Leroy and Latoya Read Marcie and Gina Read The Rest of "One Hundred Candles"

On the stage, the naked puppets danced. One had a woman's torso but a fish's lower half, and in her mouth sharp little teeth flashed. The other was a pretty blonde who fell to her wooden knees, clawing at the black-haired puppet's skirt. Above the stage, Leroy and Latoya smiled their grim smiles. Perhaps it was all a game, or perhaps, somewhere, two young women found themselves moving against their will, trapped in their own little nightmare...or, perhaps, a wet dream.

"Back again," Leroy said, his voice raw and scratchy. Too much screaming, perhaps. "For more punishment? Or out of a sense of obligation."

"I care not, so long as they read," Latoya rasped. "It is so difficult to walk that line, between horror and arousal, terror and titillation. We knew when the game began that it probably wouldn't quite work. Some images are powerful but not, alas, to everyone's taste. I fear more of these tales are apt to disgust than to excite. Yet I'll take it."

“Surely it is a coincidence, Gina.”

"There are all sorts of coincidences in these stories," Leroy said, as the black-haired puppet seemed to half-swim across the stage. Latoya grinned, and her blonde puppet spread her thighs lewdly. The two met with a clack of wood on wood, yet the echo of a soft moan was audible from where they held the strings. "They start as a mirror for the darkness inside the writer's mind, and become the mirror for the readers. How far is too far is all in the eye of the beholder."

“Zeebop does like to punish his villains. Quite harshly, I might add.”

"There is a twisted ethos to these tales," Latoya said as wooden hips rose and fell, a crotch with a carefully carved slit rubbing over the other doll's face, over and over. "The innocent may suffer, but the perpetrators suffer more. The problem, I think, is that the pleasure is unevenly distributed. Not enough sex, not enough time devoted to the sex. Perhaps we should have reveled longer in the orgies of the Sabbat."

Wooden hands pawed at breasts. Each finger was carefully delineated, individually carved. They caught at stiff wooden nipples. Dribbles of milk squirting out. The wires became tangled, and the two puppets swung around, caught up.

“You know, Gina. I have to say, there really is a considerable amount of racism in these stories.”

"Race is highly caught up in horror in the United States," Leroy said simply. "But the racism in these stories is not the ugly stereotypes of big black cocks and snowbunnies. More of the ugly realities of power and politics."

The wires seemed to saw into the doll's clothes, which shredded and fell, leaving them naked and entwined.

“You could definitely spend a long time puzzling out all the interconnections of these stories.”

"There is a bigger picture," Latoya said. "Or the hints of one. Family names and histories that come together, suggesting a wider world. But then again, there is no way to know if any of these stories really happen within the framework. Did the Freak Fucker really do all he claimed he did in his tales of the sideshow? How many of those occult investigations were lies? Much of that is, of course, left up to the reader to decide...if they care. Most seem not to want to puzzle things out. As is their right."

With a knife, Latoya cut the strings. The blonde puppet fell suddenly lifeless, unable to move. Leroy's black-haired puppet fell on her immediately. Guiding the puppet's hands to flip her over, to where a tiny drill had made a tiny hole in a warm, welcoming backside.

“I like lemon cake, Marcie. Doesn’t mean I want to eat 50 of them in a row.”

"Quantity," Leroy said, as he guided a thin wooden digit into a hole with all the skill of a watchmaker, "is the problem. The concept is fun, but in execution, it is difficult to avoid a good amount of repetition or to develop characters and build toward a satisfying conclusion. A worthy experiment, but perhaps a bit like eating all your Hallowe'en candy at once."

The blonde puppet did not scream as it was penetrated. It could not. Latoya reached down and stroked the paralyzed puppet's pale golden hair.

“A surprising little amount of vampires or other traditional monsters in this though.”
“Yeah, the incest twins said so already in their reply, which we skipped.”

"Original horrors are a bit more fun," Latoya said. "Who wants to see a vampire given a holy water enemy, or tell the old tale of a lusty werewolf? It's more interesting when the reader doesn't know exactly what's coming, even if they can sense that there are rules. Or at least conventions."

“They also complained that we addressed few of the sideshow chapters and while they are certainly some of the more heartwarming ones…”

The pale hair grew. Even as the black-haired puppet stretched the little hole further and further, the blonde hair streamed out and caught at her limbs. With a jerk, Leroy felt the toy pulled from his grasp. The twins watched as the black-haired puppet squirmed in the grasp of the blonde, who slowly turned on her.

"Monsters," Leroy said with a soft rasp. "How dearly we love them. And how much empathy and pity do we feel for those ostracized for their appearance. But, well...not everyone is sympathetic."

A strand of hair grabbed the black-haired puppet's breasts and tugged upward. A carved mouth opened in a silent scream as her whole body was held aloft by just her tits.

“This is not a but worthy sentence, Marcie."

Latoya chuckled. "Methinks the ladies doth protest too much. They like to speak about unspeakable violence, but when it comes to reading it...or doing it..."

She let down a little fishing line with a tiny hook at the end.

“Marcie absolutely would fuck an eldritch fishguy as long as it looked like a femboy eldritch fishguy.”
“Slander.”

"We did not tell these stories specifically for you," Leroy admitted. "Though I wonder what such a story would look like? How would we titillate, how would we transgress in ways that speak to your interests?"

The hook caught on the blonde's backside. Latoya pulled sharply upwards, and now both puppets hung there, in mutual agony or ecstasy. Though whether puppets could tell the difference is hard to say.

“Leave it to Latoya to always ruin a perfectly happy ending.”

Latoya laughed. "That is our dynamic. Leroy liked to build his sand castles; I liked to play the kaiju that rampaged through them. Yet I fully think he enjoys his part. After all, he kept building more castles for me to destroy..."

Leroy smiled, but said nothing. He watched as the puppets danced. Neither able to extricate themselves from the bonds that held them. They swayed together again with a crash of limbs, a clatter of wood on wood.

“IT’S STILL NOT MIDNIGHT? WE ARE OVER 90 STORIES IN! LITERALLY HOW!”

"The conceit of the game," Leroy allowed. "Impractical, yes. But it does keep the amateurs away from calling up that which they could not put down."

“And some weird ass poem for the pen-ultimate story.”

"Something a little different," Latoya allowed, as she guided the toys back to their box. "Which answers a few questions, and raises others. It's not actually a poem, though the form probably gives that impression. All good horror and erotic fiction has at least a hint of poetry, no?"

“Uhu, except we got the incest twins fucking cursing us, so at least these two made it out.”

"Did we really?" Leroy said, and for a moment it was two skeletons in evening clothes that looked down at the puppets. "Or did you, by reading through all those tales, summon back our spirits? Did you invite us in to touch your hearts with horror? Who knows, indeed, for here in Dagon's Hollow, things are strange and weird...and so they should be."

The puppets could not answer. They lay in their prison, where the twins had found them. And if they awoke from their dream with strange memories and strange marks on their bodies, the ache of flesh that had been used and abused, and perhaps a souvenir lodged where none had been before...well. All anyone could say to that would be...