A Puppet Scorned: Jamie Kort
Reviewed By Ben Walker
Socks and sex go back at least as far as that infamous photo of the Red Hot Chili Peppers with knitting on their knobs, but they’ve always enjoyed (?) a questionable link with fornication. Whether they’re being used for emergency clean-up, or as a signal not to enter a room until clean-up has taken place, foot gloves will never fully escape their more everyday fate.
So it wasn’t much of a surprise to see a story where sock puppets go at it, and it’s not much of a spoiler to say that no bodily fluids are involved. I mean, why would they be? These are humanless sock puppets after all, given life by some means which is never explained and doesn’t need to be. As we’re introduced to a torrid love affair between Brad and Camille, we’re also introduced to a truly bizarre lovemaking session, which is as weirdly erotic as it is riotously imaginative. But the warm afterglow of shagging stockings is soon dampened by the arrival of a third wheel, a tiny addition to the sock puppet world, which threatens to tear the couple up in more ways than one.
Moving gradually into horror-tinged melodrama, the story becomes one of regret and revenge, as Camille is forced to make some life-changing decisions in the face of revelations both peculiar and oddly down-to-earth. You might be of the belief that a sock puppet’s googly eyes betray no emotion, and you’d be right, but despite these hessian heroes having no hands, they’re fleshed out surprisingly well. Camille’s temper gets the better of her at times, and she’s shown to have quite a vindictive nature, not to mention a violent vocabulary. There’s one moment where she expresses her hatred for another puppet which arguably leans too far into the tee-hee, a sock puppet did a swear side of things, but it’s not a deal-breaker, just strangely unimaginative for a story in which these puppets live out a murderous, bug & beast-eating soap opera for your reading pleasure.
In short – and it is a short story, weighing in at around 30 pages – this is a quick, fun read. Maybe not earth-shattering, but definitely one that bizarro fans should consider adding to their digital collection.
A Puppet Scorned
Enter a world where needles are sexy and knitting is deadly…
Camille and Brad are sock-puppets that live in a dusty old attic. They fill their days by exploring the storage boxes in their small world. One day they find yarn and needles and they create something that causes a nightmarish series of events to unfold… and Brad has been hiding something from Camille… a terrible secret that might destroy them!
You can buy A Puppet Scorned from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Ben Walker
Ben got a taste for terror after sneaking downstairs to watch The Thing from behind the sofa at age 9. He’s a big fan of extreme & bizarre horror and well as more psychological frights, and most things in between. When he’s not reading, he’s writing, and when he’s not writing he’s on Twitter @BensNotWriting or reviewing books on his YouTube channel, BLURB.
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