"Aww, but I want to meet him! Isn't there any way to make him come out when I'm awake?" Shawn was becoming increasingly confused about what exactly was happening to his father, but he kept pushing his cheerful questioning in the hopes that something understandable would pop loose. "And why is Papa a f-...um, a 'you know what'? What is that, anyway?"
This message was last edited by the player at 22:45, Sat 10 Oct 2020.

Mr. Clayton shook his head again, this time indicating frustration. "It's not like that at all. They're both the same person. Your Dad. And Papa." Mr. Clayton sighed.

"Papa only comes out when you're asleep." Mr. Clayton repeated. "And your Dad is named Robert Cramer." Mr. Clayton said the second sentence slowly so that Shawn could understand.

"It all started the first time your Dad took me out of your bed. We went back into his room. He was all interested in hiding me in your closet. He was saying the most awful things about you. Tsk..Tsk..."

Before Shawn could process that last part, Mr. Clayton broke into a diatribe his eyelids flickering up and down like slatted windows as he blinked. "He said that your were a sissy and that no son of his was going to be playing with dolls. He dragged me down the hallway and tried to stuff me in his closet where you couldn't find me. But there wasn't any room in there. So he went to the end table of his bed and pulled out that bottle he has. He started to drink from it. Then he sat in that rocking chair of his. And I guess he kind of forgot that I was on his lap. Anyway, after a few hours of drinking, he started to look at me."

"He started looking at me with a funny look. Then, after a while, his eyes rolled back into his head. And he was sleeping."

"And that's when Papa came out." Mr. Clayton told Shawn like he was telling a secret that shouldn't be revealed.

"That was the first time I even knew Papa existed. He put his hand into me. And he started practicing. And boy did we practice. Soon we started listening to the radio. Bradford's old tapes. It turns out Papa is quite the ventriloquist. He made me promise I would never tell your Dad." Mr. Clayton told Shawn in almost a whisper. "He said he didn't want your Dad to know that he was a fag. That's why I said that your Dad was fag. Because Papa is a fag. I know because he told me. He told me that your Dad would be really angry about." Mr. Clayton explained.

"Because your Dad said that only fags play with dolls." Mr. Clayton told Shawn with a knowing voice.

"I think your Dad thinks that you're a fag too." He finished.

"I don't play with dolls! Ventriloquism is different!" Shawn felt genuinely shocked and hurt that his father thought so poorly of him. He knew what a sissy was, and he couldn't help but think the...other word...was related to that.

He felt a genuine frustrated fury build up in him. He'd done so much to try and keep his dad happy, so much to make him proud. But none of it had worked! Dad had called him names and tried to steal Mr. Clayton and who knew what else! It made him want to scream! But he'd been pushing his anger down for so long he barely knew how to express it anymore.

He took several deep breaths, but the anger didn't go away. "Why do you get to hang out with the one who likes the stuff I do while I don't? I think I'd rather have Papa than Dad. " His frustration made him sound whinier than he'd intended, which just made him more frustrated.

Mr. Clayton flinched at Shawn's anger, closing his eyes. Then he slowly opened them again.

"Papa tells me things about your Dad." Mr. Clayton repeated. "Don't shoot the messenger! Yucka! Yucka!!" Mr. Clayton joked, though the joke was hardly appropriate.

"Your Dad loves you." Mr. Clayton said, though by the way he said it, it sounded like Mr. Clayton himself wasn't convinced of it.

"Besides, you'll never get to meet Papa. He only comes out to play with me. Only when you and your Dad are asleep. Sometimes I don't like it though. The way he plays with me. He plays really rough. You ever have that experience? A kid that plays really rough with you on the play ground?"

"Papa is the worst when it comes to that. Sure, he tells me about your Mom and your Dad and why it didn't go so well. But then he throws me around when he has his hand up me. He makes me do these really, rough, quick movements. It hurts the wooden parts of by body. It's like going on one of those wooden roller coasters!"

