Tenterhooks

I don’t know what duct tape is, but I know the sound of it ripped from a roll. That sound. It’s to the left of me. I know it as well as I know my head slumps to the right, my chin rests against my chest. As well as I know the soreness in my neck and the sharp pain at the end of my nose.

The sound is deafening. Another is coming. What does that mean? Spiders wriggle in the pit of my stomach, replacing butterflies. They used to dance when I discovered new things.

What are butterflies?

Without opening my eyes, I imagine the room. I’ve awoken here dozens of times. There’s a somber, gentle old man. What’s his name? He sits at a worktable weaving wire through wood. Carves, chisels, sands to perfection. Screws limbs to joints. Not too loose, but not too tight, he says. Snug comes to my mind, whatever that means. He takes great pleasure in it. Careful, considerate, methodical. I want to look, but the spiders warn me. I remember I’m hiding.

I believed if I closed them, I’d be invisible, but I don’t think that’s how it works. The duct tape is about to snap. Anticipation causes the spiders to sink, and wetness rushes to my eyes. How is that possible?

I’m just a puppet.

My right arm hangs limp. It doesn’t budge under the might I exert. The spiders are my friends, I decide. They urge me to escape. A white wire suspends my left hand above a wooden table. I brush the surface with a finger. It’s a strange comfort, touching the material I’m made of. I have to open my eyes. The trick isn’t working because if I hear ripping; he hears me sob. A sheet of water pops as I blink. Salty liquid drips down my cheek.

Hand, rod, and string puppets litter the walls, exposed on meat hooks. Wait, no, not meat hooks. Wooden pegs. Why did I say meat hooks? I shake cobwebs from a head that won’t move. The old man dances with my clone, the one dressed in flesh. Doesn’t he make us of wood? The spiders return. It won’t be exquisite enough to dance with when he becomes bored. He told me I was exquisite once. Where do I get these words? The spiders roil. He danced with me too. I don’t know how I know this, but it rings true, unlike dreams. He’ll notice the skin doesn’t sit right. Pulled in patches. Stapled at seams. Patches. It wasn’t duct tape. He treats the skin to make it taut, makes it crackle. He twirls my copy with strings. Leads him through the air. Its eyes are lifeless pearls.

Red liquid drips from the workbench. Paint. The spiders disagree. There’s a picture pressed behind cracked glass beside me. The old man hugs a woman from behind. She’s pretty. The small boy in the photograph doesn’t look like the puppet he’s dancing with. The person he attempts to recreate. How could we? We’re not real. I’m not real.

The picture distracted me from the dance, but if it didn’t, would it matter? My right arm won’t listen, and a wire shackles my left. It’ll move, but not with a strength that will change the outcome of his attention. He sets the puppet on the table, head dangling, contorted, staring at me.

“There you are.”

His smile comforts me. I want to respond, I do, but a rasp emerges, a voice through a fan. Not the voice in my head. Feeble, slurred, half-awake from a drug-induced dream. Noise without lips. I have no lips. Papa.

“Yes, it’s your Papa,” he says, matter-of-fact, crouching to reach a stool low enough to line his sight with mine. Metal slides against leather, revealing a pair of shears, which he uses to snip the wire suspending my left hand. He sets it down with a gentleness I didn’t account for. I crawl it atop my knee. Why can’t I move?

He exhales, cleaning his spectacles with a towel too dirty for the job. “You don’t remember?”

I shake my head. At least, I think I do.

“You said you wouldn’t run away, but I knew you would.” He brushes his thumb across the jagged tip of my nose. “I wish you wouldn’t lie. It’s unbecoming of a growing boy.”

Why can’t I move? I want to move again.

“I had to…”

He pauses, doffing spectacles, tilting them skyward to check their cleanliness. A glimmer flashes in his eye. Joy, or sorrow? He doesn’t need to explain further. The fracture in my right arm and missing leg jog my memory. He beat me when I lied. Broke my leg when I tried to run.

Please, I won’t run away again. I’ll be a good boy.

I don’t know why I said that. Pain pierces my broken nose.

The old man smiles. He takes my nose between his fingers, pulls them away, and wiggles his thumb between them. “Don’t worry. We’ll try again.”

But I don’t want to. I won’t be me.

I’m unsure if he didn’t hear, didn’t answer, or I just thought it, but he responds by tilting my head back.

I could never have escaped. There’s eight hooks anchored in the ceiling, wires cuffing me. Connected to places I can’t see. Could never reach. I sit in the last place I will think for myself. He will move me to a new body. Older versions on similar hooks scream at me without sound. Slack mandibles. They plead with no limbs. Implore with hollow stomachs to remember. He’s sawing me there now. I whimper. There’s a puppet that can’t scream. He’s not made of wood, but spaghetti. I don’t understand. I try hard to remember them…me, but I can’t. The new one won’t either. Skin won’t make him the boy in the photograph. He must know that. He must know we experience pain. The spiders agree. My new body will wail at stapled seams. What does the old man want? Why wasn’t I good enough? I blink, and my surface absorbs the wetness before it reaches my chin. His hands search inside my stomach, writhing where they shouldn’t be. Something there makes me alive. Lets me think. Allows me to dream. I plead with him. Please, Papa. Stop.

I wish I could join a circus, even if it meant being a donkey. Wish for a sailboat, even if it meant getting swallowed by a whale, because then, at least, I’d be far away from him. I laugh, but I don’t think it's audible. He meddles inside, choking life from me. I squeeze my left leg. I wish a fairy would come and save me. It’s not me. It won’t be me. I picture the flesh puppet’s vacant eyes one last time. I hope they make it. Hope we make it.