Page 36 - Unlikely Stories 2

Earl King and his Puppet Thing

revealing a stage with a backdrop painted to represent a scientific
laboratory. “It’s Earl King and his Puppet Thing!” blared a hoarse and
vibrant voice behind the screen. “Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, boys
and girls, on this stage you will see a strange and wonderful drama:”—a
pause for effect—“Living Doll’s Revenge!” And again a toy fanfare
rent the silence, echoing off the cavern’s irregular limestone walls. After
the reverberations had cycled down to a whisper, the puppeteer’s
annunciatory stage voice boomed out again: “The scene: Doctor
Calamari’s laboratory.”
Calamari entered left, humming and singing absent-mindedly. He
puttered about the room, checking the progress of his experiments.
“Oh, I love to go a-tinkering, among the flim and flam; because I am a
tinkerer, I give a tinker’s damn.” A greasy off-white lab coat
encompassed his portly figure, setting off his bright pink face
surmounted by an unruly shock of purplish hair. His eyes appeared
greatly magnified, indicating the thickness of his spectacle lenses, and
slightly strabismic, connoting the imbalance of his mental faculties.
Calamari grasped a tiny Erlenmeyer flask, lifted it for a better look at
the precipitate, and stumbled. “Whoa-oh-oooooh!” he moaned,
swaying to and fro, almost dropping the beaker, while Techie children
howled with terrified laughter; breaking anything in their world of
irreplaceable objects was strictly taboo and summarily punished.
Earl King milked the gag until the wheezing giggles and pleuritic
guffaws reached the point of diminuendo. Then his left hand suddenly
entered the scene, cloaked in garish rags, a moldy green face coiffed in
dirty orange curls poking through barely feminine attire. This new
character demanded imperiously in a rich throaty warble, “Calamari,
you old fool! What are you doing?”
The scientist stopped, stiffened, and squawked. “Oh! Oh! It’s my
wife, Griselda!” he confided to the audience. “She doesn’t like my
experiments. No, she doesn’t like them at all. You won’t tell her what
I’m doing, will you?”
The Techie offspring squealed. Some shouted, “No, we won’t!
Never! We won’t tell!” None showed the slightest inclination to
disobedience.
“Ah, good, excellent!” stage-whispered Calamari.
He turned to his wife, who towered over him, arms folded. “I’m just
mixing up a new batch of phlogiston, my dear.”

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