Shawn still felt upset and frustrated and angry, but he tried to push those feeling aside. It didn't work, but he felt like it did. He didn't know if he could believe Mr. Clayton, but he wanted to know what 'Papa' told Mr. Clayton. But he didn't think he could trust Mr. Clayton's answer if he just asked.

"I told you want to meet Papa." He controlled his anger much better this time, though he was clearly still upset. "Let's switch places. Not like I said before, the way we did it in the show with Junior. We'll switch bodies. I want to talk to Papa."

Mr. Clayton opened his eyes wide.


"Are you sure." Mr. Clayton asked in a high, winy voice. "What if it's dangerous. What if we don't know how Papa would react?" Mr. Clayton's voice reached epic heights of squeaking, like his uncertainty made it the first time Shawn had seen the Puppet genuinely nervous.

"I mean, you know him better than me. And if you'd introduced us before now, we wouldn't be in this mess, would we? So how do you think he'd react?" Shawn didn't know if this was dangerous or not, but despite getting better at not showing it, he was still feeling angry and stubborn; Mr. Clayton not wanting to do it was a point for the plan, not against it.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:50, Fri 16 Oct 2020.

Mr. Clayton opened his eyes wide.


"Papa hates your Dad. He wants to be awake all of the time. I think he wants to get rid of your Dad." Mr. Clayton said. No threat to it. Said it just like he was talking about what Shawn might have for dinner. "Papa blames your Dad and you for making Mom go away." Mr. Clayton said.

"Why does he blame me!?" Shawn had thought 'Papa' sounded more understanding than his Dad did, if he was into ventriloquism and performing stuff. So why would he blame Shawn for Mom going away?

Mr. Clayton opened his eyes wide.


"I don't know." Mr. Clayton said, now taking on the role of some captured mobster in a noir flick whom the police were interrogating. "Maybe he thinks you're a fag." Mr. Clayton offered, hands close to his chest and palms out, all innocence. "It could be that Papa is mad and just wants you to go away because he wants me all to his lonesome." Mr. Clayton suggested. "Could be that you're in the way 'bub. Yucka! Yucka!!"

"Do you think there's any way we can make peace?" Shawn didn't like the sound of a second version of his father who was trying to steal Mr. Clayton from him - it was almost  as bad as the one who wanted to just take him away. "I'm a way better ventriloquist than him. If there's a pyramid, I'm closer to the top than he is, right? He's gotta know that!"

Mr. Clayton opened his eyes wide.


"It's true." Mr. Clayton agreed with Shawn. "Also, you're a bit gentler with your hands. And I like the way you move my arms more than the herky-jerky way that Papa does it." Mr. Clayton confided.

"Maybe if you could find a way from stopping Papa from coming out, he would some how go away." Mr. Clayton pondered.

Shawn felt a little glow from Mr. Clayton's praise of his technique, though he still felt a little upset by everything else he'd learned. "Even if we could, wouldn't that just take us back to the old problem? Dad wants to throw you away."

Mr. Clayton shook his head yes. It was problem. And the silence that settled in between Shawn and Mr. Clayton confirmed the predicament. Papa was going to keep stealing Mr. Clayton from Shawn and taking the Puppet to learn its secrets. Dad on the other hand was going to try to throw Mr. Clayton out.

"Yucka! Yucka!" Mr. Clayton announced suddenly. "None of this matters!" Mr. Clayton rejoiced. "Soon you'll be leaving the neighborhood."

Then the Puppet's face went dour with worry. "But what about stopping 'You Know Who.' You said you wanted to get Ralph back. If you abandon the kids in this neighborhood now, you know what will happen to them." Mr. Clayton informed Shawn.

"It was like the time I killed Tiffany. Or the time Mr. Cherrywinks killed Ron. Or......Bradford." Mr. Clayton omitted the last part about who killed Bradford.

