Teaser for The Pride of the Puppet

He wasn’t quite sure when he was able to see.

The world was gray and devoid of life, a sea of lights and darks and black and whites. Phantoms danced across his vision creating living shadows and moving lines, wriggling and squirming and twisting and folding. Everything was cold.

He raised himself off his chair and took a step forward. He took another. He took a few more.

He took one last step and the world around him exploded in colors. The ghastly grays of the walls turned into scratchy tan and the brilliant whites of the floors flared into dirty browns. However, ominous blacks of the ceiling stayed just that; dark and foreboding. 

The world was now filled with heat that radiated off every surface. All the sudden changes threw him off, and he stumbled before catching himself. He stood still and waited for the pain and dizziness to dissipate. After what seemed like hours, but was likely no more than a few moments, he raised his head and looked back at the chair.

It was a mangled thing, though he could tell it had once been beautiful. The base of the chair was green-black stone, and the back of the chair rose in exquisite dark oak. The armrests were black and marbled with gray granite. He could see the elegance and love that had been put into it.

But those pictures faded away, and reality took its iron grip once more.

The back of the chair was chipped and shredded, and part of it appeared to be burnt. The green-black stone was covered with obsidian ash, and a large part of one of the armrests was shattered, leaving a minefield of sharp stone on the ground. 

He walked over and touched the chair, and he could feel the pain it went through. He said a silent apology before turning away.

The chair has fared better than the rest of his surroundings, though not by much. The walls were made of tan brick, much of which was either chipped or scratched. Beneath him rested a dirt floor that was covered with soot and dust. The only thing decorating the floor was a wool rug at the door. Strangely, it was untouched.

The door itself was simple and drab with no handle. It creaked back and forth as an unseen current meandered its way through the air. The sound was eerie yet oddly comforting, soothing him. He pushed past the door while his shiny pointed fingers left gouges in the wood. The room he found himself in was a disaster.

Papers covered nearly every inch of the floor, and a large table in the center had been flipped over. A hardened river of wax spread from an iron candelabrum that still clutched its stub of a honeycomb candle as if it was alive. Various tools had fallen into the wax. He could make out a hammer, tongs and perhaps and awl, though he wasn’t sure.

A broken window cast long fingers of light across the room and onto the walls. He could see the sun high in the sky outside, but inside it seemed dark and dreary. He stuck a hand into a sliver of light and shadows played on the wall, energetic and gleeful. He shook his hand around and the shadows followed as they chased each other around the room. Eventually, the shadows seemed to tire and rested on the lone piece of furniture still standing in the room. A desk in the corner stood strong and stout, but the small drawers had been thrown open and lie mostly empty barring a disorderly stack of notecards and a few unopened bottles of ink. A lump of red sealing wax rested in a glass bowl on top next to unused envelopes and a dirty quill.

A closet lied closed near the desk. The floor around it was soaked in red smears, and the door handle had a handprint on it. When he opened it, three bodies fell to the ground: a middle-aged man, his wife, and a young girl who seemed to be no older than eight. The man had a deep gash across his back, and the wife had a hole in her chest. The girl had no wounds, but her white dress was stained and disheveled, and there were red marks around her neck. He figured she had been strangled to death.

There were no signs of tear tracks on the faces of the three, and the father’s arms were wrapped around the girls. The mother was grasping the hands of her daughter and husband, her mouth slightly open, whispering an everlasting farewell. 

He felt no feelings for the wife or girl, but when he gazed upon the man he felt love and affection, though he did not know why. A memory teetered just out of reach as it mocked him, but he ignored it. A small voice breathed in the back of his mind: Gaius.