, which was a bad sign. She saw plenty of mess, but no sign of the toaster. She eased backwards in an awkward duck-walk, alternating her aim between the entrance to the kitchen and the hallway leading to the living room she had come from. She had never known Xander to be patient, so he was clearly up to something, but what?

Rising to her feet, she jogged sideways down the hall, gun trained behind her. As she approached the living room, she paused for a moment, then ran forward full-speed and leaped into the room, tucking into a somersault and ending up behind the couch. She popped up, gun at the ready, and scanned the kitchen. No sign of the toaster. A series of gouges in the ceiling led out of the kitchen toward the front door, though. Cursing quietly to herself, she surveyed the damage. It looked like a very angry chef had thrown a tantrum in there, but what stood out was her empty knife rack. She guessed the toaster had used up its supply of darts when it had blasted away at her in the kitchen. Typical Xander. She bolted for the mud room, a short hallway leading into the backyard, just as the toaster came scurrying into the living room, still clinging to the ceiling. A silver tentacle flung a paring knife at her, the rest of her expensive cutlery clutched in another. She ducked and fired two shots as it scurried toward the far well, coming close but not close enough. It extracted another knife, a larger steak knife, from the bundle and sent it spinning at her head. She threw herself backwards into the mud room and kicked the door shut. The knife burst through a windowpane in the door and buried its tip in the floor next to her.

The toaster approached her, zigzagging across the ceiling as she backed toward the outer door, trying to lead the toaster but never quite able to hit it. She kicked out backwards, fumbling with her foot for the oversized dog door they’d had to put in when they’d proved unable to train Porthos, an enormous Bernese Mountain Dog, not to bang his head on the door to be let in. She was glad he wasn’t here right now--he was a lovely dog, but probably wouldn’t have been of much help against a homicidal toaster. Luckily he’d taken sick the night before and was spending the day at the vet’s-- son of a b***h. Had that b*****d Xander poisoned Porthos to get him out of the way? Oh, he was going to pay. Her foot hit something that gave way just as the toaster burst through the door’s glass panes into the mudroom. She fired off a series of shots, a burst of titanium spheres flying almost noiselessly at the toaster, which leapt to one side, losing its grip with a few spider legs. It was recovering its balance as Sue backed out quickly through the dog door, loosing a few more rounds before letting the door fall shut.

Sue straightened up as much as she dared without showing herself in the door’s large frosted window. She did some quick calculations and counted silently, “One... two... three... FOUR!” She shouted the last word as she stood up and lunged forward, throwing all her weight into a kick�"really more like a power-stomp; in her head, she was imaging that she had to kill a very large spider clinging to a wall�"aimed at the bottom of the door. She saw that she’d timed it perfectly as the door flew upward to meet her foot, a savage grin lighting up her face. Her brand-new New Balance running shoe connected when the door was at about a 45-degree angle, and she heard a most delightful crunching sound as her follow-through smashed the door through nearly a full swing. She almost lost her balance as her foot thumped to the deck, but she recovered quickly and yanked the door open, ready to shoot.

The toaster had flown across the room and smacked into the inner door. A couple of its multi-jointed legs were twisted and useless, and it was staggering back and forth as it attempted to regain mobility. Sue aimed carefully and let fly with two shots that hit it directly on the side, but didn’t penetrate. D****t! Xander had clearly made some progress with his materials science research. They did rattle the toaster thoroughly, and Xander didn’t seem to have any more smart-a*s comments to make at the moment. She was preparing for another volley when the toaster suddenly lurched to one side and flung her chef’s knife at her. She dodged, twisting to one side, but it had aimed low, and the knife buried itself several inches into the meat of her left calf.

“You f**k!,” she cried. She yanked the knife out with one hand, firing several hasty shots that punched through the door as the toaster clumsily scrambled away. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten to account for the knives. It had been too damn long since she’d been in combat. She hadn’t been counting her shots�"another useful habit she appeared to have lost�"but had to be getting low. The stab wound on her calf throbbed, but didn’t appear to be anything serious. At least she kept her knives clean, she thought. The toaster was on the ground, leaping left and right, looking for an opening. Had she damaged it enough that it couldn’t climb? It menacingly waved what she thought was her boning knife, the others still curled in a bundle.

“What’s the matter, Sue? Were my remarks a little too cutting?”

Sue winced. “Xander, you always did suck at banter. That one was terrible on multiple levels.”

The toaster growled. “You won’t be so smug when I’m slicing your tits off, b***h!”

“Yeah, see, that’s more what I expect from you. Just stick with base crudity and leave the wit to people with brains.” She fired two more shots, knocking the toaster back into the corner but still not penetrating its surface. As it whipped the boning knife back for the throw, she reached behind her and grabbed a snow boot off a shelf, flinging it overhand. The toaster impaled the boot neatly, but couldn’t get it off the knife, frantically shaking it as Sue strode forward and delivered a solid kick to its side.

