Strings — David Jones

“Nobody was quite sure when or how the puppets took on a life of their own, but there was no doubt that they had. The first sign of strife was stark and profound. The puppet master was found dead, garrotted with the strings which had once manipulated his puppets.” Strings is a short story set inside a circus. It is a story about what it is to be alive and the thoughts, the feelings and the complexities which accompany being a real, living person. It's tragic, surreal, comical and insightful all at once, and it evokes an atmosphere of peculiar unease which permeates the circus, the town, the entire world of the story and every word. It asks what it is to be alive, what we can do with this strange and mysterious thing called life, and how we can find purpose against the legacy of the past. When three circus puppets are inexplicably given life inside a fairground Big Top, bloodshed and chaos quickly ensue. In the aftermath of three murders, and trapped inside the circus by a ring of police, the puppets are driven deeper into the circus and forced to face themselves, the threat of their own destruction and all the strange terrors which accompany life and living. From the author of the best selling 'Love and Space Dust,' 'Could You Ever Live Without?', 'Love As The Stars Went Out' and 'Death's Door.'