Puppet

by Ed Kightlinger

  “He had a flat nose. His lips were surprisingly gorged, voluptuous, almost sexy-like. They reminded me of the painted lips of a movie star who had gone overboard while applying his bright red lipstick. When Puppet addressed me, I did not see his lips move. He reminded me of that scary puppet, Howdy Doody, that appeared many years ago in black and white TV shows. Except Howdy Doody had red hair, freckles, and blue eyes. Howdy Doody’s wooden lips moved up and down while Puppet’s lips did not move at all. At least I didn’t think so at the time. Maybe I was too mesmerized by his strange, puppety features to notice if his lips moved.

  “He asked me if I would like a coil of twine. I replied, ‘Sure, why not?’ He appeared to smile, and then he reached into his overcoat and pulled out a small coil of twine. The coil is about the size of a baseball in circumference. I weighed it in my hand when he handed it to me. It was very light.

  “I did not want to accept the twine at first, but for some strange reason, I felt compelled to oblige him. I did not want to hurt his feelings. Then I was knocked for six when he said, ‘Here you go, Colette. Keep this coil of twine with you at all times. It will bring you luck and make all of your dreams come true, especially when you play your music.’ How he knew my name, I do not know. It was freaky, to be honest with you. After all, I am the newest kid on the block. I arrived with my family from Texas a week ago this past Tuesday. Then Puppet turned away, reached into his overcoat and pulled out two or three coils of twine that he offered to a group of boys.’”

  Jessica Wycheck asked Colette if she still had the coil of twine or if she had discarded it.

  “Aye, I still have it and why not? Even though Puppet was scary at first, I sort of like the coil of twine. Puppet seems less scary to me the more I think about him. I thought of him all day long while I was in school, especially during boring calculus. I even pulled the coil out of my backpack in calculus to examine it. Why? I do not know.

  “As far as the coil of twine is concerned, it is not dangerous or anything special. I could not hang myself with it or do something equally creepy. There is not enough of it. What is more, it is not very strong. It is just your everyday twine, hemp I think.

  “Then again, and I do not know how to explain it, the coil of twine seems magical. I have this weird feeling I want to dust off my hammered dulcimer and start practicing again. It is almost like I can hear the notes hammering in my head. What is even weirder, I can envision songs I haven’t even played.”

  Colette reached into her backpack, pulled out the coil of twine, and then she said, “See? It is not all that scary. It is your typical coil of twine.”

  When Jessica asked to hold the coil of twine, Colette’s demeanor suddenly changed. With her brown eyes glaring menacingly, she bellowed, “Nay! No one touches it except for me!” She stuffed the coil of twine into her backpack and hastily walked toward the parking lot.

  After Colette departed, Jessica noticed dozens of students exiting Claymore High School that were carrying coils of twine in their hands. None of the other students consented for an interview.

  We return to the details of Puppet’s arrest and incarceration.

  According to Buford County Jail officials, Puppet was trailing twine behind him when the police arrested him. The ends of the twine were tethered to his head, shoulders, back, forearms, hands, even his legs, and feet. A physician had to remove the twine before committing Puppet to his holding cell. Puppet had glued the twine onto his skin.

  Puppet was to be arraigned this coming Tuesday before Buford County Chief Judge, the Honorable Shirley Sandust. However, Puppet had escaped sometime during the night on Friday the 13th.

  According to Officer McCaffrey, the jailhouse guard on duty that evening, everything seemed routine when he assumed his watch at eleven o’clock. Fifteen minutes after his watch began he responded to a call over the phone of a minor car accident on Richland Avenue. The caller did not identify himself. When Officer McCaffrey arrived on the scene, there was no one in sight, and there was no sign of an accident. He returned to the jailhouse at 11:52 pm.

  When at 12:08 am, he peered into Puppet’s cell during the midnight bed check of the three holding cells, he did not see Puppet in his cell. He immediately called for assistance. He did not enter the cell. Safety protocol dictates an officer cannot go into a prisoner’s cell alone.

