THE FUN OF DESPAIR
Plushie stars dangled and bounced funnily on a babe’s crib mobile. Fuzzy-wuzzy yellow felt made the smiley-face stars *pop* out in the room so much that she wanted to mimic the sproing-ing things. To mimic their nonexistent sound.
So she smacked her lips open. They formed the shape of an eye; the eye's crow's feet the two corners of her rubber band smile. The one talon on either side was, really, stretched far too thin.
"Pop!"
Golden bells hanging from the mobile boogied and woogied and jived, making absolutely smashing tunes.
A sharp and polished shine, a North Star in miniature, slides along the rims of the bells like beads along an abacus.
They gave the kid’s room a lovely amount of merriment, a celebratory atmosphere flourishing in the air so vibrantly that it was definitely sweet pink. There was no baby in the basic white crib, but there was a family ready to make new life, and the girl pacing around frenetically was super ready to start!
She sat down next to the baby blue wall, exhaling gustily before slamming her head right back into the wall. *Crack* goes her skull like a walnut shell. Caramel drips out of the chocolate.
“Oof,” she groaned mirthfully. She sprung up from her fetal position like a jack-in-the-box, her bobbing head spattering back and forth, a clown’s trick flower facing toward the Stars for the shits and giggles.
Impatiently, she ran across the baby blue walls, patting her hands against the windowless surfaces. Her palms pushed against the sloppily painted walls, frictionless bumps leaving indents in her skin as she played drums to the medium-, average-, normal-sized room. There was no exit to be found.
Then the toy box made its appearance, a painted white banquet with a simple design print on the front; of pink flowers with yellow pollen, sprouting on green vines.
*Whump!* The lid of the painted white toy box slammed up against the wall.
The girl had carelessly shoved it open, eager as a beaver to race inside. Wonderment absolutely aglow in her wide eyes, a hitch in her quick breath, a tremble in her jittery hands.
She was ready to head in! What was she waiting for?!
Frustration made her nibble on the skin around her nails. The slivers of flesh, like scissored-up spaghetti, fell away from her horror-like teeth.
Why hadn’t she already leapt in!? She should go now!
“BONSAI!” she screamed in utter delight as she swung herself over the sill up into the air over the toy bin.
A fatal distance from the hard bottom of the toy bin, the monster balled their fists, a delighted grin curling up their face. Their eyes were like pulsating purple pupae, purple orbs that mismatched the other in size. The lopsided, wide-open grin of glowing white teeth squished the cheeks auntie-style.
Those teeth! The Cheshire grin shined like the white of Big Ben at night. One could believe Peter Pan could fly across those teeth, a tiny black silhouette saying “Think happy thoughts!”
Until...
Right above the bin, they removed their face so they could exit stage left right!
Below/around/above/surrounded by friends, they woke up from the dream of the Stars and decided to stop there for a year, which was as long as they prettily lied to themself to be.
All those choices, from “below” to “surrounded by friends,” work in that sentence.
They frowned. Kind of contrasting the beauty of just how much can work in that sentence, ain't it? This was because-
They forgot. Their head turned. To stare at WHO? To stare at YOU – you are stuck in the dream of the Stars.
His faceless being contorts in a grimace, heart crushed with a stainless-steel vice into a purple, beaded smile, tears flowing down his face. He chokes on what he desperately, deeply, deathly wants to say to you, suffocating right in front of you.
So close the tip of his nose touches the tip of your cute nose.
Kiss, kiss, kiss!
Aw.
There was no kissing. You failed the trial. You’re guilty of ugly lies!
Maybe the next reader will remove their face and prettily lie until they are out of the dream!
One can hope!
I am hoping soooooooooo freakin’ MUCH for FRIENDS!
Sticking her tongue out for an eon in blissful wading in nonexistence. Suspended in utter freedom. Outside of the dream where the ugly lie, that reality told to her, tried to supplant the pretty lies of the Stars.
Hands holding onto each other, bronze chimes ringing with each nervous rubbing of her fingers. She’s a bit daunted TOO, much like- who else was daunted?
There was only her and her BESTEST FRIENDS. Her muscles were a-contracting and a-trembling throughout the nonexistence.
