Junior suddenly stood up straighter, eyes wide as if he too was confused and alarmed at what had been Felt. Junior looked around he was worried clearly and thought to himself or at least appeared to, that something was very wrong.
“What’s going on!?” He asked Shawn

Mr. Clayton had grown silent. The puppets eyes stared vacantly up at the ceiling. A fly buzzing around in the silence and settled on Mr. Clayton’s wooden nose. The air above Mr. Clayton‘s head seem to shiver. It had the look of hot air simmering above black pavement during a hot summer day. A shimmering that seemed to distort the very reality just above the wooden puppets limp body.

Shawn tried to move away from the shimmer, keeping his eyes locked on it the whole time. He wasn't quite sure what he'd unleashed, or even if he'd been the one doing it. Was this really part of Mr. Clayton's planned show?

He squinted into the shimmer, trying to see if anything was inside of it.

As Shawn squinted, he suddenly felt his eyelids grow heavy. Not with any sense of sleepiness, but with the sense that they were stiff and....

wooden.

Suddenly Shawn looked up and saw Shawn Cramer. The boy was walking around in a stilted fashion. It was Shawn's own body, moving with an awkwardness like he didn't know how to walk.

Shawn looked down and saw his own hand was that of a wooden Puppet's.

"Yucka! Yucka!" Shawn Pronounced. And with that, Shawn knew that Mr. Clayton and him had switched bodies.

Shawn looked down at his wooden body and tried to flex his arms and legs as fear gripped him - it seemed that Mr. Clayton hadn't been talking about using voice-throwing tricks for this 'body switching' number. He tried to stand up, to move around, to get a sense of the capabilities of his newly wooden body.

Fortunately, his stiff face made it really easy to hide his growing panic. He tried to think about what he should do - he didn't really understand how Mr. Clayton had done it, but the former puppet in his body had said they'd switch back as part of the trick. Maybe he just had to play along, not freak out until it was over? "Well, I guess I'm the dummy this time!" He forced himself to sound cheery...though even as he tried to say it, he realized he wasn't sure if he could actually talk when he was like this.

"That's right! Yucka! Yucka!" Shawn, or in this case, Mr. Clayton said. Shawn's body moved with a stilted awkwardness, like  a wooden puppet whose strings had been cut. His head lolled to one side, his hands slack but stiff at the joints near the elbow.

"Whatttya think Junior!?"

Junior stared, open-mouthed at the grotesque scene before him. Because there was something grotesque about it. Something unnaturally monstrous. This wasn't immediately obvious until Junior said.

"Its......gross?" And with that comment, the grotesque nature of the scene, and how it could be viewed as such, snapped into focus.


"But....amazing..." Junior gawked, like he was viewing the results of a train wreck that he knew would give him nightmares later, but was unable to look away from the carnival of carnage before him.

As gross as it was for Junior to watch, it was even more off-putting for Shawn. On top of watching his own body move around, his puppet body didn't need to breathe or blink and didn't have any body heat, and noticing that contributed to a pervasive sense of unease about the whole thing. But he tried to keep the show going, so that Mr. Clayton got to the end of his trick and swapped them back. "That's right, it's a great trick! But its got nothing on the grand finale up next!"

Shawn didn't remember much about the structure of the show, but he hoped the prospect of a big show-stopping number would give Mr. Clayton incentive to finish the 'swap' and restore them to their rightful bodies. He didn't know what Mr. Clayton might have planned as a final act, but Shawn was prepared to improvise one if it meant switching back.

Shawn's body didn't so much walk as much as it stammered across the slick, gray pavement of the warehouse, sneakers dragging, arms flopping. It seemed to take an eternity as Mr. Clayton spoke, Shawn's body lagging behind.

"Here I come! Here I come Junior! I'm coming for you! Boo!" Mr. Clayton's voice said. Then he laughed that same Puppet-laugh. The rictus of chuckles shook Shawn's body and threatened to tip it over to one side before Mr. Clayton seemed to correct it with an inner tug of a puppet string.

It was still a slow motion movement as Shawn's body dragged forward towards Junior.

"Oh no! He's coming! He's coming! The Big-Bad Puppet is coming!" Junior shouted with joy. It was as if he was genuinely excited the way that a kid might be excited about going on a haunted house ride or seeing one at a Carnival and pointing it out to his friends.

Shawn watched as his body trailed after Junior in a horrible parody of human movement. It was gross to look at, but he wasn't sure how he could make it stop. The only other thing he could think of, other than waiting and hoping Mr. Clayton would swap back when the trick was over, was seeing if he could do it himself. After all, if Mr. Clayton could make the swap in the first place, surely Shawn could do the same in reverse, right? He looked up towards where the strange ripple had first appeared (still was?), and concentrated really hard. Swap us back, swap us back, swap us back...
This message was last edited by the player at 12:53, Wed 27 Nov 2019.

"Now hold on just one second now..." Shawn's body said to Shawn out loud in response to Shawn's request. Because, even though they were switched, they were still connected.

Connected

Perhaps more now for having switched then they ever had been before. Mr. Clayton, for his part, was rubbing Shawn's arm's and touching Shawn's face as if he was getting used to 'wearing' Shawn. Shawn, on the other hand, could feel the stiffness and restraints of being a wooden puppet, only capable of movement as the design allowed. Also, there was a wooden smell that was old and dry emanating from Mr. Clayton's puppet body. It smelled like the old case that Shawn had known the puppet came in. The same case that he had seen many times Bradford hold.

