Puppet Graveyard by Tim Curran Page A

the unpleasant end of pretty, pretty pussy?”
    “Stop it!” Ronny cried. He turned to Kitty. “I don’t know anything about your sister! I don’t! I don’t!”
    Kitty felt cold from the balls of her feet to the top of her head. It was all planned, all arranged. She had been manipulated from the first. The bait was thrown out and she had taken it and now she was firmly hooked. Piggy had foreseen it all. Now he would count on her fear, on mental degeneration settling in. But this, she decided, is where his plans would go to hell.
    Piggy’s head swiveled in their direction, mouth still gaping. “I think it’s too late for that, Ronny. Our dear, pretty Kitty has been talking to people, hearing the things they had to say and believing them…careful now, Ronny, no sudden moves…she has her hand on the gun.”
    And it was true. Her hands were in the pockets of her leather coat and the right one was gripping the little .32 automatic tightly now. Piggy seemed to know it.
    “If she wants to kill me,” Ronny said, completely indifferent, “then let her kill me.”
    “Oh!” Piggy laughed. “You silly, silly boy! You’ll ruin all the fun!”
    But Ronny wasn’t having fun. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”
    “Well, you heard the boy, Kitty, better just do it…then we can be alone. And you do want to be alone with me…don’t you?”
    “Stop it,” Ronny said.
    “Tsk, tsk, old boy,” Piggy said in a patronizing tone. “You see, Kitty. He doesn’t want to talk about girls. Boys and girls and the things they like to do in the sweet, heady darkness. Hee, hee, hee. Girls make him uneasy. They make him so uneasy that sometimes he—”
    “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Ronny cried, on his feet now, hands balled at his sides, then up against the sides of his head, pressing and pressing. “I don’t want to hear it! I don’t want to hear any of it! So just shut up!”
    “Shut up? Sure, kid, I’ll shut up. I’m good at shutting up. I’ve been shut up in a lot of bad places. Kind of like I was shut up in the family vault until you—”
    “Stop it!” Ronny shouted at him, his eyes welling with tears now. “Just stop it! I want it all to stop!”
    “Oh, but I won’t stop it. Remember how it was? Did they tell you how it was, Kitty? Ronny can…he was there. Why don’t you tell the girl, Ronny, tell her all about it. How you used to come and see your brother in the vault, talking to him and missing him…and wasn’t it all so sad? Boo-hoo, said the Jew.”
    “Stop…it…”
    The cackling again, eerie and discordant. “No, no, no, Ronny, I won’t. I won’t stop any more than mother would stop when she suffocated little Holly with the pillow or when she wound that light cord around my chubby little neck. I’ll never forget that… and neither will you…”
    Kitty was losing her mind now; it was just too much. She brought out the gun and leveled it at Ronny, said in a trembling voice, “Where is my sister? Where is my goddamn sister?”
    Ronny turned on her, hair hanging in his face, lips pulled in a snarl. He was mad, completely unhinged. “Get the fuck out of my house!”
    Kitty brought the gun up. “I’ll use it,” she said.
    “She will, Ronny,” Piggy said. “What are bad girls made of? Ha, ha, sugar and spice and plenty of lice! You’d better take her to her sister…”
    But Ronny just put his hands to his head, sobbing and whimpering…and then he froze, stood up straight, began walking in a tight circle like a toy soldier, finally dancing in a sprawling, loose-limbed shuffle like a marionette controlled by strings from above.
    “He’ll take you now,” Piggy said. “And when you get back, then we’ll discuss your future, pretty pussy. Or the lack of the same.”

15
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Silently, Ronny turned away and Kitty followed at a discreet distance, the gun still up and ready. Ronny led her to the stairs and moved up them almost mechanically, each foot placed carefully before the next