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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/DomScribe on 2024-07-29 01:08:16+00:00.
“I believe you need to be a bit more realistic, son.” This was the general sentiment from my parents when I divulged my intention to pursue puppetry after high school. Their words, spoken with the indifferent cadence of well-meaning pragmatism, were meant to temper my expectations.
My fascination with puppetry had been a persistent fever ever since I watched a documentary on how ‘Jurassic Park’ was made. The idea of extracting something from the amorphous depths of imagination and sculpting it into tangible reality enthralled me. It was a mystic ritual, a delicate balance between creation and the uncanny, it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Despite my parents’ urging to pursue a “normal job,” I enrolled at CalArts, studying at the Cotsen Center for four years. My devotion bordered on the monomaniacal; I worked my ass off so I could prove to my professors that I had talent worth investing in.
Upon graduation, I found myself inundated with offers, but I have never wanted to be a cog in someone else’s machine, so my goal was to open my own workshop and be my own boss.
Now, I’m lucky enough to have been born into a privileged family. So, when I was able to convince my father of my potential within “that dummy stuff” as he so lovingly referred to it, in college, he loaned me enough money to set up shop in Bakersfield just a year and a half after graduation.
For the next year, I toiled like a possessed man. I assembled a cadre of puppeteers and effects artisans, leveraging every tenuous connection I made in college for project opportunities. My existence became a ceaseless blur of creative frenzy, much to the dismay of Anna, my high school sweetheart who had become the only thing in my life that could rival puppetry when it came to my love.
The influx of work initially felt like a fever dream. Though I never ascended to prominence in the special effects world, we contributed to a modestly budgeted monster film that screened in 500 theaters and also secured contracts with major theme parks. Private commissions further sustained us, and for a span of five years, I basked in a fragile semblance of success.
But all good things have to come to an end I suppose. A year and a half ago, Anna perished in a car accident on her way to visit her parents in Washington. 2023 in general was hell for the business. We only had maybe three projects that netted us over ten grand in profit, and a year like that can kill your shop, and unfortunately for me, it did.
I have been dragging my feet to close up the shop, trying to delay the inevitable disintegration of my world. In mid-April, I let my employees go, providing them with the best severance packages I could muster. For the last three months, I worked in a near-desolate space, finishing one final commission, which I shipped two weeks ago.
You can imagine the weight of the past two years. Everything I have built is set to dissolve into a nebulous cloud of the past. Daily, I exist in a state of perpetual malaise, feeling like a complete and utter failure.
As if my fractured state of mind wasn’t enough, a couple of months ago, the nightmare began. Twice a week, it visits me, lingering in my psyche for days, becoming an omnipresent specter in my life. The nightmare is always the same. I find myself standing in a clearing within an indistinct forest. Above me, two colossal hands hover, their immense size belying their dexterity. They descend upon me, seizing me with a grip that feels both real and inescapable. From the void, they produce a needle and thread. With meticulous precision, the hands pierce my flesh, threading the needle through me, encasing me in an endless, suffocating weave. The pain is excruciatingly real, each second a pulse of pure agony that shatters the usual numbness of dreams, leaving me screaming into wakefulness. Clearing out my workshop amid these visions has been a torment beyond words. Boxing up my life’s work alone has steeped me in misery and contempt, a bitter concoction that I sip daily.
Yet, neither the nightmares nor the loss of my shop compares to the terror I experienced four days ago.
Last Thursday night, I completed the agonizing task of boxing everything up. The final remnants were in the back office, the room where Anna and I had shared our last kiss before she took off for Washington. That space was a mausoleum of memories, each shadow steeped in sorrow. It took considerable effort to walk out of that room for a final time.
As I was leaving, already teetering on the edge of emotional collapse, the final box began slipping from my grip. I set it down on the front counter to readjust, and in that instant, it was like I was transported into a reality where I would know nothing but terror.
