Page 6 of Little Puppet

“Don’t worry, puppet. When you come back to me, you’ll be whole again,” he says, but it sounds like he’s talking through water.

I open my mouth to reply, but the world goes fuzzy, and I close my eyes and lean into the feeling of heavy, unburdened sleep.

Nausea rolls in my stomach,and my mouth is dry. My lids are heavy, almost to the point that I can’t lift them.

“Come on, puppet. Fight it.”

His voice alerts me that all that happened before darkness swept in was real. I gasp, battling the heaviness to open my eyes and find him in the candlelit room.

“Help,” I rasp as pain shoots through my body.

Now, it’s not only my stomach that aches but my shoulders and arms.

Rolling your car into a ditch seems to leave a nasty hangover behind.

“I did help. You’ll see.”

His words don’t make sense, and nothing has made any sense in the last few hours.

“I don’t feel good,” I say, trying to sit up.

It’s not as if any one thing doesn’t feel good; it’s a general feeling of being unwell, and I want to go back to sleep.

There’s a sour taste at the back of my throat, and my stomach flips with unease.

“But I made you better,” he says, curiosity lacing his tone. “There’s no reason you should feel bad.”

I scoff, still trying to sit up.

“Be careful, you’ll tangle your strings.”

My strings?

“I don’t have strings.”

I shake my head, trying to clear some of the fog, but it doesn’t help.

“What are you talking about?” I manage, sitting up in the bed against the pain in my stomach.

My hand finds the bandage over where the stick previously was reeling from my flesh. It’s far less painful and has been cleaned.

Looking down, however, I find myself naked. He’s removed my clothes when it wasn’t necessary to tend my wound.

While I was blissfully floating in the haze of whatever drug he’d injected, he was doing God only knows what to my lifeless body.

The sick feeling in the back of my throat stretches, threatening to make me hurl.

“You do now,” he says matter-of-factly.

Confusion muddles my thoughts as I follow the tiniest of strings glistening in the air. It seems connected to me, and my eyes follow it downward to my arm.

Delicately placed under my flesh are pierced hoops. Connected to the hoops are hooks with strings.

Strings that bind me to a board on a conveyor in the ceiling that’s rigged so I can move on it.

Panic ceases my chest.

“What in the hell?” I mutter, looking over the rest of me. My shoulders and back all have new piercings and hooks that connect more of my flesh to the ceiling.

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