What is Scott doing right now?
Strings as thin as spider silk but as strong as chains drop. He doesn't even see it as the enchanting threads wrap around limbs.
wrist.
shoulder.
back.
knee.
When he finally noticed something was taking control he was too late. By now he's lost much use of his body. He could move it but what use were feet that didn't bend and fingers that couldn't move?
Not very useful are they poppet? But don't fret I can make you useful.
For a glorious performance.
Scott's dragged up in air feet dangling more useless than ever before. His legs aren't really his, his body itself begins to stop listening. Only for the man doing it all to shrink down and enter unwelcome, but hard to say it was unexpected considering the wire digging into unfeeling porcelain limbs.
He smiles, all he does is smile these days.
Your body isn't yours.
He holds out his hand, and you take it.
a dance begins, a step back and forth that you've become an unwilling participant of. Each word that slips from your stiff lips falls on deaf ears. He doesn't care, never did, never will. You dance but you don't touch the floor.
You don't get that privilege anymore.
It's a short dance. A mockery of a dance you might have loved once upon a time.
you don't get that privilege anymore.
A proper puppet needs control of the head too. movement of the neck is vital to a life-like performance after all.
I'm sure you scream. (But well who cares what the toy has to say?)
the string is visible this time. drops between his eyes Scott has to go cross eyed to see the rather thick wire dangling. But when he does all he can notice is the sharp point of the wire. A fine needle of a wire squirming like a snake in a jungle as it doubles back out of his sight.
It comes back down. Hard. the sharp pain spikes through his skull, blood trickles down his nose. He can still see for now, but he can't see what he's feeling. the wire is spreading hooks through his skin and muscle. it's not wrapped like the others. No, no that wouldn't hold right on the head, Joel simply had to get creative.
It snakes under his skin and through muscles, hooks like thorns split from the main wire and stab into the muscle securing it. Scott could feel how far it crawled, wrapping around his skull as it pulled him up. his body was forced to follow or god (haha) forbid it tear its way back out.
He's not given a moment of pause as two more spike into his head right above his ears. None breach his skull thankfully but he can feel them crawling through muscle. Invading what left of the body is his.
Infecting it.
Controlling it.
Using it.
because it is not yours. Not anymore and possible not ever again.
He hangs limp in the air blood slowly trickling down from the holes in his head, staining that dainty porcelain a icky sort of brown. The wounds pulse with pain, it's the only sensation he can feel. He can't even feel the now present cracks from where the stabs shattered porcelain.
Probably doesn't even notice until Joel runs a finger across the crack down his face.
I should have been more careful, cracks are quite ugly, wonder if Jimmy will mind.
I still want to put on a show for him. :)
These days, there’s nothing but lying in bed and waiting, for the inevitable. Like a lamb to slaughter except- a lamb gets the mercy of death, of not knowing its fate. Scott has no such luck, she is trapped, she is scared, and she knows what the future holds.
It is written in the way his legs are completely immobile now, no flesh to be found except where the knee has yet to form the proper joints that make Scott what he is now. It is written in the way his chest shutters in miniscule not even there breaths, like the whistling of wind through broken glass, nothing but a reminder of failing organs. It is written in the way she can make no sound, and her lips are barely moveable, same with her jaw, locked in place. It is written in the way nothing but his arms is hollow, stars he wishes the rest of him were hollow, everything would be so much easier. But she doesn’t get easier. All she gets is cruelty.
That’s when a voice whispers in her head,
“Not very useful are they poppet? But don't fret I can make you useful. For a glorious performance. For your dear lover.”
And she’s pulled into the air.
The words sting, it’s worse than the man’s presence or anything that’s going to happen while Joel is here today. Jimmy doesn’t deserve this, any of this. She doesn’t care what happens to herself, Jimmy doesn’t deserve this.
He hadn’t- when did he get strings? Or wire? Scott isn’t sure, she’s not sure it matters either. Not when Joel is smiling like a mad scientist who’s proud of their newest abomination.
He isn’t- well- he’s not surprised when his body moves on its own. The surprising thing is that Joel is reaching out his hand for some unknown reason. It’s when a dance begins, that he realises what Joel is up to, a performance, he’d said.
