Equinox 2017 | Page 22

After that, I changed the channel to reruns of sitcoms I remember from my youth. Most of them have not aged well. As I became desensitised by the late night shows, I started to become irritable. Irritable about what? Zeppo.

The idea that I still had him bothered me. I thought of replacing him. The temptation of the idea lingered in my head for several days now, but tonight was the night I started brainstorming ideas. I could call the new puppet Groucho. Instead of jokes based around making fun of people, I could do an act with smart witty jokes about occurrences in society. Politics, public events, there’s an endless array of material in those two topics alone. The next step will be finding a new dummy. They’re more expensive than you’d think. I could take Zeppo apart and use some parts to built my own dummy. No….. There shouldn’t be any Zeppo at all in the new act, no matter how small. There should be no more Zeppo, but I’m not against the idea of taking Zeppo apart. I could ensure he’d never come back. Never make his way back into my life. Never creep his way back into my mind and torture me on purpose. No more Zeppo, no more fear.

Fear? I’m afraid of Zeppo? I’m afraid of an inanimate object that even little kids find silly. The realization of this fact made me mad. I went over to the closet where Zeppo was and tore him out of the case and scolded him.

“You don’t exist!” I screamed. “You’re in my head! You’re a cheap piece of plastic constructed in some factory in China in order to make a profit! If you can talk, do it! Do it now! No one will know!” I threw Zeppo at the couch.

“If you’re truly alive, defend yourself!” I stomped over to the couch and slapped Zeppo around.

“Get angry! Fight back! If you were truly alive you’d show some sort of emotional reaction!” I began shaking him in anger.

“You are a material made for corporate gain! You posses no motor skills to control your own life! I am the puppeteer, you are the puppet! I pull the strings!”

I slid my hand into Zeppo to make him talk to give me some satisfaction that I was getting somewhere with my yelling.

“I had strings, but now I’m free,” I made him sing.

I finally threw Zeppo at the wall. He didn’t break, just plopped onto the floor.

“There are no strings on me,” I said in Zeppo’s voice.

Zeppo had landed with his face facing me. His smile was still prominent. It wasn’t an evil smile, it was a humorous smile. He was laughing at me. He was smiling because without doing anything, he made me break down and yell at a puppet. I did exactly what he wanted. I was indirectly being controlled by him. I was the dummy, he was making me do things to entertain him. I was his puppet, and he was pulling my strings. My dislike for Zeppo was the setup to the joke, and my breakdown was the punchline.

I didn’t bother putting Zeppo back in his case when I went to bed. When I walked into my room, I looked up at the noose I had tied a few feet away from my bed. Taking my own life was something I often debated whenever the Zeppo complex became too much to handle. I keep it there as a reminder of an easy way out of if any one thinks I’ve lost it. But I haven’t lost it. Everyone else doesn’t see what I see. They don’t know Zeppo like I do. I, for lack of a better word, know Zeppo like the back of my hand. He seems off; he doesn’t seem like an inanimate object. He seems like he’s a sentient being that’s buying his time and waiting for the perfect time to strike. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but I’m onto him.

If I truly spoke my mind I’d end up in the looney bin. A person can’t speak their mind freely anymore (or ever, depending on how you look at history). If you say something that scares someone you get arrested or locked away so you can’t spread your ideas. SInce the beginning of time, humans have shunned what they refused to understand and it hasn’t changed much since.