Stutter-stop

A boy stopped. He tugged on his mother’s hand. The boy carried a little book, and he waved it at Henry. Henry stopped, pausing on the dirt tract. His brows furrowed together and he reached for the book without hesitation. What was this? The boy thrust a pen toward him, and Henry took it. Autograph? This boy wanted his autograph. Scribbling his name on the paper, Henry thrust it back to the boy. He went on walking. Boys took up too much time. Kids were a pain. Better things occupied his mind. 

Still, it sent her collapsing to the ground with a sharp crack as her chin collided with earth. Her eyelids flicked open with a whispered click, and the feet in her line of vision were familiar. It took a second...the strongman! Mister Hopper, hello!

The wind ruffled Tanya’s dark hair, disordering what she had taken so long to curl and put into place. Instead of her work-clothes, plain pink or sea-foam green or white with pastel stars paired with sensible comfortable shoes, Tanya had chosen to wear what she thought of as a romantic, slightly collegiate ensemble: a tea-brown skirt, nylons, a creamy, fluffy sweater, and pale milk-colored coat. She had hovered over her sink for an hour, maybe, leaning deep into the mirror with an eyeliner pencil and wadded up tissue soaked in make-up remover. Tanya had liked her face when she had left her apartment. She was not so sure now.

She had suffered through Halloween, unreasonably bitter that she had missed the opening of the carnival, and heard about it later. Tanya reminded herself of her obligations. A good heroine suffered trials; she seemed to welcome them. Tanya’s footsteps crunched over the gravel and leaves. The walk lead her past St. Anthony’s, lit up, fractionally on the first floor only. It was only about eight in the evening.

Not everyone had gone to the opening, surely—but by the time Tanya had a night to herself, it seemed that everyone had already gone and seen the sights—everyone had one thousand stories to tell, and much of what she finally heard was so contradictory and strange that it seemed like a torture not to be able to. Her curiosity burned. She was not satisfied with her maze-walking. There was only one dark presence there.

It didn't even occur to her that someone else might move it before the night was up or that the dogs might sniff them out as well. But the more she swept, the more her spine relaxed itself so that Dottie was all but hunched over by the time she reached the front gates - the end of the first round of her game.

Someone stood there without friends or family or anyone else. What a pretty someone it was, though there was no way of knowing whether she was real or not. Sometimes Miss Cruentifer liked to play tricks like making up people and faces. It could be a test for the performers to see how well the perform, or sometimes just making the visitors to think that there are more people than there are. Still, this person was very pretty and had such lovely hair. Dottie wished she could see the person properly without craning her neck, as she swept closer to the front gate.

Danse macabre, Op. 40 - written in 1874 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The title of Danse macabre is usually translated as Dance of Death, but it’s sometimes also called Ghoulish Dance or Dance of Grim Humor, among others. Image: Les feuilles mortes by Spanish-Mexican para-surrealist painter Remedios Varo.

Maybe all Pack needed was a meal to fill her empty tummy. He could not hear the food sounds in her body that others had - could not hear the warm, slimy organs move - so she had not eaten. He would fix that. He would always fix Pack. 

He turned to leave and took a few steps towards the outsidebigopenspacetorunandhunt before he felt the cold of the wire in his hand. Pack needed that. Pack needed to be fixed. Metal and then food to fill her up until he could hear the food sounds. Walking over to Pack he reached out and grabbed her wrist, intent on placing the piece of wire in her grasp. 

Food and sleep, Rago said. If she had a heart, it would be breaking now at the thought. Then again, if she had a heart, perhaps she wouldn't have to be upset in the first place, because those with hearts needed food and sleep. They could do something about food and sleep, whether they wanted or needed it or not. Dottie had no heart, and so she had no use for food. Sleep was a foreign concept to her. Something other people did, while she sat or went around and worked. But sleep was a funny thing - what use did  people have for lying still with their eyes closed for hours on end? Dottie had sat by and studied sleepers endlessly in days past. And she had come up with no plausible theories to speak of. Oh well. Real people were strange things. They had emotions and thoughts and purposes and the like. Dottie Doo was, of course, simply Dottie Doo, and she had nothing to do other than make sure no-one was unhappy.

Puck couldn’t decide if this was Dottie’s fault or the cat’s fault, but Dottie was present and much easier to blame than the creature that had already escaped. Surely it couldn’t be his fault for being too terrified of the creature to dispose of it himself. Cats scared Puck and therefore he had gone to someone he trusted to take care of the problem, but she had fallen down on the job. The motion of Dottie’s joints meant nothing at all to Puck. Her joints were her concern and if they didn’t move fast enough, perhaps she needed to have them fixed.

He failed to see her as a machine, but he also avoided any notion at all that there was the possibility that Dottie felt emotion or thought beyond the ability to do tasks. She was, after all, a slave. No: He couldn’t think like that. To think of her as slave meant that he was a slave to Madame Cruentifer and that thought made Puck freeze in his place. The thought slithered into one of the holes in his mind, occupying a blank memory-space and then disappearing, and he turned to raise his eyebrows at Dottie. "Well? Find it."

