Ya know…most of these stories just kind of pop into my head…. It gets awkward sometimes…..

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The curtain rises.

I am onstage. My family is with me.

We act out the play of a happy family.

Other actors come and go, scenes change, change, and change again.

I grow, my family grows, and time passes.

But then, their strings are cut. They tumble down, down, forever away from me.

I am alone. Trapped in a cage.

Other actors, no, other puppets all around me, but I am alone.

Everyday I watch as other puppets have their strings cut, and they tumble down into the abyss below the stage. I will join them too, one day. I think, no, I know.

I count the numbers, one, ten, fifty, two hundred, one would think that there must be a bottom, that one day the bodies would pile up to the top, and then it wouldn't matter if strings were cut.

But that day is not now, not even close to now.

The other puppets have tied me down. The knife, no, the scissors are grazing my strings, they begin to snip.

But another puppet comes. He saves me, but it isn't really him. Whoever is controlling the puppet is the one who saved me.

He calls his body, 'temporary' something he needs to serve me.

All he asks for when my strings are cut, is that he may catch me, use my body, eat it up.

I take it willingly.

He saved me when no one else did, someone has to move my strings, they could have saved me. Pulled me out of that environment, drop the other puppets, change the scenery, but, they didn't.

As my strings shiver and I feel new, smoother movement swing my limbs, all I can think is, it's their loss.

The destroyed scenery I thought to be beyond repair is built again easily enough by the unseen hand that talks to me through the black puppet.

My play starts again, a farce to bring forth the ones who cut the ties between me and innocence.

The puppet works with me, often doing things thought to be impossible. Strings made of something that cannot be cut.

I thought.

I have him cut the strings of many.

Rich, poor, innocent, guilty, all types, they were only in my way, I don't need them.

Eventually I even cut the strings of relatives, althoug I suppose it wasn't done directly by me or my black puppet, it is close enough.

They would have left me anyway, falling down into that pit, left me all alone.

Not that it's their fault. They are only puppets after all.

I am the same. Carved from the same wood, held up by strings of the same weight and substance.

Able to do as much as any other puppet.

Someday, my strings will be cut in the same way too.

But he won't. My black puppet. Because he isn't really a puppet. He is a puppet master. He will stay with me.

He promised.

But there he is, my black puppet, my conveyer, my link to sanity.

Tumbling, down, down, down.

I am cut from my savior, or was he killed? Is that why the puppet he held stopped?

I am alone on the stage again. I wait for a new puppet, one that looks like the last one.

If it doesn't come, I will know the answer, and then, surely, my strings will be cut too.

Then, at last, the curtain will fall.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Short but sweet in my opinion…. Probably not in yours though.

Review please!