The day I received a poppet was a day just like any other—partly cloudy, birds singing, and a beautiful breeze drifting through the trees.

Perhaps bad things are destined to happen on days like those.

I stepped outside and let out a heavy sigh. A rusted, dent-battered car sat beside the shop. The owner complained of a busted car engine, but I could tell many other problems were going on with it.

I was tending to the car engine when Mrs. Agatha arrived.

She was a frail, old thing. A shock of white hair sprung from her head, sweeping down in front of her pale face. Deep wrinkles engraved themselves in her skin and would move with her mouth as she spoke, revealing crooked yellow teeth. With her shoulders hunched and her back arched, she hobbled up to me. One hand gripped a wooden walking stick, and the other was clutching something small—something I couldn't recognize.

“Hello, ma’am,” I said, wiping my hands on my jeans. “What can I do for you today?”

“I won’t have any of that “ma’am” nonsense!” She scolded, flashing a wry grin. “You can call me Mrs. Agatha.”

I gave an uncomfortable chuckle as I closed the hood of the car. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Agatha.”

The old lady’s friendly expression suddenly dropped into a solemn state. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m afraid my most beloved possession requires some repairing,” Mrs. Agatha rasped. She extended her bony hand and uncurled her fingers, revealing a foreign object I hadn’t seen before.

A poppet.

It was small and doll-like, made up of what appeared to be gnarled twine. Gruesomely twisted into the form of a person, its joints and neck were bound together with wads of foul-smelling wax. The poppet had no face, no identity—just a head made of twine.

“This poppet meant the world to me,” Miss Agatha sighed. “But I fear it’s much too old for me to fix any longer.”

I stared at the poppet in startled fascination, then quickly recollected myself when I noticed Mrs. Agatha arch her eyebrows at me. “Oh—yes, of course,” I hurried to the shop entrance and pulled the door open for her. “I can fix that up right away.”

Mrs. Agatha entered the shop and glanced around the cluttered, fluorescent-lit room. “Tell me—what is your name?” She asked.

“I’m Toby,” I replied, pulling up a stool to my “quick fixes” table—a worn wooden table I centered in the middle of the shop. “I can take a look at your poppet now if you'd like.”

Mrs. Agatha blinked at me and pursed her lips, then set the poppet shakily on the table. “Make it snappy,” she demanded, casting a quick look over her shoulder at the entrance.

I frowned at her sudden impatience but said nothing as I took the poppet and inspected it.

It was indeed a weird and rather hastily-made poppet, but nothing seemed broken. I set it down and gave Mrs. Agatha a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Agatha,” I said. “But I can’t find anything wrong with your poppet.”

Suddenly, Mrs. Agatha’s face contorted into a look of seething anger. Curtains of her white hair threw shadows over her wrinkled face. She tightened up her claw-like fingers and pounded the table with her fist. “Fix him!” She screamed into my face.

Alarmed, I blindly reached for the poppet and bent its back in half, severing it. The twine figure was now more distorted than ever, laying in a heap on the table.

Mrs. Agatha gazed at the poppet with foggy eyes and began to chuckle—which evolved into wild, hysterical laughter. “Yes!” She shrieked. “It worked! You’re a murderer—a cold-blooded murderer! You killed him!”

I stared at her, dumbfounded.

Later that day, as a pair of handcuffs clipped around my wrists, I came to understand what had happened.

Anything you did to a poppet would affect the individual it represented.

Mrs. Agatha made a poppet resembling her husband.

After a long and exhausting marriage, she decided enough was enough. She discovered the evil witchcraft of poppets and made one for her husband. He was a brittle man—the slightest bend or break on his poppet could have killed him. However, not wanting to mangle the poppet herself, Mrs. Agatha had to find someone naive enough to do it for her.

I guess I was that someone.