Panachio pt. III

Well, Guido comes to a solid 20 or so hours later – pretty average for when he'd been harfing down fistfuls of vicodin between drinks like stale bar-pretzels – only this time, his crusty eyes hinged open on a scrawny stump of a shadow, hovering right over his rattling skull. For a minute he figured he must still just be conked, about to get the familiar night-terror treatment, until he noticed the monster headache rattling his brain around like cheap oriental dice. Guido’s first instinct is to spring up and bolt for the handsaw on his workbench, and go for the fuckin’ jugular of who- or what-ever’s staring him down like county lockup fresh-meat in his own goddamn house – he still can’t tell it’s Panachio, remember, since his eyes are still all full of that crusty crap from sleeping.

But, since he’s still all fucked up and practically sweating moonshine, he decides to take it slow and easy instead of going more apeshit, and starts slumping toward his fridge, just kinda ignoring the little bastard, still hoping it’ll just go away if he can find a couple morning swigs of Irish mouthwash – until he hears this horrible clunking right behind him, following him straight across his clusterfuck of a kitchen, and when he finally turns around, he sees the blank, accusing, soulless goddamn toy soldier stare of his creation shooting right back at him, into him, through him – this deadpan, mechanical glare that he was pretty sure he hadn’t even carved out in the first place, frozen on with killer determination like some shark that just spotted a nice, meaty cloud of ripened chum. Three more heavy, wooden clunks toward him, and Guido finally managed to choke out a response:

“F’chrissake,” he growled. “Who the hell’re you, and what’re you doing on my property, you…punk?!”

Suddenly the puppet stopped, and its face slowly tightened and twisted up into a crooked kinda grin. The knotted grains of splotchy wood covering his face bent and curled up, like some little goddamn Discovery Channel flower stretching out for sunlight in elipsed time, or whatever they call that creepy fast-motion nature shit, you know what I mean. It looked like he was either trying to be friendly or just got tricked into polishing some neckbearded guy’s knob in the back of a paneled van or something, but either way he didn’t really seem threatening anymore, and Guido, suddenly more curious and self-satisfied than homicidal, dropped his saw and cocked his head to the side, giving the kid’s details a once-over.

“Hmmm, not bad at all,” he mumbled into his palm, “I’m getting pretty good at this shit I guess. But how the fuck did I get him walking around like that? I don’t even remember finishing the damn knee joints…must have gotten more blotto than I thought, dumped some clock parts in there or something? Or made some gay little wish and somebody actually bought it…eh, who cares. Genius Guido, fucking genius, even you almost shit your pants! Those government cheesedicks will never know what hit ‘em…”

Now the puppet’s just trying to kiss ass, staring up at him and giving him the old puppy eyes, which I guess it’s really saying something for Guido’s carpentry skills that the doll’s face can be so, y’know…expressive. But that shit don’t fly with Guido, right, ‘cause he’s obviously not the sentimental type, and he sure as shit wasn’t gonna go soft just from this hollow twerp making googly eyes at him, even if he hadn’t been too busy practicing sympathetic yarns to spin for those neckless pricks at the welfare office to notice. But you can bet your juicy ass this was the happiest he’d ever been in the same zoning code as anything even resembling a little shithead kid – and that’s when it hit him. Something still seemed off about this creepy oversized woody mugging up at him like a Brady Bunch understudy…it seemed to be studying him right back, sizing him up, looking him over like it was actually…thinking.

Guido’s throat hardened into a lump and splashed down into his stomach like a monstrous turd that took weeks to squeeze out – this wasn’t just fucking clock parts, not even Swiss, and yeah, that’d been a stretch, but a guy who drinks as much as Guido and can still piss anything but blood gets to believin’ he can pull off just about anything from time to time, and besides, he didn’t believe in any of that frilly, twinkledicked, pixiekissed fairytale horseshit. But if this little lump of deformed hardware scraps was somehow thinking, that had to mean it was alive, which meant it must be some kinda real, actual kid – a pouty, whiny, sticky, needy runt…a 100%, bonafide, disgusting crotchglob – standing in the middle of his fucking house. And just when Guido’s startin’ to thank fuckin’ god that at least in this fucked up dream or hallucination or, Christ forbid, real thing that was happening, at least the little shit is quiet, Panachio pipes up, in the worst, most goddamn annoying, shrillest eunuch-y voice he could have imagined: