A Sock Puppet on a String
a manic fairy tale retelling, pt 2
It has been a tough week here on the topside as we said an unexpected and very much unwanted goodbye to our beloved family golden. She is in our hearts.
As for the story, we have the conclusion to “Sock Puppet.” See part 1 here.
To recap, Aubrey is a Grimm gatekeeper tasked with imprisoning demons in a castle prison. But they trick him and escape boldly from the underworld to the real world, and begin wreaking untold havoc.
With Aubrey hot on their tails, hunting down demons and destroying them, Rumpelstiltskin their leader remains just out of reach. Read the conclusion to the story after the picture.
This story originally appeared in Pulp Corner by Aurora Publishing, and can still be purchased on Amazon without all my window dressing.
Content warning: graphic violence, scary situations
A Sock Puppet on a String
(part 2)
My mind has progressed into a hyperdrive of rage and anxiety. My head can’t handle it; it throbs anew, clinking at my skull like a diamond hunter. Whatever Rumpelstiltskin did to me when he struck me, it did the trick. I hope to return the favor, and soon.
I pay no heed to the demons in the road. Not even when their hapless, macabre faces smear on my windshield, and their thick blood washes across before getting swept away by the wipers.
A vaporous form begins to take shape in the seat beside me, as if by teleporter. I sigh and press the pedal to the floor. Either this demon is very bold or very clueless, and both equal very stupid. Now I’ll have to dispose of him and drive.
He finally appears, molded to the seat like gelatin, an amorphous Gumby looking like a homeless man with a vendetta. He turns his pupating head towards me and grins. Grimy, broken teeth wink at me beneath a whiskery face and gleaming, devilishly expectant eyes.
I sigh again, reach over and grab his neck with my right hand. It is like grasping a water balloon. The movement surprises him; my strength terrifies him. I kick open my door and transfer him to my left hand, sweeping him across the steering wheel and holding him outside like a sock puppet on a string, dragging him down the asphalt. As I make a wide, fast turn from the highway onto the gravel road to Lana’s house, I fling him into the nearest tree. He explodes like a firecracker over New Year’s.
A few things were clearly wrong at Lana’s house. First, the front door was thrown open; second, her SUV was gone; third, no police were on the premises—Lana should have seen the blood by now, and called them.
Aubrey darted through the house. Clothes, utensils, food, furniture lay strewn all over. The kitchen counter was partially covered by a blue blouse and a pair of khakis, but no sign could be found of Lana. In the bedroom he found her purse, contents splayed across the bed. There were no keys.
In a mad panic, he rushed back into the kitchen. His head pounded again and thoughts rushed through it like horses on a racetrack. Where could she be? What could have happened? What did Rumpelstiltskin want with her?
Aubrey stopped and stared. At the place where her husband had lay dead, there was no blood.
But no, he thought. The man wasn't dead, there should be no blood. Why would he think so? Had he dragged him from the house, buried him in the back yard? Yes. But no. He did not. He shook his head, took a deep breath, and thought of nothing. His eyes closed, his lips set, his face relaxed.
After her husband had dressed and left for work, Aubrey had sneaked inside, watched Lana sleep for a while, stared out the window and seen the coming storm, and left the house to meet it. That was all. The rest had been a dream, no doubt courtesy of the alp, bringer of night terrors.
But something was missing. Aubrey shoved out to the garden, but could not find the mound, could not find any recent disturbance to indicate a grave. Again he recounted the events in his head, two parallel happenings meshing into one confused mess.
Back inside, he picked his way through scattered debris to the garage. A red line trailed across the floor. He bent down to it, studied it. Lipstick. At first, it appeared little more than a line dragged across the concrete. But there was a pattern. Faint, almost imperceptible. It could be words—or a map—or… a trail.
The squiggly line of lipstick continued another fifteen feet and suddenly vanished. He looked up, noticed the blood-and-gut-splattered, dented BMW to his right and the gravel road straight ahead. Just as he feared: they were in the Lexus, and they were gone.
He peered again at the red line on the pavement. All meaning was lost out here, on the rough asphalt, but he now knew where he had seen that pattern before. It was a crude imitation of the symbol for the State Forest, the one on the edge of the sea, with the squiggly line indicating the sea, and the jagged one a tree, an evergreen.
He sprinted back to the car.
It was a short drive to the State Forest. Back out to the highway, then the opposite direction of town for about six miles. Aubrey drove it as fast as he could, spreading gravel and laying rubber and plastering demons all over the pavement.
Up ahead, the Lexus lay along the shoulder of the opposite side. Both front doors hung open like wings, and a body drooped out of the passenger side toward traffic.
Aubrey squealed the car to a halt and dashed from the car. It was Lana. She had a nasty gash on her head and bruises were forming on her arms, legs, and cheekbones. She was out like a night on the town. He helped her upright onto the passenger seat, struggling with her limp form. He slammed the door shut and darted around to the driver’s side. Little impressions could be seen in the soft earth where tiny feet had leapt from the vehicle. They led away, and straight into the woods.
