Alexander the Magnificent's Magnificent Puppet Show

The story I am about to tell you happened when I was no more than ten years old. It means that it all happened more than two decades ago. What I saw still haunts me to this day. I don't sleep often, I simply can't anymore.

It was a nice day during summer break and I was a typical ten year old kid. Ever since I was in second grade, I spent the summer staying over at my friend Martin's house. We were in the same grade, but he was almost a year old than me. He was my best friend and I looked up to him. More than a little.

Martin had many friends in town. I knew most of them from school. They weren't exactly my friends though. I think I was more or less tolerated in their group.

Most of our days were spent exploring the town on our bikes or playing soccer. I enjoyed those times a lot.

On this day we were at the soccer field, playing ball in the early evening. Martin's parents didn't mind if we stayed out till dusk. To ten year old me they were the coolest parents in the world, since my mother usually demanded that I was home right at dinner and wasn't allowed to go out anymore after that.

It was this evening that we met little Tony. We had never seen him before and he was probably no older than six. He simply walked up to us and asked if he could play with us. We nodded and let him join in.

While we played soccer little Tony went on and on about how amazing his dad was and about his siblings.

"My dad is the best in the world!" he would say or "No one is as amazing as my dad."

All the while trying his best to keep up with us in soccer, but he was simply a little too slow.

"What about your mom? Is she awesome too?" one of the others teased him.

Little Tony simply shock his head without saying anything, but the big smile on his face didn't falter.

Then he suddenly stopped and raised his arm to get our attention.

"Why don't we all go over to my place? My dad is great and I have all the toys and we can all play together and hang out and have fun."

He simply babble on without giving us much attention. We didn't really care about his dad or his toys and kept playing ball. Then he said something different.

"Oh!" he exclaimed suddenly "You could watch the puppet show."

I stopped in my track and turned around towards him.

"What puppet show?"

"My dad's puppet show." he said simply.

In the end little Tony kept talking about it and we soon found out that his father was apparently a puppeteer who had come to town to perform his puppet show. If we came with him, we could see the rehearsal of tomorrows show. The prospect of seeing a free puppet show was what convinced us in the end.

Now some of you might be wondering what the big deal about a puppet show is. It is just a pretty common thing in the area I grew up in and me and many of my friends loved them ever since were little. There are many different ones, but in the most popular ones a puppeteer is controlling multiple puppets, telling tales of adventures or local legends to the delight of children.

We were excited and all joined in. Little Tony didn't have a bike like us so we were forced to walk. He and his father were staying at a small, old cottages. They were located a little outside of town. I think it was once a popular holiday attraction, aimed at people from the city, but even when I was kid not many people used them anymore. I think most of the cottages were either used by the townspeople, run down or completely abandoned. I was a little surprised to hear that someone from outside was staying there.