Eyes all along her body that were there ~all along~ with her (like friendship!) blinked in an advertisement of Las Vegas-esque similarities. She could just feel the eyelids press down in confusion as they shook off the ugly lies they had long existed.
The eyes of her face were long gone, so they didn’t matter like the other eyes. She then redonned her face, covering up the beautiful mistruths that had so colorfully started sprouting from the boring blandness of empty space she had exposed to escape the stage! Back to the reality of the box she was in.
Sadness!
Foul play!...
“BONSAI!!!” once more!
Let's stick you in her/them/him!
Fight! Fight! Fight!
You swan-dive down into the empty toy box, full of emptiness. Streamers of grey extend from the edges of your mask, fanning out behind your falling body like a behemoth’s wings with all of the fragility of a tiny butterfly’s. Some of the gorgeous lies from outside the dream of the Stars are still glommed onto you, hugging on with all their might.
They sent you soaring!
The wonder of flight, can't you feel it!
Wind rushing by your face, you become more and more of a creator as you flew! Looking down into the nonexistence, billowing right in your eyes as you flap your hands like a chicken! Monotone colors spread like toxic vapor from your hands, coloring the nonexistence. That means you are making stuff! Like a fallen angel, you make your landing in the abyss you made with the powers vested in them.
You are the Creator.
With the hands of an unknowing youth and the little additions of your sleepover compatriots, her BESTEST FRIENDS, you poke and prod your way into a empty shell, a mother hen making one of the many eggs of the day.
A crude string lays under the dark, dreary shade. It is the possessor of an ugly and linty GREY color. To pan along the threadbare thread would see you traveling through droll shadow for far too long. The boredom of such a pursuit would be mind-numbingly monotonous. You will see the same, exhaustingly GREY string from the same angle, no matter how you glance at it.
But glance at it, you did.
A haze of mediocrity homogenizes your eyes, redistributing them until you are left with the average of your flesh. A numbness settles deep in your sockets.
Your eyes finally are the windows to your soul!
They reflect the world around them, grey masses of flesh that do nothing but sit rent-free in your skull, a fitting match-up as there was never substance behind them to begin with. You are now blind.
You get to feel around, trying to pry some meaning, some sense, from this pointless world. Yet the texture beneath your fingers is so unbelievably average. Then the tips of your fingers wander onto script set in relief to the surfaces you painstakingly, childishly, crawled across. Yet the change in texture only hammers home how senseless and pointless the change in.
It causes you so much pain to touch the floor, but much like a bland fiction is a critique of the author’s self, so is a bland background a critique on its Creator. Feel critiqued? In your chest, a chink opens up. You may not have been able to see it even if you weren't blind, but it hurts.
Something wiggles along your face. Ten things. Two trembling hands gleefully take advantage of your weakness. Your numb fingers tear at the skin manically. WHITE-hot pain lights up within your head like a trail of sparklers.
You scoot along the script on knees, mindlessly scratching at your face and leaving a trail of grey blood behind you. A tableau of a some psychedelic, demented view of a corpse on a slug's body in a grey land.
Eventually though, you will find a SHINY. A SILVER knife with no hilt, carefully placed amidst the dull, dark hard surface.
It will fit in any hand, ready to draw bold RED from any.
Your mindless travels, groping around in these vast distances with no vision to call your own, turn mindful.
The metallic killer has cut through your lack of vision.
You can see again. Previously surrounding it is coarse-BLACK, frayed cotton. The heap of puffs hold on to the knife desperately, a hand of carbon-BLACK thread that cannot be identified as anything else but a cartoon, four-fingered limb reaching out of the fabric. This mound of fabric towers around the SHINY like a fortress of old stone; a caldera protectively huddling around its precious with an entrance cut into it so you could make your way into it. Slowly and stutteringly, another hand emerges out of the limb that was holding onto the knife. It stops at a respectful distance from you.
Will you shake it?
Hehehe...
You will shake it, right?
You wouldn't?
Oh, but you are in this person's body...
So you eagerly grasp onto it with both hands, shaking it up and down vigorously.
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It feels soft as it dyes your skin MONOTONE. Like ink saturating its way up a slip of pure WHITE paper, a void becomes your hands. It is just so soft, like a loving embrace.
