Puppets Win Today: A Humorous Fantasy Novel

Chapter 1

As he stitched, his sewing machine clacked, and his prior puppets vomited fuzz and dragged about. They gazed at wiry fingers and danced. A puppet crawled and said, "I think, therefore..." With its beak all wobbly. "Line?"

It was no wonder the hiring managers complained his creations lacked the intellect to perform office work. Our workshop was not really the best environment to train magical puppets to be office workers. The scent of curry hung about the apartment, which was on the tenement side of the tracks.

Our nearness to poverty drove us to a threadbare frenzy. To separate myself from this privation, and be a good puppet, my mannerisms, emails, and keystrokes needed to be controllable. So Miltro took his time on my rod attachments. I lie paralyzed, facedown, and hacked up a mountain of felt. The materials a puppet maker uses can be difficult to keep down.

Miltro had left the front door to our apartment ajar, with notes scattered throughout, directing couriers to deliver materials to his workshop. He probably assumed it was a courier, bringing more Urftoo wood, more memory foam, more river-blood rope, when the knock came.

"Set it in one of the corners," Miltro said from behind his sewing machine. His lazy cigarette dangled as microwaved noodles spluttered. The workshop had been two bedrooms before the joining wall had been knocked-out. It was now one big room, housing puppets from waist to knee-high.

"Can we talk outside?" Certi asked from behind a door.

"No," Miltro said.

"But," she slapped the door, "my fire got fumbled." Vague forms sharpened as she opened the door to invite the purple rays. She pressed away wrinkles from her pantsuit as her pearls dazzled. "The puppet sales aren't pulling enough for the payments on our condo, which we discussed."

"I'm better with a needle and thread than anyone on Urftoo, and you know it!"

"I'm better with a needle and...you've been at it for years. You don't have the character of Gohansen, not groovy like Van Whipple."

"There's no medicine in their puppetry."

She looked at her lipstick, snuck it in her purse and trudged into the foam and clay molds. "This wasn't the deal when I agreed to marry you."

"You didn't take my last name."

"Our second anniversary was last Wednesday." She lifted the Tuxedoed DinoMan as her arm strained. It stroked her as its scales creased the neckline of its tuxedo and its muzzle pecked. The rubbery scales became a surface as variable as water as it blushed like something illumined from within: "This meat-eater hates meteors!"

"You're behind schedule." She set it on its shelf and wiped her hands. "I thought you'd have them ad-libbing."

Its guide rods flailed as it struggled to right itself, and it moved as if to suck its thumb.

Something squirmed beneath a towel and cried, "Master, why won't you give me my thumbs?"

"I'll give thumbs—"The morning train warbled as Miltro stilled an ashtray.

Certi raised her finger.

The train surged.

"I'll give thumbs when you learn to hold and be held."

The squirming stilled.

"You're holed-up in this dark room, trying to bring life into this world like some pregnant woman," Certi said.

"Why can't we start a family?"

"The index funds are below seventy."

He stood from behind his sewing machine and shook the pistachios from his undershirt.