They all had smiles stitched on their faces. I had stopped at a fast food restaurant - I may not dream anymore, but I still eat - when I noticed that everyone around me looked...wrong. The workers behind the counter, the people flipping burgers, the people behind me, men, women, children. They were all smiling. And then I could see it: the invisible stitches in their faces.

The attacked at once. I ran, but they grabbed me. They pulled me back, threw me down. I pulled the gun out, but I had nothing to shoot, no bullet, no target. They pulled my arms up and to the side and I felt strings pull them until my feet slipped off the floor.

I was a puppet on a string.

A woman walked forward. She had the same stitched on smile, her eyes unblinking as she looked at me. "So this is her," she said. "A bit disappointing, really. I had such high hopes. Such vision. But I guess it didn't take that much to stop you. Not much at all."

My hand gripped the gun. It felt heavy, too heavy to be real. It felt like it weighed a million tons, but I couldn't let it go. It was the only thing I had.

The weight of the gun seemed to increase until the strings holding my hand couldn't sustain it and they snapped.

"Ooh," the woman said. "Wasn't expecting that. How neat!"

I raised the gun as I felt strings encircling my throat. They tightened and I couldn't breathe. My lungs burned and darkness began to crowd my vision and I knew I was helpless. I was going to die here.

And then that feeling of being helpless slipped away. It melted, along with all the strings around my body. Control? I had no control. All my control had slipped away. All my control was now bound together in one bullet. It was a bullet made of string.

Before I could pull the trigger, however, the woman snapped her fingers and everyone in the restaurant fell to the ground. I looked at their faces, each one a grimace. No more smiles.

The woman's face, however, still had the smile. She said, "Bye bye," and then the smile slipped away and she was gone.

I still have the bullet in my pocket. It's waiting to be used.