  Thinking Puppet had hung himself, due to the many strands of twine dangling from the ceiling in his cell, Officer McCaffery called paramedics to the jailhouse. Upon entering Puppet’s cell, Officer McCaffery, his superintendent, Deputy Sheriff Rich Jones, and two paramedics, could find no trace of Puppet. He had disappeared into thin air. The many strands of twine glued to the ceiling were even more bizarre than Puppet’s disappearance from a locked cell. According to one of the paramedics we interviewed, who wishes to remain anonymous, he had never seen anything like it in his twenty years on the force. Repeated attempts to confirm the strange phenomenon with Buford County officials have gone unanswered.

  Puppet left behind a handwritten note that read, “It is time. It is time for me to avenge your wrongdoings. [Signed] Reginald P. pUPA.”

  The Buford County Sheriff’s Department has issued a state-wide, all-points bulletin for Puppet’s apprehension. The sheriff’s department does not consider Puppet dangerous. Because Puppet had made a subtle threat in his note found in his prison cell, the public should not approach him. Our readers are advised to dial 911 if they have any knowledge of Puppet’s escape from jail or his whereabouts. Local authorities are considering a reward for Puppet’s recapture.

  We will update this article when we receive more information.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MY NEIGHBORHOOD IS GONE!

  “There’s nothing better than a puppet to give you the heebie-jeebies!”

  Part I: The Nightmare Begins

  The mocking murmurs of scraping noises on the wooden floor are the first things she detects. They annoy her sense of hearing. In reply, tingly, cold shivers suddenly lay siege to her torso causing the hairs on the nape of her neck to wake up. The shivers produce convulsive goose bumps that rudely race to shroud her shoulders. Then they move at a snail's pace onto her forearms. At the same time, they slowly slide along her spine until they cover her legs with prickly, needlestick sensations. She is shivering from head to toe almost immediately. She instinctively pulls the covers up to her neck – for she knows what is about to happen.

  She is about to enter Limbo Land. Limbo Land is a strange place where human beings find themselves when they are trapped between still asleep and fully awake.

  She urges her eyes to open. They refuse to budge. She starts to gasp as she struggles for breath after breath. Her thunderously loud, booming heartbeats pound more rapidly. Before long she is hyperventilating. Her subconscious mind begins to panic. She has visions of her heart exploding from within her chest into a million fleshy pieces. She feels as if she is going to die in her sleep without so much as a whimper. What a horrible way to go!

  All of a sudden, the murmuring of scraping noises on the wooden floor ceases. Her eyes snap open! She sees something at the foot of her bed that causes her skin to crawl!

  Five separate sets of tiny, skeletonic fingertips gradually come into view as they seize the edge of the blanket. The elfin-looking fingertips spiritedly start to haul themselves onto the bed. Then the whole fingers slowly come into view. Next, the skeletonic form of five impish, sylphlike hands that are lacking thumbs follow the reaching fingers.

  The five, four-digit hands are hideously scarred with bluish veins and pus-filled, popping pimples that squirt green excretions onto her white fleece blanket! The five hands, like their twenty fingers, and their fingers’ fingertips that are missing fingernails, are made of translucent plastic! What is worse, there are no arms attached to the hands!

  The ugly, plastic hands nauseatingly creak and groan as they begin to swarm frantically at the foot of her bed. They remind her of starving, nocturnal cockroaches greedily p
reying on a kitchen counter!

  When suddenly, the five hands abruptly stop moving. Their twenty fingertips begin to thump the blanket slowly with the rat-a-tat-tat of an impatient beating drum. It is as if the grotesque hands, along with their twenty exasperated, drumming fingers, are contemplating, pondering – trying to reach a consensus of what they should do next! After a few moments, they seem to decide.

  They abruptly reach to grab her pus-splotched blanket and begin to tug slowly!

  She wants to yank at the blanket, to keep it from slipping from below her chin, but she cannot. Her hands refuse to move!

  She wants to scream, but she cannot. Her vocal cords will not communicate!

  She wants to wake up, but she cannot!

  Limbo Land, the strange place between still asleep and fully awake, has her in its clutches, and it won’t let go!

