The Puppeteer

O.K. Mantz

A single strand of silk sprints upward until completely vanishing within the jaws of a starving cumulus cloud. The string is only dimly adumbrated by the blackening sun which stretches across the entire horizon, scorching the earth by its mere proximity. Were it not for the scintillating reflection of the twirling silk (set in motion by the ever-blowing planetary wind), the ivory scroll attached to the very end of the string by nothing more than a kiss would appear to be levitating. Rugged and scabrous, the cyperus material is bent and worn, as though having crossed the charred kingdom of Chaos, Apophis, and defied the great dryhten Time. But rather than wrought of the pith of a papyrus, the note seems fashioned of woven clouds, agglutinated by the jet-black blood of stars.

“What is that?” Leala whispers, her arm stretching out toward the page and her hand unfolding like a flower thirsting for something other than sere dirt. Her expression is inquisitive, her countenance curious, as she unknowingly leans in closer, an ambrosial scent whisking into her nostrils that draws her aura ever-forward. Around her bosom is wrapped the foul slough of a snake, a furfuraceous texture of Persian blue, dotted with canary yellow. Her waist remains adorned with tan, baggy cloth of unknown origin; thick, hyacinthine hair is tied back with rope, and Leala, other than these, stands naked and blistering, the heat of the sun scalding her bare epidermis.

“What is that?” she repeats in her sweetly languid voice. Fearful of the empyrean note, she draws back. Of what she cannot have enamoured, Leala’s pupils dilate and her gaze glances not to th’ other side, nearly severing, rather, the silk with her zealous stare. Squinting beside her stands Infidelis, his natural corpus completely uncovered and every part of him exposed. Great sores like jebels sprout on a charred and ashen body, wounds dripping with pus tunneling deeper down toward the frame. On his fingers, by way of the scorching star, phalanges prove visible where skin had formed to dust and ash. Sharp features carve his visage and paint his pale physiognomy with the forlorn shade of misery. His pupils dilate immensely, the flame-filled horizon, although providing heat, thrusts, rather, the scape in darkness visible. With his own hand now blooming toward the papyrus, Infidelis mumbles something beneath his breath, gently kissing the rough paper with his fingertips.

“A note...” he utters almost silently. “It is a note from the Puppeteer.” His words seem much more than merely that; searching the atmosphere gingerly, Leala marks each letter dance toward a gallows of tongues, and, tying the crimson rope around their necks, each word hangs itself before assuming a tangible reality.

“Who is that?” asks Leala vainly, almost desperately, as she witnesses the murder and her answer’s spirit rising upward. There follows no return, much less acknowledgement, and for a moment, the entire world is quiet and still. In capitulation, Leala shuts her gaping lips and relaxes her rigid stance, only to whisper again. “Do we take it?”

No longer rubbing the spindly fingers of his eyes across the cyperus, Infidelis folds his neck and allows the silky guide to lead him upward until his sight falters and fails him. Near-sighted, his vision takes him not even to the clouds, and the heavens become blurry and unknown.

Suddenly, the sinfully scintillant silence shatters as a car screeches on their right. Their attention is ripped from the note and their eyes behold a rusted, silver sedan lose track, skid sideways, and then lift off the ground a meter away from their position. From the moment of their beholding to the now airborne vehicle, only a second had passed, leaving both man and woman speechless, stunned, immovable by fear. Infidelis propelled his arms leftward and pulled Leala in to his chest, cradling her and wrapping his hands around her head. The sound of aluminum scraping the dirt road beneath resounds so penetratingly as to become tangible— assuming an ambiguous shape and rolling, as waves of thunder, toward the two. Already, Infidelis’ skin mocks the fierce fangs scraping at his arms as the metal begins to collide into his being.

