Super 0

by Paulson, Daniel

  Shallower and shallower the water got, until Hazel could feel her body scrape against the soft sand. She hadn’t thought very far ahead because as soon as she reached the shoreline she realised that if she were to set foot ashore, she would surely collapse and suffocate. Her appetite was insatiable though. After all of her frantic swimming, she had built up a fierce hunger, if she didn’t eat soon she would surely collapse and die of hunger. She was helpless, damned if she went ashore, damned if she didn’t, a catch 22 situation, although it is likely that such a scenario was not in the minds of whomsoever coined the phrase, in this peculiar circumstance it could be deemed appropriate to call it a catch 23 situation for no other reason than there being 23 coconuts in a nearby tree and 23 fairy lights dotted around the cabin.

  Hazel swam a touch closer to the shore so that she could raise her head from the water in order to see while maintaining her mouth and nose beneath the surface. There was a banana tree almost touching the shore, bereft of bananas but with a bundle of them curing beside. Why there were bananas left in the open was for the gaunt gentleman to explain, Hazel was simply relieved that there was some form of sustenance within reach. She took one last deep breath and sprinted out of the water towards the bananas. Years of swimming had given Hazel the ability to hold her breath for considerably longer the average smoker, which is to say, enough to run out of the ocean for a distance of three metres and gather a bundle of bananas before making the return journey of three metres in order to be able to breathe again. Hazel gathered the bananas in her arm and stole towards the ocean just as the gaunt gentleman was leaving his residence. He swayed a great deal on his walk towards his boat, it was pretty clear that the gentleman had been drowning in his liquor. Hazel had no time to waste else she would be drowning in oxygen. She crashed back into the waves, causing the gaunt gentleman to question the sudden splurge in the water. The vodka told him that it was simply a fish, the whiskey said that it was a wild boar, the absinthe – arguably the most sensible of the bunch – whispered into the gaunt gentleman’s ear of an orang-utan attempting to set sail on an overturned umbrella, logic would have it – according to the absinthe – that because the gentleman had most certainly seen a banana or two, that it stands to reason that the subject holding said banana or two must be an ape of sorts, because nobody else carries bananas. While all of the liquors were arguing in the gaunt gentleman’s mind over what exactly they saw, the gaunt gentleman merely shrugged it off and boarded his boat.

  Hazel was back in deep water and treading the water merrily while guzzling down some soggy bananas. Despite the odd texture of the fruit, Hazel was beside herself with joy after each successive bite. It took a few bananas to truly master the technique of eating them underwater, the first two had lost most of their innards to the tide and small fish, after three bananas, Hazel had worked out how to fit the entire banana in her mouth without it floating away, a technique that her mother had learned in the process of making Hazel. Hazel was so contented by the runny bananas that she couldn’t hear the sound of the boat’s propellers kicking into life.

  The gaunt gentleman accelerated his vessel while sipping on a bottle of some such liquid that would’ve looked more in place at a nuclear facility. Whatever the fluid was, it sent the gentleman’s head spinning, he pushed harder on the accelerator and rotated the wheel towards the open ocean. There was a small bump on his journey, the same kind of bump caused by a little aggressive wave, only this bump left a trail of red in its wake and a few banana peels to float to the surface.

  KAAN

  Let’s be honest, puppeteering is not widely considered to be cool. Once upon a time it probably was in vogue, with people travelling from village to village to see the latest puppet master at work, with the puppeteers themselves living nomadic rock star lives touring from place to place and performing their narratives to eager audiences. Nowadays, puppeteering has transcended the physical and tangible realms and entered the digital age. But there are still those who cling to the physical charm of puppets.

