Master of Marionettes

Have you ever felt the hairs on the back of your neck stand-up or felt goose-bumps rise up on your skin? It is a pretty normal reaction to experiencing fear. It is also indicative of something else. Most of the time it is a physical reaction to terror, the bodies’ out-dated fight of flight response to make you appear larger. Sometimes that reaction is the result of another thing. On those rare occasions, it is a reaction to my mental intrusion. I’ll expound on that a little. My name is Alex Whitaker and if you’ve ever felt goose-bumps well up on your skin or your hair stand on end, you may have at one time or another been my marionette.

Now I can almost envision you rolling your eyes and making jerking-off motions with your hands, but give it some thought. Haven’t you ever made a decision or done something that in hindsight makes no sense and seems completely foolish? Maybe you hooked-up with someone you knew you shouldn’t be with, maybe you cut loose with some friends drank too much or let loose in other ways, or maybe you indulged in some of your darker proclivities. You probably woke up the next morning and saw what you had wrought and exclaimed, “What the hell did I do?” To be snide, you didn’t do anything. I did something using your body.

I feel like I should explain the process and rules. I can’t just go around pulling the strings on anyone I want. There are rules to these things. I can control people from a distance, but I have to know what they look like. I have to have their face in my mind to get it to work properly. I also have to be in the same mindset as them. I have to be on the same wavelength, if they are depressed, I have to be depressed. If they are ecstatic, I have to be ecstatic. You get the point. The easiest emotion to provoke in people is anger. Once I’m in sync with there mental state, the process of insinuating myself into their mind is simple.

Pulling the strings or mind controlling, if you want to sound all science-fiction-y, on someone is an odd sensation. The simplest analogy I can make to explain it is try to imagine yourself reading a really involving and intriguing book and watching an extremely suspenseful movie at the same time. You’re being constantly drawn in two different directions. I can see from their perspective and can even feel what is happening to them. I’ve even snapped out of a trance when pulling someone’s strings to find goosebumps and my hair standing on end. I am that attuned to their physical sensations.

I must admit that I don’t have complete control over them. I can’t force them to do something they find morally abhorrent. I consider myself lucky to have born in a world where morality is on the decline and not too many people uphold the righteous ideals people used to carry with them. An example of something I couldn’t manipulate someone into doing would be forcing a mother to murder her children. The maternal love she feels for them is just too strong. I have to keep my emotional state on the same wavelengths as theirs.

There are of course loopholes to this. I couldn’t manipulate a mother into killing her children by controlling her through hate or anger, but I could take advantage of her love and desire to protect them to accomplish my goals. I could manipulate a mother’s love to protect her children, say from the wickedness of the world, and convince her that smothering them in their sleep would be the only way to keep them innocent.

Now I feel like I must attempt to save a little face with you all. I am not an evil person. I am not a sociopath. I couldn’t be able to empathize to the extent necessary to take control of them if I was a sociopath. I like to call it ‘pulling their strings.’ To say that, “I’m controlling them.” implies force and a lack of finesse. In reality, most people wouldn’t even know I’m there. When I’m using my gift, I’m only pulling strings and whispering immaterial things into your ear. It’s not much more than that. I will say that years of honing my skills have made me a bit of a master manipulator.

I first became aware of my gift when I was in elementary school. I was an abnormally tall, skinny stick of a kid. To be honest, I look more like a scarecrow than a man. I was rather bookish and I think that is what drew bullies to me. I would sit outside during recess and read rather than play. I like to stimulate myself intellectually. I think the bullies were just drawn to someone who was different from them. They loved to knock the books out of my hands, get up in my face and shout, “Only faggots read!”

One bully was always a little more prosecutorial than the rest. He had a personal vendetta against me. I remember one time, I just rubbed him the wrong way and he decided that he wanted to beat me within an inch of my life. He punched me in the stomach and straddled me when I fell to the ground and began to rain punches down on me. As he was beating me, I frantically wished that he would just leave me alone and bully someone else. I imagined him shoving another boy, a socially awkward classmate who insisted on not bathing, to the ground and unleashing his pent up rage on him. I was thinking on this so intently, so desperate to escape the pain, that I didn’t notice when my bully stopped punching me.

My bully got off me and walked off. The other kids who were watching me assumed that he was tired of beating me up. I was flabbergasted when the bully walked up to Eustace, the smelly and socially defunct boy, and began to swing haymakers at the unassuming student. The class crowded around them and by the time a teacher was able to intervene Eustace had suffered a fractured rib and the doctors had to wire his jaw shut for a week.

Some part of me realized that I had done that. I had made the bully stop beating on me and shift his attention to a completely different boy mid-attack. I couldn’t figure out how I did it. It took years of practice, trial-and-error, and dumb luck to learn how to control my gift. I realized that I needed to mentally picture the target, experience the same emotions as them, (In the case of my bully, we were both angry. He was angry because he was confused and insecure about his budding sexuality and I was angry because I was being bullied.) and it was just that simple. I could make them my marionette.