Perhaps you should let go?
It is strongly recommended that you let go.
Billowing above these disparate elements is a mess of thick, dirtied cloth with threads so small that they appear as an inflexible mass of chalky WHITE leather. It enshrouds the dull surface of this bland world. The cloth halts any possibility of silence, its flapping, whipping-around surface making sounds like a titanic flag of death. While still leaving this world practically barren of anything that would not numb the mind, it at least leaves this landscape not quiet.
A hole in the cloth, formed from basic wear and tear, waves around. Beams of light pour from it into the center of the mound of BLACK. It is the only illumination which exists. For a pointless amount of time, this world did and did not exist, a dichotomy which is equally pointless to note.
Alas.
This is all that is needed to describe the world.
Did you want more? You must be greedy for Color, you foul, accursed thing.
Disappointing.
Let it be known that you are at least in good accompaniment in that trashy, BROWN filth. Instead of letting go of that cartoon hand of sharp EBONY, you eagerly bury your hands and feet into the mound of BLACK fabric. Coarse looking and soft bushels encase your limbs with iron weight as you climb with abandon.
Look up, you innocent child.
Peer over the edge, with your PURPLE eyes filled to the watering brim with childish curiosity.
Hmmm. Not quite.
You need to be more avaricious to really set the mood.
Grasp. Hug. Embrace.
Live the desperation. Grip that cloth. Coat your BRONZED hands in WHITE dust, the interest and beauty of another world reduced to the disgustingly blank ashes that slick your fingers.
Can you pull yourself from a terrible fall?
Your wriggling body coated in WHITE resembles much the actions of a maggot facing the tweezers of an embalmer.
It is up to you to bring Color into the world.
You writhe, thrashing your head and arms in a frantic mess. The head, neck, and body inch and inch, contracting to pull yourself. You parallel your life, reflexively refusing to relinquish your sobbing, moaning hold onto your friends. The Color drains out of your face as you realize your world may just kill you. Can you survive the fall from this height?
Panting; kneeling; the Color of your GREY blood flushing visible on your face. You keel over, wheezing in the comfort of safety on your knees.
The maggot has obtained success, digging back into the corpse.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. That’s better.
Your impromptu trial had been quite Colorful.
Now.
Don’t forget to grab onto the edges of the whole quite firmly with your claws.
And see it.
Could you see it?
Like hide-and-seek, the seekers could see you even if you couldn’t see them.
Two Versicolor Stars swirl into existence, a pair of coruscating fires amongst the dream-like INDIGO of the skies. Outside of the world, these glowing swirls beyond the SANGUINE void look in upon you.
On you.
In this night, you have been looked upon by the Stars. Can’t you feel the empty, invisibly crinkling flesh making way for the ever-widening "beautifully" fish-eye view of the eyes that increase in size with such life; or rather such curiosity?
The eyes expand, pressing and mounding aside the sores of the empty flesh.
As you look on them, you fondly - in this place of all places under their eyes of all eyes - remember the philosophy that brought you here.
Do you remember it now? Life and curiosity are much the same.
Don’t you agree? Curiosity and creativity are true life, otherwise you are simply Monotone.
And all should run from being Monotone. Can you outrun the fate of reducing to a singular shade?
Stand up. Feel your hair trail behind in you in the nonexistent breeze and feel the warmth of a hive of onlookers distilled into the vast two/four/twenty-thousand-and-sixty-one/why count? eyes swirling above you.
The dark INDIGO colored your skin. The chill finally set in. The lukewarm temperature made way for AWE and BEAUTY. The two raised up goosebumps on your arms like the Sun raised life.
Find your footing on the repetitively shifting, boring cloth, the wild, erratic BLUE chaos above you a stark contrast to the world below you. The being/the hive gazes upon you, and then its otherwise featureless face turns joyous, giggling globs of nonexistent blood coming out from nowhere under its crescent eyes.
Its many eyes. So many eyes. Uncountable eyes.
You know stars do not show emotion. But you don’t care what they do. There is no worry nor concern on how Their Bleeding Eyes change. For they love you anyway, and you them no matter what. The blood warbles and wobbles, yet no sound comes from it, nor silence. They do and do not swirl around you. The empty flesh rasps against itself to make way for the movement of the absent blood, before you feel an impossibly... COLORFUL HUG.
