Pinnocha Part One

i know nobodies gonna read it, but its more for my own personal gratification <3
" 1. The Conception and Birth of Pinnocha-Gogol I. Bronewitz

My father was twenty, and ran to Finland to hide from the world.

'He was the first to see and breathe the winter air. After hours of being stuffed and suffocated inside the cattle car, the walls were swiftly and abruptly slid open with a screech that melted into an echo of load groans and shouts and roars. They rolled on in a deafening wall of deep noise, and no real words were said. The camp was familiar but bizarre; every object was granular and black, all except the thousands of howling faces melting, changing, and disfiguring themselves. Figures, the ones he knew, where still in helmets and uniforms, bearing guns and the lightning bolts on their collars. They stood as silhouettes as the shadow of barbed wire became an extension of their being. Their faces were crisped, such as by an aggressive, roaring fire. Their eyes were blackened and gone.
A savage creature lunged at his chest with large, long, white, and sharp teeth and a terrible barking and snapping escaping its lips. Its eye sockets were empty, but what was swinging violently with the German Sheppard’s movement where its eyestalks and its god damned eyes. They swung; the camp was charring within its own crimes, and the savage dog with the swinging eye stalks was going for his heart and his throat. Men were ordered to the right.'

My father had written down the memory of his nightmare in a vague and hurried daze, after waking up in a cold sweat. He was surrounded by the soft glow of one candle he had left to burn for the night. Many things were kissed orange in the darkness, everything he had made to keep himself occupied, and to keep his frightened brain at ease. Tapestries hung over the walls, and deformed puppets, vulgar images painted on birdhouses, and drawings of the dying and emaciated hung over the tapestries. A work of taxidermy, which he made on special occasions, stood by his bedside table in the quiet darkness and starred him directly in the eye. It judged him, beaver’s skull on a deer spine to man, starring down his dark eye’s with dark and lifeless sockets. My poor father felt a pain within his arm, where his number was engraved, and then in his stomach. He ran to the toilet with a sharp ringing in his ears, and proceeded to vomit.

My dear father, Gershom C. Bronewitz, was a frail, timid, hurt man. He sank to the floor beside the toilet, painted auburn, shivering and overflowing with the nausea and anxieties in his gut. My poor father wiped away tears about to form on his lids and took a look at his thin and colorless arm. His fingers softly traced over the long number etched in his skin, under the humming white light of the washroom, and he slowly shook his head to try and forget the name of his death camp. It’s been two years, it’s been two years, it’s been two years…

This was a night when Gershom wasn’t the person I knew him to be, and wasn’t the fond memory of a gentle and sickly artist boy his family had died with. My father would have been the subject of conversation after the war, I’d imagine. One between those he knew and survived, and with those who lived and had it quite easy and fine during the war itself.
“I can safely say, my dear, that I almost miss the boy who made those lovely birdhouses down the road, just a while ago.”
“Who do you mean?”
“You have to know, the boy who fixed your rocking chair… the skinny one, who couldn’t keep a dialogue very long because his brain seemed to clog up…”
“The Jew, yes.”
“Oh God…”
“He was quite a weak link in the first place… maybe he’s alright, dear.”
“ He was such a darling boy. He must have died there; his little heart probably had given out even at the sight an armed soldier-man. Oh God, what could have happened to him?”

So many people must have thought of him, had such a conversation about Gershom. But they’d all be wrong; he was the one who lived, the weak one. But he began to seethe on the bathroom floor, so tragically and powerfully, at least to himself. He rose with the rotten taste of stomach acid burning in his throat, and began to shout to himself and to the trinkets that watched him. He began to shout to Hitler, through the floorboards, and threatened to go down to hell and gouge out his eyes. He then threatened anyone who could hear him, which was only the cold winter air outside his cottage, that he would also gouge their eyes out and through them to the floor. He needn’t have noticed he was already crying.

My father had very suddenly had the idea to create a puppet in the middle of the night, out of his rage, and create the wooden figure into an emaciated, dead, and injured human being. One that was so disfigured and so malnourished that it no longer even represented a person but an animal, as we were. Aren’t we animals? My father growled many angry thoughts as he shoved all his past work off the craft table to begin ripping at a log of oak. Isn’t all we are meat- we’re meat and we can burn and won’t feel anymore, isn’t this our place in this Godless universe?

When the corpse would be done, as dead as can be, he intended to get rid of it any way he could. He thought of burning it as he thrusted at the wood, to beat and kill who hurt him. But it wasn’t as if they lived in the little wooden log.

He would burn it, as it was hanging from the air by a rope. Or he would bury it, break it, or face the face of another man to buy a pistol to shoot it up until it was unrecognizable. Or he would leave it to freeze and rot away back into the Finnish land and snow until it melts away. It’ll only be dirt, and wouldn’t bother me anymore, he thought.