  Computer animation was something that Kaan had dabbled in, he enjoyed modelling the characters but then soon learned that he had no idea how to animate the damn things. He’d seen the computer revolution coming and jumped on the band wagon out of fear that his profession as a puppeteer would diminish as a result. It did diminish, and continued to do so year on year, but there were still a few bastions of the traditional art of puppeteering that kept the fire burning. It had become such a niche market that puppet masters were now able to charge more for their services as it was considered more of a craft than a dime a dozen VFX artists working on the next CGi blockbuster. And so Kaan was able to carve out a living doing what he loved and continuing his hereditary lineage of puppeteering.

  Kaan’s grandfather had invented a new kind of marionette rod (the bit with all of the strings attached) currently in use to that day. Kaan’s father hadn’t capitalised on the success of his father before him and decided to kick back on the proceeds from his father’s innovation and then live in relative squalor as a shadow puppeteer, the lowest form of puppeteering. Nonetheless, he was widely regarded as the best shadow puppet master in the province for a brief spell. Kaan was standing on the shoulders of giants, he felt as though he had to maintain the prestigious line and send his heritage soaring to new heights in the puppeteering world. This notion of legacy was what drove Kaan to succeed and leave his mark on the puppeteering world as his father and his father did before him, this is why he was in a constant state of devising new innovations for the puppets and their steering mechanisms. Despite many years dedicated to innovation, Kaan hadn’t created anything that was ample enough to be shown to the cut throat world of puppets. It had to be perfect. It had to be new. It had to be game-changing. It hadn’t come to him yet.

  Jasmine was a very supportive girlfriend, she was after all one of the last known puppet groupies and so fully understood and accepted Kaan’s craft. She had first seen him when Kaan was on a primary school tour with his child-friendly show about a princess and a dragon, Jasmine was the teacher who organised this little event at her school. She then followed Kaan’s career with great interest, ending up at a less than child-friendly establishment watching a puppet show involving puppets doing unspeakable things to each other. This was during the dark times when puppets were seen as a dying art form and weren’t quite in the sweet spot of niche nostalgia. During this uncertain time, many puppet masters were forced to create new shows for a bizarre sub-sect of fetish folk. Such shows were too sordid for the likes of regular people and required additional strings to control certain regions of the male anatomy, the strings attached to the female puppets were equally as complicated and often incorporated arrays of levers, pulleys and the occasional squirt gun. When Jasmine saw Kaan’s first show, she was struck by the cuteness of it all and discerned that the master behind it must be a sweet and gentle soul, when she saw the second show she saw a whole new side to Kaan that made her feel a torrent of much raunchier emotions. That was three years ago to the day, give or take a couple hours and a handful of minutes, and the pair had moved in and lived a relatively peaceful and quaint habitual existence together since.

  “Honey, our show is on. Come watch with me” Jasmine called out to her boyfriend who was tinkering away with Josephine and Bruce.

  “Just a sec, dear. Bruce gave Josephine quite the battering last night, his ding-a-ling is having trouble standing to attention”

  “When will that Bruce learn?! Maybe tonight you could give me a personal demonstration of how he did it” It must’ve been the thought of two puppets engaged in a sexual act that tuned Jasmine on so, Kaan was never turned on by such things. He saw puppets as tools, therefore Bruce’s ding-a-ling was merely an extension of said tool and didn’t warrant any feelings of sexual desire. Josephine’s female equivalent also didn’t awaken any feelings of lust within Kaan, however, it wasn’t likely to awaken any such feelings in anyone after the abuse it had received from Bruce’s male e
quivalent. The squirt gun needed refilling for sure. Kaan had reattached and strengthened the sinew connecting the appendage to the marionette rod and had threaded the sinew inside the appendage and out of the, how to say, human sewage outlet. It was a wonder how Kaan hadn’t thought of such idea beforehand given the amount of stress that certain appendage was under most nights.

