Porcelain and Steel

I am the puppet master. I tinker, rebuild, polish. Most shine beneath my hand. But this one, this girl is stubborn, damaged, unworthy of the stage. I acquired her through an accident. The other masters turned away, unwilling to waste their craft on her fractured frame. Her performance embarrassed them; her limbs betrayed her. But me? I have always liked a challenge. I can fix her. I can get her to perform again. The show must go on.

Her limbs collapse, dangling like wet spaghetti. I pull harder, the wires slicing into my own flesh, but there is no response. The arms flail as if caught in a hurricane, though the air is still. She neither obeys nor resists. She simply hangs. She is defiant. I’ve been told this story about her, and how she is no longer worthy of performance, but I am in charge; I am the director of the show, and the surgeon of her architect. I will repair her.

I picked her up from the sidewalk, discarded like trash, bones broken, skin split, body depleted. People passed by with their noses in the air, unwilling to look at her. But I stopped. I saw not a failure but potential. She was raw material, something I could shape, something that could be useful to my show. She is made of porcelain, drained of life, skin etched red from the falls, and muscle not to be found. She is lifeless as the world passes her by.

The show cannot go on like this. She must participate. How does she imagine she’ll move without me?

I stare at her in fury. I drilled the holes through her bones, threaded the wires, and gave her the gift of movement. And still she weeps, curses, and accuses me of ruining what was already broken. Never grateful. Never understanding. She does not know that repair is violent. She does not know that broken things are never mended with tenderness. Bones do not fuse through kisses, fairy tales do not sew bodies together. No, because repair demands machinery, drills, wires, screws, the weight of force pressing bone to bone until it either holds or shatters again.

And so I drilled. I stitched. I forced her pieces back together. Still, she dangled lifeless, as though daring me to try harder. Who does she think she is? The disobedience.

Her legs now hang like cold cuts in a butcher’s case, bloodless, pale. The audience stares. They have no sympathy; they came for spectacle, not excuses. They lean forward, waiting for her to stand, to dance, to prove my craftsmanship. She trembles, falters, and collapses. But I know this act. I’ve staged it before. She always gets back up. I always make her get back up.

I tell myself it is my artistry, my precision, that revives her. That she rises because she finally sees the masterpiece I’ve carved from her ruins. She resists, yes, but in the end, she always returns to the stage. If she doesn’t, I have steel for her spine. There is nothing I cannot reinforce.

She is my only puppet who refuses to accept the damage. The others yielded long ago, their fragile bodies bent to my wires, obedient and unremarkable. They shine because I make them shine. But this one… she freezes, she resists, she longs for an ending I never grant. Only in her mind does she fight me, and there I cannot reach her.

Still, I repair what the world shatters. I fill her with fluids and cocktails until she gleams with life. I run wires where muscles fail. I carve her into shape again and again. And when she glares at me with hatred burning in her hollow eyes, I know she does not yet understand. Someday, she will.

Someday, she will thank me. Someday she will thank all puppet masters who sew the broken back together, crooked stitches and scars be damned. Yes, it is brutal work. Yes, drills through bone and strings through flesh leave permanent marks. But trauma sharpens performance. She shines brightest in her agony. And when, at last, she smiles without my wires pulling her cheeks, the audience erupts in thunder.

The audience, that faceless mass, is why I do this. They demand spectacle. They applaud my craft. They want a girl who suffers and survives, who shatters and rises again, who wears her scars like sequins under the lights. They do not care about her rebellion. They do not care that she longs for quiet, for shelves and dust. They want the performance, and I deliver it through her.

What a show she gives, this girl who dreams only of silence. She longs to be boxed away, tucked on a shelf where no one watches, no one pulls. She dreams of stillness, of dust settling into her seams. But I will not allow it. Dust is death, and I am no dealer of death. I am the master of resurrection.

She will not rot in obscurity. She will not choose stillness. She will move again. She will obey the screws, the rods, the wires I have given her. She has no choice.

And when she does, she will be magnificent. Still, I wonder in my darkest hour as I craft what makes her change her mind. Is it the beauty I instill in her? Is it her own reflection once she catches a glimpse? What finality allows her to accept her fate and dance as I instruct?

Because her body may fight, but her mind still holds a spark. I see it each time the lights strike her porcelain skin, each time the audience gasps at her return. She thinks she defies me, but even her rebellion feeds my show. Even her silence is a spectacle.

She does not yet understand: I am not just her master. I am the master of survival itself. I am the hand that lifts the broken. I am the one who makes the shattered whole enough to keep moving, to keep performing, long after they wished to stop.

And though she resists, though she despises me, though she longs for dust and quiet, I know the truth.

She shines brightest under the light, a body broken, but still performs. I know she is grateful that I pull the wires.