The Puppetmaster's Final Act

The theater was abandoned decades ago, but when I stepped inside, I smelled sawdust and candle smoke, as though a show had only just ended. The seats were draped in cobwebs, yet I swore I could hear the faint rustle of fabric, the shuffle of restless spectators in the dark.

On the stage, a man waited. Tall, skeletal, dressed in a tattered suit the color of dried blood. Strings hung from his hands, trailing into the shadows above. At first, I thought him a relic—some forgotten marionettist left to rot. But then he bowed, slow and deliberate, and whispered:

“At last, an audience.”

The Puppets

With a flick of his fingers, figures dropped from the rafters. Wooden marionettes, their paint cracked and peeling, their eyes too bright in the gloom. They jerked to life, moving with unsettling precision. A child with a gap-toothed smile. A soldier missing one arm. A woman in a wedding dress, the veil yellowed with age.

They danced, but not with joy. Their limbs strained against the strings, their heads twitching at odd angles. I realized, with a crawling horror, that the puppets were not carved. They were shaped from flesh and bone, lacquered in layers of paint, preserved like grotesque trophies. I recognized the curve of human teeth beneath the wooden mouths. The faint bulge of veins painted over with red lacquer.

And all the while, the puppetmaster smiled.

The Performance

He began the story: a tragedy, told in pantomime. The puppets reenacted scenes of loss, betrayal, despair. A husband raising his hand against his wife. A soldier bleeding out in mud. A child abandoned in the cold. Their jerking motions spoke volumes, their painted faces warped in agony too precise to be invented.

Then I noticed something worse: I knew these stories. Each one was mine. The arguments I had hidden, the sins I had buried, the wounds I had tried to forget. My life unfolded in splinters of wood and shrieks of violin strings. The puppets bled when I did. They screamed when I had screamed. Their strings pulled taut as my own guilt crushed me.

The audience—the unseen crowd beyond the cobwebbed seats—clapped and roared, though I saw no one in the darkness. The sound swelled until my skull ached, until the boards beneath my feet trembled.

The Final Act

The puppetmaster turned his gaze on me. His eyes were hollow sockets, but I felt their weight. He raised his hands, and I felt strings tighten around my wrists, my ankles, my throat. Invisible cords tugged, forcing me forward onto the stage.

The marionettes cleared a space, bowing as though welcoming me into their ranks. Their faces were blank now, waiting. The puppetmaster’s voice rattled through the theater:

“Every story requires an ending.”

I fought the strings, but they burned against my skin, cutting deeper the more I struggled. My arms rose against my will. My legs bent, jerking in unnatural rhythm. The puppets surrounded me, their movements syncing with mine, a grotesque chorus line. I tried to scream, but my jaw snapped open and shut like a wooden hinge, voice stolen by the cords at my throat.

The puppetmaster lifted his hands high. The strings pulled tighter. My body convulsed, then froze. I felt my skin stiffen, my veins clot with resin, my eyes glaze into glass. My breath stilled, replaced by the hollow creak of wood. I understood then: I was becoming his newest marionette.

After the Curtain Falls

The applause thundered one last time. The puppetmaster bowed, elegant despite his decay, and the stage lights dimmed. The audience’s cheers dwindled into whispers, then silence.

Now I hang among the others. Strings pierce my limbs, my painted smile locked in place. I watch as he waits in the empty theater for the next wanderer to arrive, the next soul to join his collection.

Because the puppetmaster’s show is endless, and his final act is never truly final. There is always room for one more.

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