"I'm not gonna abandon the neighborhood." Shawn noticed the omission in Mr. Clayton's list of dead, but he didn't acknowledge it at all, aside from stuffing another ball of anger deep down into himself. "And that means we've gotta fix Dad somehow."

He spent a few moments in silence trying to figure out some sort of solution. "Both Dad and Papa live in the same body, right? Is there a way to, I dunno, squish them together into one person? Maybe one that doesn't mind ventriloquism but doesn't want to learn it either?"

Mr. Clayton shook his head no, as if that couldn't be done.

"They're both in the same body already!" Mr. Clayton confirmed, though the statement, the way he said it was obvious, even if he used his high-pitch puppet voice. "Fine" Mr. Clayton resigned.

"We'll do it the way you said." The Puppet nodded, indicating that he would, indeed acquiesce to switching bodies with Shawn once again.

"But if we do that, don't tell Papa that you and I did it. Or we're going to both get in trouble."

Shawn didn't really understand the limitations of Mr. Clayton, though it seemed he'd finally given ground on something. "I won't tell him you and I switched. But are you gonna tell me how to turn on the tapes and all that other stuff you do? Do you appear in Papa's dreams like you do in mine sometimes?"

Mr. Clayton nodded his head, wide eyes looking odd as the head lolled to one side.

"OK, I'm sorry I didn't tell you before." Mr. Clayton said, not sounding sorry at all. "It's just that you weren't really ready. " Mr. Clayton said.

"I didn't want to upset you."

"I'm not upset." Shawn was lying, but no more so than Mr. Clayton clearly was. "So how do we do this, if I wanna convince Papa to leave us be?"

Mr. Clayton responded with his high-pitched twang that was off-putting to anyone that might have heard it. However, the door was closed and Shawn and Mr. Clayton were in the room alone, so no one heard it. And of course, Shawn himself had made the sound, hadn't he? Hadn't Shawn practiced in front of the mirror so many times before perfecting that voice that Mr. Clayton was using just now?

"It's be a Switch-A-Roo!" Mr. Clayton explained.

"With Greater Ventriloquism.  When you see Papa, you'll know what to do. You'll know whether the time is right or whether or not we need to do several Switch-A-Roos!."

Mr. Clayton flopped his arms about in a pantomime of excitement.

"We either need to get rid of Papa or get rid of your Dad getting me. One or the other. Yucka! Yucka!!!"

Shawn nodded seriously. Mr. Clayton's vagueness aside, he couldn't let the situation with his Dad keep going. One way or another, he had to fix it. "All right, I'm ready."

Mr. Clayton shook his wooden arms out like he was a great showman about to begin the first act of a new play. He waggled those fixed eyebrows in a way Shawn had seen once in a silver-screen Groucho Marx film that Dad watched on the couch.

"You know what you have to say!" Mr. Clayton announced with great flair. Then he paused.

"You do know what you need to say, right?"

Shawn did know what he needed to do, but he still needed a moment or two to psyche himself up to do it. This was important, this had to be done, and maybe this would let him convince his Dad he wasn't a bad son. He took a deep breath and braced himself. "I give myself to Greater Ventriloquism."

"Alright fine." Mr. Clayton said, the voice of child who had has his fun annoying Shawn and was now growing bored of it. He had run his little circles around Shawn with indirect answers and jokes and now it seemed that he was done.

"I'll do it, I'll do it." Mr. Clayton said in an exasperated tone, as if drawing this out had all be Shawn's idea and what a bad idea it was. "But you have to go to sleep first and then you have to say 'I give myself to Greater Ventriloquism.' "

"All right. Good. I'm gonna go do that." Not long ago, Shawn might have asked how he was supposed to say stuff if he was asleep, but he'd had enough bizarre dreams after meeting Mr. Clayton that he knew it was definitely something he could manage. He got up from the stool and headed back to bed. He'd have to calm down a bit to sleep, but unfortunately trying to get to sleep immediately after feeling upset or sad was something he'd become used to.