Good morning, House of Madness puppets:
Sometimes a good thing isn't meant to last; especially if it's only good for one person. Hope you enjoy!
Marbles
With every day that passed, and every show he was forced to endure, Marbles became more and more resentful. Not just towards his handler Tim, but every second that passed seemed to feed a loathsome creature lurking within, leading him down a path into a demented fantasy of power and revenge. Twenty seven years ago, when Marbles and Tim were introduced, things couldn't have been better as the two made quite the team and the world was their oyster. They'd travel from town to town, state to state, and eventually country to country entertaining the masses with their stories and hilarious on-stage chemistry. Back and forth they'd go at each other until one of them was deemed the victor, and then the curtain would fall, people would clap, and Marbles would go back in his box while Tim's previously occupied hand returned to his body. Things were swell indeed.
As time went on, the jokes started leaning more towards Marbles and less towards Tim; this was never discussed or negotiated, it simply came to be that Tim was slowly making himself the star of the show, and Marbles was becoming nothing more than a sidekick providing cheap laughs at his own expense. At the last show in Albuquerque, Tim had the gall to pour water all over Marbles's head while the audience roared with laughter, and Marbles was forced to speak in a gurgled tone as he went on with the show. What the fuck was going on here? The two men were clearly equals, yet whenever Marbles went back into his box and Tim went God knows where, something was happening behind the scenes conspiring against Marbles and his efforts. One thing was for sure, Marbles had been humiliated for the last time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please help me in welcoming Tim & Marbles to the stage!" the emcee announced into the microphone, and the audience clapped with eager anticipation. The curtain lifted, and the people were greeted with a man sitting on a stool with a wooden dummy on his knee. "Well, are you going to say something, or just sit there like a dummy?" Tim led out with as he had done at hundreds of shows, but instead of the usual "You're the dummy for wearing that shirt" which always got a laugh, Marbles blurted out "Why don't you go fuck yourself, you narcissistic piece of shit!?". While this certainly garnered a few laughs, the majority of the crowd gawked in horror and covered their children's ears as Tim sat on his stool completely perplexed by what came out of his assistant's mouth. What people have never known and couldn't find out was that Tim wasn't a ventriloquist at all, he had stumbled across Marbles in his travel case at a flea market while traveling through Romania, and after discovering what he had found, immediately began using his newfound money-maker to his advantage. The problem was Tim never saw Marbles as anything other than his ticket to stardom, and the day he had never imagined had finally come. "Ummm, sorry folks, I forgot this was an all ages show; I was in Houston last night and it was adults only. Please accept my apologies" Tim said in a voice that seemed a thousand miles away to him, and before he could continue on with the show, Marbles chimed in once more with "You're not sorry you fat fuck, you've been riding my coattails for decades and never apologized to me once! Hey everybody, FUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUU!!!!!". As the curtain slammed down, stage hands, directors, and producers looked at Tim with angry despair, and nothing was needed to be said before Marbles was back in his box, and they were out the back door.
When the two got back to the hotel, something happened that had never happened before; Tim opened up Marbles's box and they spoke. First minutes passed, then hours as the two longtime co-workers talked and talked, with Marbles handling the majority of the dialog. When all was said and done, things would be different at their next show in San Antonio, they'd be much different from now on.
As the crowd filled the auditorium with anxious whispers of what they were about to see, they had no idea of just how special a show they were just about to witness. Word travels fast, and although some wanted another foul-mouthed performance, many just wanted to be entertained by the man and his dummy with the routine they'd been doing for years and years. As everyone was settled, the curtain raised and as it got about halfway up, someone screamed "OH MY GOD!" while others fainted, vomited, or both. As the curtain reached the top, to everyone's horror was Tim sitting on Marbles's lap, blood spilling from his back where Marbles's hand was, and then Marbles said with glee "Well, are you going to say something, or just sit there like a dummy?" and this time no one laughed except for Marbles, who was giggling uncontrollably as Tim gurgled something in retort about his shirt.
NB
