Page 32 of Little Puppet

And I don’t know what the fuck to do with her now.

I waketo the smell of food, and panic washes through me.

When had I fallen asleep?

Swinging my feet out of Grace’s bed, I nearly trip over myself as I descend the steps beside it.

She’s in the kitchen, her few strings still attached to her back and anchored above her, stirring butter into rice.

A timer goes off, and she grabs a pot holder and pulls a pan of chicken out, testing to see if it’s done.

I stand in the kitchen, gobsmacked at what I’m witnessing. It’s as if she belongs, and I don’t know if I like it.

Unease spreads through me like a fucking cancer.

I don’t know if she’s trying to fuck with me intentionally or if she’s simply trying to survive.

She turns, gasping as she sees me standing in the kitchen archway.

“God, you scared me.” She grasps her chest.

The fear feeds my soul, and I grin and step closer.

“I found your phone,” she says, and panic again grips firmly onto my heart. Is that what this is? She’s got the cops on their way, and this is her farewell meal?

“I hope you aren’t mad, but my sense of time in this place is all fucked up. I realized it’s Christmas Eve, and I wanted a nice meal.”

My brows knit tightly together on my forehead, and I loom over her as her hand touches my chest softly.

“Why? Have you poisoned it?” I ask her, fully serious and waiting for a reply.

Her face shows genuine shock. “What? No.”

“Then what are your intentions, then? Hm? Why thefuck do you keep being so nice to me? I don’t like it, Grace.”

My admission and unhinged tone have panic laced in it, and I hate to break down like this in front of her.

“Well, I…” she swallows as I tip her chin back up as she tries to look down to the floor. “I don’t know. Honest, I don’t. I’m questioning my sanity with everything new you do to me that I enjoy. I’m questioning my mom’s loyalty and love because she hasn’t come for me. And I’m wondering who the fuck lives in this town that they won’t even help when they seem to know I’m here.”

“How do they know you’re here, puppet?”

“It was a ghost town on my way in, and you said one week a year, you take a girl into this house and do this to her before you kill her. The locals are in hiding, it would seem. So that girls like me are easy picking out in the open.”

“Riddled that all out yourself, did you?” I step into her, pressing her closer to the stove.

Her strings get stuck above as they try to move from one track pattern to another, and I reach above and yank them to right them.

She whimpers as they tug against her strings, and I grin.

“It’s just a theory,” she answers me.

It’s a damn good one, not that I’ll confirm a thing for her.

“You walk amongst them, and they have to know that. You never move on from Dunhaven. You always hunthere. They’re scared enough to go into hiding and turn the other cheek.”

“I’m a god to them, puppet—a mythical creature, hunting and feeding on the most magical day of the year. The question is, am I your god? Will you feed me?”

She swallows, her delicate, beautiful neck working over the lump building there as I’ve caged her into the hot stove with my body.

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