Chapter 29

The Puppet Master

Ty awoke and the red was gone, the words were gone, the mall was gone. Anna was gone. Ty touched his wrist and found nothing there.

He sat up on his bed in the toy-less room, a sense of familiarity setting in immediately. He didn't wonder where he was this time—he had no illusions of being back home.

Ty hopped off the bed and went for the door, surprised to find it unlocked. He slipped into the hallway, dark save for a small sliver of light coming from his parents room.

He crept in its direction, making his footsteps as light as possible. He grew up doing this, usually to catch his parents unaware as he jumped on top of them on Christmas morning, their least favorite wake up call. He knew where every squeak in the floorboard was, and he avoided each one, in case the reconstruction of his house was still just as accurate as before.

He continued to the door without a sound and poked his head inside. The light came from the bedside table where his sword sat inside a glass case, the rainbow colors slowly pulsating. He couldn’t believe it, there it sat, safe and unmelted. It almost brought tears to his eyes and, with it so close, he realized how much he missed it; how naked he felt without it.

The light from the sword went out, as if its only reason for existing was to draw Ty to it, its task now done. He could see his parent's silhouettes under the covers. He watched for movement but saw none—not even the rise and fall of their chest that would indicate breathing. They were asleep or dead; either one would be a help to him.

Ty opened the door, just enough to step inside, remaining near it as he let his eyes adjust to the darkness. From what he saw of the glass his sword was in, it was made to display, not to protect. His father didn't think much of his son's abilities if he just sat the weapon right there in the open. This irritated Ty.

Eyes as adjusted as they were likely to get, Ty took a step forward, stopping before he put his foot down. His mind jumped back to the fight with San, when he'd split his sword into pieces—maybe he could try that again.

He held his hand out, feeling stupid as he stood there for more than a minute without a single thing happening. Obviously, expecting it to work on its own wasn't going to cut it.

He focused on his sword and stared hard at it, trying to clear his mind of everything but the weapon. There was a slight twitch in the blade. Progress, but to move the whole weapon, he needed to split it apart.

He looked at his outstretched hand in his peripheral vision. He moved it to the left and the sword wiggled in that direction. He tried the right, and the sword followed. An idea hit him and he clenched his hand into a fist while visualizing the weapon as the stream of bricks.

It worked. The pieces fell away from one another, abandoning their sword shape and becoming a colorful, floating cloud. He would have celebrated, but it required all of his concentration to keep the bricks airborne. He moved the cloud forward, the glass lifted up with it, and slid it off the table.

The added weight of the glass put more strain on him than he thought it would, sweat broke out on his forehead. He couldn't do it for long, and the progress was agonizingly slow, each passing second increasing the risk of the glass dropping onto the floor.

He walked deeper into the room, taking small but quick steps while the glass sank lower in the air. His head throbbed, the bricks wiggled back and forth as he struggled to keep them afloat.

Ty took a massive step, held his hands out as far as he could, and caught the glass as he felt his mind let go of the bricks. He pulled the glass close to his chest and used his shirt to catch the bricks as they tumbled out of the bottom.

His parents didn't move.

Ty walked backward, stooping over to keep the bricks in his makeshift pouch, out into the hallway and back to his room. The bricks started to slip by the time he made it to his bed, so he dropped the edges of his shirt and let them spill out onto the mattress.

He collapsed onto the bed as well to catch his breath. He had a newfound respect for Jedi—moving stuff with your mind was not as easy as they made it look.

He stared at the pile of pieces and sighed.

Time to get to work.

He raised his hand once again, and the bricks lifted from the bed, clicking and clacking together.

Ty was able to mentally rebuild about half of the sword. Then it became too much to handle, resulting in a major headache. His brick moving abilities would have to be put aside and only used in last resort situations.

He built the rest of the sword by hand, somehow remembering the exact place each piece belonged. It was reborn in less than a minute, glowing as if glad to be back.

Ty went to his window to look at the fake world outside. It was night, even darker out there than in the hallway, but he could still make out the white door in the distance.

He opened the window and stuck his head through it, considering the lawn below. Two stories. He could have fallen from this height back home and maybe been all right. Here, the drop was pathetic—he wouldn't be surprised to find that he could jump two stories.

Ty pushed himself out the window without a second thought; falling was a lot faster than taking the stairs anyway. He landed on the grass without a sound, and continued to walk. He held his sword at the ready, scanning the darkness for any sign of danger. The “red dream” was on repeat in the back of his mind, constantly reminding him that this was not over.

He set a course for the door. His father underestimated him enough to leave his sword right there in the open; maybe he left the door unlocked, too. It was worth checking out before confronting him for a key that he might not even have.

His shoe found cement as he entered the square. He paused, looking around even harder for danger. Nothing. He continued on, faster, and arrived at the door in a few seconds.

He stopped in front of it, shocked to find it without a keyhole, padlock, or chains. Could it really be...?