I was thirteen when I used my gift next. I was in middle school and getting ready to transition to high school. I had been enamored with one of my classmates. Her name was Proserpina. I was in love with her due to her bookish nature and schoolmarm-ish appearance. She had thick glasses and a cute smile. I wasn’t in the same social circle as her, but I thought love conquers all. I managed to catch up to her on her way home from school one day and spill my heart out to her. She of course didn’t know who I was and rejected me in the harshest manner possible. She called me a bunch of rotten things and even called me a perv. Me?! A pervert!

I was sitting in my room. I was there and I wasn’t. I was in my room and five miles away; the school’s janitor was raping Proserpina. I felt everything. Every delicious sensation. I felt the janitor grinding into her and her hot breath puffing up against the hand that he held over her mouth. It wasn’t hard to pull his strings. You could read what he was thinking by the lecherous looks he threw at the female students. I conjured up the image of his face and aligned myself with him. He finished and the sensation was so incredible that the strings snapped. When he came, I came. He came to his senses in that small watershed and what happened next I don’t know.

Proserpina was transferred to another school. The janitor fled to his home and hung himself in a closet. No great loss there. The teachers never made mention of her, I didn’t care much either way. I had found something much more interesting than love. I realized that my gift had given me a wonderful opportunity. You see, so many people drift through life without truly experiencing what life has to offer. I could use my gift to experience things that no one person could ever experience.

I am what you might call an aficionado of experiences. In my lifetime, I have seen what only a few people might have experienced. I know what it is like to lie with a girl, a woman. Both with consent and against one’s wishes. I have been beaten to an inch of my life and have bludgeoned someone off of this mortal coil. I have robbed people of both their belongings and dignity. I lived the life of a rich man and toiled in destitution. I gave away my entire empire to benefit the poor. I have committed vile acts and saved people from death’s door as a doctor. I have died and I have lived, all within the comfort of my room.

Dying was not a fun experience. I thought it would be exciting. I was sitting on a bench when I pulled the strings of a young man. He was a bit of a hipster and even wore a shirt with the phrase “Y.O.L.O.” bedazzled across it. I disagree with that statement. You don’t only live once. You can experience a myriad of diverse and interesting things. I whispered into his mind that he should really be walking in the shade of the buildings. He crossed the street without thinking twice and stepped right into traffic. The impact of the car should have splattered him, but I guess the human body is more resilient than that. A sensation of intense cold swept over my body. I was deep in the throes of shock and didn’t even feel the pain. I tried to stand on my crippled limbs before I/he collapsed in the street and died.

I could write hundreds of pages on the things I experienced, but I have a feeling that you would find them all decadent and deprived. Not so! I hunted down these experiences and subsumed them into my being with only a scholarly interest. I wanted to feel what it was like to stand on the roof and watch the sun set and the chilling wind caress your face before throwing yourself onto the streets below. I wanted to experience the blinding rage as a man wraps his hands around his cheating lover’s neck and strangle the life from her.

I bet you are disgusted with me… I can almost feel the hatred you are harboring in you for me. That’s good. Hold onto that hatred. It will make it easier to pull your strings. Just joking! I don’t know what you look like. I will probably never know what you look like. I’m writing this as something to leave behind when I face the true death. My time is running down and it’s my turn to experience the end through my own body.

My slow descent towards the end began when I got greedy with my gift. I pulled too many strings and the whole thing began to unravel. I began to use my gift to line my pockets. It was my avarice that did me in. I wanted to feel what it felt like to be hunted and I wanted to gain some coin for the ordeal. I reached into the mind of a man outside a jewelry store. He was looking in the window at the displays with such a forlorn look on his face. Maybe he wanted an engagement ring for his significant other? I decided to help him with that dream.

The whole smash and grab ordeal was fucked from the start. I managed to snatch the security guard’s handgun before he realized what was happening. He was reaching for it with an outstretched hand when I squeezed the trigger. The bullet shredded through his hand and pierced his neck. He slumped to the floor like a ragdoll. I turned the gun on the cashier and had her empty all the jewelry into the bloody shirt of the guard. (I am pretty good at improvising.) I turned my back to her to give her sufficient time to trip the silent alarm. I wanted to know what it was like to run from the police and trade gunfire before being torn apart by bullets like a mad dog.

When I was certain she had triggered the alarm, I took off running. I had him toss the jewelry into a bin so I could retrieve it later as an added bonus. The wailing sirens alerted me to the cops impending arrival. We whirled around and unloaded a few bullets into the windshield. While the cops hunched behind the squad car for cover, I ejected the clip and counted the rounds. I had enough. I took aim and squeezed off a few rounds, a sufficient number to provoke the cops. They popped out behind their car and riddled me full of bullet holes. I staggered back and collapsed into the street. My blood draining from my body and a chilling sensation sweeping through-out my core.

