The Nutcracker Bleeds by Lani Lenore Page A

there something special about it?
    She
looked down, rubbing her hand over the smooth, green glass. It looked normal.
Just a marble.
    “All
aboard!” her escort said, and she hastily stepped into the teacup before it
began to haul them back to the top of the shaft.
    The
frightful toy beamed widely at her as the lift took them up, and while she
couldn’t find a smile to give back to him, she began to wonder if perhaps he
wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe he could even be a friend in this mess? Could he
be trusted even though his smile and eyes told her otherwise? Anne didn’t know.
She pulled the cat’s eye closer to her chest.
    They
traveled most of the way back in silence, with Anne contemplating something in
her mind–something that she knew she should say but didn’t truly want to in the
least bit. She knew that if she didn’t say it, she would eventually forget, and
it wouldn’t trouble her again, but now it kept coming back to her. Nagging her.
    Oh,
don’t be stubborn. Just say it. Turn to him and say it.
    For
the sake of pretending to be a better person, she stopped her escort in the
long stretch of shaft that led to the grate they’d entered this place from.
    “Jester,”
she said, standing with her head bowed toward the ground, a stray insect wing
dangling from her hair.
    The
dark puppet turned back to her, and for the first time, she looked at his eyes.
They were purple at the iris; all the rest was deep black.
    “Thank
you,” she managed. “I appreciate your help and couldn’t have done it so easily
if you hadn’t been there.”
    The
jester looked back at her, clasping his hands and twisting them together
nervously. On his face was a curling smile and his eyes turned down at the
edges. If she hadn’t known better, Anne would guess that the puppet was on the
verge of tears.
    “Are
you alright?” she asked, tilting her head in her uneasiness.
    “You
just don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear those words, Anne.”
    An
hour?
    “What?”
    Something
about this wasn’t right. Slowly, Anne began to back away.
    “From
the moment I first laid eyes on you, I thought you were the most beautiful
thing that I’d ever seen,” the jester confessed. “More perfect than any doll!
    Anne’s
brow furrowed in confusion. She shook her head. The jester stepped toward her.
    “I
saw how you looked at me–curled up your lip in disgust,” he went on. “It hurt.
I watched you at night from that grate above your room and sometimes I let
myself down through it, watching you sleep.”
    This
was shocking to her, but she wasn’t quite sure why she was surprised. The
puppet had been sitting on top of her when she’d awoken in her bed tonight. All
of these toys had been carrying on beneath her nose? She was dreaming. She
wasn’t dreaming. Anne could hardly feel herself at all.
    “But
even though you loathed me, I knew that one day I would be able to prove you
wrong! I knew that one day you would love me!”
    Love? The mention of
that shocked her.
    “Wait
a minute,” she said, finding her voice but still backing away defensively. “I
didn’t say–”
    “I even
made something just because of you– for you!”
    The
puppet wrestled with the black cloth of his body, finally managing to find an
opening within–and what he’d been looking for. From within those folds emerged
a post made of old, unpolished wood. The tip was cut into an arrowhead shape.
It was nearly an inch long–comparative to her former size: over a foot .
    “What
in the world is that ?” she cried, though she had immediately known what
it was supposed to be. Something the puppet had never had on his own. He’d made
one from a spare piece of wood and attached it to himself.
    A
crude, wooden phallus.
    Anne
clenched her eyes as if it would make all this go away. When she opened them,
all was still the same. All was not well.
    “It’s
a tool, of course,” the jester explained innocently. “It’s what humans use on
each other. I’ve seen