Ty's hand crept forward, finding it hard to believe that it could be so easy. A strange wind came from nowhere and a chill swept up Ty's spine. Something touched his shoulder and he realized that he was no longer making progress toward the door handle.

He turned ever so slowly, afraid of what he would find.

It was his father. Radiating anger from every pore.

“Hello, son,” he said.

Should he run? He felt like he should run.

Ty tried to run, but his father's grip tightened on his shoulder as he stepped between the boy and the door. He placed his palm above the handle, a strange light coming from within his hand. When he removed it from the wood, a lock and key were in its place.

He turned the lock, extracted the key, and placed it inside his pocket. Before it went out of sight, Ty saw that it was a white skeleton key and, beside the color, a perfect twin of San's.

“I underestimated you.”

“I noticed that. I mean, a glass container? Really?”

His father continued to glare. “Your life is here; there is nothing for you through that door.”

“That so? Why don't you burn it too, then?” Ty challenged, surprising even himself with his level of bravado.

“Believe me, I would—if it was not against the rules.”

There it was again, this annoying talk of rules.

“Against the rules, huh? So, is this a game to you? Don't you think I should get a look at the rule book? It isn't very sporting, keeping me in the dark.”

His father laughed. “A mouse need not understand the game a cat plays. He need only know which direction to run.”

“So... you're saying it's in my best interest to open that door? Gotcha.”

Ty reached for his father's pocket and actually got a hold of the key before the man knew what was happening. He caught on and grabbed the boy's wrist, twisting it. Ty cried out and the key fell from his hand, onto the concrete.

His father released Ty's wrist, grabbing his sword arm instead and squeezing until the sword clattered to the ground. He kicked it, knocking it just out of Ty's reach. The boy tried anyway, and his father pressed Ty down to his knees. The boy's face was inches from the cement, the key about the same distance, taunting him with how close it was.

“You are not going anywhere, do you understand me? It is time for you to grow up.”

Ty's right hand made for the key again, his father's shoe stomped down on it. He followed it up with a kick to the side of Ty's head, knocking him onto his back.

He walked over to his son and leaned down in front of his face. “No more of your nonsense. No more of your resistance.” He took the collar of Ty's shirt in his hand and hoisted him into the air. “Your grandfather is gone and his ideals are meaningless in this world; outdated.”

“Then...” Ty struggled in his father's grip. “I don't want anything to do with your stupid world!”

His sword glowed and flew into the air, spinning around toward his father's arm and lodging itself inside of it with a loud, unnatural thunk. Ty's shirt was released and he fell onto his back again, ready to spring up and go for the key. A sound even stranger caught his ears, however: silence. His father hadn't cried out in pain at all.

There was the sword, dug all the way into his arm from the left side, only a sliver remaining to stop it from severing the limb completely. By all accounts, he should have been screaming by now with blood everyw—there wasn't any blood. Not a single drop of it.

His father saw Ty's eyes widen at this development, and yanked the sword from his arm, hiding the wound under his clothes. “Sharp toy you've got there.” He ran his fingers along the blade, its surface losing the metallic shine at his touch, blocky imperfection returning. “But a toy nonetheless.”

A strong burst of irritation ran through Ty and his sword reacted, glowing bright, burning the unworthy hand that held it. There was still no shout of pain, but he dropped it all the same, his hand visibly burnt—this too was odd, but Ty didn't have time to waste sorting out why.

The boy dove forward and caught the sword in the air.

The man raised a foot, and brought it down hard.

Ty swung up, meeting his father in the middle, and sliced right through his foot, continuing on up to the middle of his leg.

Still no screams. Somehow that was more terrible than the sight of his sword buried all the way to his father's knee. The gruesome effect from the injury was diminished by the clean, perfect cut... like chopping a log in half.

There was no blood, there was no pain, there was no flesh.

His father was a puppet.

As soon as the truth hit him, Ty's first reaction was to get the heck out of there. However, there was a problem with this as his sword was currently lodged into a wooden leg and was certainly not going anywhere, no matter how much he tried to wiggle it free.

Ty’s “father” transformed before his very eyes. His skin lost all traces of flesh-like texture, his body made of a low quality wood and his joints now visible. His eyes glossed over, just cheap glass orbs. Even his clothes changed, looking like they came straight from the local landfill. The lack of love and effort put into his construction was appalling; it would have broken his grandfather's heart to see.

The transformation didn't stop there. Strings sprouted from his joints—pale blue strings that pulsated with energy. They went higher, like a plant growing toward the sun. Ten, maybe fifteen feet in the air, they met each other in a tip and just ended, abrupt and startling... and in its impossibility; the blue strings hung in empty space.

The world was unsatisfied with Ty's levels of confusion, one last surprise for him up its sleeve. Near the same area where the strings met, a hand appeared and tore through reality itself, opening it like a window.

Legs next, long and skinny, then the rest of the figure followed and perched on the frame of the “window.” In one hand he held the puppet strings.

“Hello there, Ty, it's time to grow up!” His San-like face grinned.