But then the pandemonium is laid to rest, the palpable din suddenly returns to its ethereal origin, and the scraping sound ceases with such immediacy, that Infidelis shrinks back before lifting the covers of his eyes. Suspended in the atmosphere inches before his figure, the vehicle hangs stretched out and tilted, as though all time had paused. Fearful awe drains into his countenance and his chest heaves and falls, relishing the dusty air. A sunray glances him and falls beside his feet. Lifting his chin, Infidelis espies two glistening reflections just above the car and, pursuing the trail, finds two infinite strands of silk from the underside of the auto reaching up into the clouds. The sense of wonder withers and is replaced by a strange obligation— Infidelis reaches out his hand and snatches the note, wresting the cyperus from the kiss that taped it to the silk. Then they steal away, lest the silk should snap and the car follow its intended course.

After walking a few minutes (minutes embellished with eternity) in silence, they halt and press together, the pus of their wounds intermingling as their open gashes rub against each other. As though carrying gold refined, they shield the strange papyrus from the sun, Infidelis gingerly motions the bent sheet apart to carve out the faded letters within. Written in smooth, cursive calligraphy that is boldly imperfect, Infidelis reads aloud the words:

There are those that do not belong here. You must guide them to their place.

“Where do you think the note came from?” Leala asks. Her brows arch upward, as though creating a bridge over her nose for the wind to cross from one side to the other. A glassy film blankets her eyes and she gazes at Infidelis, fearful and helpless. Silent, Infidelis is frozen in thought, contemplating the movement of his throat and the hewing of his words.

“My Father,” he mutters quietly, rubbing his ashen palm across his face and leaving a streak of grease on his cheek. “My Father used to tell me stories… stories of a world above our own called Earth.”

Leala lifts her eyes, stretching her neck toward the sky and peering upward as though, if she strained enough, this other world would become visible to her. But her eyes merely break the surface of the clouds, unable to espy the firmament nor stare past the stratosphere.

“What is it like?” she whispers in wonder. “What does Earth look like?”

Sighing, Infidelis gazes past her, as though reminiscing on dear memories. After an immeasurable stretch of time, he begins, quietly and with great struggle.

“Beautiful…” he starts, but falters, and after breathing deeply, begins again. “Much more pleasant than here. The people, he told me, were for the most part the same, but there were some who had the most amiable complexions and the most compassionate hearts. And they all had souls… He said the sun was much farther away, not as scorching as here, and the natural sublimity was… breathtaking.”

With mouth suspended and eyes as large and encompassing as the horizonal star, Leala gazes now too at the distant imaginary plane, transliterated from the mind into a visionary reality.

“You and I—” Infidelis continues, “—we were born here in this realm, but my Father… my Father was born on Earth and lived his whole life there…”

“But how did he get here?”

The methodic breaths immediately silence and his lungs seem to have turned to stone. The miracle that had formed in his eyes now vanishes and morphs into incomprehensible despair.

“He… he died. And the puppeteer…”

Confused, Leala loses her dreamy physiognomy. Unable to envision the actuality of those words, she bites her lower lip and squints.

“What does that… mean?”

As though conquered and now relinquishing his power, Infidelis hangs his head and slumps his shoulders, his entire frame seeming to be pulled toward the centre of the planet by a force much more miserable than gravity.

“I don’t know.”

Standing, no— hanging there in silence, both man and woman tumble into a colloquy with despair, overcome by forlorn isolation that nearly smothers them with abject hopelessness. But then Leala performs a miracle by annihilating the gorge of gloom, this wretched ravine, dolorous defile, the crevasse of melancholia. By motioning her arm and laying her bare skin across his shoulders, pulling him close and closer to comfort, she closes the infinite chasm between them and plants, however small, a seed of love within his breast. A burning sensation overcomes him and, although Leala’s presence proves pleasant, he nearly suffers a coronary infarction by way of the flames bursting beneath his sores.

“Let us find a place to stay tonight,” says Leala, holding him upright and beginning to move him forward. Gradually fading, the fire is tamed and Infidelis coughs up ivory smoke before shuddering and standing upright. His lids close halfway across his eyes and a deeply embedded frown clothes him in weary and fatally tired attire; with countenance more pale, and smoke still percolating through his nostrils, he groans and wheezes, staring at his arms as the blisters belch out pus.