The cat could only have gone to so many places. Perhaps he was going to need to find one of the ghosts to find out where the cats went when they weren’t in his tent. Their disappearance to an ethereal realm made more sense, but it would be too disrespectful of him to go to one of them and demand the removal of the cat. No, Dottie had to be his first choice, every time. "Find the cat. Make it go away. Permanently." He waved at her, dismissing her on one hand, though his mind was also curious to know where Dottie went when she shut down, and she could be fun to play with. 

Send her to find a cat. That, by itself, was a special sort of game. He grinned. The cat didn’t even exist on this plane and he could have Dottie chasing it all night long and into the day!

As fast as she could gather the net, it seemed it would never be fast enough. Puck had already given her another order by the time she was only half done with gathering up the net, and it pained her to know she could not be faster for puck. Dottie would search for the cat until she forgot what she was looking for - it was bound to happen after a few hours or days. Dottie's memory was very good when it needed to be, and she could remember that she had been made by a young engineer who loved a woman very much and needed more than she could give him. Dottie never blamed him. In her own mind, was not alive and she could not feel, and so she could hardly be enough for someone who needed love. And her young engineer needed a lot of love.

Allowing anyone to disturb his things without his presence, he followed after Dottie, carefully moving slower than she did so that she would stay ahead of him. He didn’t offer to take the net from her, nor did he consider the possibility of her getting it tangled up in her works and making her stop. If she did, there were people available who could repair her and put her back together the way that she belonged.

Halfway to the tent in question, Puck stopped, half forgetting what they were doing. The cat was still there in his mind, and he cocked his head to the side, not unlike the look Dottie usually had. Frowning, his brows knit together and he shook his head, then started after her again, not speaking, nor really thinking. She would notice the rats, but fortunately she wasn’t likely to direct the others toward them. Maybe they would be hiding, with a cat in the tent. This one had been a dark tabby with white paws, a disgusting creature not even good enough for eating.

Frustrated, Puck swept past Dottie and toward the tent, allowing her to follow behind him. Walking at such a slow pace made little sense for a tall, narrow man with long legs. At the tent, he paused, hesitating just outside. The cat was inside. He didn’t want to be where the cat was. Frustrated, he glanced around, trying to find something to take over his mind. Something had to entertain him, and quickly. If he didn’t need Dottie, he might use his time to punish her for being so slow. Something which she quite obviously could not help. 

She looked back to see him following, though not expecting it. Dottie had assumed Puck would simply walk away. Oh, well, perhaps he wanted to make sure she did the job perfectly. If she could speak, Dottie would be the first to admit she did not always do things perfectly, especially when moving quickly was a requirement. It made plenty of sense. 

When he stopped, she stopped, but for only half a second. There had been no order given, no-one telling her to stop, so there was no reason for her to, and so Dottie resumed her rickety walk. He swept past her again, and Dottie still continued on her way. She was determined to make it to that tent before that cat caused too much trouble, and the more time she took, the more chance it had to ruin everything. Poor Puck! she thought. Having to suffer such a thing for so long, all because I cannot walk so fast as him. Dottie did not think of it as guilt, but a weight settled on her for her slowness, and though she tried to walk faster, her joints became too uncontrollable, and the stutter-stop motion became too much, and she was forced to walk again.

Dottie did not hesitate when she entered the tent, though Puck was already there by the time she arrived. She was used to entering things by now, be they tents or game stands or massive creatures from which something or someone needed to be extracted from. And the moment she entered, Dottie heard all the scritching and scratching of rats. But no padding of cats. Hm? No cat pads?

He did not like those smells - they tickled his nose and now he wanted to sneeze. But those smells meant good and kind and friend and pack, so he also liked them. If only pack smelled different and not like decay and death and blood and rust and metal and old. Pack meant safe and warm and dry and food and love, but also hurt and sad and tired and cold and sharp teeth. Maybe soon pack would smell of happy and new and warm and full belly. 

The leather jacket creaked softly. Only he could hear it as he moved. Only he could hear a lot of things. He could hear the strange noises that came from the tent where the bad and good smell came from. The sounds meant pack too, just like howls and barks and yips meant pack. He could also hear his claws click-clack on the ground when he walked. No one else could hear them. Claws meant pack and hurt and food and hunt. 

Carefully he reached into the jacket pocket and pulled out the wire. It smelled like pack, so maybe if he gave it to pack then pack would work better and not make strange sounds and smell bad. 

Though she never said it, Dottie made it perfectly clear that she enjoyed Rago's company. He had interesting thoughts, wonderful things to say or not say when he chose not to speak. And he was so very important, too, after all. He was in charge of looking after the Madame's dogs, so for someone like him to be kind to her - Dottie was more than flattered. An she grinned as best as automata could grin whenever she saw him.

What happened after was up to others, and he had failed to pay sufficient attention whenever this process had been explained. They each had their jobs, and it was much easier for him to allow himself to focus on his own job than it was for him to try to compartmentalize what everyone did. Memories produced holes when he evacuated (or perhaps evicted) them, and he no longer tried to remember things that didn’t pertain directly to him — or which he did not find personally pleasant.

