It was a typical night at the local mall. My girlfriend Liz and I had gone to the movies and were just about to leave when I saw it standing near the food court. A claw machine filled to the brim with prizes. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but I saw Liz study it with interest. It was impossible to miss, as it was red, covered with lights in contrasting colors, and completely filled with stuffed animals in various sizes.
“Shall I try to win you one?”
The look on her face said it all. I’ve never been a huge fan of claw machines. It’s easier, and usually cheaper, to just buy whatever you’re trying to win. But I could spend a couple bucks to try to win my girlfriend a stuffed animal.
So I walked towards it after fishing a few quarters out of my pocket. All claw machines look alike, and this one was no exception. The only thing that ever changes is how much it costs and what the claw grasping at a prize looks at. This one was two dollars per try.
Once each quarter landed in the slot with an audible noise, the machine came to life and the claw sprung open. I slowly steered the claw around at first, deciding what prize to try for while the air was filled with the sound of mechanical whirring.
Eventually, I decided to try for a green teddy bear. So I guided the claw directly over it, pressed the red button to drop the claw, and watched it slowly descend towards the bear while trying to grasp it. I watched as the claw grasped ahold of it and tried to pick it up.
I felt a tiny bit of anticipation as the claw closed and as it went up, had the bear clutched inside. But then came the other part where the machine moved back to drop your prize down the machine if you got one. No small matter, considering that the claw mechanism often moved around in a way to make it more difficult to win. So I was proud when I saw the stuffed bear stay firmly in the claw before it opened and dropped the prize down the metal chute with a small thud.
“Well done Drew.” Liz smiled at me as I presented the prize to her.
“Thanks. Shall we go now?”
“Sure.”
Later that night, Liz went to put the stuffed bear on a shelf when we got back home. As she lifted it up, she looked at me.
“I think something’s inside it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I gripped it and I heard something crinkling inside.”
“Huh.”
Without saying anything else, Liz turned the stuffed animal over and unzipped the back of it. Then she reached her hand inside and briefly rummaged around before she pulled it back out. Clutched in her hand was some wadded-up cash.
“Look at that!” I walked over to her for a better look at the cash.
She wasted no time in immediately grabbing it with both hands so she could unfurl it. It turned out to be three crumbled 20-dollar bills.
“Nice job. We really won, didn’t we?”
“What’s this we stuff? I won it.”
She chuckled. “Fair.”
“How did it get in here though?”
“Someone probably had a mix up and put it inside. Weirder things have happened.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
And that was it. We reveled in the find, but it was no different than finding cash in your coat pocket unexpectedly. But the next time we went to the mall about a month later, Liz pointed at the claw machine and said, “We won big last time, shall we see if it works again?”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
So I approached the claw machine, put some coins in, and did the same thing as last time. Except this time I aimed for a stuffed elephant, and I missed.
“Give it another go,” Liz said. “It’s only a few coins. Especially if we get another surprise like last time.”
“Sure. Why not?” I nodded. “Which one should I go for?”
She took a step closer to the machine, so she was right next to me. “How about the lion?” She pointed towards the stuffed lion located on the right.
“Ok.” A couple more coins in the machine, and it was ready to go again. Then I maneuvered the claw over to the right side, pressed the button, and we both watched it descend and try to catch the lion. A good decision, because the claw snagged it and pulled it up and over before it dropped it down the chute.
“Good choice,” I said as I pulled the stuffed lion out of the bottom of the machine.
Liz smiled at me. “I can pick winners every now and then.”
“I know, I’m exhibit A.”
“You’re exhibit something. Now shall we see if lightning strikes twice?”
“Go for it.” I handed it to her, and she deftly opened the zipper in the back and reached inside. She only fumbled around for a moment before she pulled out a small piece of paper. When Liz unfolded it, she studied it for a moment with a puzzled expression before handing it to me without a word.
“You’ll get an even better prize next time.”
That was it. The note was typed on standard white paper.
I looked up at Liz and she rolled her eyes. “Nothing like always trying to keep people coming back.”
“No doubt.”
Then we left the mall and went home, but not before throwing the note away in the garbage on the way out. While doing that, we passed a couple that was heading inside as we were heading out. They looked to be about our age, and the woman had red hair, while the man was blond.
