Toyinfestation

14- I hate dust. Forever.

A thick, fuzzy layer of dust blanketed almost everything in the room, and that wasn't much. The hinges of the door had given away a little. Where the door had slid past, some of the dust had been swept away, forming a little arc where some of the dirty concrete floor could actually be seen. I pointed the flashlight around to get a good look. There was small display cabinet at one corner of the room, a simple table at the back, leaning against the wall that separated the garage into two parts. There was nothing else in the room other than a few ceiling lamps. It looked like there was nothing there after all. Other than a layer of dust that was half a centimetre thick. Not much of the dust floating around showed up in the blue-white light of my fluorescent flashlight, but I knew it was there, I couldn't help but sneeze a few times. I really should have gone there when the sun was out. I turned to go, despite Anaesthesia's protests. "At least turn on the light or something." She shouted from my jacket pocket. I tried to close the door again, but it wouldn't budge.

My shoving had done more damage to the hinges than I had intended to. I let out a deep breath and wheezed a little.

"If I stay here any longer, I'll get asthma. We can always come back tomorrow." Preferably, with a vacuum cleaner and some air fresheners.

"You're just as melodramatic as Trac. There has to be a switch somewhere."

"How would you know? You aren't the one trying to breathe with this junk floating around."

The door refused to move even an inch. I couldn't just leave the garage door open like that.

"Why can't you just look for the freaking switch? Those things on the ceiling are lamps." Anaesthesia sounded like she was gritting her teeth. Dolls, gritting teeth, talking toy cranes, club hopping grandmother, business clients, dusty garages and creeps. Why me?

Frustrated, I ran my fingers through my hair, I looked around, holding out the flashlight in front of me, scrutinising my surroundings. There was a set of switches right behind me, close to the door. I hadn't noticed them because they were set into the wall, with a little cover on top. (Plus, you know, they were behind me and I just wanted to get the hell out of there) I flicked them on. Four lamps near the corners of the room lit up steadily for a moment before they started flickering rapidly. The two that were the closest to me died out after producing a fuzzy little spark each. How cute. Anaesthesia and her ideas, why did I even bother?

There were two dim lamps at the back of the room left, casting multiple shadows of the table all around it on the awfully dusty floor. Those two started to got a little brighter for a moment and then extinguished themselves after giving off a little spark. Anaesthesia let out a little "Oh." She sounded a little scared to me, though I didn't know of what. We were still standing close to the door, and it was my grandmother's garage for god's sake.

I was about to turn around and walk away I noticed something I hadn't noticed before.

"Hey, did you see that?"

"See what?" Yup, she definitely sounded scared.

There were two large oval indentations of some sort in the area close to where the table was. I covered my nose with my scarf before walking across the room and squatting down. They weren't just random little indentations in the dust, they were footprints in the dust, covered by some more layers of dust. The imprints the soles of the shoes had made were barely visible, but they were there.

"Footprints. Your grandmother's involved." Anaesthesia muttered, not exactly happily.

"No, old footprints on an old garage mean nothing. Want to see where they lead?"

The footprints looked like they stopped behind the glass display cabinet. I scoffed, there was nothing wrong with the garage.

"See, its fine, just another old garage. There's noth-"

"Tony, the floor beneath you is creaking."

"Yup, bad quality cheap wood. I could renovate this place and put in nice woooooooooooooffffff-"

Anaesthesia let out a loud scream as the floor beneath us gave away.