The Secondary Saga

[Deadpool]

Swamp

[spoiler]The crowd rejoiced with a round of rhythmic applause, chanting “dance, dance!” as the marionette’s body twirled and flopped around, in the confines of the glass cage. One child tugged on the blouse of her mother, pointing towards Pinocchio, with a mouth full of jagged, half-grown teeth.

Another kid pressed his face against the glass, and exhaled a circle of fog. Afterwards, he used it as a canvas for his finger art—PUPPET!, he wrote, putting a dot above each end of the U, making it look like a smiley face.

The marionette’s hands moved in swats, and his feet reverberated off of the wooden floor. Coated in shame, his head dropped to his clavicles. His body continued to sway, looping around at times in wide circles. Then without a warning, the strings loosened their control. Pinocchio crashed to the floor like a heap of lumber. His limbs sprawled over his hand and abdomen, stacking on top of them, and into a rough pyramid.

The crowd exploded into hilarity. One sandy-haired girl almost fell off over her daddy’s shoulders, but she gripped her father’s forehead before she could backflip onto her crown. The boy, who had pressed his face against the glass, covered his mouth with one hand and pointed a finger towards Pinocchio with his other; his freckled cheeks seemed to perch high above the top-edge of his hand.


Are you afraid? Are you afraid that this may someday be your life, for eternity?


With eyes wider than apples, Pinocchio stared into the faces of the crowd. One by one, he looked deep into their pupils, and then switched to another; all of them had the same expressions: amusement, pleased, happy, and even wicked. Most of them were there just to pause their own pain, and find solace in degrading another person. Sometimes humans were evil, sinister beings, capable of causing far too much anguish.

“No!” he cried.

You’re lying, the voice replied, giggling behind shut lips.

The marionette’s nose sprouted an inch (the slanted edge of where his leaflet used to sit now seemed so distant from his face). “No it’s not!”

Another inch grew, and the voice continued to giggle. “You’re too entertaining to kill, just yet.”[/spoiler]



The tip of his nose shot out from the water, soon followed by the marionette’s entire face. He never needed air, but sucked it into his open mouth all the same. His mind buzzed with anxiety, still boggled by what just happened.

The voice still haunted him, giggling in the pits of his head, taunting him. He shuttered at the thought of her bringing another one of his past memories into reality again.

It felt so real. The faces of the crowd were the exact same faces from the real event—he remembered the sandy-haired girl for sure, and the boy. The feelings of worthlessness and shame were as if ripped from time and redisplayed. It made him remember the evils of man, and all of their racist, tribal ways. That was one thing Pinocchio did not envy about humans.

He looked around; the fog was gone, and his eyes translated the landscape as good as ever. The marionette was near the edge of the swamp—patches sod and marsh ran forward, until stopped by a mound of mud, which assimilated into grass. He pushed forward, trudging his feet through the remainder of the morass.

As the marionette pulled his last step from the swamp, he collapsed to his hands and knees. He kissed the ground as if it were sacred (hell, it was sacred after hauling the weight of his own body through a half mile of murky abyss), repetitively whispering ‘thank you’, each time his lips smooched the ground. His inner-mechanics geared and pumped, and a feeling of relief rushed out faster than perspiration on a humid day.

He sighed. Still alive. he thought, picking himself off of the ground. He wiped the mud from his kneecaps and set his sights forward.

Ahead was more of the same picture he had seen throughout the entire journey—forest. Trees neighbored closely, and their branches often held hands, meshing the leaves together to block the sky. To the west, vines stretched from one tree to another, sagging down near its center like a jump rope.

Pinocchio could see a path leading under the vines, into the green abyss of shrubbery beyond. With a closer look, he realized the pathway was nothing more than a beaten trail, freshly made by a pair of strong feet; maybe an orc made the trail, or maybe a familiar face. He placed his money on the latter, and veered left, ducking under a couple of drooping vines as he kept his slim frame within the confines of the trail.

Voices filled the air as the marionette walked deeper into the forest. They were near. Eastward maybe? He looked over to his right, and furrowed a brow into his artificial bangs. It did not take Pinocchio long to recognize the voices, and as he did, a smile curled from under his looming nose—camp friends, for sure (an on-queue Grobdum cackle punctuated his declaration).

He broke right from the trail and headed towards the sounds. Grass matted under his feet as he created his own pathway through the forest.

There they were—most of them.

Pinocchio rushed forward into the clearing. A smile grew across his face as he saw Top Man, and Lyra. Grobdum even lived. He congregated with some of the other survivors.

“Hey!” the marionette shouted as he dodged a tree, slowing to a stop as he neared Top Man. A few members of the group looked over at the wooden boy with pleasing looks (at this point, every one of them was happy to see another survivor).

“How’d the swamp treat you?” Top Man asked. His eyes looked the marionette up and down, and while he kept a smile on his face, it was fragile; it curtained a look of worry.

