The puppet dances from the string for all the audience to see. Its strings pull taunt by the hand up above, posing the way it wants and moving the way the finger demand it. The dancer dances across the stage elegantly with all the fake poise needed for such a job. The hand is the director and the doll is nothing but the actor. A silent scream paints its face, but all the audience sees is a wide smile. Its seams tear and rip, but they clap and laugh.
The doll moves as it must, its fabric tearing to the beat of the music. The holes spread as the puppet’s smile grows wider and its stuffing spills out across the stage. No one helps. They all just sit and stare as the thing they see with no soul dances on a string for all to see. The stuffing falls to the floor yet the hand just keeps moving it not letting the show stop for even a second. The doll’s plastic button eyes fall loose by the threads holding them in as they droop out of their places and land with a hard clank onto the floor. The thing is blind now. Its distorted movements continuing as the strings pull it left then right in their twisted dance.
The doll opens its mouth again as the stuffing keeps flowing out of its body and onto the floor below creating a beautiful mess for all the onlookers below. The stage grows full of the puppet’s body, strewn across the floor, falling out of its small stuffed frame. It keeps the dance going as its hair gets caught on a nail and torn from fabric. One hair then more as the doll smiles to the audience once again, its hair all falling to join the stuffing littering the space. The audience claps at the event, delighting in the puppet’s misery. The doll dances as it has to but soon the only thing left for the hand to control is empty fabric.
The stuffing has all run out and the eyes lay on the ground, only severed threads left on the face. Its smile has gone lax, no longer does it open its mouth for what the observers thought a smile. It was blank with nothing left to give yet the show went on, the fingers moved the lifeless fabric across the stage as the people jeered and laughed. There was no more doll, only what was left held up by man made strings and the large ever-looming hand.