Hateful Darkblack Posted January 28, 2015 Report Share Posted January 28, 2015 I slipped out of the toy chest when the last light went out. I couldn't much lift the lid of the old oak box, but I managed a gap enough that I could slowly force my sawdust-filled body through. I fell to the worn-smooth pinewood floor face-first with an undignified little thud, then stretched out my faded cloth limbs and rubbed my loose-threaded button eyes, and then perked up as I remembered: Tonight was the big night! Hop by springing hop, I climbed up a potted plant, atop a dresser, and onto a windowsill to look outside. The streets were bright in the full moon, but empty. Nothing yet. Time to prepare! * * * I crept around the orphanage, as is my way, too quiet to wake the sleeping children. In the crevices and corners I found my friends and told them my plight. A dancer from the wagon came last month And mocked my humble verse with wicked words. I dropped a gauntlet to defend my name. The moon has turned, and now the wretch returns! My first friend told me this: "Make adorable cooing babbling noises to lure him close, then pounce him and stab him a hundred times! That's what I do! And then I have my giant teddy bear finish them off!" I looked at him sadly, and shook my head. I couldn't coo, and I didn't have a giant teddy bear. He frowned thoughtfully. "Well, the most important thing is to have a viciously sharp blade." So I took the rivet out of those rusty old scissors, and took just one half of it as my blade, and sharpened the sharper half of the scissors against the slate chalkboard, honing a vicious edge. My second friend told me this: "Turn your fists into fire and punch him over and over, until he is just ashes! That's what I do! Then stomp around angry, cursing and crying and pouting so that he’s weakened and confused with anger magic!" I shook my head sadly. I didn't have any special anger magic, and I was pretty sure that my sawdust would burn up before my enemy did, even if I could turn my fists into fire like that. He thought about that grumpily, and I was worried that he'd stomp off in a huff like he sometimes does, but instead he just said, "Well, the most important thing is that you hate him forever and blame him for everything and never look back." So I sat and stewed and remembered his sing-song jaunts. I remembered how sure I was that my poetry would impress him, and the shame I felt when he mocked me instead. The travelling show puppets all spoke in tiny couplets, and they all declared my verse inferior. They were so mean! Him especially, though. I sat atop of a tiny dollhouse chair and sharpened my shame and my hatred until it could slice through anything. My third friend, my best friend of all Mister Lumpy Giraffe, did not much advice at first. He started making tinny little off-key music-box sounds from the machinery in his lumpy belly, the way he does when he's nervous. He nodded and then shook his head five times, as ideas dimly rose to mind and then faded away under closer scrutiny. Then he brightened with a new idea. "Well," he said in his own gulpy goofy voice, "If it's a duel, then I think you'll need a second, right? I could be your second, to help you get ready!" And so we spent time preparing and practicing for the fight, until nearly dawn, when we heard the sweet and perfect chimes of a distant calliope. I hopped up to another windowsill to look down at the city below, and there it was: a big performer's wagon, painted a lustrous blue, with cheery calligraphy along the side: MASTER COLLODI’S TRAVELLING PUPPET SHOW * * * My enemy jumped down out of the wagon and immediately looked up at me in my second-story window. He recognized me immediately, despite the darkness of night and the distance between us. He sensed my hatred, or maybe my fear. His own button eyes somehow narrowed at me. Oh, those fancy expensive showroom puppets with their fancy expressive faces! I hated him all the more for it. I made a rude gesture at him which he totally deserved. He held his belly and shook in a mocking full-body chuckle that I could see but not hear. Then he pulled a sewing needle out and pointed it at me. I gestured aggressively to the nearby city garden below. He regarded it and then nodded confidently, accepting my challenge as he had a month before. His puppet friends hopped down from the wagon, two by two, four by four. Mister Lumpy Giraffe’s belly played Eidelweiss. I gulped soundlessly, then shrugged and hefted my scissor blade. It was time to meet my fate. * * * We left the orphanage through the parcel drop slot in the door, and creeped across Cedar Drive (which of course had no cedars on it) and under the wrought-iron garden fence. Down on ground level I could no longer see him, but across the garden I heard his minor-key nursery song, lilting and menacing all at once: TICK TOCK! TICK TOCK!BETTER HIDE BENEATH A ROCK!GONNA CATCH! GONNA CUT!UNSTITCH YOUR FACE NO MATTER WHAT! I called back into the cold clear air: These buttoned eyes have watched him seal his death. This garden green will witness his demise. His cotton lungs will soon draw their last breath, And hungry soil will soon be fertilized. Mister Lumpy Giraffe and I followed them by sound through the garden, under orchids and over lavender. Soon enough we met in the clearing under the old mossy marble sundial. * * * He pointed at me again with his sewing needle, which dripped black with poison, in a challenging salute. CLIP CLOP!BEST STOP!YOU STEP UP,YOU WILL DROP! A warning? In his