Puppetry

Three: No, Please No (Emerald)

The cold paint bit at my cheeks, making me shiver gently with the sudden coolness. He was painting over my face: Starting with white, the moving to red and black. I literally had no idea what the hell was going on at all. Every word I wanted to shout, to scream in fear, was pulled back into my chest in a gasp of putrid air. In a way, it is painful to me.

A single, reserved tear flows down from my cheek. I didn't even know I had it in me.

Etan looks at my face, before slapping me upside the head. The pain stung like a million bee stings and I cried out in sheer pain.
"Argh, what the hell-"
"YOU RUINED THE MAKEUP!" He screeches. Jabbing furiously at the white paint with his brush, he paints the cheek I had supposedly blemished.

It was easily half an hour before he decided to put the brush away. And, sure enough, that brilliant smile of his was back.

"Do you want to see your makeup?" He smiles sweetly.

This guy. This flipping guy.

I mutter a silent 'No' under my breath, scared of what could happen to me if I reject his perfect answer. He catches on, and chuckles eerily.
"Too bad." He retrieves a rusty mirror from the trolley and holds it up to my face.

The reflection I saw in the mirror will haunt me for whatever life I have left. He had painted my face a chalk white, and had intricately stenciled a small red heart under each eye. My cheekbones were now exaggerated in a creepy way and so were my eyelashes, now painted to look long. A jawline came down from each corner of my mouth (which was painted a matte red.)

I was literally a dummy. A real-life, human-sized puppet.

I didn't dare cry, for the fear of being slapped or hit or punished. I know he isn't done yet, but part of me wants to run, to hide, to die.

"So, what do you think?" Etan asks in a sadistic tone. I nod politely and stare at him in the eyes. He seems delighted with himself, for some weird reason. He clears up his paint and brushes. I'm allowing myself some time to recover from that horrid image still lurking in my mind.

I hear the clattering of tools from his trolley, before he returns with echoing footsteps. In one hand, a bag of nails and a hammer, in the other a drill. Dangling from his neck are four fine pieces of some sort of wire. Instantly, my stomach hits the floor, and I feel the need to be sick again. I manage to contain myself. Literally.

"Now we add the strings, so I can control you at my pleasure." This remark is followed by another sniff of my hair. He lifts up the DIY tools in his hands.
"But how should we attach them? Nails or Drill?" Neither of them sounded good. I want to die, right there and then. In that hideous clown/dummy makeup. He was murmuring silently to himself, listing the positives of each one.

"Drilling would be permanent..."
"But it would be painful..."
"Nails are a nice twist...."
"It would pleasure me to see...."

"DRILL IT IS!" He yells, suddenly. I scream out, not even trying to contain my sick. It leads to another slap.

Etan powers up the drill, setting it to the fastest it could possibly go. The nails and hammer were tossed aside.

I prayed aggressively to myself. I'm gonna die now. I don't want to. I cry again, as he looms ever closer, drop whirring menacingly.
"No, please no" I cry.

The drill was placed on my palm as it dug into the flesh. Crimson blood sprang from the hole, and I was forced to stare at it in complete agony. My head rolls back.

I am knocked unconscious.