The Marionette's Father

Late 1800s, France

The candlelight flickered in the darkened workshop, casting shadows across the unfinished wooden puppets that hung lifelessly from their strings. The air was thick with the scent of sawdust and something fouler, something rotting beneath the fresh veneer of varnish. It had been two decades since the blue fairy granted Pinocchio his wish—to become a real boy—but time had not been kind to him.

Geppetto had passed in his sleep, leaving Pinocchio alone in the quiet house they once shared. At first, Pinocchio grieved as any son would. He wept until his throat was raw, until his knuckles bled from clawing at the wooden walls of the workshop where his father had toiled. But grief turned to madness, a slow, creeping decay of the mind. And one thought festered in his fragile heart:

Geppetto had created him. Why could he not create a father of his own?

It started with small things. He dug up Geppetto’s grave and held his brittle bones close, whispering lullabies into the night. But bones could not speak, could not hold him, could not scold or praise him as Geppetto once had. Bones were not enough.

So he sought flesh.

The first was the butcher. A stocky man with calloused hands and a voice like gravel. Pinocchio lured him into the shop with the promise of repairing a broken marionette. The struggle had been quick—a hammer to the skull, a blade to the throat. When the man’s body stilled, Pinocchio worked with careful precision, stripping muscle and sinew as though carving a new puppet. The butcher’s broad chest would make a strong torso.

Next was the baker’s wife. Her hands were soft, warm—perfect for the gentle touch of a father’s embrace. He sewed them delicately onto his creation, marveling at how the fingers curled slightly, as though reaching for him.

One by one, he gathered the parts, piecing them together as a master craftsman would. A tailor’s legs, a priest’s voice box, a schoolteacher’s kind eyes. Every stitch was placed with love, every seam a whisper of longing.

The town noticed the disappearances. They whispered of a monster lurking in the night, a demon that stole away loved ones, leaving only smears of blood in the alleys. But Pinocchio paid them no mind. He had work to do.

The final piece was the heart.

A heart was a delicate thing, and he needed one filled with love. He thought of the old cobbler, a man who had often shared stories of his children who had long since left home. The cobbler was lonely, just like Pinocchio. So he waited until the man sat by his window one night, watching the stars, before creeping in with a knife in his wooden hand.

When his father was complete, Pinocchio stepped back to admire his masterpiece. The patchwork body sat slumped in the old rocking chair, its eyes dull, lips stitched together in a grotesque smile.

Pinocchio held its hand, tears brimming in his hollow eyes. “Papa,” he whispered. “I made you. Just like you made me.”

The body did not move.

Pinocchio shook it gently. “Papa, wake up. It’s me. Your son.”

But there was no fairy this time. No magic to breathe life into his grotesque creation. The thing in the chair was no father—just a lifeless amalgamation of stolen flesh and broken dreams.

Something in Pinocchio snapped. He let out a wretched sob, his fingers digging into his scalp. The blue fairy had lied. Life was never a gift—it was a cruel joke, one that had left him abandoned and broken. He had tried to fix it, to take fate into his own hands, but fate had spat in his face.

He sat in the dark, rocking beside his unmoving father, whispering lullabies to the corpse. And when the townsfolk finally broke down the door, torches in hand, they found him there—cradling the monstrosity he had built, his wooden lips pressed against its decayed ear, whispering over and over again:

“Papa, I made you. Just like you made me.”