At present, the most pleasant memory that he could find would not cover up the cat. No amount of attention paid to the recollection of blood spurting down the back of his throat as he sucked the liver from his last meal would banish the thoughts of the cat. Dottie moved slowly, and he frowned, tapping his foot in irritation. Turning, he swept back the flap of the tent again and glared at her. Perhaps she would need to be disassembled and put back together, but if so this wasn’t his job to do. Dottie wouldn’t laugh at him and make him go through the trouble of punishing a worker (and then of supplying a replacement). 

Patience came and it went, and Puck was growing bored. He snapped his fingers in Dottie’s direction, the long digits making the task difficult and the sound somehow muting itself in the thick fog that was growing higher and higher. Fog added to the mystery, and it was probable that it was produced by some kind of magic, though he wasn’t sure if Madame was the only one who possessed such extraordinary powers. "There is a cat," he repeated, his tone sharp now. 

Puck refused to go back to the tent alone. There was, after all, a cat. Impatient though he was, he would dismantle all of Dottie’s parts and carry her there in pieces himself if he needed to, but he would not return to the tent alone. There was, after all, a cat.

Despite the look on his face - angry, Puck was angry - Dottie smiled as best an automaton could. She disregarded the fog. It wasn't a problem for her until it reached eye level, at least, because she could see just fine until something covered her eyes. 

She stepped out of the tent, nodding again at the strange and unusual selflessness Puck was showing. Still, perhaps he just wanted her to get her faster. She repeated the saying in her mind - the faster she left the tent, the sooner she could get to the mess, the sooner it could be cleaned up. And then, Dottie planned to return here and continue her cleaning, and that would be that.

The music sounded muffled once she was outside the tent and Dottie suddenly missed the music.Then again, erhaps it was meant to stay only there, and nowhere else. She did not bother to take the phonograph, after all, and Dottie reasoned that it was the best decision that could have been made regarding it. After all, it was much too big and clunky to carry, and it might rip her gown, and Dottie would not want to bother anyone else if it was ripped, especially considering she still had fingers. They could hardly move properly to hold a needle, but that was no excuse for being terrible at sewing. So the phonograph had to stay behind.

He seemed to be impatient, so Dottie did not wait as she made her way over to his tent. She assumed the cat would be there anyway. Her gait was something between graceful and broken. Her joints caught and jerked and spasmed, but it was clear she was originally meant to dance from place to place. The ballet shoes she were were far from neat white satin, like they originally were, but she could still manage to walk with them as if she were a dancer, which she had been, at one point. After her jaw rusted shut, but before she was dismembered for the first time. That was a wonderful time.

He opened his mouth to tell her, then closed it again and swept back and out of the way, his fingers brushing the outer canvas of the tent and then sweeping back the flap to allow her to wander out. The music couldn’t stay behind, but he surely wasn’t going to carry it for her even if it had to be moved, and Puck waited with a lost feeling in his mind, that place he went when he wasn’t anywhere, until she picked up her things and carried them to where he needed her to go. She would, or he would lose his temper, though it seemed she had agreed.

"There is a cat," he said quite suddenly, the memory flashing into his blank mind and lighting it on fire. "It must be removed." The cat gave him a sense of disconnectedness, putting him on edge. The thought of the creature made a strange prickling sensation begin at the nape of his neck and travel upward, prickling over his scalp and making the base of his wings itch. Something told him that meant it was a memory of something from long ago, before his time as the King. 

Smiling, Puck stared straight ahead of him, beginning to lose patience. "It must be removed and you will remove it and take your papers," he said. His voice stayed low and without inflection, but his shoulders squared, setting himself up to be commanding. She would either do what he had asked, or he would find some way to take her apart so that she would have to endure the indignity of being put back together. If an Automaton could feel indignity at all, that is.

Oh--no, he wasn't pausing to think. Dottie bent forward in a pathetic attempt at a bow when she saw that Puck wasn't holding the tent flap open for himself. She was so used to people forgetting she was there the moment her orders were given, or at least making sure she went second. It was a level of importance thing. The most important people had to go first. Then the second most, then the third, and so on and so on. Dottie usually went last unless she was dismissed while the important people spoke about important things. But perhaps he just forgot about that for now, because she would get to the mess faster if she was allowed to go sooner. She walked out in her stutter-stop gait,

He spoke, and she stopped walking, only halfway out the door. Cats were pests, that's right. She remembered that well enough to know that Puck's mess was an important mess. She couldn't let them ruin his schedule. Dottie understood. A stiff nod. She did not know what papers he was referring to, but she did not want them taken away. She would have to be clever if she did not want to let the cat get away from her. Cats were quick, and she was slow.

Dottie would need more than just a broom however. She looked to it, eyelids narrowing a bit to suggest a thoughtful look, and then to Puck. In the next second, Dottie turned back to the tent and went to fish a rope in. Metal scraped against porcelain as she bent at the waist - posture perfect as a ballerina's - to fish a rope net out from behind a steamer trunk.