  All she can do is stare wide-eyed as the twenty fingers tug at the blanket frantically. All the while, the pus-filled, popping pimples squirt pus everywhere!

  The blanket gradually creeps from her neck to her chest. Then it sneaks to her waist. Before long it slides to her mid-thigh until it quickly tiptoes from her feet to fall silently onto the floor.

  Without warning, the intense glare of a rushing blast of sunshine blackens her eyelids causing them to fall apart! She urgently needs to shield her unblinking, lidless eyes. She cannot. Her hands refuse to move!

  Her lips begin to blister and crack from the sizzling sun scorching her face. A few seconds later, she can feel the fried, crisp skin of her lips as it slowly slides onto her chin. Next, what remains of her voluptuous lips gradually slips over the edge of her chin and slides along the Hyoid bone and Thyroid and Cricoid cartilages. It finally comes to rest in a small pile of crumbs in the Jugular notch, the hollow of her neck. The suffering is unbearable! Just the thought of lidless eyes and lipless lips is enough to drive her out of her mind!

  She tries to cry out because of the mental pain she is experiencing. But she cannot.

  Limbo Land – the place between still asleep and fully awake will not let her!

  At that moment, surprisingly, without her experiencing any pain, her long, light brown hair is yanked from her head by an unseen force, bit by bit, one hair follicle at a time! She watches horrified as strands of her beautiful, silky brown hair, that now bears a resemblance to frayed strands of puppety twine, are heartlessly chucked corner to corner of her bedroom. A few of the strands fall onto her chest. Her heart winces with mind-boggling despair as she stares at them miserably. Then suddenly, as a windless breeze fills the room, she feels the betraying coldness of her hairless, bald head! She wants to scream, but she cannot.

  She is between still asleep and fully awake – in the throes of Limbo Land. It won’t let her go!

  All of a sudden, one of the gruesome hands hurdles onto her lower leg. It slowly begins to crawl finger after finger lengthwise on her thigh. It is dragging strands of puppety twine behind it as it crawls. She cannot help but notice that the frayed strands of twine resemble what used to be silky strands of her gorgeously stunning, long hair!

  After a few seconds, the gross hand sluggishly scuttles across her belly and then onto her chest. Its progress is painfully slow. It must stop every so often to reach behind and untangle strands of the frayed twine that have snagged on her toes.

  The revolting hand gradually raises itself onto its four fingers, and then it abruptly leaps from her chest onto her throat. She fully expects its bony fingers will reach around her throat to choke her. Thank heavens they do not! Instead, they do something almost as depraved! They reach up and jab their four pointy fingernails into her skin! They begin to score her face viciously.

  She thinks that blood will soon ooze from the many gashes on her face. Oddly, she does not feel the betraying sign of blood, nor does she feel pain! It is like her body lacks its essential body fluid and its vital sense of touch! She tries to scream. But no sound escapes from her lipless lips!

  The unforgiving, uncompromising, unyielding midpoint of Limbo Land refuses to let her go!

  She stares at the foot of the bed. What she sees horrifies her. The sixteen long-limbed fingers are removing the skin from her toes! Like the hand that had crawled onto her face, and is now doing unknowns with her hairless, bald head, the hands are trailing frayed strands of twine. The fingers working at the foot of the bed begin to peel back the skin from her feet and ankles. Surprisingly, and thankfully, she senses no pain. All the same, the mental torment is overwhelming!

  She watches with horror as her toenails are yanked from her toes and tossed indifferently onto the floor! Next, the busy fingers slowly start to work their way up her legs, onto her waist, her chest, across her arms and hands, and finally to her neck.

  She stares with disbelief at her body. A shiny, translucent substance that resembles plastic covers her entire form!

  Suddenly, as quickly as they had appeared, the alien-like hands disappear. One second they were swarming over her entire body, and the next second – poof! They had vanished!

  It is at that very moment she hears street noises. The sounds are very near like they are occurring inside her bedroom, happening beside her bed.

  She listens carefully to the sounds. They are familiar, heaven-sent sounds. The sensation of her lips smiling appears in her mind. However, she knows she cannot move her lipless lips to beam a smileless smile. All she can do is listen.