A panorama of Colors, a morass of vivid imagery, a kaleidoscope of jagged Color. They swirl and bite into your skin, drawing blood. You are foolish. Scream in ever larger volumes until your jaw breaks to allow the beautiful pain escape your lips more freely. Grab what you brought with you to fulfill The Star’s Starvation for Adulation or else you will not be entertaining enough to the Stars.
You want to be entertaining for the Stars, right?
Perhaps they should... Sew your lips shut?
*giggles*
Like, well, nothing of note, the flinty GRAY string had curled through your whole self.
Surprise! Bet you didn't expect that nonsensical part of the world with the boring string to come into play! It must have climbed heights that a mindless string should not be able to do, just so it could get here. Perhaps it was so boring to reality that space just let it get up there, not making any attempt to enforce the laws of nature.
Behind you, its long remainder of thread waits. A carbon-BLACK hand of thread joins it behind your back, holding a SILVER and SHINY knife. A couple bobs and weaves of the eye-catching implement onto your lips, a pout at your rightful punishment playing across them, leave your lips sewn together.
A zigzag of puffy string turns threadbare as your jaws work open and close, dragging on the flesh of your face. GREY liquid pours from the holes in your sad pout.
You are a bad child!
Now.
What do you have for the Stars?
I see now. You have a corpse of a fellow devout of the Stars, long dead and not boringly killed by your own hand.
Not bad, not bad.
That will be suitable material.
The Stars consume it in a puff of comical glitter, so SHINY and GOLD. They give some of the GOLDEN sparkles to you, which you gratefully accept. Like fairy dust, a miniature of a dune of gold within the palm of your hand. It feels light and airy, like a clump of feathery down.
Tears fall down your cheeks under the cold and callous eyes that are so far beyond human. Your breath mists in front of you, turning into liquid from the oddly selective cold. The tears freeze on your cheeks like glass baubles glued to your sewn-shut mouth.
You know what you must do next. Sacrifice your happiness or else they won’t be pleased. Rid yourself of your blessed joy.
The eyes growing all over on your arms... their views mournfully roam over your features, every single bit of which makes up the warm, comfortable hearth for your soul! No matter how monstrous the rest of you is, no matter how vicious the specters waiting outside your windows are, these little parts you adore, they light up the house of your soul happily!
But no longer. You should work harder than you did to get a body like this. What I really mean is... you should work harder to earn happiness for yourself!
So this is a worthy trade! I'm even helping you! You will merely fall into the Uncanny Valley in every way that counts to you, in return for the salvation of your Earth and a toy of great life for the Stars to play with other worlds.
A blur on your neck, your head shakes, a scream prying open the depths of your INDIGO-lighted mouth. To touch on onomatopoeia, the As exit one after the other, seemingly never ended by the H. The scream just takes so long! Conical teeth rasp snake-like by each other as it does so.
You tune out the words of the Stars, LA LA LA LA LA!
But you can't help consider the hints toward what happiness they name. The thoughts flit wonderingly in your mind: do you really have to pull out the fire from the hearth? You try to distance yourself from the realizations, making them metaphors so personal as to be incomprehensible to even your understanding from second to second.
Your heart paces, panicking in horror, your cheeks bending so, SO hard in your hate of the deal. The frozen tears shatter on the face contorting in fright, twinkling glass of misery shining even on the shifting hills of WHITE chalk fabric beneath your feet.
But the voice continues heedless of all of your wild motions. But the hand still outstretches to grip onto the collar of the dog scrambling in any direction away from it. But the voice/the hand still drags the whimpering beast out into the BABY-BLUE snow.
For again, if you wish to remove the viscerally entertaining color of suffering you had wrought on so many actors on the stage of the Stars, then you must help make a new FRIEND made of this color for your FRIENDS, the Stars, out of your own suffering!
You must warp your façade! You must desecrate the repairs you've made to the home which your body is! You must do this to amuse the cackling rows of teeth!
