“How could something that beautiful be called a dummy?” He wonders as he loads the trunk of his car with dummy after dummy.  He knows he can only take one on stage, but it doesn’t hurt to have options. He is so excited, he’s lucky he feels his phone buzzing.

 

“Hi! Is this Travis?” The phone inquires.

 

“This is he.”

 

“Alright, there’s no easy way to do this. Just don’t shoot the messenger.”

 

“Sorry, who is this?”

 

“I’m with the theater, and unfortunately, we have to cancel your show tonight.”

 

“Are you serious? What about the people who bought tickets?”

 

“That’s just it. Ticket sales are so low, we’d actually lose money if we opened tonight.”

 

“No one told me that!”

 

“Well, I am, right now. Sorry, man, look, your puppets are great, but you’re… nothing special.” The unmistakable sound of a call ending marches its way through Travis’s ear.

 

Travis shoves the phone into his pocket. Any onlooker would think the man lugging so many puppets is on a walk of shame. But to Travis, it is anything but that; his dummies are embracing him. And why wouldn’t they? To them, Travis is their father; he built them and gave them life.

 

When his own face was riddled with pimples, bright red and eager to be popped, Travis idolized how dummies were pristine, forever youthful. His pimples were a flaw, but those little red dots painted onto the wooden faces were gorgeous. 

 

Love crept into every corner of his mind. Every Christmas, his list had one item: “A dummy.” He kept lining his shelves with more and more. When they were out of real estate, he’d bring a different one to school every day. His peers would shove him into the walls, throw their trash on him, all of them jealous of the love Travis possessed.

 

One day, a classmate’s girlfriend said she thought Travis’s puppet was cute. So, after school, the boyfriend and his friends circled Travis like a pack of wolves and tore the dummy from his hands. They spent hours slamming it onto the asphalt. Travis wasn’t worried, though; unlike him, no matter how hard a dummy fell, it never bruised. Travis loved the idea, even long after his death, his puppets would always remain.

 

The preserving chemicals on his desk keep his workshop almost identical to his childhood room: dummies lining every available shelf. 

 

Travis’s love has only grown stronger now that he’s their father. As a kid, he only saw a reflection in every puppet. Now, a piece even more beautiful than himself is in all of them. He lifts the hand of a puppet the way a prince caresses the hand of a princess. The hand is featureless. Travis can’t understand how his old, varicose-riden hands make something so flawless.

 

“You’re nothing special.”

 

Travis doesn’t smile. But the smiles he carves onto his dummies are sculpted into time.

 

“Your puppets are great.”

 

Of course, they’re great. They are constant and enchanting—everything Travis aspires to be. No blemishes, no pain, hands always ready to embrace, fingers incapable of spreading. Of course, his puppets are great; they are what people want to see at his shows. Why would people want to see a cheap impersonation when his hand is inside the real thing?

 

The fingers come first. He takes great care in binding them together. The needle laces his fingers like a boot. The dummies on his shelf smile, knowing their father understands them.

 

Between his thumb and extended palm, the exacto knife traces around the moles on his skin. Travis carves out the leathery mountain range, making it as smooth as paper. 

 

The sight of blood is the first sign he will at long last be perfect. All that’s in the way is his skin, soft like a mattress begging for someone to lie down and rest. He slices an opening, but instead of springs, the red tongue of his muscle is ready to taste what Travis is going to feed it.

 

Balsa wood is malleable yet strong enough to prevent bruising. When he reaches for the planks, his loose skin flows and dances in the air like clothes hung out to dry. He muscles the wood under his body’s blanket, jamming and compressing the veins beneath. The craters where Travis’s moles used to reside are filled by the nails he hammers in to keep his new bones in place. His old calcium bones crack under the iron: each strike one step closer to eternity.

 

Before he can shine, Travis wipes off the red paint seeping from his body. With his mittens, he lathers himself in the lacquer that keeps his dummies permanent. Now he can join them on the shelf, sharing the spotlight. 

 

As he bears witness, he can only hear his heart thumping when he faces the mirror. Travis loves all his creations, so why can’t he love what glares back at him? The eyes. Dummies’ eyes are alluring; Travis’s are not. They're too dull. Too wet.  

 

With his fingers bound, they make perfect shovels. Travis brings them to his swamp-colored eyes and digs. He doesn’t stop until his eyes dangle out of their sockets like snot. He slices the optic nerve, and the new glass eyes become pearls resting in place.

 

He’s finally done it. Travis is shining, but through his new eyes, the mirror disappears into the abyss. He reaches out, but down and up are one and the same now. Thrashing his way to the ground, Travis embraces himself with his hands designed for hugging, but the lacquer shields the feeling of love’s warmth. In his dance of madness, only the dummies, lining every shelf, can see how perfect Travis has become.

 

And isn’t he remarkable? He doesn't need eyes to cry.

​

Wyatt Hittelman has not been previously published. He is a student and sketch comedian. He is a lover of all things scary, silly and everything in-between.