It bounced off the wall behind it and landed upside-down, legs flailing as it attempted to right itself. Sue raised her foot to crush it, but it suddenly flipped over and slashed at her with the bundle of knives, slicing a series of parallel gashes across her shin and sending her crashing backwards to the floor. Sue cried out and grabbed her shin, blasting away at the toaster until her gun clicked, empty. The toaster took several hits, then fired twin grappling hooks on chains out of its slots and hauled itself toward the ceiling. It anchored itself upside-down and flung the remaining knives at her one at a time. Sue rolled frantically toward the inner door, blood trailing from her legs. She ended up with her back to the door, a line of knives embedded in the floor leading right to her, a paring knife sticking out of her thigh.

With a snarl, Sue yanked the knife out of her leg and got awkwardly to her feet. The toaster sat motionless above her, vibrating quietly, one knife remaining in its grasp. “What’s the matter, Xander? Forget to pack any more weapons?”

The toaster said nothing. “Holy crap, you did, didn’t you?” She laughed out loud. “You figured you’d ambush me and finish me right off, so you wouldn’t need much.” She reached carefully behind her for the doorknob, not entirely trusting Xander to be that stupid. She felt the cool metal in her palm, and curled her hand around it. “Seriously, Xander, ‘tight-fistedness’ is not a quality one encounters a lot when dealing with megalomaniacs. I thought all you world-domination types liked overkill. You know, why send an assassin when you can send a squad of robot ninjas? Dr. Mayhem would have given the toaster twin laser cannons and a flechette gun as a bare minimum. Even Count Kill would have done a better job designing a killer toaster, and that poor schmuck once built a killbot without putting his own name on the safe list. But hey, he gets around pretty good on those prosthetic legs he had to invent for himself, and the VA contract he got made him a pretty penny, so I guess it all worked out, right?” Still no response. Maybe Xander had finally had that heart attack that had been lurking in his future for so long. She should be so lucky.

She had to end this quickly, but up there, the toaster was out of reach, and she was running out of insults. She had no choice but to escalate straight to thermonuclear. “You know, Xander, I knew back when we were in school that you were going to grow up to be a loser. Even in elementary school. It was junior high, though, where you really started to shine. Well, ‘shine’ isn’t really the right word. Is there a word in English that means the exact opposite of ‘shine’?” The metal tentacle curling around the handle of the knife clenched it tighter, the wood starting to splinter. That was interesting. Was he directly connected to this thing with a neural interface?

“Remember the surveillance network you set up in the girls’ locker room? You were making pretty good bank off of that, charging for peeks, selling little videos. You even thought you had friends for a while, didn’t you? All those kids hanging around you, calling you ‘Dr. Science’ and ‘VideoMan.’ Not one of those kids would have given you the time of day if you hadn’t had your little live porn show, you know. Nah, of course you know that. You might never admit it yourself, but you know. It’s a shame the alpha jocks found out about it. The irony is, of course, that they would have gladly been customers of yours, except you were stupid enough to include the cheerleader squad in your shows.”

The toaster was vibrating visibly now. If this were a cartoon, it would have had steam shooting out of its ears, or at least its slots. Sue grinned wickedly and continued. “Man, were they pissed off. That beatdown they gave you was just... whew, it was something else. I hurt just watching. Personally, I think the way they kept doing it every Monday was a little much, but hey, jock anger is a powerful force.”

The toaster was making a peculiar low growling noise. Sue tightened her grip on the doorknob and turned it, easing the door open ever so slightly. “Did you know that my kids go to our old school? Yeah, they came home late one day and said there was a huge fight. One of the football players had caught another one copping a feel from his girlfriend and just beat the holy living tar out of the guy. Almost sent him to the hospital. My kids said that the guy totally xandered him. Isn’t that great? You made your mark on the language!”

In a voice that sounded like large rocks crushing small rocks, the toaster said, “Shut up. Just shut up.” Sue almost felt sorry for him, until she remembered what he’d been like in school, and how much worse he’d gotten since then.

“Did you ever wonder who tipped off the alpha jocks, by the way? I personally couldn’t believe nobody had done it sooner, but then, I guess everyone was enjoying the porn too much to wreck such a sweet deal. Hard to imagine, isn’t it, that there was a time when you couldn’t just download gigabytes of this stuff for free off the Internet? Me, I’ve never cared for porn. I think it’s crass and exploitive, and I just hate to see it. That’s why I told the jocks all about your cameras in the girls’ locker room, and how you were selling buck naked videos of their girlfriends to everyone with $5 and a hard-on.” She tensed. If that didn’t do it, nothing would.

