I would suggest the victim eventually giving in to despair. Perhaps the hallucinatory voice of the jack-in-the-box urges him to give up and simply allow himself to die. That gives you room to either end it on a depressing downer-note, or having a denouement in which the lock is broken open and the child, pale, shaken, and traumatized, is rescued from his ersatz prison.
This is a good, effective play of events! Though... for some reason the idea of a younger child accidentally trapping his brother in a box and just wandering off without realizing the situation still unsettles me more LOL. Like they were playing hide and seek or something and the latch got stuck as you said, the younger boy finds him but then gets distracted again and walks off. I'm sure your idea would work out better though.
The jack in the box is a little, eh. Cause the toy box I was talking about was a small thing. I was pretty cramped in there. So we had to take all the toys out.
Well that just depends on what kind of direction you want to take it. I tend to like creepy carni type of things lol. Just to have some freaky toy staring at you in this dark box contraption. As a child your mind could play tricks on you. Plus, if he is stuck in this box... what is happening while he's in there? If there aren't things for him to 'trip out on', is he just going to be kind of losing his mind? Talking to himself?
I guess they could forget one toy. How about a toy that makes a lot of noise? Like an electronic dog that way no one can hear his screaming and cries for help. And the mother can be cooking make loud noises. And his brother could be watching the television really loud. All that noise can get to someone in a cramped toy box.
I think you'd be better off with a thick box and a remote room. The playroom can be up in the attic or something, somewhere out of the way. Occam's Razor and all that. As for the box being too small, well, just because it happened that way to you doesn't mean it always has to happen that way. I fell into my own toybox when I was very small, and it was a great big bin that was sort of built into the wall. (A bit like an old coal bin, if you've ever seen one.) I could slide the door closed with me and all of my toys still inside. It was pretty knobbly, though.
What great mothering though? A toy box in the attic! What the heck was his mother thinking? Don't you think people will place blame on the mother if I do that? I still want the latch to be broken.
I agree with Scattercat that it should just be a thick box somewhere that he just can't be heard. Too muffled. The quietness of it adds to the unsettling nature. As far as the toy goes, I would personally still stick to something rather frightening like a Jack-in-the-Box or a clown puppet like Scat suggested. An electronic dog just wouldn't scare me to be honest if I were the one trapped.
Hey, don't dis the dog. Come on blinking lights in the dark, after a while that thing is going to freakin annoy you or scare the crud out of you. But I don't want to go with generic cliches a jack in the box or a clown. Those things already scare people. Why don't I use a toy that people haven't seen in a horror and make it scary.
That would be a good idea. But now you just have to think of something that is frightening that isn't one of those things lol. I really wouldn't go with the electric toy dog though. It would get annoying yes but I just can't see it being creepy or anything like that. Maybe just your average teddy-bear? And in the dark its face becomes distorted and evil looking or something. -shrug-
A toy car. Cold. Metal. What's going on behind that darkened plastic windshield? It clicks and ratchets, as though it has some sort of complex mechanism inside that is broken now. Sometimes I find it in places that I never took it. Strange places, like in the freezer, or behind the curtain in the shower.
Or a Barbie doll, ken doll. Or maybe a stuffed snake. You know those teddy bear snakes with stuffing in them.
I had a rubber snake when I was young. Three feet or so. It was a great favorite; I took it everywhere, even in the bathtub. I chewed the tail when I was nervous or bored. The thing lost about six inches over time. Still, snakes are scary in their own right. You want something innocuous that becomes frightening because you make it so.
I use to have this talking Barbie dentist. She would say things like brush your teeth, and isn't fun to have oral hygiene. Then water was spilled on her and she made this really demonic creaky noises. And she would go off on her own sometimes. Water is damaging to toys. See I think it should be a happy toy. What kind of mind f that would be? A toy that looked happy as you struggle for your life. Just one giant grin as you suffocated and struggled.
My toy soldier. He has articulated joints. You can stand him and pose him. He came with a bunch of little plastic weapons, but the only one he has left is his knife. He can hold it in his hand, and it's as long as his forearm. I cut his mouth open once so he could hold it in his teeth, too, but it didn't work, and now he has this weird smile all the time. He's missing one foot now; he can't stand up, and he has to crawl everywhere. With his little plastic knife in his teeth.
Noooo not the barbie LOL. Teddybears are happy? And cute. And not supposed to mess with your mind. -shifty eyes- Or maybe it could be like some creepy looking homemade doll with a deranged happy face. xD EDIT: WAIT I GOT IT. Make it a Darth Vader toy. Hahaha jk.
I have the perfect ending. After being in the box and being tortured by the one happy toy. His mother finds him traumatized. And you know what she does. She gives him his favorite teddy bear to calm him down. And as he passes out he sees the teddy bear wink and give him a devil's grin. So I can't have a teddy bear torture him in the toy box. It needs to be another toy.
A spinning top. It's got painted circles on it. I used to pretend that I was a hypnotist, and I would spin the top round and round and mutter magic words. Then, one time, I actually did fall asleep while I was watching the top spin. I don't do that anymore. The colors are all faded - it's only paint on wood - but in the dark, sometimes, it looks like they're glowing. A big circle, a little circle, and a round dot in the middle, like a wooden eye.
LOL okay I like the teddybear ending. The spinning top is a neat idea. Though something with a 'face' would frighten me more. Maybe one of those dolls that look like babies? Or just a head of something? xD A wind up doll that plays one of those creepy tunes? OR like a demented Elmo or something hahaha.
You know those old refrigerators? The kind that if it closed and you were on the inside you could not open it? If a boy was playing around in junk yard, and fell into one of those, and as it happens the door closes on him. There is no way for him to get out. What if he is playing in the snow, avalanche, he is trapped in snow. A read half way through a novel about that very thing. It was intense. It was mostly his thoughts, and man it was good. I wish I could remember the name of it. He builds a fort in one of the larger cracks in the ground. Earthquake, and he is trapped in dirt. A small hole, he doesn't know how much air is left. He needs to find a way out.