  She remains trapped in Limbo Land between still asleep and fully awake!

  Cars are zipping by on the avenue, some honking a racket, others revving their engines at the stop signs as they await passing traffic. She cannot tell if the traffic sounds are from Grider Street or from Marigold Avenue, or, for that matter, from the busiest of the three thoroughfares, Leroy Avenue. All sounds sound alike when you live on the second floor of a three-story, turn-of-the-century flat that is poorly insulated and anything but soundproof. Besides, the house is less than one hundred feet from a six-way, three-thoroughfare intersection. Street noises are an all day and all night occurrence.

  At this instant, she can hear passersby on the sidewalk up the street. Some are whispering. Others are engaged in loud, animated conversations. She suspects they may be churchgoers. After all, it is Sunday morning, so hearing many voices along the avenue makes perfect sense. Then again, the way the day has begun, with the enduring between still asleep and wide awake nightmare, she cannot be positive.

  The telltale “tap, tap, tipity-taps” of the dance studio on the ground floor begin to flood through the floorboards. The studio is open for business early on the weekends, usually around eight o’clock in the morning, and after school on weekdays. She grimaces because she knows her father will be angry.

  Her parents’ bedroom is located just above the studio. Her father works nights, so the muffled, awfully annoying tap, tap, tipity-taps make it difficult for him to sleep.

  In spite of this, when you are renting a three-bedroom flat for sixty-five dollars a month, that includes utilities, there is not much you can do about the annoying noises – either from below the creaking floorboards or from the loud, six-way intersection outside.

  She suddenly hears the nearby shouts of neighborhood kids playing in their backyards and up the sidewalk. She recognizes the telltale bounces of Nelson’s basketball dribbling on the pavement, hammering the backboard, and Nelson’s occasional cries of “Yes!” His jubilant cries are intermixed with groans accompanied by, “Dang, I missed again!” along with whispered, vulgar expletives.

  Nelson is her next-door neighbor, as obnoxious as the day is long. She has to admit, his singsong calls in a painful, monotonous way, for her to come out to play, are less frequent now than when he was younger. After all, Nelson is fifteen years old just like her. Then again, every once in a while he likes to get under her skin when he calls up to her window.

  “Oh, Chloe, oh, Chloe, can you come out to play? Maybe strikeout today or perhaps a bit of skating. What do you say?”

&
nbsp; Chloe notices someone is skating back and forth on the sidewalk. She reckons it most likely is James, the hard rubber wheels of his inline skates rhythmically careening over the sidewalk’s many cracks. James is the wannabe champion inline skater of the Claymore High School speed skating team. He longs to attend a prestige college that specializes in physical therapy curricula. Then again, he may move to Hawaii and attend a college that specializes in flight nurse training.

  James’ short-term goal is to join the Navy, to see the world as his father, uncle, and grandfather did. Ah, for the life of a sailor! She doesn’t know James well, and she doubts she ever will. He is a senior while she is nothing more than a lowly freshman.

  She listens intently to the sounds of James’ inline skates. She cannot do anything else for the reason that Limbo Land is hanging onto her subconsciousness.

  “Zip – bounce – scrape – zip. Zip – bounce – scrape – zip.”

  The sounds repeat over and over until they fade into the distance. After James turns around in a half-circle to retrace his course, the sounds repeat themselves more loudly as they grow ever closer.

  At this point, she can hear her other neighbor, the gorgeously lovely and multi-talented actress and model, Diana Jane, as she recites her lines. Diana Jane is practicing her lines for the upcoming Claymore High School play, Peter Pan. Scenes for the school’s rendition of the performance come from the novel by J. M. Barrie. Diana Jane is the best actress in the Claymore High School Drama Club, so her acting as the primary character, Peter Pan, comes as no surprise. By the loud cries of Diana Jane’s recited lines, she can tell that her best friend is amid a nasty, duel to the end, sword fight with none other than Captain Hook.

  She suddenly is aware of the tolling of the Holy Mary Methodist church bell from across the street. She listens carefully to the tolling of the bell.