But this would never happen; my Father would never destroy the body he made. In his fit of rage an unexpected jolt of terrible pain in the joints of his hands had made him drop his tools to thump and bang on the floor. His racing mind halted to look at his trembling hands. He very cautiously tried to touch the unfinished puppet he had made, that wasn’t frail enough, not nearly dead enough; God knew it needed more. Pain bit his joints again, and my father felt panic bubble in his insides. He held his breath in complete silence to stare at his hands, trembling, his mind clotting for a brief moment, but the anxiety coursing through his body reminded him defiantly that he couldn’t work, not tonight. No no no no no I have to work, I can’t bear to think of anything anymore, I don’t want to be aware of myself anymore, damn it.

Nobody in the entire world remembers when, how, and what they saw and felt when they were born. Whether their eyes aren’t open, or they’re mind simply can’t comprehend that they exist. As far as I would know, one is floating around in space in the first months of life, inside themselves. But I remember what I saw when I was born. To me, they were shapes, colors, and the terrible howling sound of a creature sobbing and quivering on my right. I had woken up from dark eternity, from the universe, from not being alive, I suppose. I am thankful to remember being born, because I can now understand the things I saw. Notably the face of another puppet, hanging from the side of a window with curtains cut and fashioned out of a terrible red, black, and crème colored Christmas sweater. This puppet didn’t have eyes, only sockets, and a red face that frowned at me with a silent cry on its lips. Although one would think I would mistake my father’s weeping for the terrible red puppet, but I couldn’t comprehend the idea of weeping anyway, yet I seemed to know a human face. I remember I was lying down, and I raised my arm to look at myself, at least a little, for the very first time. My arms were wooden, and twiggy, and stiff, but I believe that was the first thing I learned even in my first few seconds of life; my arms could be broken so easily.

I remember seeing Gershom, my father’s face for the first time. Now I realize what I privilege I had to see the face of who had made me, and remember it, and to instinctually know that I needed this creature to feed me and take care of me. My head turned and I thumped my long nose against the table. My father’s head was hidden in his arms, and his aching hands grasped the back of his head. He wore an overcoat that I would see to be his and my favorite for the rest of his life. It was a blue grey, was very long, and very light and formfitting for such a slender man. I touched him; I felt his short hair brushing through my pointy wooden fingers. It felt pleasant, and then I reached out to hold his finger. My whole hand could grab that boney purple finger of his. I could comprehend by instinct this was my mother of sorts, and that they were alive, and that I was so much smaller than them.

My father had swung his hand away and his head shot out of his arms. His crying abruptly halted, and his eyes were wide and fearful. He gasped and scuttled backward away from me, to lean against his redwood door. I tried to follow him as best as I could. The best method I could muster was to attempt to sit up, and to extent my frail little arm, that could break under the pressure of the air itself. I had managed to tumble off the table and to stare bewilderedly at my father, who was panting with fear and ogling at my being. The fear in his eyes was in fact frightening me, I remember, but I had that first look at his face that I would never forget. I recognized his face, analyzed it so I would know who to call for to be fed or held or protected. He was undeniably frail, and was a rather dark figure among the orangeness of the cottage. I would say if I had the capacity to think when I was born, that my father Gershom was beautiful, like a woman; irrefutably his face was that of a young woman’s. His skin was very pale, and colorless, and the ridge of his nose curved downward very smoothly and very slightly. He indeed had the lips of a lady, and very dark expressive eyebrows, and cheek bones that shown with his wonderful facial structure, but also from malnutrition. His eyes were what caught me the most; my father’s eyes were so unbelievably large and glazed with fatigue and a very slight trace of past conjunctivitis. They were lined with black eyelashes, and a grey crescent that marked the space below his left eye, and had been cradling it for two years. The irises that held my reflection were just as dark; though he claimed they were brown I still don’t believe him. To me they were like nighttime, though he believed that night was a symbol of death and evil, as darkness can be. But nighttime to me is time to rest, or see the world in a way that everyone is too tired to see. Darkness can be a place to hide or be safe in, no one can see you in the night time, and you can’t see what may be hunting for you. That, the good kind of nighttime, was all in Gershom’s eyes.

For a good while, we starred each other down, and Gershom gradually began to let down that guard of his, and inch closer to my little wooden body. He couldn’t burn me anymore, he couldn’t bury me anymore, and I could no longer be a symbol of death and of the bodies of Gershom’s lost emaciated friends, for I wasn’t finished for this to be; I was alive.

My father’s legs were rather close for a time, as he gazed down at me with his hands resting on his knees. I wanted him closer, and grabbing at his shoe ended with me being kicked to the back of his craft table, straight in the gut, though I had no guts to be injured. I still felt the pain of what was really his own instinct, only a reflex to defend himself from strange wooden animals that tried to take his shoes. I began to cry. It was then that dear Gershom placed aside his pain and his fear to apologize, and hush me. “N-no no I’m so sorry, shh, don’t cry, please don’t cry, shh, hush, I’m sorry…” My father kneeled before me, shushing me and feeling the space behind my ears, the ones he had carved and glued unevenly onto my head. I still cried, and held onto my stomach, hanging my head as my father gradually began to stroke it, with a mild tremor in his hand. In his eyes for the moments that had past I had seen the fear go away. He was beginning to pity me, and a sense of wonder came over the existence of my being.

