I'm a Real Boy!

I’m A Real Boy!

Pinocchio awoke with the sun in his eyes. He blinked. He was scared. His vision left him whenever he did that. That never happened when he was made of wood. He turned over on his side and felt a cramp around the middle of his body. What on earth could that be?

“Father!” he shouted, frozen with fear on his bed.

Gepetto shuffled to his side as fast as he could, considering his advanced age.

“Father, Father, I have a horrible feeling around the middle of my body!”

“Calm down my son, show me where it hurts!”

Pinocchio’s flesh covered hands touched the area between his legs. “Here!” he whispered, to which Gepetto grinned.

“Son,” assured Gepetto. “There’s nothing wrong with you, you just have to go to the outhouse!”

“Really?” asked the awe struck boy.

Gepetto led him to the outhouse and showed him how to aim his yellow stream into the hole in the wooden bench. Pinocchio thought this was the most interesting feeling indeed.

When he got back to the cottage, he bent over in pain again.

“What’s the matter now, dear boy?” Gepetto coddled in a fatherly tone.

“My body hurts again father, a little higher up!”

Gepetto chuckled and told Pinocchio to have a seat. In five minutes, Gepetto brought a large slice of toasted bread to the boy, and spread it with a generous piece of freshly churned butter. He prepared a mug of hot cider and set it down in front of Pinocchio.

At first Pinocchio stared at the things the man had laid before him. Realizing he hadn’t touched his breakfast, Gepetto broke off a piece of the buttered bread and offered it to the boy.

“Open your mouth dear.” offered Gepetto.

Pinocchio opened his mouth and Gepetto placed the bread inside. Pinocchio closed his eyes, paying no heed to the darkness, and let the delicious morsel slide down his throat.
He began to choke.

With a few well placed blows on Pinocchio’s back, the hunk of bread was dislodged. Gepetto sighed in resignation. “Son, you have to chew.”

“Chew?” Pinocchio asked incredulously.

“Yes, chew. Let me demonstrate!” the rest of the morning ticked by, and pretty soon, Pinocchio had the whole eating and drinking thing down to a science.

After the mornings tutorial, Gepetto was exhausted. “I must go lay down dear boy, my old bones aren’t what they used to be!”

“It’s all right, Father, I will be fine while you are sleeping!”

Gepetto yawned widely. “Well good night then, Pinocchio, stay out of trouble!” He kissed Pinocchio on top of his tasseled brown hair and hugged him tightly.

“Ouch!” yelled Pinocchio.

“Oh come on boy, that didn’t hurt, It couldn’t possibly have. I didn’t even hug you that hard!” With that, and leaving a very worried looking Pinocchio staring up at him, he went down for a nap.


“Goodnight Father,” he whispered as he watched the elderly man ascend the creaky wooden stairs to the bed loft.

Pinocchio sat there, his hand on his chest, still feeling a little strange. He was scared to be alone, there were so many things he needed to ask his father, so many things he had to learn.

He felt the rhythmic pounding of his muscular heart inside his chest, and he felt a warm sensation on his hand. He withdrew his hand from his breastbone and looked at the palm. It was covered in red.

“Paint?” thought Pinocchio, and he snatched one of Gepetto’s shop towels, hastily wiping the paint off his hands.

He looked down at the place on his upper body where his hand had been and noticed more paint. As a matter of fact, the paint had spread to the size of a small tin plate and soaked the front of his white linen shirt. In a panic, Pinocchio removed the shirt and put it in the kettle over the fire, adding some fresh water from the inside pump. The water turned an instant murky red as he watched in fascination.

Pinocchio felt a warm feeling on his left foot. He looked down and noticed some of the red paint was dripping off his pale white upper body and falling on his shoes. He began to panic. From where was all this paint coming?

He quickly removed his shoes and red soaked socks, and added them to the pot. By then, the fire had worked its magic, and the kettle was near the boiling point. His arm grazed the rim of the pot, and his flesh instantly sizzled and blistered. With a cry of agony, he fell backwards over a stool, breaking one of the peg-like legs. The fractured leg of the stool impaled his right calf, and he screamed again.

Up in the hayloft, Gepetto snorted, shifted under the coverlet and fell back asleep. His hearing wasn’t what it used to be!

Pinocchio dragged himself to the table in the center of the room. His head felt a little strange, like someone had set a moth in a bell jar inside his brain. On the table sat a free standing mirror, that Gepetto often used when he shaved his stubbly face. Pinocchio gazed into the mirror, and screamed again. He had never thought to look into a mirror and see how he appeared as a real boy, and now he understood why. Staring back at him was a pale white ghostly lad, with red rimmed eyes. The paint that was soaking his upper body was also flowing from those two strange little holes in his face, and rimming the place where he put his “food.”

“I must try to clean myself,” Pinocchio said to the empty room, “Father will be disappointed if he sees how I have messed myself with his paint!”

He limped to the linen cabinet, with the fractured stool leg still jutting from his calf, and brought down several stiff linen towels. He sat in the middle of the room, trying in vain to rub the sticky red paint from his body.

After a while, he felt those familiar moths in his brain begin to flutter and darkness overtook him. His last thought, as he lay sprawled in a puddle of his own blood, "Father will be so disappointed, yes he will…”

Gepetto snorted awake just as the last rays of the sun had sank below the horizon. He sat up and stretched his arthritic arms, hearing them crack and pop in protest. As the fabric of his weathered linen shirt stretched across his chest, he felt something weighty in his pocket. Chuckling softly to himself, he withdrew his favorite wood carving knife.

“My stars!” he laughed. “Good thing I sleep on my back, I could have seriously hurt myself!”

He stretched his thin arms once more, and prepared to descend the creaky wooden stairs.