It did. With a harsh snarl, the toaster shot its grappling chains straight at her. Sue ducked and whirled, flinging the door open and crouching behind it as the hooks thunked into the wood instead of her face. She stepped back into the room and slammed the door, yanking the toaster off the ceiling and sending it flying. She grabbed the chains, whirling the toaster over her head and smashing it into the floor. The chains burned through her hands as it retracted them, so she let them go and grabbed the toaster itself. The chains slashed at her arms painfully. She spun and hurled it through the door’s remaining panes into the living room, yanking the door open and plunging into the room after it. It shot its chains toward the ceiling but she was there in two huge strides and kicked it with all her strength, yanking the hooks loose and sending it tumbling into the kitchen. Sue leaped onto the counter, sliding across and dropping into a crouch on the kitchen floor in a move she was rather proud of. The toaster was flailing its mechanical tentacles wildly, one searching for any kind of weapon and one assaulting Sue, whipping back and forth at her but unable to do significant damage.

As Sue scrambled backwards, preparing to kick the toaster to pieces, her hand fell upon a hard, cool object, and she couldn’t help but smile. “Hey, Xander! I was just kidding about being the one who squealed to the jocks, but I seriously wish I had. This is going to feel almost as good, though.” The tentacles paused in their flailing as Sue hoisted her find into the air, a gleaming marble rolling pin. Her grin turned positively manic as she brought the rolling pin down on the toaster, creating a sizable dent in its top. The tentacles both whipped into an assault on her face, but she barely noticed as she gripped the pin with both hands and brought it down on the toaster again, and again.

The grappling hooks shot toward the ceiling, but a sideways swipe robbed them of their grip. A quick spin of the rolling pin wrapped them several times around it; she braced one foot against the toaster, and a single hard pull ripped them from their moorings. The toaster was babbling incoherently, only the occasional curse word intelligible. The neural interface might not mean that Xander was sharing the toaster’s pain, but this sure as Hell wouldn’t be comfortable for him. She repeatedly hammered the toaster with the rolling pin, blow after blow crushing it further. The mechanical tentacles ceased waving, the spider legs stopped twitching, even the voice eventually gave up. Sue became aware that she too was babbling, her fury at this intrusion into her home burning like fire. “You rotten motherf****r! You come into my house! You poison my f*****g dog! You could have hurt my goddamned kids! My kids?! You come near my kids again I’ll burn your f*****g life right to the ground! You think I’m pissed off now? You think you’ve seen me mad? You so much as think of laying one goddamned finger of your worthless f*****g carcass within ten miles of my family and I will come down on you like a f*****g archangel with PMS!” By this time, the toaster was a grey pancake, scattered metal bits and pieces all over the floor. Sue finally stopped pounding on it and dropped the rolling pin from numb fingers. It thumped to the floor and rolled briefly sideways before coming to rest against a pile of former toaster.

She sat back, the legs of her jeans bloody, hair tangled and hanging in her eyes, panting like she’d run a marathon. She took a deep breath, held it for a five count, and let it out slowly, leaning back against the cupboards. Looking up, she swept her hair back and saw her twins, Caleb and Katy, standing in the kitchen doorway, eyes wide. She had the terrible feeling they’d been standing there for a little while now. “Oh, hey, kids. I had some trouble with the toaster.” She indicated the heap of metallic rubble with one hand, an angry red stripe across the palm oozing spots of blood.

Caleb, always the bolder of the two, said, “There’s a bunch of holes in the fridge. And the ceiling. And the back door.” Katy just nodded, unable to figure out what to stare at first.

Sue took a deep breath. “How would you kids like to lie to your father and say that all this happened while I was taking you out on a special surprise trip to Chuck E. Cheese, huh? Lying is fun, right?” She grinned brightly. An impartial observer might have characterized her grin as “insane,” but she was sure she’d get a handle on it quickly.

Caleb and Katy looked at each other. She could see the little gears turning in their heads. Caleb turned back to her and said, “This, uh, I don’t think this much restless vandalism--”

Katy nudged him with an elbow. “Senseless.”

“Senseless vandalism could happen during a trip to Chuck E. Cheese.”

Katy shook her head solemnly. “No, this clearly took a long time.”

Caleb continued, “Yeah, I think this happened while we were at Chuck E. Cheese’s, and after that stopped at Barnes and Noble.”

Katy added, “That seems more likely. A good, long family outing before we returned to find this awful mess.” She shook her head sadly. “This awful, and hard to explain, mess.” This last was delivered while looking mom right in the eye.

Sue gazed at the ceiling and took another five-count breath. “All right, that’s fine. Pizza and books, the classic American combination. Just let me get changed, and we’ll head out. Please don’t touch anything in here.”

She trudged up the stairs while the kids traded outlandish theories below about what she’d been up to. Blackmail, the perfect cherry for today’s s**t sundae. Of all the people her children could have taken after, why did it have to be her?

Author's Note

This isn't really where I want the final draft to be, but I figured I probably should take a break from picking at it and come back fresh after a while. Meanwhile, you all get to read it! Woo! Any and all comments are welcome.

Reviews

[The Pain Stays Fresh]

Evil toaster. Epic.