Play of Shadows

2.21: Cut Strings

The woman in the wheelchair was not a woman at all.

Ann lay in a cold palm. The fingers that caged her in were long and elegant, but they lacked warmth. When she looked up, she saw a beautiful porcelain face peering down, frozen in perpetual youth. Only the woman's eyes looked human. They watched Ann distantly, as if through a veil.

"Where are they?" the marionette in a woman's guise asked.

Before Ann could answer, two small voices called out one after the other.

"Mother!"

"Mother."

The marionette could not smile but her eyes visibly brightened. She dropped Ann without a care of where she landed, hurrying to gather up the two porcelain dolls.

Ann was momentarily swaddled in layers of red fabric. She emerged in time to see the woman carefully checking the two small dolls before hugging them close. Breaking little Hansel and Gretel apart for the sake of the keys they carried looked less and less like the right way to go.

"Which one has it?" the woman in red asked.

She was stroking one of the dolls, as if combing a child's hair. Ann waited patiently for an answer. A cold look and a sharp tug at the string around her throat later, she realized the question was meant for her.

"Which one has what?" Ann asked, caught off-guard.

The straight tightened, cutting into the fabric deeper and deeper. "The key," the marionette hissed. "I need to get inside. There's things he has hidden from me. I can make them better. I can make them perfect. But I need the key."

Ann swallowed. "I thought you had the keys," she whispered to the porcelain dolls huddled in their 'mother's embrace.

"It was a lie," Gretel admitted.

"It's all a lie," Hansel added.

"I hid the key in one of the dolls," the woman in red said. "Seven of them I have unraveled. It must be in the remaining two. Which one is it?"

"How can I tell?" Ann asked.

The marionette looked and looked at her. "You are not as you should be," she said, but not in her own voice. The thin, serrated sound of a machine garbling out human words made Ann's blood run cold.

"You tug them by the string, right mom?" Gretel said sweetly.

She reached over and tugged at the string around Ann's neck in demonstration. "If you feel something heavy on the other side, then you've found the key. Am I right?" the girl chirped.

The woman in red turned her attention from Ann stiffly. "Yes," she said at last. Her voice was back to normal and filled with indulgence for her 'child.' "That is correct. What a smart little girl."

"It's in Michael," Ann blurted.

There was a startled grunt from somewhere nearby. Ann smirked to herself.

The marionette hummed in apparent satisfaction. "Which one is that?"

Ann described Michael's clothing without an ounce of shame. "But it's dangerous to chase after him with the little ones – what if they fall and break?"

"They will not!" the woman in red screeched. The remaining lamps in the corridor burst, buzzing out like dead flies.

Ann swallowed over a burst of panic. "Of course not. But it will be safer to leave them here with me. I will protect them. We - we are one and the same, after all."

The woman was still. In the dark, she was a shadow, unmoving and unbreathing.

"He's getting away," the little boy said.