The Puppet World

The Car Ride Home

"So, how did you kids like the museum trip?"  Oliver's mom asked from the driver's seat of the family's car.  

"Eh, it was pretty boring.  Sarah replied, Oliver couldn't see her, be he assumed that she was slumped down in her seat as far as she could go.  "To be honest, I'm more excited by the thought of going home than I was by anything in that dusty old place."  

"Well I, thought it was very interesting."  Jenny, Oliver's other sister replied sternly, from the other back seat.    

"You've been awfully quiet Oliver,"  Oliver's mom started, taking her gaze off of the road in front of them to briefly look at Oliver, "what did you think of the museum trip?"

"I thought it was..."  Oliver trailed off trying to gather his many thoughts, "intriguing." 

"Your only saying that because of those stupid limbs they found decades ago!  If they weren't there, then you would've forgotten that stupid place the second we stepped out the front doors!"  Sarah exclaimed, clearly upset by the fact that Oliver didn't agree with her.  

"Well yeah, but don't you think that they're interesting?  Like, what were they doing in the forest?  Or, why would someone make something so human-like, only to seemingly never use it?"  Oliver said in defense.  

"Hmm, that is interesting,"  Jenny said, most likely thinking of the answers to both of those questions.  "But the obvious and most likely answer, is that someone made them and long time ago, and then took them into the woods and ended up dropping them somewhere.  Then years later, someone ended up finding them, and thought that they were really weird or something along those lines, so they saved them and put them in a museum."    

"Well, yeah, that seems likely, but why would someone take a bunch of fake limbs into the woods in the first place?"  Oliver questioned.  

Even though he knew that answer was most likely true, he was still dissatisfied.  He felt like there was more to this story than he knew.    

"I don't know."  Jenny said, getting slightly annoyed at Oliver's dissatisfaction.  

"Ooh!  Maybe back then they had like a cult.  And those limbs were part of a ritual or something along those lines."  Sarah suggested, with a bit too much eagerness in her voice.   

"That..." Jenny said, pausing for a second, "may be a possibility."     

"Great!  So now that that mystery is solved, lets start talking about where we should stop to eat."  Sarah exclaimed, happily changing the subject of the conversation before Oliver couldn't argue back.   

After that, the rest of the conversation became a blur as Oliver tuned out the rest of his family's discussion, and went into his own little world.  He wondered whether Jenny was right or not.  If someone really had just dropped some random limbs in the middle of the forest for seemingly no reason.  Maybe he was just  being really paranoid about all this for no reason.  

But he still couldn't shake the feeling that so many big details were just hiding in the shadows.  Even when he tried to ignore that feeling, and accept the perfectly logical explanation that Jenny had given him, he just couldn't.  There was no way someone back then could make such perfect replicas of human body parts.  Or how there was no way someone could just drop such perfect replicas and just forget about them for years.  

The only thing he knew about those for sure, was that they were found in the forest right next to his house.  To be honest, he probably wouldn't even care about those limbs as much if they were found anywhere else.  But for something like that to be found practically right next door to where you live, it's bound to justify some curiosity.  

He thought about the possibility of there being more weird limbs, hidden somewhere in the forest.  Or how the answers to some of his questions hidden somewhere under the leafy tree tops and stiff dirt.  The more he thought about the possibility of being about to find out the answers to his questions, or even more limbs, the more appealing the idea of going into the woods sounded.  So, he decided what he was going to do that day.  Go into the woods, and search for answers.