{{note|This is a prequel to .}}
My name is Haywood Krueger. I’m a jobseeker who doesn’t always gets his way because I have autism, which hinders my ability to make friends and pay attention to whoever’s talking to me. Now enough about me because I’m about to tell you a story. You’ll may shrug it off as “unbelievable”, but who am I to judge you? So with that said, let us begin.
I just got a job at the fire department and they really liked me for my performance, but all of that was about to change. One night, I heard what sounded like wooden footsteps and then a knock on my bedroom door. I was too tired to see who was knocking. When I woke up the following morning, the creepy-looking coat hanger from the church house I went to every Sunday for mass was standing right in front of me. I had no idea how it got there, but I dared not to find out. Then I heard the wooden footsteps from the night before. Paranoid, I turned around; I wish I hadn’t.
The coat hanger was standing right behind me. It’s “head” turned to face me to reveal those “eyes”. I ran into the family room, but it followed me as it trotted on its two front legs (the one and only back leg was used as a tail). I ran outside and approached the house of a neighbor, who was also a friend and a co-worker. He asked if I’m ready to go to work, but then realized that I’m in a panic and asked what was wrong when the coat hanger burst in.
My Friend grabbed a bat and tried to beat it away, but it conked him in the head, grabbed the item with no hands at all, and proceeded to choke him with it. His wife and I tried to free him; we did, but at a cost: The wooden menace clubbed her in the head with enough force to crack it open. Feeling remorseful of his lose, my friend tried to charge at the coat hanger, but I dragged him away as it continued to attack his wife’s corpse. We hopped into his pickup truck and I told him “quick, drive me to the police station!” And with that, we took off like there was no tomorrow.
As I laid in the trunk, I was shocked to see that the coat hanger was laying right next to me. I picked it up and threw it out. My friend asked what the matter was and just as I turned to answer, I was even more shocked to see that the coat hanger was running right towards us. I told the driver to pick up speed and he did, losing the coat hanger as we speeded right past a police car.
We pulled over at our destination so that the police would give my neighbor a speeding ticket. No sooner did the coat hanger caught up and the two officers initiated fire. I ran into the building to inform the police, but they didn’t believe me, thinking that I was bluffing. I cocked my head to the window and saw the coat hanger staring into the building, looking straight at me with those soul-piercing eyes. Four robotic tentacles ending with three-clawed hands sprang from the back of the wooden menace and hit the bulletproof glass with a bash, catching the attention of the police. The cracks branched out to the point where the window shattered into pieces.
The coat hanger drew a Ruger Blackhawk out of hammerspace and fired at me with no hands at all, but I blocked the bullets with a nearby chair. While it was reloading its gun, more officers came in, drew their pistols, and shot at the coat hanger, but it shrugged off the bullets as if they were throwing pebbles. The coat hanger approached me and proceeded to continuously knock one of its prongs against my noggin. A sheriff came up from behind it and blasted its head clean off with a shotgun, but the coat hanger gathered up the slivers to reassemble its head and placed it back onto its neck. It slowly spun around 360° and then its eyes made an angry expression and started to glow a devilish red.
The policeman reloaded his shotgun and resumed shooting to no avail. My friend suggested that we go to work and get an ax. He was suddenly caught by the coat hanger just we started our headway. He threw his keys at me his before his head got ripped off. I tried to drive away, but the coat hanger was fast enough to break the passenger window before I peeled away.
The truck dragged the wooden menace as it was holding onto the broken window. I sideswiped a semi-truck hoping to get rid of the hanger. I saw it in the rearview mirror getting up as I drove away, finally making it to the fire station. No one else was there because the last shift already went home. My deceased friend and I were going to be the first ones there that day to open up.
I just clocked in when something metal touched the back of my neck. I looked back and saw that the object was a pump-action shotgun, held by (who else?) the coat hanger. As it chambered the weapon, I dodged just a split-second before it even pulled the trigger and tripped it, breaking off one of its legs. I headed for the firetruck when the coat hanger grabbed me with one of its tentacles.
I held onto the door for dear life when I saw an ax. I grabbed the weapon and chopped the coat hanger to pieces. Feeling relieved, I opened the station. When I got inside the firetruck with my coworkers, we heard multiple gunshots, metal stabs, and wooden footsteps.
We looked out the windows and saw a whole army of identical coat hangers with arms marching around the firetruck, stabbing and shooting with bayonet-fitted FN Trombones. Some even looked like dwarf spiders. Looking out the windshield, my comrades and I saw the original coat hanger rising from the crowd with its tentacles hoisting it up into the air, again with the Blackhawk in its nonexistent hands. Without hesitation, I stepped on the gas plowed through the mob and reached our destination: An Autism Awareness building sat ablaze by Neo-Nazi nutcases, one of which started the fire with a Flammenwerfer 41.