  To clarify, both Bruce and Josephine were indeed puppets. The main stars of the raunchy show that Kaan put on several nights a week. If one were to go on certain adult sites, the kinds that have puppets as a category, then one would be inundated with images of Bruce and Josephine. Bruce with his masculine physique and square jaw and Josephine with her long hair flowing out of all manner of places. But these were not the only puppets Kaan had in his collection. There were several males and females of varying dimensions, each to be used for certain re-enactments. The only reason Bruce and Josephine were as celebrated as they were was that they were the most versatile and could easily slot together in an array of poses. That being said, each puppet was a specialist at a certain act and each puppet frequently doubled up and performed the more family friendly shows. During the day, Josephine could be playing the part of the damsel in distress and during the night she could be playing the part of a dominatrix causing distress.

  The show Kaan eventually sat down to watch with his girlfriend wasn’t anything particularly ground-breaking, it was a show about a group of young people being forced to interact with similarly young people on a holiday resort specifically designed to instil feelings of lust in the competitors. Kaan didn’t openly admit to enjoying the show, but found it to be a useful ethnographic study which could be used as research for his more sordid puppet narratives. Indeed, many of his more recent shows had infused elements from the TV show into their plots. Once it was over, the couple decided to test out a new narrative that Jasmine was working on in their bedroom.

  After Kaan had given a thorough re-enactment of Bruce’s adventures with Josephine, Jasmine had fallen asleep from exhaustion leaving Kaan awake on his back with nothing but his thoughts and a somewhat sore area between his lower limbs. The romp had given Kaan food for thought regarding a new innovation on the marionette rod. When the thought first struck him he was in the middle of his re-enactment and so was struggling to maintain certain momentums in lieu of this brainwave engulfing his thoughts. Now that the strenuous activity was complete, the thought returned to the forefront of Kaan’s mind. The thoughts raced around inside Kaan in a similar fashion to early 2000’s super hero movie opening credits. There were flashes of blueprints, sketches and the finished product all vying for his attention, Kaan had to get into his small workshop and craft this innovation before the thoughts sent him insane.

  Once at his workbench, Kaan could organise his thoughts into a single linear stream. There was something about working on puppets that enabled Kaan to focus and block out all other distractions. He picked up Bruce and sat him on the bench while severing the strings attaching him to the steering rod. The last string was cut sending Bruce slumping over. There were similar puppets to Bruce in Kaan’s collection so he wasn’t concerned about using one of his star puppets. Besides the narratives he had coming up required the introduction of a new male puppet to give Josephine a jolly good seeing to. This puppets name would be Samuel, who was gazing out from his box in eager anticipation for his rendezvous with Josephine.

  Kaan turned the rod over in his hand, examining every minute detail, his thoughts were falling into place and forming a logical sequence of events that would ultimately lead to the greatest innovation in marionette puppeteering since the days when people actually cared about that kind of thing (centuries ago). Kaan worked long into the night sketching designs and promptly scrunching them up into little balls that would inevitably hit the rim of the trash bin and fall on the floor. When a new thought entered Kaan’s mind, he would close his eyes and place his hands above Bruce, imagining he was controlling the puppet with the new as-yet-invented rod design.

  Kaan had reached a mental impasse, he couldn’t figure out the next step in the process. Perhaps he was tired, or perhaps he was simply out of ideas. Regardless, he closed his eyes and placed his hand above Bruce. He went through the motions of the show in his mind while performing them with his hand. Bruce sat upright, he pushed himself onto his feet via his hands and arms and was stood upright. When Kaan twitched his index finger, Bruce raised his arm. When Kaan twitched his ring finger, Bruce raised his other arm. When Kaan twitched his little finger, Bruce raised his…

  Alas, Kaan couldn’t overcome this mental barrier and so relaxed his hand and his mind. The sound of Bruce clattering back down onto the workbench didn’t register in Kaan’s ears as he was too tired and exhausted to put two and two together, he could barely put one and one together.

