The Chattering Chute
The traveler jerked awake, heart hammering, convinced that the gaunt bony motel clerk was standing over his bed. The room was silent, but his throat felt like dry sand. Wanting a cold drink of ice water to settle his nerves and get the creepy out of his head, he grabbed the plastic bucket from the dresser and stepped out in the dim hallway, and walked to the machine alcove for ice.
He held the bucket under the chute and pressed the lever expecting the "clunk" of ice cubes-- but instead there was this rhythmic, high-pitched rat-tat-tat-rat like gravel hitting the bottom of his bucket. When he looked to see, it was a heap of gross, yellowed molars and coffee-stained bicuspids; some were rimmed with black decay, others with crumbling silver filings, and the machine wasn't stopping; it just kept pouring them out like a relentless mechanical vomit of human teeth!
Just as the bucket began to overflow, a shadow stretched across the machine. It was the bony skeletal-looking clerk with the hollow eyes from his dream, his skin the color of old parchment, leaning against the wall. He didn't look at the traveler; he just stared at the pile and muttered...
"Must be a clog in the hopper. They always get stuck when the roots are still attached."










