What is "Marionette"?
Marionette is a short horror story written and illustrated by me, Megan E. Risk. The story is laid out as equal parts text and artwork.
"A young person returns to salvage a relationship with their estranged grandmother, but Grandma may have everything in her life that she wants..."
"By day three, I was getting a little bored and a little worn out of the scented candles all around the house. That, and the clock ticking in my room was starting to bug me. It was another stain on the wall – once I noticed it, I couldn’t shut it out. Before, I used it to help me fall asleep. Now, it was starting to get on my nerves.
The third night, I woke once more by the clock tick tick ticking. I sat up in bed. If I could find it, I could just move it out of the room for the night so I could get some peace. It couldn’t have been very big – it didn’t sound big – so moving it shouldn’t be much trouble.
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If I could find it.
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I stood up, bare feet on the carpet, and tried to pinpoint where it was coming from. The room was suddenly an impossible mess. I didn’t even remember ever seeing a clock, but there was so much stuff in this room that it could have been under anything.
As quietly and carefully as my sluggish body could manage, I searched between lace, frills, floral patterns, gold trim, silk bonnets, mohair curls, glossy eyeballs, vacant smiles, and rosy cheeks for whatever was making that tick tick tick. I found nothing until I was face-to-face with it.
Being half awake, I figured my eyes were playing tricks on me. I used to see shapes in the dark when I was really little and they would scare me so bad that I would run into my parents’ room in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to my own bed until the sun came up. But I was older now, and I knew better. It was a clear, breezy night, and the moonlight could be dancing on the leaves outside the window, making shadows move on the walls of my room. I blinked hard to wake myself up, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from what I thought I was seeing.
There wasn’t a clock in this room. There wasn’t a clock anywhere in this house except the stove and the microwave. I shouldn’t have been looking for a clock at all. "
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