“Let’s d—” Without the sun disappearing and replaced by a star of pure ice, his body freezes, shivering as he looks before him. “Do you see that?” Pointing a crooked finger straight in front of him and shakily holding up sore muscles, a slight sunbeam bounces through the atmosphere and lands as gently as a butterfly upon the tip of his forefinger.

“Oh my God…”

In the distance, some hundred metres away, hangs an almost identical note appended by a thin, silk gallows. The silk twirls around its axis, pendulous only to itself, and catches the orange expulsions of the sun to transform them into a white, radiant luster that it propels toward the two. Catching Leala’s eye, Infidelis begins to jog over, Leala bouncing at his side, and they quickly close the interspace between themselves and the note. Reaching the silk first, Leala tugs at the papyrus and severs the material from the kiss attaching it to the strand. Unfolding the bent page, she squints to decipher what is written, finally reading aloud the message.

Find Virtus and kill him.

“I know him,” Leala says, taken aback by the mention of the name. “What does the Puppeteer want with him?” Appalled, she squints and steps left, cocking her head as though her position would facilitate understanding.

“I don’t know that, but we should fulfill this request, lest some greater evil comes across us.”

Swallowing, Leala nods and retraces her step, resolve painted boldly on her countenance. Tapping on the name engraved on the cyperus, she points east and motions for him to follow.

“He lives that way. In the building over there.”

Marching across the rugged terrain of barren earth and sand, they drag their feet and match each other’s pace. Infidelis wheezes, the arid and oxygen-deprived air crawling like a parasite into his lungs. With each step they advance, the earth beneath groans and flings up dust that grasps at their naked feet as though to hold and devour them. Strewn all over the country are unclothed beggars, moaning and wailing as they lie there, unmoving other than to scratch their maggot-infested lesions. Those beggars, as the two— man and woman— appear unkempt: patches of hair stick out like cancers, open sores adorn their pale skins like poppies and hibiscus, dark eyes sunken in to the point of evanescence are barely situated within dented, oddly shaped skulls. Some characters lift their heads and scream at the withered plants— the chartreuse-grey stalks held only a finger’s length above the ground by the unceasing, unbearable wind. So withered is the vegetation that, if one leans in close, a low-pitched hiss can be heard from the ground that must bear the rotted corpse. Thick, impenetrable clouds cover the heavens, but the black-orange globe spanning the horizon remains clearly visible and excruciatingly tangible. Mud houses lie scattered all over the plain, built under the pressure of tormenting weather and the greater torment of the soul each person must endure. Within this firmament there is found no rest nor comfort. It is a hopeless, restless, loveless, sickly habitation— both an external Hades for all as well as an internal Tartarus for each individual soul.

They approach one of the irredeemably crooked buildings and Leala halts, craning her neck to study the two-story structure. Built with the same lack of skill as the other houses, this one seems to be melting and falling apart, torn down simply by the fact of its existence.

“This is it.” She motions for Infidelis to come round and move onto the doorstep. Slow and smooth, smooth and swift, yet without sound, they cross the threshold of the doorframe and make their way across, then up the broken stairwell, entering a cramped room. A single chair adorns the otherwise torn apart and empty space, a chair that upholds a man who sat still, staring out of a window directly across from him. He marks a noise and gingerly turns round, shrinking back as he finds the two rushing at his chair.

“Hello? What—?”

Springing ahead toward a startled Virtus, Infidelis’ arms grow in length, reaching through the atmosphere, his hands clasping at Virtus’ jawline. He thrusts himself diagonally past the frozen soul, magnifying the potential of his momentum and flinging his arms after him to snap Virtus’ scrawny neck. The horrified figure lets a yelp escape before collapsing on the tile floor like a bundle of sticks snapping and dispersing in every direction. At the entrance stands Leala, her hands covering her lips, allowing her eyes to display the panic trapped within her. Infidelis steps over the body, heading to the window, and cannot help but notice the expression of peace and contentment, rather than terror and despair, on the physiognomy of the dead.