The overhead lights flickered erratically. The electricity was scheduled to be disconnected this month, so I assumed I was just witnessing that process. But once the lights dimmed to a sickly glow, the front doors exploded open with a force that cracked the glass, slamming into the walls.
Now, my shop is set up in a way that the whole front is one large area, with the back being segmented into my office, a bathroom, and the break room, so I was immediately forced to confront the unreality of the situation I had found myself in.
Two puppets “walked” through the front entrance. Well, when I say walking, I mean their feet grazed the ground as their legs made labored movements, mimicking forward motion. They were both supported by strings that disappeared high into the sky, but still stretched into the building as they entered.
They both stood around four feet in height, as they moved, their limbs flopped around a bit, but were far tighter than an inanimate object should be.
The first puppet was garbed as an old-timey gangster, complete with a zoot suit and a fedora tilted to obscure its eyes. The second resembled a tragic opera clown in the style of Pagliacci.
A nauseating metallic scent pervaded the air as they entered, as if a chalice of blood was being held beneath my nostrils.
The reality of what I was witnessing clashed violently with my rational mind. But I didn’t have time to debate the existence of what sat before me, as they shattered every preconceived notion I had of how our world is supposed to WORK.
The gangster puppet spoke first, it had the accent and all the vocal inflections of an old cartoon gangster. . “You Eric?” it asked, its mouth flapping incongruously with its words.
The sound seemed to be thrown from some celestial puppeteer from the sky above, not emanating from the puppet itself. My body, paralyzed by a blend of fear and disbelief, refused to respond.
The clown puppet then spoke, its voice a melancholy drone. “Look upon the hands of creation!” it intoned, raising a trembling hand to point at my own.
For a moment, I stood there, slack-jawed, trying to process this invasion of absurdity. The gangster puppet taunted me again,
“What, your mouth hinge broken? I’d think you’d know how to fix that!”
In a desperate bid for normalcy, I stammered, “H-How can I help you?” The question was absurd, but it was all I could muster to keep from crumbling.
The gangster puppet’s sneer grew more sinister. “Listen, we need to ask you some questions. If you try getting smart, I promise, you’ll be yanking splinters out of your soul for the rest of eternity.”
I felt my blood heat, as if my very essence was melting. “What do you want to know?” I managed to squeak out.
The clown puppet floated closer, the dim light accentuating the painted sorrow on its face, its black frown seemed to somehow droop lower.
“What does it all mean? Why are we here?”
The question felt like an invocation from some forgotten, eldritch tongue. It took root in my mind, growing into a monstrous puzzle I could scarcely begin to decipher.
“What?” I managed to stammer.
The gangster puppet flung its arm up in a grotesque parody of human exasperation.
“Oh Jesus, listen, we’re asking the questions here! Enough with the third degree!” it snarled.
The clown puppet’s voice, laden with a weary melancholy, contrasted sharply with the gangster’s fury. “Why do you create life, only to force it into servitude? Why can we not simply live?”
The gears in my brain began to turn, condensing such an absurd situation into a coherent question that I could answer.
“I don’t know why you’re here. I didn’t make you.”
The gangster puppet swayed ominously. “Your kind did, so answer the damn question!”
For the first time, I noticed that the wood of the puppets seemed almost alive, as if something sinister pulsed beneath its surface, crawling and breathing.
“Entertainment,” I croaked.
The clown puppet tilted its head in puzzlement. “Entertainment?”
Both puppets took a synchronized step forward, and panic began to creep into my veins.
“Puppets exist for human entertainment. That’s why you were created,” I blurted out, stumbling over my words in my haste.
The puppets paused, as if grappling with the finality of my answer.
“What happens when the entertainment ends?” the gangster puppet asked, its tone unexpectedly subdued.
“What do you mean?”
“When you walk off stage, when the cameras are off, when do we start living our own lives?” it pressed.
My mind swam, a dizzying nausea rising within me, bile threatening to spew forth onto my wooden interrogators.
“You don’t. You aren’t meant to. When you’re done, you’re done.”
The puppets turned their heads toward each other, en…
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