Page 41 - Unlikely Stories 2

Earl King and his Puppet Thing

“Yup, that’s it. Pretty good condition, ain’t it, boss?”
“Aaagh!” The diminutive genius wailed, and again pursued the
hapless Didjiridu. “This isn’t from a human being, you toad! It’s from a
shoe! Tongue, indeed! I’ll give you a tongue-lashing you won’t soon
forget! Take that and that and that!”
The puppets raced around the operating table on which Living Doll
lay inert and incomplete. Earl King exhausted his repertoire of sound
effects and allowed his characters to stop. The hands within them
gently flexed, providing a simulacrum of panting. The audience, too,
settled down, waiting to see the denouement heralded by this caesura.
Doctor Calamari collected himself and surveyed the scene.
“Well,” he said, “nobody’s perfect. I’ll just have to make do with
what I’ve got. All great scientists are forced to work under these
conditions: misunderstood, abused, ridiculed and ignored. But I shall
triumph! I don’t care what materials are at hand! I’ll fashion them into
whatever I want!”
He cackled and gathered up the inferior appendages acquired by
his assistant. “Now, Didjiridu, my dear daffy doltish dunce of a dodo:
get out. Yes, leave me now! Wait outside and don’t come in unless and
until I call you. Do you comprehend me?”
“Uh, yep, boss, I got it. You call, unless I wait. No, I call, until you
wait. Or is it, unless or until I wait, you call? Oh, um, er, uh.”
“Get out!” screamed the doctor, and pushed the unceasingly
cheerful idiot off stage. “Ah,” gurgled the inventive homunculus,
“alone at last! I should be able to make these parts fit without too
much trouble. Just twist off her kneecap—so!—and jam in the table
leg—ah, there it goes!—and tie everything back together with baling
wire. Oh, I love to go a-tinkering, hmm-humm-hum. Now, let me see:
her two legs aren’t quite the same length, but she’ll get around all right.
And what about this tongue? Could use a little saddle soap or leather
conditioner, and I would have preferred pink to brown, but never
mind! All I need to do is reach down into her throat--yes, easy does it,
Calamari!—and hook it onto the end of her larynx. Hmm, doesn’t
seem to be holding. Let me just get something to pin it down. Ah!
Here’s a paper clip on the floor: that will suit my purpose admirably.”
He stood back and gazed fondly at his handiwork, a puny Pygmalion
before his handiwork. “At last!” he crowed. “Now I’ll activate the
framistan with my biostatic veeblefetzer.” He made some intricate

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