Chelsea and I were hanging out in our hotel room. Chelsea was channel surfing and I was cleaning the revolver and, like, half watching the screen.
Suddenly, she stops on this shitty as fuck looking puppet show, right? The star is this puppet that looks like it's made of other puppets or something? Like, with a doll head? And he's on this cheesy as fuck pirate ship with a face, and there's cheesy fucking calliope music playing the whole time. Chelsea kept it on because it looked, to quote her, "wonderfully godawful".
So, I'm cleaning my gun, and I'm glancing at the screen, and then I start to notice the pirate ship's in strangely familiar waters. The sea's full of cattails, water lilies, lotuses...aquatic plants and flowers as far as the eye can see. It got to the point where I couldn't even see the water anymore. Petals began to drift down from the sky from some unseen source. I think I heard the ship choking on some of the flowers, spitting them out as best it (she, maybe?) could.
I guess they got to shore--not that I could tell, since the flowers never stopped, because the puppet--who looked fucking terrified, by the way--was giving this dismal fucking stare down at the flowers, and then the pirate ship says, "You have. To go. Janice needs us."
The puppet, I swear to God, gulped, nodded, and jumped down, and fucking immediately, the background music cuts out and gets replaced by a constant rustling sound. He sunk to his fucking knees in water and flowers, and started slowly wading through them and this whole time a part of my brain is screaming at me that all of this is real fucking familiar.
"Holy shit. Why would they go to all the effort to make such a shitty looking puppet so amazingly expressive?" Chelsea said. I could tell she was starting to get a little unnerved by the whole thing.
The puppet slogged through the water and to the shore, and the whole time, he's looking around, glancing at everything, like he's afraid something's going to pop out and drag him under at any minute, and from the ripples and rustling all around him? He was probably right.
So he made it to shore and now he's walking through this endless field of flowers, with petals raining constantly from the sky, and he has a hand over his mouth and he's coughing and sneezing and I would've been thinking about how realistic this puppet show was if I hadn't instantly recognized where the puppet was.
They focused a really long time on the puppet stumbling through the fields. Like, absurdly fucking long, ten minutes at fucking least, if not longer, and the entire time, it was like there was something under the foliage, just out of sight, following him slowly and methodically.
Eventually, the puppet started coughing so hard he fell to his knees, and he started to bring this surgical mask out of his pocket when suddenly, there was someone in front of him.
I kid you fucking not.
It was the Smiling Man.
And not, like, a Smiley puppet, or a Smiley actor. The fucking Smiling Man and, at this point, Chelsea dropped the pretense of being anything but unsettled by this.
The puppet started freaking out. "Muh muh muh Mister Smiles! The Bird Man told me...."
Smiley handed him a mayflower. Its eyes...they were like black spots, like the TV couldn't process the feed it was getting from them.
"Janice. I need to find Janice. Have you..."
The Smiling Man handed him a blue rose. The puppet stared at with absolutely no comprehension.
"Please, sir! I know the Skin Taker was here! I need to..."
Smiley gave the puppet a handful of impatiens and asparagus blossoms.
"I...I'll go, if you don't know any--"
Smiley gave the puppet a human heart. Chelsea jumped.
The puppet fucking screamed and dropped it, falling into the tangle of flowers beneath him and backing away on his hands. Smiley slowly advanced on the puppet, its grin even wider than before.
"Oh please, Mr. Smiles, I didn't mean any insult! I just wanted to find Janice! P-please, don't..."
The Smiling Man handed the puppet one last flower. It was a rose. It was completely black, save for the flower, which was a solid white bud. The leaves had been stripped of their flesh, leaving only dangling, tendril-like veins hanging from the flower's sides.
"Y-yes sir. Yes, I understand." The puppet said, taking the flower and getting to his feet. The puppet was absolutely covered in this reddish brown mud and pollen and grass stains, and his hands were still covered in blood from the heart. He snatched the rose up and took off as fast as he could and then I guess the episode ended.
Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that? A children's show with the fucking Smiling Man on it? Shit, what the fuck else is on that fucking show?
Chelsea was pretty shaken up. I'm trying to calm her down. More if I can find out anything about that show.
Mr. Smiles was the scariest of the Lords and Ladies I've had to meet yet. Except my Queen of course. I don't understand most of his silly flower talk, but he's right.
ReplyDeleteIf I want to find Janice and get to her before the Skin-Taker I have to sail to the Black Path and ask the Birch King. I'm sure he'll know where to find her. The Birch King really likes children . . .
I was really hoping that Jcarlson fellow was trolling with those Candle Cove reviews, but if you saw it too . . .
ReplyDeleteCandle Cove airing again after more than a decade off the air can't be good.
Who?
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should check this out. This could be something big.