We put out the flames just as the Neo-Nazis came out of hiding by crashing out of five random garages with what appeared to be British Mark VIII tanks with turrets on top. They came out of their “panzers” wielding Sturmgewehrs, Kalashnikovs, Lugers, Hi-Power and CZ pistols, Springfield XD-9 and Walther PPK derringers, SIG-Sauer and Colt 45 rail guns, Makarovs, Tokarevs, Nagant revolvers, MP5 and MP40 submachine guns, TEC-9 and Sterling machine pistols, FN P90 and Knight’s Armament Personal Defense Weapons, Tommy Guns, Uzis, Skorpions, PPSh-41 and Hi-Point 995 pistol-caliber carbines, SKS rifles, Mauser rifles and Broomhandles, Krag–Jørgensens, Mosin-Nagants, Walther bullpups, G3 and G43 sniper rifles, MG3 and modified PK machine guns, Winchester trench guns, stalk hand grenades, Airtronic RPG-7s, and Panzerschrecks. I managed to evade capture and duck into the firetruck just as those swastika-bearing psychopaths had my coworkers completely surrounded. With ax in hand, I waited for one of those coat hangers to past by and sure enough, they arrived and started looking for me.
I jumped out of the vehicle and hack an arm off of one of those wooden creatures, but it began to grow into a new hanger within about a minute. I cut the hanger in half to see if it did anything different. The disembodied arm had become a new coat hanger, also wielding a pump-action rifle with a spike bayonet attached. The halves grew
into two separate hangers. The lead coat hanger appeared and took the ax away from me.
“What do you want from me!” I shouted. The lead coat hanger didn’t say a word, but it raised the ax as if it was ready to split me in half, a good indicated that it that wanted me dead. My shouting caught the Neo-Nazis’ attention and they redirected their guns to me and the coat hangers. The wooden menace ordered a counterattack. I cowered from the gunfire, ran to the firetruck, and hopped inside to turn it on only to realize that I didn’t have the key.
One coat hanger opened the door and tried to impale me, but I dodged, kicked it away, closed the door, and locked it. I reached over and locked the other door before another hanger opened it. It nudged me in the face with the buttstock of its rifle only for me to pull the trigger on it, blowing its head clean off and forcing it to close the door. Three more coat hangers attacked the doors and windows. The thick windows began to crack.
A Special Weapons and Tactics team arrived and commenced fire (but with little effort) until the National Guard arrived. The coat hangers advanced on them. A guardsman knocked on the truck door. I opened and jumped out.
Military weapons were blowing coat hangers into large pieces. In terror, I shouted to stop, but I was too late. The pieces were already growing into new hangers. The National Guard continued to attack, but the growing number of hangers overwhelmed them.
The soldier who was with me lamented not having a flamethrower. Then an Idea struck me. I asked the soldier if he had a grenade and he said yes. As we started for the nearest gas station, the lead coat hanger gathered its brethren together and they fused into a giant, skeletal-looking dragon. We arrived at our destination and lured the abomination in between gas pumps, rendering it stuck.
We tied the gas nozzles around its limbs so that it would no longer struggle to break free. As we sprayed gasoline all over it body, the giant coat hanger summoned more of its henchmen to come after us. As they charged, we threw an armed grenade into the big one’s chest and ran. Half of the area was drenched in flames as the pumps exploded. The soldier and I were thrown forward from the force of the explosion.
We looked back and saw the coat hangers burning and writhing. With sighs of relief, we got up. When the fire died down some, the soldier went to investigate and I followed. Some of the hangers were still twitching, but all of them seemed to be dead. Many of them were in fragments, but were not regenerating, so that was a good sign. The soldier and I ventured into the station.
As the soldier went deeper into the station, I look at the scorched firetruck. Then something grabs my leg: The coat hanger was half-burnt (but still alive) and it emerged from underneath the truck. I jerked my leg free and backed away. The coat hanger limped towards me with one leg still smoldering. Thankfully though, the claws on its tentacles were blown off by the blast, so that would explain how I managed slip out of its grip with ease.
Suddenly, something splashed onto the coat hanger and the smoldering leg ignited the rest of its body, reducing it to ashes. I looked over and saw the soldier holding a fuel can. He had found a few intact cans of fuel as he was looking around. He grabbed one when he heard me cry for help. He had cut the top off so that it would make a good splash.
The soldier called in on a radio that the situation had been neutralized. I heard the person on the other side of the radio ordering me in for questioning about what had happened. I told the soldier that I don’t know what or why, but he said that his superiors would want to hear the whole story themselves. From inside the ruined husk of the gas station behind us, a fried skeleton popped out.