Puppetry - P.JM. [ON-HOLD]

Six

The sound of the puppet's voice going dark like that made me stop, the anger in my chest now gone. My eyes widened, my feet planted to the floor. I could feel how deep the puppet's glare went through me. The voice was not a default option within the circuits of the device. My stomach was dropping to my feet. Something was defective.

"Tell me, what did you just call me?"

"Default set to off," my voice rang through the air, sounding flat as I spoke to the puppet's system, my hands clenched down by my sides. I tried to keep my nerves calm, knowing that I needed to reset its system so it'll go back to normal.

"Command denied."

I turned around, my eyes narrowing. "What the--?"

I was met with the puppet seeming to tower over me more, the gaze of it making the most of the intensity. The eyes had grown dark, completely masking off the kind gestures it had given me earlier. Its body was stiff, but not a way a puppet would be. It was more like a human stature. A fear started growing inside me.

My voice wavered a bit this time as I spoke. "Default set to off."

The puppet's head tilted to the side, a small smirk coming to its lips. "Command denied."

The fear was growing rapid now. At the way the puppet had acted, that was no way a puppet could even seem that way. My heart thumped in my chest, my hands shaking, not out of anger anymore, but out of fear. I had no control, it seemed like. That's what I liked about puppets; you had control of them. This puppet was obviously defective.

"Oh for Môna's sake," I murmured, trying to shake off my nerves. I started to approach the puppet to handset it to its nocturnal mode. I could feel my stomach tugging at me to stop, but my stubbornness was getting the best of me.

When I was about twelve seams away from the puppet, I heard the rapid sound of a wheel above me. I had no time to react, my throbbing head slowing me down. I was pretty good about having fast reflexes about what was around me, but my head wasn't in the correct place at the time.

I was found to see my face only a couple seams away from the puppet's, its burning eyes watching me with intensity. I felt its hand on the back of my head, the other placed on my lower back. My jaw was hanging open slightly, myself going speechless. My hands were planted on its collarbones, my left hand pressed against the hummingbirds. I forgot how warm a puppet was, always thinking they were cold machines, when in reality, they had blood--very minimum, though--flowing in them. The little studded diamond on his nostril was closer than needed.

When my mind suddenly came back down from the stars, I realized the puppet was causing no harm like I thought it would in this situation. Its hand was gentle against my scalp, somehow knowing where to put it to not cause any pain. It didn't want to hurt me. It was probably set in its system to not harm humans, but it was a defective model? My mind ran with questions.

"What are you?" I blurted out. I wanted to pull away, but my body was weak like it had been for the past day. I wasn't sure if it was from fear or sickness.

The puppet's eyebrows raised up a bit. Its mouth was pursed. "Puppet Model 500MP. Set systems: Nervous, Skeletal, Muscular, Integumentary, Circulatory. Main anchor: Frontal Lobe. Switch set: left lateral of head, anterior of hair. Memories: incapable of reaching. Name of being: Jimin. Puppet number of District Technology: 53681. Gender: Male."

My mind ran as the information fell out of the puppet's mouth. I had never heard of the model of 500MP. I swallowed down the thickness in my throat that had built up. "Command: name of creator."

The puppet didn't change its expression. "No data available."

My eyes narrowed, suspicion coming over. A mysterious model with no names of the creator. I had no clue what secrets this puppet held. Taehyung had said it was an affluent. It wouldn't listen to most of my commands. Whoever made this puppet was obviously setting this up for a reason.