Aubrey dialed 911 as he followed the footprints into the forest, toward the sea.
The trees have taken on a sinister shade. They mock, nay, threaten me. Creaking, groaning, swaying. The earth contorts to their whims, and they to Rumpelstiltskin. His power is great, more than I had imagined.
I swipe away a branch from my face, and hack it to pieces when it refuses to unblock my path. Up ahead, a thicket bush grows like a Chia pet on speed.
I should have brought a sword.
A voice rises above, from the trees themselves, from the sky, as from a concert hall.
My name, my name is Rumpelstiltskin
I’ll help you out, just take me in!
Shrill, piercing. That of a maniacal child. Reverberates in my skull like a pinball. I fight on through the tangle of leaves and vines.
My name, my name is Rumpelstiltskin
I’ll give you gold and steal your kin!
I am getting closer now. I can practically taste his foul breath, stained with the blood of countless victims.
My name, my name is Rumpelstiltskin
Watch me as I eat your children!
I burst through the brush into a clearing. The sea stretches forever to the horizon. It is high up here. I am on a cliff overlooking the ocean like a balcony on a cloud. It is beautiful—the view, the scent of salt water hanging on the rushing breeze, the caress of the breeze as it puffs out my shirt and musses up my hair.
At the edge of the cliff, dancing and singing and prancing about with his back to mine and the tail of his little cloth cap stretching outward, is Rumpelstiltskin. I approach him with stealth and extreme caution, alerted to every possible action. But it is as though he does not know I exist.
Quickly and suddenly he pivots toward me. His eyes are crazed with power and freedom. "Say my name!" he shouts.
I take another step toward him.
"Say my name!"
I stop, for now I see he is holding something out to the cliff, a thin silver chain with the lead key dangling at the end. Below him is not the sea, but the abyss. That cold, dark nowhere between the worlds.
"Say my name," he says, calmly this time. My palms are clammy, my brow soaked. I cannot say his name. To say his name is to grant him power.
The chain slips from his grip and falls, and then he grabs it again. My heart plunges with it, and stops just as suddenly. "Say my name," he repeats, and then begins to chant it. Say my name, say my name, say my name.
My voice catches in my throat. It is swollen, tightened against the word.
"Rumpelstiltskin," I manage.
He stops and looks at me, a wide grin on his tiny, impish face. He seems to grow a little larger.
"Again."
"Rumpelstiltskin," I mumble.
"Louder!"
"Rumpelstiltskin!" I shout.
He is almost man-sized now and dancing again, twirling on one leg and extending his arms out.
I grab him, expect a scrape, expect one or both of us to take the long plunge into the abyss below, but he is like a kitten in my hands. He screams, wails, and is perfectly, unquestionably still.
And suddenly the world begins to cave in. I am the vortex, I am the drain on the floor of existence, and it is all rushing toward me. All the demons, the haze, the wrongness descends upon me like an avalanche and is sucked back into the netherworld. Tormented faces, swirling blackness, piercing cries; Rumpelstiltskin grows soft in my hand, until holding him is like holding air, and he is gone.
The burden is too strong, I cannot handle it.
The world goes black to my eyes.
When Aubrey awoke, the haze was gone. He lay inches from the cliff. The crash of the breakers far below repeated rhythmically. The tart sea breeze infiltrated his nostrils and exposed gooseflesh on his arms.
He arose and massaged his eyes. The sun had fallen several degrees; evening was fast approaching.
The world was a different place than the one he had left. The parasitic intruders had been excised, and the world renewed. It spoke and sang to him, through the cry of the gulls, the rush of the wind, the whir of an airplane somewhere overhead.
Aubrey made his way back through the trees. Gone was their antagonism, their disdain for his presence, their continual and inexplicable hindrance to his progress. Now it was as any other forest on any other day. Aubrey reached the highway in minutes.
A rollback was just pulling away with the crumpled Lexus. Remnants of the SUV remained strewn across the grass, like tokens of a nightmare past. Aubrey broke the forest’s edge and approached the car that had gotten him there, still perched upon the grassy shoulder, its grate splattered by an array of blood and its sides grooved.
A ticket lay beneath one of the wipers. A rollback would come for this next, this stolen vehicle. Aubrey pulled the keys from his pocket and jumped in. He needed the car one last time.
I enter the hospital and approach the front desk as if in a dream. The scent of sterilization fills my nostrils and the dull glow of the fluorescent bulbs lends an eerie tone to everything around me.
I am given a visitor’s ID and directed to the third floor. I traverse the hospital maze, subconsciously noting the arrows and signs and following them until I am standing outside the door to her room. I peek in and enter.