Don't you want to finish the Show? Mr. Clayton asked Shawn, though this time it wasn't out loud, but in Shawn's mind that he heard Mr. Clayton talk. Mr. Clayton spoke to Shawn through Shawn's mind, transcending the verbal patterns of the spoken word, so that the words themselves appeared in Shawn's mind's eye more like a thought than a series of individual words. The idea itself was woven into the contextual fabric of thought and could not be separated from the reality of being inside of Mr. Clatyon, watching Shawn's own body stagger towards Junior in stilted, irregular steps.

"Yes! Yes! Come towards me! Here I am!" Junior yelled, delighted that Shawn's body was lumbering forward, and somehow knowing, or at least, appearing to know or believe that it wasn't Shawn at all but the magical Mr. Clayton that had switched minds with Shawn.

Junior looked like a kid who was excited to see that the ice cream truck had appeared on the block, turning towards him as the result of his yelling and hollering at it.

Despite the weird smells and the stiffness in his wooden body, Shawn actually calmed down a little. Part of it was the realization that they were still connected, but it was also Mr. Clayton’s reaction. The fact that he was asking Shawn to continue and not just ignoring him helped reassure him that this was, in fact, temporary, and that Shawn could switch back if and when he really wanted to. Sorry, keep going - the show must go on!

He fixed his wooden gaze on Junior and let out an exaggerated, clearly performative shout. “Watch out for the big bad puppet!”

Mr. Clayton--in Shawn's body--staggered forward with Junior rejoicing. Just as Shawn--in Mr. Clayton's body--had uttered the phrase about the big, bad puppet, Shawn watched his arm swing back in a full arc.

Whack!!

There was a meaty, thud sound as Shawn's body smacked Junior right across the face with an open-palmed slap.

Whack!!

Shawn's body caught Junior on a backhand with with same hand, and something flew through the air, a tooth.

Whack!!

The next open-palm smack sent Junior stumbling backwards, reeling in a half circle. Shawn, from his vantage point inside of Mr. Clayton's body, could see that Shawn's body had a red hand, whose knuckles were bleeding.

"Yucka! Yucka!!!!!" Mr. Clayton's voice sang through the air, an affirmation of the violent spectacle that was very much a grotesque Three Stooges show, albeit with a more violent, slapstick tone.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:07, Thu 28 Nov 2019.

Junior stopped spinning. His hand was pressed against his face, Shawn unable to see the small boy's reaction. His shoulders started to jerk like he was sobbing silently. His other hand grabbed the other side of his face, back completely turned to both Mr. Clayton and Shawn.

Through his knuckles, a single trickled of blood eked out and ran down his forearm before falling to the floor. Junior started to emit a low, sobbing sound, like the reaction of pain had just started and was about to build in a louder sound that promised to take up the entire warehouse.

Shawn's first thought after the first slap was that this was some sort of terrible accident, that Mr. Clayton was still getting used to his body and had accidentally swung too hard. But then he struck Junior two more times as Shawn watched in horror. What're you doing?! That can't be part of the show!

Juniors shoulder started to bounce up and down with the tell tale silence of someone in the midst of deep sobbing. He turned to face Shawn and Mr. Clayton, hands covering his face. Then he dropped his hands...

....to reveal a face that was smiling. To be sure, Junior had a fat lip that was split. His smile sported a missing front tooth, fresh blood staining his white teeth with a brownish hue.

“That was amazing!” Junior stated, a slight lisp and a bit of a whistle escaping his mouth because of the missing tooth.

“Whattya know! He likes us, he really likes us!” Mr. Clayton said in mock actor’s voice, a parody of some famous quote someone must have said not too long ago.

“See? It’s all part of the show. All part of the performance. You’ve got to give yourself over to Greater Ventriloquism. You’ve got to...loosen up a bit.” He said gesturing a Shawns...or in this case, Mr. Clayton’s body.

Shawn was completely confused, looking back and forth between Junior and Mr. Clayton in his body. I guess...he does? Sorry, I should've trusted you. Despite his apology, he had no idea why Junior was acting this way. "Do you...want a cloth or a bandaid or anything, Junior?"

“Did you see that?” Junior sloughed, mouth sounding like it was full of mush. He looked over at Mr. Clayton’s body where Shawns mind resided.

“I mean! I’ve never, ever seen anything like it. That was just something so fun and so exciting. It felt like I was on a roller coaster when he hit me. It felt like I just played all day! All day with my closest friends. It felt like Christmas and getting just what Santa was told to get, just what you told him you wanted. You know? Or like on your birthday, like when you’re about to blow out the candles, you know? Like right after everyone sings. It’s like that. It’s just like all of that!” Junior seemed so wrapped up in the moment, he didn’t answer Shawns question.

It was completely weird...but Shawn wasn't going to question such a positive response. Though he knew he'd have to talk to Mr. Clayton about all this when the show was over. "That's great, Junior! Guess I was the one acting like a dummy, getting all worried."

As Junior began to speak, no, It wasn’t speaking as much as it was rambling. I was talking about how fun things were how much you like ice cream and how he had a reoccurring scratch on the bottom of his foot for what seemed like forever. But most of all, who was waving his arms around and excited gestures. As he did so blood stream down his chin pooling at the bottom of his neck.

“This is the most fun that I’ve had in so long. And I knew we were best friends Shawn...I mean… Mr. Clayton… I mean, well you know what I mean. It’s like this is been so much fun I can’t even believe it. I mean I knew we were friends but now I just feel like we are closer than ever on your bestest bestest friend.”.

Shawn was taken aback by Junior's rambling joy, especially contrasted with the blood coming out of his mouth. There was a sense of unreality to how he was acting, like it was a weird dream he was having where he couldn't quite grasp the logic. So he kept playing along, lest he make a misstep and make things worse by breaking some unknown rule. "I'm glad you like the show - you're being a great audience!"