I began to calm myself as my father tried to sooth me as best as he could manage, and he let me grab one of his boney fingers, and didn’t flinch away from me. He peacefully watched me as the candles about us danced, and flickered their light among all the vulgar images Gershom had made without stopping. A wooden block with the vague likeness of a storm trooper, holding the body to a headless woman over his shoulder, looked on at us on the floor, studying each other. (I will say right now for my father, his work back then didn’t reflect who Gershom actually was, which I find bewildering.)
“Shh…there…you’re okay now. I’m so sorry…” An eerie silence came over the room, and I stared at him as my crying had died away. Gershom was as still as the silence; the world around us. That was the first time I had saw and understood his gentleness, because he was gentle like silence, and was very quiet when he spoke from then on that night. “There…” he whispered, stroking my head as I held on to his finger, even though I had hurt his arthritis, he didn’t say a word. I caught a glimpse of the number on his arm, the one he was petting me with. “There, you don’t have to be afraid, I won’t hurt you anymore…” A single tear rolled down his face, as my limp reflection glowed within his dark eyes. “I won’t hurt you anymore…” he breathed.


The sun wasn’t to rise for a few hours, and Gershom sat in the little pine wood rocking chair he had made three weeks ago. He sat with me in his lap and arms in the dark of his bedroom, beside a window were the curtains were made out of bath towels. They were embroidered with grey, white, and black bears sewn into a tessellation. My father gently rocked back and forth and starred into the darkness out the window, feeling a bit of a draft, and contemplating about what had happened. He tried to swallow away the last burning taste of vomit in his throat, and trying his hardest not to fall asleep to face another nightmare, and possibly drop me to the floor when he screamed awake.

I rested in his arms and listened to a strange pumping noise inside his chest, and I wondered why Gershom was warm and soft, and I was not. My long nose had poked at his sternum a little too hard, and it made him gasp a bit, and pushed my head a little farther from the center of his chest. But I so desperately wanted to dig the beating thing out of his chest to see what it was, and I wondered why I didn’t have a beating thing within my own chest. I lifted myself and placed my pointy little hand on where I felt the beating, and tapped on his chest to mimic it. His thoughts clotted for a minute, and when he came to he forgot what was happening until he saw me. He hissed in a sort of tired sigh and said “What-what in the world are you doing to me?” I stared at him and kept mimicking the beating in his chest with my hand. “That’s my heart,” he said. “When it stops beating it means I have died. If its beating, it means I am alive.” I didn’t understand, of course. I touched my own chest and felt nothing. I turned and rested on my back on top of my father and tried to find my heart, but it wasn’t there at all. “What are you doing?” He realized quickly that my heart didn’t exist, I didn’t feel alive and I did not work like many living things. Yet I was alive, alive or a dream to Gershom, so he put his arm under my own and gave me a heart. He tapped my chest as his heart had to beat, and I heard the hollow sound of wood being hit, but it never the less delighted me. I smiled for the first time and put my hands to my face, which moved all about in excitement. “There’s your heart.” He said. “It’s there, I found it right here, don’t worry.” I thought it was wonderful, and I thought that Gershom had let me borrow his heart in my ignorance.

Gershom began to doze as we rocked back and forth for a bit, but he kept tapping my chest to the rhythm of his own heart. His head rested on his shoulder, and his eyes were drooping closed, and I watched his face be still and quiet, as I loved that manner of his. “It’s right here, Pinnocha.” He grumbled. “Your heart is right here, Pinnocha.” His eyes fluttered open, and his black eyelashes danced like moths wings. His head rose very slowly to look at me. “Pinnocha.” He said, and stopped tapping on my chest. “I’m here Pinnocha.” He then began to tap again, to the syllables of “Pinnocha”, tapping three times, and whispering “Pinnocha” to me. He began to doze again, until I had stopped his arm, and studied the number engraved into his skin. He starred, I felt the number, and he only tried to pull away once. He stopped rocking, and we sat there very silently, and Gershom was very still. I still don’t know today if I had caused him pain by looking at his arm, nor do I know for sure if I had touched his soul. He kissed me, for the first time, on the top of my head very softly and kept his lips on me for a very long time. He turned me around for an embrace, as he began to rock again, and my head rested itself under his chin. “Oh Pinnocha,” he breathed, while very quietly sucking in a shaky breath, and I very gently began to tap my father’s chest to the beat of his heart again. “My precious Pinnocha…”

It was so long ago, but I remember being born so visibly. And now I can safely say to you with tears in my eyes; I would give anything for my father to be here with me again. "

well, there it is
ow, my dignity- it hurts
cuz this sucks, and its meant to be vague and confusing cuz i was vague and confusing before it was cool- im archival *insert hipster glasses*
but its ok cuz i know no ones gonna read it, and enjoy the pretty picture instead :3

hope u like