She is lying on her back, sheets drawn to her neck, IVs in her arms and oxygen tubes in her nostrils. Her eyes are closed, and her breaths come in gentle, rhythmic motions. I sit next to her and stare at her battered face for a while, saying, touching nothing, losing myself in her.
A flood of emotions descends upon me, a tsunami of repressed feelings. Feelings of love, care, concern, admiration. Feelings I had hoped gone, but had always known better. I chastise myself. I can no more afford to harbor these feelings now than ever before. I am yet the gatekeeper of the deep; I am yet in the path of danger. But even my withdrawal from her life at the pain of both of our loves has done naught to save her. They had known; he had known.
I reach out my hand and clasp her slender fingers. Her skin is soft, almost clammy to the touch. I sit there for several moments, staring into her eyelids, before extending my arm to brush back the hair from her face. I whisper in her ears my regrets and my fears and even my love for her. I express my deepest condolences on the death of her husband, and find myself sincere. Then I wish to find him, tell him she is here so he can come be with her.
I shake my head, the disparate sequences still confused in my head. But my heart wishes nothing but the best for her, and I am not it. I break anew at the thought, but it shall heal once more. I must.
Aubrey did not know how long he sat beside Lana before he came to with a start. There was a knock at the door, and a young nurse entered bearing a basket of flowers laced with golden strands. It was a beautiful display. She smiled at Aubrey as she set the basket on the dresser and slipped from the room silently.
Aubrey frowned at the basket. Who knew Lana was here already? But no, there was something else...
The golden strands. His trademark. No, he breathed. He arose slowly, approached the bouquet with trepidation, expecting the gnome’s impish face to peer out at him at any second from one of the colorful buds. His fingers collected the card from the plastic tongs protruding from the bed of loam, his fingernail traced the edge of the tiny envelope, trembling fingers removed the card and opened it. He forced his closed eyes to reopen and read the tiny, cursive lettering within:
Congratulations, Aubrey and Lana, on the start of a brand new family! May your womb be filled and your home be blessed. Forget me not when the moment comes, when the water breaks, when your firstborn child pokes his tiny head into the light of a new world--forget me not! Then shall I return to bless the child and claim my reward.
All hope and expectation,
R
The card fluttered to the floor from Aubrey’s newly-numb fingers. In a flash, the image of him awakening in Lana’s bed, in her husband's clothes...!
It was all a set-up. Not a mad jailbreak, but a conniving escape plan by the most dangerous, the most cunning of them all. And he, Aubrey Wessen of the line of Grimm, had swallowed the bait like a catfish. No greater fool existed in or beneath the world.
He plucked the card from the floor, and dashed out into the hallway, ran to the nurses' station. He found the girl who had brought it exiting another room, her arms laden with a tray of half-eaten food and drink. He darted to her, clutching the card before him.
"Who sent this?" he demanded frantically. "Who sent this card? The basket? Who sent it?"
The girl took a step back, eyes widening in consternation. Her mouth opened and stuttered high-pitched giblets of information. "A… a… man. He had a … hat. A funny hat on his head. And a briefcase. Dressed nicely, a businessman, I think. He was very… very friendly, very nice to me."
Aubrey tore away and down the hall. He took the steps two, three at a time, and burst into the lobby and out the front door.
Night had come. Several people walked the slow paths to their cars. His eyes jumped back and forth, scanned the parking lots. A car pulled out of a spot and came toward him at the entrance. Just before the drop-off circle, the car turned toward the exit.
It was a Lexus. The man driving wore a funny hat, a cloth thing that hung beside to either side and pointed up above each ear like horns. The man turned and grinned at him, flashing all his teeth, and then he was gone, into the night.
It was him. Lana's husband, but not her husband at all. It was Rumpelstiltskin.
He remembered what he had known all along. Even in his thoughts, he had admitted to it; in his deepest feelings as he sat by Lana's bedside, he had known it; and yet his conscious mind had rejected it.
Coming upon him in the night as he entered late from work, bludgeoning him from behind with a figurine, lying down with Lana as if her husband. It was as a dream, a terrible, mad dream, a relentless stupor.
Aubrey collapsed, his head in his hands, moaning loudly, rocking back and forth on pivoted feet. How, oh how?
He shrugged off cold hands reaching for him, the hands of concerned security officers. There was nothing they could do for him. Nothing anyone could do.
He had given Rumpelstiltskin his name back, a body to hide in, and his love as wife. It was only a matter of time before he claimed his firstborn child as well.
Rumpelstiltskin was loose in the world, and it was his own fault.
But regret never solved any problems, never righted any wrongs. He was stronger than them. The line of Grimm was stronger than them. He would fight.
He stood up and straightened his back. When her husband who was a gnome who was still a demon came back to claim his child, Aubrey would be ready.
After all, he was the gatekeeper, and he would show them why.
Thank you for reading! Until next time… hold your family and pets close, and kill the demons.
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