pride he was offering to spare me if I'd walk away. The arrogance of his gesture only made me more furious. I raised my half-scissor blade in a return salute and spoke my verse in reply: The pride in tiny hearts swells twice as great, So wounded pride must guide my wounding hands. Now blades that ache to seal an insult's fate Must cut uncivil hearts on civic lands. The circle of puppets behind him laughed and mocked at my verse -- among the wagon puppets, any rhyme that didn’t have a sing-song quality was hopelessly unsophisticated. I felt a flush of shame and then a rush of anger. Perhaps my backwater orphanage rhymes would not be so amusing soon. I struck the nastiest grimace my stitched-on face would allow, and stood firm in my best imitation of a fencer's pose, my free hand hidden behind my back. My knees felt wobbly and unsteady, even more so than usual. He began his menacing theatric dance toward me, needle held high to catch the moonlight. Well, I had some theatrics of my own. I pulled the matchstick from behind my back and struck it against a nearby stepstone. Flames sparked up, bright in the moonlight and soon I held both torch and blade against him. He paused. Good. I threw the lit match into his expensive face. It caught immediately and began smoking a sickly chemical black. The others went hush and stepped away in nervous surprise. Fire kills us all. I didn't care. He howled and scrambled with his cloth hands to put out the fire, dignity forgotten. I kept my distance and watched with malicious contentment and prepared my next weapon. Somewhere behind me I could hear Mister Lumpy Giraffe playing Silent Night. His ruined black face contorted into a hateful grimace and he lept at me. Moving far faster than I ever could, he pushed my blade aside and pierced me deep with his needle, through my heart and out my back again. We came face to face eye to button eye. I felt the sawdust within me decay from the black venom. What sort of toxin could poison a doll's stuffing anyway? The pain just made me angrier. I swung my scissor blade awkwardly around and below to cut at his knees. A bit of newly-revealed white cotton shone in the moonlight. He clutched me there impaled, twisted the point, jabbed around to spread the poison. His wooden core was too strong, and I couldn’t slip free from his clutch. My blade dropped pointfirst into the soil below with a little undignified thump. He danced his mocking dance and kept me in place, a grim sadistic smile on his burnt and wicked face. No matter. I ignored the agony, and brought out my third weapon: a coil of thick copper wire. I looped it over his head and pulled tight. His cotton bulged and his neck cinched closed. He didn't need to breath any more than I did, but the wire pulled him in place. He let go of his own proud weapon to try to pull free, but I held on with a murderer's strength, and began to twist up the wire noose. There was a horrible tear and the snap of broken thread. His face sagged as his neck-seam burst stitch by stitch, and then finally there was sort sort of pop and his whole head went slack, dropping off to dangle loose from the remaining stitches. Cotton stuffing bulged out of his neckstump. His company pressed forward around me, but I kept them back with a snarled couplet: A single murder heals a puppet's pride, Let mischief end with honor satisfied! My hate paused them, and they turned away without looking back. They could have overwhelmed me, but not without their own losses, and they had no idea whether I had another vicious trick readied for them. I limped away through the morning dewdrops, needle still stuck through me, sawdust still draining out, poison still destroying my insides. Mister Lumpy Giraffe looked concerned but just followed me, playing Pop Goes The Weasel from his belly. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hateful Darkblack Posted January 28, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 28, 2015 Word Count: 1694 Theme: The Duel Character: The Improbable Poet Item: Wire Location: The Garden Line: Never look back Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
admiralvorkraft Posted January 29, 2015 Report Share Posted January 29, 2015 Lovely. Truly lovely. There's some awkward sounding word repetition in the first couple of paragraphs, but beyond that I've got nothing productive to give you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hateful Darkblack Posted January 29, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2015 Lovely. Truly lovely. There's some awkward sounding word repetition in the first couple of paragraphs, but beyond that I've got nothing productive to give you. Oh, good catch. Trimmed up that section a little bit. Probably brought my word count down by 5 or 10 too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Grue Posted January 29, 2015 Report Share Posted January 29, 2015 A good read, and I did enjoy the multi-colored verses. One bit had me confused, "He started making tinny little off-key" Did you mean "tiny" or "Tin like" I could see it both ways so I thought I would ask. As always, The Grue 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hateful Darkblack Posted January 29, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2015 Thanks! I definitely meant tinny, as in tin-like. Tin music boxes were often cheap and off-key and had a particular sound quality to them that I wanted to evoke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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