Jeffrey Thomas [Thomas - Uncanny Valley

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

Uncanny Valley first appeared in the anthology Darker Companions , PS Publishing, 2017.

Stranger in the House first appeared in the anthology Looming Low , Dim Shores, 2017.

Sliced Bread first appeared in the anthology Adams Ladder , Written Backwards, 2017.

CONTENTS

1. UNCANNY VALLEY

2. STRANGER IN THE HOUSE

3. SLICED BREAD

About the Author

UNCANNY VALLEY

Pegler noted that the town seal for San Marcos, California called it the Valley of Discovery, but his own discovery was that he found the place oppressively dismal. It was not that the town crowded upon him gloomily, but rather the opposite: that it was too open and too bright, with oases of civilization widely scattered throughout a parched desolation, like someplace that had waited too long to become filled in and given up hope of it. Like an apartment with too little furniture and too few pictures on its walls, or an infantile scalp with two few hairs plugged into it. Well, the apartment he had taken upon his divorce, back in Liverpool, was like that, and so was his scalp, but he didnt feel keen about those things either.

Hed been picked up at San Diego airport and driven to the company; a ride of only about forty minutes, but he was glad he hadnt rented a car. He feared he would never have found his way in or out of the bland maze of little side streets fronted with the interchangeable white blocks of businesses, of which the smallish building containing Galatea Creations was but one. There was no sign identifying the company outside, and Pegler thought of the discreet unmarked packaging that often shielded potentially embarrassing objects of titillation.

And here we are, David, chirped the woman who had picked Pegler up at the airport, pulling into a spot in front of the bone-like white box. She twisted toward him as she unbuckled her seatbelt. Well keep the tour quick today Im sure you must be jetlagged after your trip. I bet you cant wait to hit your hotel.

Im fine, Pegler reassured her, smiling bravely and he hoped charmingly. Didnt American women find British men charming, even when they were decades older than themselves? This is what Im here for, isnt it? But she was right, of course. The only part she was leaving out was that he wished she wouldnt just drop him off at his hotel this evening, but accompany him to his room for the night. The woman, Maria Garza, was in her late twenties or early thirties, he estimated, with long hair that he envisioned spilling blackly like oil down her bare brown skin. For forty minutes hed been darting looks at her legs, dipped in black pantyhose, where they emerged from her black skirt. Hed never been with a woman of other than European heritage. In fact, he hadnt been with a woman other than his former wife of many, too many, years.

They disembarked from the car and walked toward the buildings entrance. Great, Maria said brightly. Then well start with our showroom.

This was only Peglers second visit to the US. The first time, last January, had been when he and a colleague from the sales department representing his employer, Sellacious LLC had attended the Adult Novelty Manufacturers Expo in Los Angeles. It was there that he and his colleague had first connected with the people behind Galatea Creations, an encounter that had led to Sellacious LLC becoming an affiliate of Galatea and the sole distributor of its Love Mates line throughout the UK and Ireland. Galateas bond with its former UK affiliate had dissolved upon the recent death of that companys owner, who had had no partners or heirs to carry on the business, his only sibling a sister having perished in a fire decades earlier.

Pegler had first met Maria at the Expo, and the Galatea people and Sellacious people had dined together and later gone for drinks, but despite his attraction to her Pegler had never managed to speak with the woman privately. His younger colleague, Baker, had cornered her briefly, obviously fueled by the same fantasies Pegler entertained, but had admitted to the older salesman later that he hadnt gotten far with her, much to Peglers satisfaction. He could never understand the unselfconscious audaciousness, the sheer confidence, of bastards like Baker. And here was Baker with a pretty young wife, to top it off.

The showroom Maria Garza ushered him into was really more of a smallish reception area, in which five young women and two young men stood about as if in whispered conversation, or lounged upon furniture, but of course these were a variety of fully clothed Love Mate dolls. One female figure sat behind a desk, and Pegler flinched when her head looked around a computer monitor to speak in greeting to Maria, proving herself to be the receptionist. Pegler was reminded of the time his beloved mother, now deceased but then young and beautiful, had taken him to the Madame Tussauds museum. Outside the Chamber of Horrors, a security guard whom Pegler had thought to be a wax effigy, so straight and immobile was he standing, finally turned his head slightly in the boys direction as if to intentionally give him a shudder.

Maria discussed the dolls with him, boasting about their hair, which to Pegler looked too glittery and perfectly styled, and other of their features. He had already seen such specimens at the Expo and naturally he was impressed with the workmanship, though most of the females with their bloated lips and overly made-up eyes reminded him of transvestites trying too hard to look feminine. Not that he would express such an opinion aloud. He smiled, he praised. After all, he was here to determine specifically which standard configuration models should be offered through the UK outlet, and what quantities of those should be ordered to have on hand, for starters. Of course, customized models would be shipped singly upon completion, as the Sellacious website like Galateas parent site would offer customers numerous choices in everything from eye color to skin tone to breast size.

The receptionist had summoned the director of Galatea, Jude Loew, who remembered Pegler from the Expo and shook his hand warmly. Loew was Peglers age but leaner, tanner, with hair almost as long as some of the female mannequins arrayed around them. After Loew had asked about Peglers flight, and whether Peglers people back in the UK were eager to get things going in earnest with the Love Mates line, he gestured toward an inner door and said, So lets go see where the magic happens.

Maria accompanied the two men onto the production floor, which was mostly just one large room without windows. The smell here was overpowering, a chemical miasma, but the sights were more distressing and again brought Pegler back to the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds. Rows of naked women hung from chains attached to a high track system, all in a kind of crouching stance as if clenched with rigor mortis, varying in height and skin tone and breast size: everything from large to gigantic. Some of these hanging bodies were headless, showing only a black chute in the throat, but others further along in assembly wore a hard white skull piece with black sockets for the eyes and mouth, making these figures look less like dolls awaiting the application of soft mask-like faces and more like murder victims who had had their faces flayed off.