As soon as I was sure I was dead, I sat up from my spot on the bench and moved towards the bin. I flipped the lid back and withdrew the jewelry. I could fetch a nice price for all of this stuff. The instant my hand withdrew the bloody shirt from the bin, a hand seized mine and encircled it in something metal. I tried to turn to face the person, but they slammed my head into the side of the bin and my world erupted in a bright flash. I was too dazed to realize that I had just been handcuffed and was being arrested as an accomplice.

The police officer dragged me towards the squad car. I protested the entire time and claimed innocence, but that was now a moot point. I had been caught red handed quite literally as the security guard’s blood stained my hand. I tried to pull the strings of the arresting officer, but she had an excellent poker face and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling the entire ride to the station. I was thrown into a cell while they planned their interrogation strategy.

I sat in the uncomfortably cold room and waited. After half an hour, a doughy man opened the door. I gave my whole planned speech, “I had nothing to do with what happened downtown, I just saw the guy dump something into the trash. My curiosity got the better of me and-”

He interrupted, “Cut the shit… We got witnesses who placed you too far away from the scene of the crime to know where he disposed of his ill-gotten gains. The only possible explanation is that you tow were in cahoots.” I began to argue, but he wasn’t listening. He had his version of the truth and he was going to use it against me.

My court appointed attorney arrived too late and too ill-prepared to make any real difference. Bail was refused and I was left in the police station to await my trial. It was a quiet day at the station, which was a good thing. I didn’t feel like dealing with other cellmates. As I sat in my cell in quiet contemplation, I realized I was screwed. My ‘accomplice’ was dead and I could be tied to the crime. Best case scenario, I would be tried for larceny and sentenced to two to five years in prison. Worst case, I would be charged with aiding and abetting manslaughter, which would carry the same punishment as if I committed the crime myself.

I knew that I had to get away. I thought it would be simple with my gift. All I needed was to strike up a conversation with the guard and say something to piss him off. Once he was angry, I could use that anger to get him to unlock my cell door to give me a beating and then I could affect an escape. I could steal his uniform and slip out and live my life as a fugitive, using my power to evade detection. I called the guard over and set my plan in motion.

Angering him was easy. He looked like a family guy type. He had that kind of fatherly air about him. This was going to be easy. I explained to him that I couldn’t be an accomplice because at the time I was at his house forcibly fucking his wife. He gave a gruff snort and I pressed on. I told him that she fought it at first, but in the end; she was begging me for more, telling me her husband was a limp-dick piece of shit. That got his ire. Funny… Telling him I raped his wife didn’t provoke him, but mentioning his sense of inadequacy riled him up. People are so amusing sometimes.

The guard unlocked my cell and slid the police baton out of it’s holder clipped onto his pants. He snarled, "You’re buddy shot a retired cop, I am going to enjoy this.” I envisioned his face and got angry. How could I get locked in this stupid fucking situation in this stupid fucking podunk town? I slid my mental tendrils out to the guard and tried to pinion his mind. Something was wrong. He raised the nightstick and hit him square in the stomach. I emptied my stomach and he continued to berate and beat me. Why couldn’t I control him?

I tried to control other people after I regained consciousness, but I couldn’t pull anyone’s strings anymore. At first I thought that I had somehow forgotten an important step in the process, but after re-hashing the process for the umpteenth time; I realized that it wasn’t that. I couldn’t use my gift anymore. Panic took me then. I frantically lashed out with my mind, trying to ensnare anyone, anything. I failed miserably and resigned myself to my fate.

My trial went about as well as anyone of you would expect. They wheeled out the security guard’s widow who wept and bawled, a lookie-Lou who saw me rifling through the trash for the bloody shirt, and a few more people to corroborate the evidence. The judge sentenced me for aiding and abetting the trigger man and handed down a sentence of twenty years. I was given a little lee-way, but not much as the judicial system still charged me with the shooter’s murder sentence.

I came to a realization during the first month of my incarceration in a state penitentiary. My power was gone. I tried multiple times to pull people’s strings: guards, inmates, visitors, I failed to insinuate myself into any of their minds. I was powerless. It was then that I began to put all of the pieces together in this complicated jigsaw and why I am writing this now. I am going to die sooner than later and I need to get my story out there.

I don’t know how much time I have left. I have slid the final piece into the puzzle and realized that I was forming the image of a death’s-head all along. The pieces of how I seemingly stumbled upon my gift through pure happenstance, how I got goose-bumps and my hair stood on end every time I pulled someone’s strings, how I conveniently lost my power as soon as I got caught. It is the only reasonable explanation to all of this. I thought I was the master manipulator, but in reality… I was just a marionette.

I don’t know how they did it. I don’t know how they pulled my strings. I just know that they’ve been pulling my strings for a while. Hiding behind my inquisitive nature and making me their dancing marionette while they lived vicariously through me. They manipulated me into thinking that I had these powers, but I was just an extension of them. This master of marionettes knows that I am no longer of any use. Will he control me to take my own life? Or maybe just manipulate someone into shanking me… I don’t know how or when he is going to cut my strings, but I know they will be cut… EmpyrealInvective