Monday 28 January 2008 23:38 GMT
I chose the ideal time to take my man-puppet to the park.
It was an overcast, cold but dry weekday afternoon. On a sunny weekend, there would have been too many people about, leading to unwanted witnesses. On a wet day, there would have been almost no-one to interact with my toy. The day I picked had an ideal balance.
I selected a quiet path where someone walked by on average every five minutes or so. Having set my puppet up, I floated up overhead, rising imperiously above the ordinary world until the strings I was holding were taut. My toy was powerless to do anything but stand there and wait for me to start moving his limbs about according to my whims. He couldn't even cry out in protest without forfeiting my other game (and also his life). Unsurprisingly, he stayed silent.
I started to make him walk up and down a stretch of the path. Although there were plenty of trees that provided just enough cover so I could remain unnoticed up in the sky as I manipulated my puppet, I wanted to make sure that the strings which were clearly visible to my superhuman eyes were actually "near-invisible" to ordinary people. So, I "walked" my toy right past a middle-aged woman and then an elderly man, examining the two passers-by in detail from my lofty vantage point, checking their pupils for the telltale indications that either of them noticed anything unusual. They both failed to spot that the man they strolled past was being controlled by four strings in the petite, but mind-blowingly strong, hands of a gorgeous girl who was hovering twenty-five feet overhead.
Now that I was certain my puppet-game worked the way I'd planned, it was time to start having fun. The next passer-by my toy encountered as I walked him along was a boy walking a large dog. I waited for the right moment and then gave an extra big pull on the cord attached to the puppet's left ankle. My easy tug caused the male's leg to flash out, catching the dog squarely in the ribs. As the hound landed, growled and leapt, I stopped moving the puppet, giving the animal an easy target. Snarling and barking, the dog sunk his jaws into my toy's leg, extracting revenge on the thing that had hurt it.
Of course, my puppet wasn't allowed to scream, so he bit his own lip to contain his yells as the beast tore into his calf. From up above, I watched the sweat pouring onto his forehead as he fought to keep his silence.
"You deserved that, mister!" said the boy with the dog, showing no great urgency as he tried to pull his pet away. My toy, naturally, said nothing.
Eventually, the youngster calmed the animal, and dragged him away, leaving the bleeding man alone. Without leaving my station eight yards above him, I employed a quick, precise blast of my heat-vision to seal the wound in his leg so that he wouldn't leave a suspicious trail of red on the path. It goes without saying that I didn't bother asking him if he was ready. I didn't care. All that mattered was that I had him walking again within seconds of the boy and dog leaving the scene.
The next person we encountered was an enormous middle-aged man with huge arms, a massive thick neck and a misshapen nose that suggested extensive past fighting experience. I was making my puppet stroll on the opposite side of the track, so the first thing I did was steer him into the big man's path. The giant hurrumphed and side-stepped, so I copied the lateral move with my toy. This went on three or four more times with the large man's face getting more and more crimson on each occasion until, clearly not blessed with much patience, the would-be passer-by yelled "Get out of my way!"
That was my cue to raise the puppet's left arm and very gently brush it against the gorilla's shoulder. I managed to make the action look like a pathetic, failed attempt at a punch. A punch that conveyed the message "I'm weak and I don't know how to fight, but I reckon I can take you." And you can imagine how delighted I was to see the gesture being received in the spirit in which it was intended.
The big guy seemed to pause for a moment as if he didn't know whether to laugh or get furious. Fortunately, he chose the latter. I did the laughing (quietly), high above, as he roared "You stupid little wimp!" and threw a massive fist at my puppet's head. If I hadn't pulled his body back a little at the last moment to cushion the blow, it would have been an instant knockout. As it was, I heard the crunch of his jaw as the punch landed. It must've been extremely painful, because when my toy tried to close his teeth on his own tongue to stifle his instinctive yell, he bit down so hard that he drew blood.
Realising that another whack like that might fracture my puppet's skull (an unacceptable level of damage before I'd finished playing with it), I lowered the strings, making my toy fall as if he'd been completely floored by that first punch. Luckily for my man, his opponent swallowed the deception. The large man gave a satisfied grunt, noisily gathered up the saliva in his mouth and spat onto the head of his prostrate, vanquished challenger. After that he pronounced his brief judgement on the man he believed had tried to hit him: "Arsehole." Then, checking to the left, the right, in front and behind (but of course not above) and thinking he was unobserved, he strolled off.
No sooner had he gone from sight then I lifted my puppet back to his feet. He had a big bruise and a swollen ear where that huge fist had impacted, but he was still fully conscious. I soon had him walking again.
It was a few minutes before we met anyone else. Eventually, I spotted a girl of around seventeen carrying a bag of books, presumably on her way home from college. I carefully steered my man near to her and then skillfully lifted his left arm, placing his hand precisely against the shocked young woman's breast. Then I moved the string a little to make it seem as if my puppet was copping the most outrageously indulgent feel. My toy blushed bright crimson, but he couldn't stop me doing what I wanted with his arm and hand.
The girl shrieked and jumped back. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded. My puppet couldn't answer, which the girl didn't appreciate. "I said what the hell do you think you're doing, pervert?" she cried. Again, no response. "Haven't you got anything to say for yourself, you disgusting creep?" It appeared he hadn't. "You should be locked up, freak!" The girl was working herself up nicely. "Your type make me sick! You're a disgusting, perverted piece of shit!"
Losing control of herself, she ran up to the man who had groped her and kicked out as hard as she could. Her sneakered foot connected perfectly with my puppet's crotch. I didn't move him out of the way as I thought it wouldn't be fair to spoil the girl's fun. She wasn't superpowered, her kick didn't lift the male from the ground, but it did cause him agony. The proof of that was he way he screamed as her foot fell away from his groin. He'd succeeded in suppressing screams when the dog bit him and when the gorilla punched him. But a good old kick in the balls from a young woman finally proved too much.
The girl turned and ran. Perhaps she was shocked by what she had done. Perhaps she was shocked by what he had done, or frightened of what he might do next. Whatever the reason, she was soon gone, giving me an opportunity to float down from the skies and join my tearful puppet.
"That's your last life," I reminded him, with a happy grin. "Next time you make a noise without me ordering you to make it, I get to kill you." Maybe I should have made that sound more like a threat than a mentioning of something I was looking forward to doing later, but I was having too much fun to bother with acting.
"OK," I told him. "That's enough of a break." I started to rise once more to my position twenty-five feet up. "Back to the game!"
Continued next post. |