“Well, I’m still alive,” Pinocchio replied. He glanced at his arms—dirt grained the grooves of his wood, and the water discolored it with a green tint. “Got a bad case of waterlog though.”

Top Man nodded, and his smile reinforced itself. “That’s good. I had a little scare in there, but nothing serious.” He paused eye contact with the marionette, and peeped at the other survivors before returning it to Pinocchio; his smile faded. “Some of us weren’t so fortunate; so far, no Raw Onion.”

Pinocchio looked over at Lyra—she sat at the base of a tree, cradling her knees with locked arms. “Is this true?” he asked.

The elf pulled her head from the depths of her bowels, and replied with a nod. Her eyes glistened with the gloss of heavy tears; tracks of moisture ran down her cheeks in stains.

Pinocchio pouted; Raw Onion’s positive attitude never failed to keep their group’s morale high. Even the sound of her voice was enough to uplift the marionette.

“Lyra!” It was Raw Onion.

Top Man’s eyes went upward, and Pinoccio’s followed. The pink color of Onion’s coat came down from above, steadily descending as she maintained her stability.

Lyra’s head whipped to the sky, her eyes darting so far that a couple of tears pelted down her face. She pushed herself up and ran over as the unicorn descended from above. “Onion, you made it!” she exclaimed, hugging the unicorn as she landed.

“And this little mini-story WILL have a happy ending,” Top Man quipped, and threw a thumbs-up towards the metallic eye, hovering over his shoulder.

Worry washed from Pinocchio as he watched Lyra and Onion embraced each other. It was a heartwarming moment, and even though the marionette had no heart, the moment touched him.

As time elapsed more familiar faces found the clearing. Each of them came with the presence of having wandered around for months, deprived of basic necessities. Many of their clothes were now nothing more than soaked rags, outstretched and flabby from the added weight of saturation.

Pinnocio noticed uneasiness begin to take hold of Klaud. She tried to keep a firm visage, but with each person who rejoined the group, her guard peeled farther down. The woman expected a particular person to emerge, but it never happened. As Isaac sat next to her, trying to console her with his words, she simply caressed her belly.

Clayton burst into a roar as he overheard part of Klaud’s conversation: “Father of your child?!”

Everything ceased, and everyone’s eyes shot towards the blond.

“You heard it folks,” Top Man murmured. “We have a pregnant lady amongst us.”

The giggling of the mysterious voice returned to Pinocchio’s mind, stronger than ever. His shoulder quivered as the flashback from the swamp reanimated itself in his head, reshowing him the faces of the sandy-haired girl and freckled boy.

Well, I see some of you still made it. The voice of the girl said.

The marionette’s eyes darted over to Isaac; the voice was no longer in his head, but physically present. It was the same one from the swamp. As the voice materialized into a shadowy figure behind the white-haired man, a chill slithered up the Pinocchio’s back, and massaged his head.

It was the ghost girl—had to be. But as quickly as she appeared, she vanished.

Isaac had an eerie visage displayed—one that was often accompanied by a full diaper. In a tremble, he went to look over his shoulder.

Nothing was there.

“Hello there,” the figure’s whisper echoed; the sounds of the forest went mute as she reappeared behind Clayton. “If you’re worrying about the others,” she giggled, “well, they rest with Omni now.”

A children’s nursery rhyme transmitted over the forest. Pinocchio recognized the rhyme—it was something often paired with a little handholding dance—but it never carried such dread with it.

Klaud let out a strong gasp, and plunged her head into her open palms, covering her face as she wept.

The ghost girl vanished from behind Clayton; everyone looked around with anxiety, trying to spot where she would appear next.

BANG!—Christa’s pistol howled as the ghost girl materialized in front of her. The figure’s head opened to accept the bullet, and then closed back shut. BANG!

The ghost girl giggled as she allowed this round to open a hole in her cranium. A river of dark blood flowed out.

“Who are you?!” Kluad cried.

The ghost girl replied with allusions, and then asked the group to question Christa instead.

Terror painted the group’s del facto leader as the ghost girl spoke.

Pinocchio translated the new information with a mixture of angst and bewilderment. What does this mean? he thought. Was all of this just to get some sort of payback against this lady?

Christa tried talking to the ghost girl, but none of it made sense.

With a sway of her hand, the ghost girl launched Klaud into Claytons chest, sending them both crashing in a pile of tangled limbs.


“Why’d she bring us all together?” he retorted. His teeth gritted into splintered ends. “The temple, the orcs, the swamp, the . . . the everything! Us being here, in general!” He demanded answers; his fear and confusion transformed into unguided rage.

Before the marionette could charge forward, the air itself went dense, and felt like a million pounds crushing his frame. He smashed into the ground face-first, and stayed there as the ghost girl went off into a soliloquy.

All of it was merely a game; just to get revenge.