The glass of the window is grimy— covered in dust and wounds of its own caused by the scorching environment. Thoughtfully, he unfastens the latch and opens the window, allowing the wind to rush inside and relieve the room of the suffocating stench of pain. He glances out, his eyes drooping on the dark, gaping landscape beneath. A hole becomes more prevalent within his chest, a chasm that he, since birth, has felt grow, expand, mature, devour him from the inside out and destroy his very essence, leaving his soul in an eternal, not temporal, state of suffering.

He turns around, espying Leala bending over Virtus, the expression of horror having somewhat subsided. But almost immediately, his gaze is distracted by another string swaying from the ceiling. His heart begins to throb, thrashing within his bosom, battling to avoid the consuming abyss grasping for his blood. Before Leala could follow his sight, Infidelis springs up and snatches the note, ignoring the violent din as the silk flies throughout the room.

Leala turns her head, seeing the soft cyperus in his sinful hands. A selfish desire infiltrates the malleable walls of Infidelis’ heart, ambushing him like wolves and infecting him like the venom of a snake. He steps away from Leala, turning sideways as to shield the note from her view and unravels the cyperus-like cloud. With black eyes he reads the words, tastes every letter on a forkèd tongue, and feels his hands begin to quiver.

Kill her. Take Leala’s life.

He gnashes his teeth, grinding the rotten and sun-stained white into minuscule pieces.

“What does it say?” asks Leala, curiously leaning toward him, attempting to peak over and read the note. Again, Infidelis scoots away, his visage assuming a more pale shade and his eyes darkening, and bares his teeth in indignation. He shakes his head, wide-eyed and ghost-like, beginning to tear the note with the strength of his grip.

“I can’t kill you…” utters Infidelis. “I won’t…”

With a sort of frenzy, Infidelis tossed the cloudy cyperus aside and motioned to the open window, smashing his palms onto the ledge before snapping his head back.

“You’re too precious to me,” he whispers. Throwing his arm up toward the clouds, he twists his head to stare out the window at the heavens, screaming: “Take me in her place.” And then Infidelis flings himself out of the window, launching his body over the ledge until his legs struggle with the air. The colossal persimmon star shimmers and growls across the horizon, reverberating over the landscape to reach Icarus and scorch him one last time, prising his wounds and creating a rain of blood to envelop and tumble after him. Harshly embracing him, the dusty ground shatters his essence, breaking every bone as he violently smashes down with a crimson puddle exploding around. His contorted frame is no longer recognizable, his wounds replaced by a gash stretching the length of his being, his pale complexion vitalized even as he himself forfeits his vitality. A sangria shade floats upward toward a horrified Leala, who leans over the window ledge, staring down at her love with two moist globes and a gaping red hill. Tears dribble down her cheek, expelled from the prison of pupils, and tumble down after Infidelis, as though they might still catch him in his fall, or perhaps salvage what remains of him. The tears bend as they plummet, separating in two as though each tear weeped another of its own accord. So tempestuously does the planetary wind breathe that the lungs that uphold the earth quiver and rock the ground. Tracing the line of his fall, a single strand of silk motions upward toward the overhanging sheet of grey. The string comes to Leala’s attention only through the fall of her tears that glisten and twinkle as they tumble, mirroring the silk that scintillates from the yolky firmament. With a kiss attached, the rugged and scabrous cyperus of woven clouds, darkened by the hecatomb of stars, another note dangles at eye level directly in front of Leala.

Perceiving a shuffling noise behind her, Leala twists round and beholds a figure standing motionless and staring. Ghost-like, pale nearly to the point of death, is the complexion of his skin; his eyes remain unblinking and glossy with a slimy film of misery.

“I’m sorry…” says Infidelis, his arms quivering at his side. And then his step is swift as he moves toward her, arms outstretched and helpless, as though moved by some power not his own…