The Puppeteer

‘Alright, who’s next?’ Called Mrs Telhall and her daughter walked in through the curtains.
‘Sit down, dearie, sit down’ Mrs Telhall smiled and pushed back her curls.
Fifteen-year-old sally sat and stared outside the window.
‘Now, let’s see. Open your eyes, sally. Open your eyes.,’ whispered Mrs Telhall softly.
Sally did. A few people were walking on the pavement.
‘Open your eyes, sally. Open your eyes.’
Cars were rushing on the road.
‘Open them now. Open them.’
Trees swayed and rustled in the wind.
‘Ah!’ Sally let out a startled cry that blared through the room. Mrs Telhall smiled. It was done.

‘Everything is out of the question!’ Screamed a man with greying hair.
‘Then what should we do, Henry, what should we do?,’ asked an exasperated woman with tattoos.
‘Maybe we should just be,’ suggested a quiet man with glasses.
‘Quiet, everyone, be quiet,’ said a calm woman with a clear eyed gaze.
Heads swiveled on necks to spot the woman in the crowd. She was nowhere to be seen.
‘Open your eyes, open your eyes,’ said the calm woman again. 
Ah, there she was. Hidden in plain sight. 
Mrs Telhall stood on the dais, a tiny speck from afar. ‘We all know that we need to ferret out the puppeteer, regardless of life or death.’, she said.
‘For cutting off ties with it!’ Shouted the ageing man.
‘Yes. The curtains should be closed, the show ended. The immortal threads finally cut.’
‘And how do you propose we do that?,’ asked the tattooed woman.
‘With my sight. With my gift of sight and soon, yours. We will find a way to get to it. We will find a way, for the audience have been amused enough.’
‘I think we’d like to see now.’, suggested the bespectacled man.
‘Open your eyes.’
The blue sky rained strands, like hair.
‘Open your eyes.’
The air glimmered with faint white lines.
‘Open your eyes.’
Words died in heads and hearts. Truth misted, was born and alive. The truth of control.
Mrs Telhall smiled. She eyed the strings attached to her arms and legs. And then at all the tangle of strings puncturing the blue sky. It was very surreal, she had to admit.
But scary? No. She had always felt it.
But the fear of the unknown froze the air below her. Silence clouded the crowd of people as they gazed at the strings on their body, on other bodies. White strings that shot from the sky or beyond, white strings that watched every move.
Mrs Telhall wakened with a sudden start. Another vision had come. Another step closer towards it.
She propped her head back, or rather something else did. But it didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was finding the puppeteer.