The first flyer appeared overnight, stapled to telephone poles, pinned to church doors, fluttering through cracked mail slots:
> ONE NIGHT ONLY
THE MARIONETTE GOSPEL
"A Sermon in Strings"
Beneath the Town Hall
11:11 PM
No cost. No intermission. No refunds.
There were no names. No sponsors. Just a single symbol drawn where the producer's name should be: an eye inside a hand, with strings dangling from each finger.
No one remembered hearing about the performance.
But still… they went.
---
The performance was held in the old cellar beneath town hall. A place long forgotten, carved out of stone slick with condensation and age.
There were no chairs, only cold concrete steps in an inverted amphitheater. The stage was built from bone-colored wood, lit by a flickering yellow bulb.
People came in silence.
They didn't talk. Didn't laugh.
They only stared.
At the curtain, heavy and red as dried blood.
And when it lifted, they held their breath.
---
There were three.
Not cloth. Not plastic. Not anything that belonged in this world.
They were carved from wood that looked like it grew from screams, grain patterns spiraling in unnatural ways. Their limbs were jointed in too many places, fingers long and bent backward.
No eyes. Just smooth faces, like eroded stone.
No strings.
Not at first.
Then they rose.
Jerked upright as if by invisible cords, their heads twitching to one side, then another, like they were listening to something too far away to hear.
The audience stared.
No one clapped.
---
The lead puppet took center stage.
Its mouth split open—not hinged, but ripped—and from it came a voice like wind through a keyhole:
> "We are the fingers you never knew you had."
> "We pull the strings of your choices."
> "We are not performers. We are reminders."
> "You are not the hand."
> "You are the puppet."
People laughed, then stopped. Not because it wasn't funny—but because the laugh didn't feel like theirs.
---
Beatrice Harrow, wife of Pastor Harrow, stood mid-show.
She began to convulse.
Her body contorted—elbows bending the wrong way, her neck turning until her head was nearly upside-down.
She spoke.
But not in her voice.
It came from under her skin, too loud, too slow:
> "We were carved from the sap of the first lie."
> "The tree still grows."
> "And it remembers who worshipped first."
She collapsed.
Her eyes remained open, rolling like loose marbles.
---
Halfway through the show, the strings became visible.
Not rope. Not twine.
Light—pure white tendrils, stretching from somewhere high above, beyond the ceiling, beyond comprehension.
They pulsed in rhythm, like breathing.
And they began to descend into the crowd.
Touching foreheads. Wrists. Chests.
Wherever they touched, skin paled and minds flickered.
People's mouths moved without sound.
Some began mimicking the puppets, twitching in unison.
A boy started to cry.
But his tears ran upward.
---
Deputy Clarke, suspicious of the event, had wandered behind the stage.
There was no puppeteer.
No ropes. No gears.
Just a wall covered in symbols—scratched, not painted, into the wood.
They vibrated.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
He touched one.
It whispered:
> "You were never in control."
He screamed.
The audience didn't hear.
Because on stage, the second puppet had begun a monologue in a language that hurt to listen to.
Clarke vanished.
Only his badge remained.
Pinned to the wall.
Upside-down.
---
Eleanor Franks, age 92, stood and whispered:
> "I remember this. From before I was born."
Everyone turned.
She was levitating—only an inch off the ground, but unmistakable.
Her arms dangled like marionette limbs.
She smiled.
> "The show never ends. It just waits."
> "My mother saw it. In 1906."
> "She said the last act is the most beautiful lie in the universe."
Eleanor then bent in half.
Literally.
Backwards.
And didn't get up again.
---
The show ended without applause.
The puppets bowed—joints cracking like splitting trees—and sank back down, strings vanishing.
The curtain closed.
People sat in silence.
Then rose.
And left.
Not speaking.
Not looking at one another.
Just walking out, one by one.
Their shadows were longer than before.
Some split at the ends, like fingers.
---
In the weeks that followed:
Pastor Harrow stopped preaching and began sculpting puppets out of wax. None had eyes.
A child was found in the woods, chanting: "Pull the right string, and I will forget."
Everyone who attended the show began sleepwalking.
Several reported dreams of a tree that bled when touched.
Others claimed they couldn't remember if they were dreaming right now.
No one could find the cellar again.
Town Hall's blueprints showed no record of it ever existing.
---
A new flyer appeared in a different town.
Same eye-in-hand symbol.
Same invitation.
> ONE NIGHT ONLY
THE MARIONETTE GOSPEL
"A Sermon in Strings"
Beneath the Library
11:11 PM
People whispered.
Some joked.
But when the night came, the seats were full.
Because some part of them remembered.
And some part of them wanted to see the strings again.
---
There is no puppeteer.
There is no stage.
There is only the idea of being pulled.
Of being watched.
Of being moved.
The Gospel is not a show.
It is a ritual of permission.
To see the strings is to invite them.
To know they exist is to feel them tug.
---
Found in a journal near a hospital bed, written in trembling script:
> "I saw the strings before the show."
> "I think I was born with one wrapped around my throat."
> "We are just wooden thoughts, carved into flesh."
> "They're not teaching us anything."
> "They're reminding us what we agreed to forget."
> "This is not a story."
> "It's a rehearsal."