There’s barely any fight left in Scott, he just doesn’t have the strength for it. Not after being bed ridden for months with no way to communicate other than head nods and shakes. So- he resorts to begging. She knows Joel can hear her, she can feel him lingering in her head:
Please leave him alone. Do whatever you want with me, just- Jimmy is so good, all he wants is to be left alone with his town, let him have that. He doesn’t need me, I’m not good, but he doesn’t deserve this.
Joel ignores the weak pleading, and the dance comes to an end. She and Jimmy had never gotten to do that…
With the torso and leg muscles he’s got left, he shutters as a string drops in front of his eyes. The porcelain containing those muscles vibrates with the motion, it makes Scott feel sick. He looks at the string, going cross eyed to look at it and then- it disappears, and he tenses.
It pierces and he screams, but there is no sound. His face screws in pain and he is helpless to take it. His body is not his. Is it really even a body? The answer, painfully easy to come too on his own, is no. She isn’t human, not anymore. So this isn’t a body.
A porcelain shell, Joel had kept his promise. Even if the shell hasn’t been completed.
Blood runs from its nose and it’s gross and she closes her eyes like it can escape the sensation of the sticky red-brown fluid running over its half porcelain and half flesh skin. Strings worm around under his skin, spreading thorny hook after thorny hook, into one weak dying muscle after the other. Tears run unbidden because there’s no sense in holding them in, it only ever hurts worse and Scott just can’t stomach that right now.
He’s forced into place, and he hates it, he hates it, he hates it. He can no longer bury his face in her own blue hair for comfort. Simply made to look Joel in the eyes who is grinning sadistically. She hiccups and it’s once again an action without sound, a motion accompanied by the vibration of porcelain again. This time: the nauseous sick feeling is aided by the pain and with that comes the smallest bit of bile, it bubbles up from his throat and trickles from the right corner of his lips. There’s barely anything in his stomach, but this is still something her shell manages. Just like the first time… but that had worse. No questions.
The wire stops slithering around his muscles but that’s only because two more razor sharp strings stab above his ears. It’s the worst of the pain by far, and Scott noiselessly screams again. Nothing pierces his skull, she doesn’t think it’d survive strings wrapping around weaving through her brain.
Joel’s presence in its head as he listens to its internal monologue is enough.
It still crawls though, and he swears these two are slower than the others, drawing out settling into place and making Scott feel it.
She wishes she could curse Jimmy and blame him for this. But he is not at fault, in fact, he’d warned her. Truth is he’ll be hopelessly in love till the day he dies, he chooses not to think about whether death is even possible like this. Shamefully, because he knows his earlier begging didn’t work, he hopes after the performance is over he’ll be allowed to stay in Tumble Town, to rest with Jimmy. It’s another thing she doesn’t think she’d survive, being alone after this.
Scott hangs limply in the air, in a body that’s still slightly too big to be a marionette’s; and he has the brief horror of considering whether they’ll have to do this again when the strings become too long. Gods above it hopes not.
After it’s all over, and he’s thankful for the pain, because at least it’s something to truly feel. That, and the dripping of more red-brown from where the final two strings had pierced. Everything else is just… numb.
When Joel reaches out again, this time to touch, he closes his eyes. It wishes it could squeeze them shut, but the glass would break. More tears slip out though, and that can be something.
When he does finally touch, her chest seizes, its face has been cracked.
“I should have been more careful, cracks are quite ugly, wonder if Jimmy will mind. I hope not. I still want to put on a show for him.”
Pitifully, vainly, Scott wants to beg for them to be fixed. Sue him, she’s always prided herself on being pretty and he has nothing left. He’s got nothing. Anything it can cling to is something, and… she just wants to be beautiful. So she swallows her pride again,
Can you fix them? Please, I-I’ll do whatever you want. Please, I’ll be complacent and compliant, I won’t complain anymore, I- whatever you want. Please. I don’t have anything left besides this, just let me be pretty. I’ll never ask for anything again. I just want to be beautiful, if nothing else. Please.