I was watching the news about a week later when a story came on about a home invasion gone wrong. The victims were a local married couple who lived in a house on the other side of town. But when they showed a picture of the victims, my jaw dropped.
It was the couple we’d seen at the mall on the way out.
Especially chilling was the fact that police had no leads and no suspects. I called Liz to come and see it, and when she did, she just stood there quietly for a second before agreeing how creepy the coincidence was.
We didn’t go to the mall for about a month after that, but when we did, we went with Melanie and Greg, some of our best friends. When the movie we were there to see was over, we found ourselves in the lobby while we debated where to go for dinner.
While we did that, Greg turned and saw the claw machine. Liz and I briefly explained our experience, and he was intrigued.
“Why don’t I give it a try and see what happens?” He asked.
I shrugged and told him to go for it.
Greg approached the machine, put some coins in, and began the process of trying to win a prize. After maneuvering it around for a moment, he pressed the button for the claw to grab a prize, and it landed on a toy cat. Even though I wasn’t trying to win anything, I did feel a faint bit of exhilaration when the claw went upward with the toy cat clutched inside its grip.
When Greg walked over with it, he had a triumphant smile.
“Well done.” Liz smiled back at him.
“Thanks. So where shall we go for dinner?”
We decided on a local Italian restaurant. But since Melanie and Greg had to go home to get something they forgot, Liz and I beat them there and got a table while we waited. The two of them were having some work done on their house and were staying at a hotel nearby.
They arrived about 20 minutes later and apologized for the delay.
“I gotta tell you,” Melanie said. “I swear I felt like someone was following us on the way home.”
“I got the same feeling.” Greg agreed while he took a piece of bread from the basket on the table. “But every time I looked back to check, I didn’t see anything.”
But eventually the chit chat turned to something more pleasant, and we all had a good meal. Melanie and Greg eventually got the work complete on their house, and while they were pleased with the result, they eventually complained that it seemed like someone had gone through their things while they were away. Nothing was missing, but they were irritated at the idea.
My attention was elsewhere because my cousin Taylor was visiting. She hadn’t been to a movie in a while, so we took her to one, and when she saw the claw machine, she really wanted to win a prize. So after the movie was done, she tried her luck at it. It seemed it was her lucky day because she won a stuffed blue fish. She took it triumphantly before we went out to a local bistro.
Dinner was nice and it was late when we finished. Since Taylor insisted on staying in a hotel rather than with us, we had to drop her off there since she rode with us to the movies. We had just pulled out of the restaurant parking lot when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black sedan get behind us. There were many cars in the parking lot, so I didn’t think anything of it.
But when the car stuck behind us and kept following us, I started to get suspicious. Especially since the hotel was on the other side of town and the car steadily followed us the whole way.
That was when being suspicious left and unease took its place. I told Taylor and Liz about it, and they agreed it was following us. Fortunately, Taylor was able to get the license plate off the car and Liz called the police while I drove. I did my best to do that while ignoring the fear churning in my stomach.
The cops told us to keep going on the road and said they’d meet up with us and pull the sedan over. I did that, and it wasn’t long before I saw the flashing lights catching up to us. I was beyond relieved.
They managed to pull the sedan over while the three of us watched. The cops also took note of our story while the driver of the sedan came out and was taken into custody.
I don’t know what I expected, but the story that came out was shocking.
The driver of the sedan was part of a group of criminals that used the claw machine to gain information on people. One of the people involved was a mall employee tasked with keeping an eye on the prizes in the claw machine. So he would occasionally put cash and other valuables in certain prizes to keep people coming back so they could win other prizes. Ones that had tiny tracking devices that were concealed inside so the group could track the movements of various people.
It wasn’t long before the group confessed to being responsible for the home invasion gone wrong. It also came out that they had followed Melanie and Greg and had gone through their things. But since they had moved everything valuable out because they were having their home remodeled, there was nothing worth stealing. But had they not been at a hotel that night, there is no telling what might have happened to them.
The group was eventually convicted for the home invasion gone wrong and for other crimes that they were associated with. The claw machine was also removed from the mall and never replaced. As for Liz and myself, we wasted no time in throwing out the prizes we’d won from it.