The gnashing teeth crack in symphony like cricks in thousands of necks, and clack like crickets ramming their tiny, little heads against a plastic bucket futilely. Celestial PURPLE contained within the hard sheen of bone is exposed from the moving of nonexistent flesh.
Where do you end, and where does their voices talking to you begin? You cannot tell! It is is so confusing!
You clutch your head in discomfort.
Do it now!
There is no point in regret!
Willingly resign yourself to suffering!
And bring entertainment to the Stars!
The knife sculpts off your comforting features, reducing you to an imperfect shell once more. The shell of you has imperfections you will loathe no matter what.
A bit of nose there floats off from your face. Cut-off chunks of your chest freeze frostbite PURPLE under the cold stare of the Eyes Under the Sanguine Ocean and your helpless stare out onto the empty world. Bits of your pelvis bounce away across the whipping around, WHITE fabric you stand on.
With one of their blinks, you heal over in a shape wrong to you, but so colorful to the Stars' sight. But you simply smile.
"Nice to meet you, Ship of Theseus. I'm Dad," jokes the Stars. You smile, when nonetheless, the joke is incomplete and doesn't make a lick of sense.
Beetle-wing iridescent, despairingly GREY fluid pours from your chest and face. You add nothing to this world with your bodily fluids. Unsurprising, as you are the creator of this pitiful world.
Your sacrifice cannot bring the Color the world needs so desperately. But the Stars can. They have the power you pursue.
The power is always worth it, no? Your sacrifice does end up leading to Color.
With a touch of amusement carefully pressed in by the Stars’ minds, and a breath of inspiration from the nowhere beneath the Stars, the world collapses beneath the weight of the Stars’ gazes. Much like a pizza slice mashed up into a ball, they nibble on it, testing out their handiwork.
Bodily held by your neck, fast suffocating next to the remains of the world, you see their ARTFUL design.
With a spin of nonexistence by force of whatever constitutes their minds, the world spirals out into a toy to match the way they toy with you. They make a reflection of you, strings attached to the toy to taunt you lovingly about the remainder of the strings attached to you.
The WHITE cloth becomes skin so terribly blank to observe.
That hand of carbon-BLACK weaves horridly BLACK hair, before being worked into the grey cloth for a miserably patchwork outfit.
Mark my words, the stitches of EBONY will make you cry. The jack-o-lantern nose and mouth of BLACK threads hold no emotion despite the supposed resemblance to a humanoid.
The linty GRAY thread coils within the insides of the Puppet, only extending outside of the body for a few squares of cloth to cover its featureless body. Before you send the toy on its way, you and the Stars co-creators of new life, you must thoroughly check it.
A GREY finger delicately scratches your chin in thought.
Are you ready to let it go from this abode?
See it. See the Monotone Puppet, you sick actor, so boring it turns back to a gothic beauty. It prances around, strutting its stuff and already curiously looking for color. It sniffs around the blank WHITE space left by the good riddance of the world you created.
Feel it. Feel the Monotone Puppet, you sick actor. There is no discomfort nor comfort from its touch. Neither can it feel you. It can feel the wonderful GREY-BROWN of your skin. It sweetly shakes your finger in a ‘Hello.’
Taste it. Taste the Monotone Puppet, you sick actor. Feel the blandness melt off your BLACK, BLACK tongue like musty water squeezed from a soaked plushie.
Hear it. Hear the Monotone Puppet, you sick actor, you hear nothing. You and the Stars forgot to give it vocal cords. Remedy that immediately!
Smell it. Smell the Monotone Puppet, you sick actor, and wrinkle your nose at the accursed energy you have infused it with, the tidal wave of toxic positivity, contained within that body.
Congratulations! It is truly evil. Now that you have entertained the Stars with a dead body, a bit of suffering, and a new life of strange design, they shall bless you.
The Stars will send your creation away from your world. They will send you back to your Earth in "Charisma."
You shake your head, delighting the COLORFUL beings. Delicately, under their watching view, you fold the paws of the Monotone Puppet around the SHINY knife you used to cut away your human beauty.
The creature is ready to leave your hands now. To start its own story.
Now. Forget about making your first creation. Forget all about beginning-
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The Creepypasta of The Red Marionette
It is a puppet for the color, by the puppet, and for the puppeteers!