  Jasmine had already left the apartment by the time Kaan had woken up, primary school teachers do have to wake up early unfortunately, despite neither teacher nor pupil wanting to do so. Kaan’s profession predominantly started in the evening and on some occasions lasted well into the night. Today, Kaan had no shows booked and so would’ve been content to mope around the apartment all day, however, the innovative idea lingered in his mind throughout the night. It was possible that he even dreamt of the idea during his sleep, but wasn’t able to remember it upon waking up. Pesky dreams, causing such vivid visuals and emotions and then dissipating in an instant. The elusive dream was enough to incite Kaan to go back to the workbench and realise this innovation once and for all.

  He examined the previous night’s lucid scrawls in an attempt to piece together where he had left off in his fatigued state. Bruce remained slumped on the bench beside him, silently watching the room with his rear end proudly on display. Kaan closed his eyes and placed his hand over Bruce once more to visualise the mechanisms needed to create movement. Bruce sat upright. Kaan made the puppet dance with his variety of finger movements, but he was oblivious to the display as his eyes were clenched shut straining to visualise the mechanism. When Kaan reopened his eyes, he saw in his peripheral vision, Bruce clatter back to a slumping position. He turned sharply to face the puppet but it was motionless on the bench. A trick of the mind, he thought as he resumed his inventing. Kaan had worked on the invention all morning and so took a small break for lunch. After a brief sandwich break, Kaan continued with his invention.

  Getting the strings to pull the limbs accordingly from within the hollow puppet itself was proving to be somewhat difficult, Kaan knew that the innovation involved minimal amounts of strings and preferably none at all. If only he could figure out the means to do this. His hand idly hovered above Bruce who promptly sat bolt upright again. This time, Kaan’s eyes weren’t closed. He saw in his peripheral vision that Bruce had moved and when he turned to face the puppet he discovered that it had indeed sat upright, seemingly from its own volition. Kaan’s hand was still placed above the puppet but when he removed the hand, he saw the puppet clatter back down onto the bench once more. In shock, Kaan raced out of the room to fetch his camera.

  Kaan was adamant that he saw the puppet move and was equally adamant that he had nothing to do with it. He set up his camera on a tripod in front of Bruce and set it to record in case of any further movements. Hours he waited for the little puppet to move, even a little spasm would’ve been sufficient but nothing happened and Kaan simply left the camera recording and retired into the living room. Jasmine had returned from a long day at work and the pair sat down to enjoy their favourite show. The camera remained on, Bruce remained motionless.

  Upon a review of the footage the following morning, there was nothing unusual therein, as a matter of fact, Kaan had forgotten that he set up the camera and had left it on longer than he had anticipated. By the time he looked at the footage, the camera had long since run out of battery. Kaan concluded that he must have been seeing things, and hearing things for that matter, and so set about continuing his task of creating the next big thing in puppeteering, all the while thi
nking about how ridiculous it was to set up a camera in the first place. His hours spent tinkering had finally produced something vaguely resembling an innovation in the field of puppeteering, and because most, if not all, people are experts in said field it would be fruitless to go into great detail about the device in question for fear of patronising the majority. For the slim minority of people that are not puppeteering aficionados, the device fit like a glove, because it was a glove, with many strings dangling from it and smelled an awful lot like turnip. The next and most crucial step in the process was to attach said strings to Bruce and then with a pinch of the fingers make the puppet come to life. Kaan spent the next hour carefully threading the strings through the joints within the puppet and locking them in place. When all strings were seemingly attached, Kaan placed the glove on his hand and began testing the movements. It all seemed to go smoothly, with Kaan making Bruce dance and sway with the most delicate of motions. It was a success. Until one of the strings snapped. Kaan didn’t notice the break at all as the puppet was enacting the movements with precision regardless. Indeed, Kaan didn’t notice until after he had taken the glove off and inspected the mechanisms. It must’ve broken the minute he decided to stop, he thought, he had put the glove down somewhat aggressively after all and the strings weren’t of the highest quality for the prototype, a point he made note to improve upon with the next iteration.