I don't own Pinocchio.
Please let me know what you think.
Give a boy enough rope, he'll soon make a Jackass of himself.
After making sure the park was sealed up although none of the Stupid Little Boys wouldn't realise it until much later when some of them retained enough of their human education to look beyond their transformed states, the coachman retreated to his office while the sounds of park attractions could be heard even through the windows and the walls. He usually retreated to the office while his associates and workers readied the crates for transporting the boys when they transformed and could hardly be called human anymore, but it was mostly to relax or to simply go over his paperwork.
As soon as he walked into his office, the coachman smiled as he took in the surroundings. The office windows were high up and far away enough from the rest of the park so none of the boys could throw bricks or pieces of debris from the places in the park which were built especially for destruction. The coachman lit up his pipe as he stood by the window, overlooking the scene. It was always the same on nights like this; a night depicting a large, chaotic mess of a party, the sounds of laughter, some of it drunk already or just happy in general. The coachman knew the temptations of the island, combined with the lack of adults, would make the transformation accelerate.
He took a deep whiff of the night air.
The air was fresh as a gentle and cool breeze drifting on the clear sky carried into his office. The cool and sweet air was not the only smell that came into his office; he could smell the faint smell of tobacco smoke in the air. Soon he knew that a scent known to those who frequently worked with donkeys would carry into his office before he heard the sounds of braying among the sounds of human voices. Those were things the coachman waited for.
The coachman stood by the window for some time, thinking as he stared out at the chaos.
The way he was seeing it, he was doing the boys a favour. The way he saw it, he had a booming business empire, and that was one of the reasons he was doing this. Business, pure and simple. But it wasn't like that at first. No, he had needed to see the types of men these boys would become before he embraced his career. When he had first entered into this business, the thought of transforming boys into donkeys had been horrifying to him of course.
The coachman had indeed watched as the disobedient boys who failed at school, took every opportunity they could like what they were doing outside.
Sometimes they would be fortunate enough to get a job as a labourer, but they would continue to throw their pitiful wages away. Others would become vagrants who did nothing for society but expected society to do something for them. But of course, nobody would although a few might try, but the coachman knew they'd stop as soon as they realised the people whom they were trying to help refused to lift a finger to make an effort to pull their own weight.
But the ones who had made the coachman realise and embrace the dark side of his donkey-trafficking business were the ones who went into the prisons and usually stayed in them for the rest of their lives. They did nothing for society. They did not work. They just committed crimes as they felt like it. Once he saw that and reached the conclusion, the coachman had approached his business differently and he took to it with sadistic glee. In any case, the gold coins he got from the circuses, farms, and mines quickly pushed aside his guilt.
Besides, if the stupid little boys weren't the types of boys who would need to be given enough rope, then they would make a jackass out of themselves soon enough.
But truthfully, a large part of the coachman wondered why nobody realised that the donkeys the boys were going to become were their true form. Many of the boys were likely to become labourers anyway, or beasts of burden for society. Sometimes the coachman wondered what had happened to the donkeys he had sold over the years, but truthfully he didn't bother to investigate since by now, some of them were likely dead.
However, there were times he had asked himself the question of if he found one of the donkeys and asked it if wished to return to its original form, go home, would it. Or if it felt liberated, since he had given it the chance to what it was on the inside and allowed the inner donkey to come out.
While he didn't have much guilt over what he did, even the coachman had to feel sympathy for the families who lost sons, grandsons, even the occasional granddaughter - girls who came to the island were rare, but they did come either because they wanted to indulge as well; the coachman did not care. To him, a donkey was a donkey - would their families wish to see what they would have become as humans?
In his mind, the boys forfeited their rights when they chose to indulge as soon they appeared on the island, smashed it up, gorged themselves, and smoked to their heart's content. The coachman had no idea if their true nature had something to do with the accelerated change, but he didn't care, but he believed if society was more responsible then the park would never transform them.
Chuckling darkly, the coachman walked over to the desk and he took out the neat stack of paperwork containing the new contracts. The coachman had recently made new deals with several farms miles away. They had given orders for only a measly number of donkeys, but if they were happy with their livestock then they would approach him with more orders. The coachman was determined to make sure those donkeys fulfilled their standards. He would pay strong attention to the stronger donkeys, and send them off to the farms. The coachman looked through the newer contracts, and he smiled when he found the one where a company transporting goods and people by saving up money and costs for coaches and carriages had recently opened. This was the type of business that demanded donkeys, and the coachman was always delighted to deliver especially when they wanted as many as he could spare. If they found the donkeys to their satisfaction, they would demand more. However, like the new farms, they were new to his business empire but he was determined to make sure he met their standards.
However, as he worked, the coachman could not help but think about the marionette Honest John and his idiot associate had brought to him. If the idiot fox had not brought him other boys to bring to the island, then the coachman would willingly cut all strings with him - puppet pun intended.
Didn't the fox even think about who and what had animated the puppet in the first place?
Didn't they know the being behind it was likely watching over the park and would interfere if the rules permitted?
The coachman had never transformed a puppet before. He was unsure if the magic imbued in the puppet boy would be strong enough to block off the island's curse, but it would be fascinating to watch.
In the meantime, he had time to think. A living marionette, animated and given a personality by powerful magic. Such a thing was an abomination, especially since the coachman knew that unless something changed, the puppet would soon lose that personality and it would once more be nothing more than a wooden puppet that could only move when someone played its strings. Thanks to his own abilities which allowed him to cast the curse and privately grow and cultivate the crops and materials he needed for the island in areas where they would not normally grow on their own, the coachman knew enough about magic to know such a thing required a being of supreme power, and he had guessed who was behind it.
The Blue Fairy.
The sentimental magical being had likely promised the boy he would become a real boy at some point; the coachman had no idea who was behind it, but it was likely down to a wish. Whoever had made the wish had been sentimental, foolish, but it would be enough to summon the Fairy.
The coachman wasn't worried about her coming to the island personally to rescue the puppet boy. He knew enough about the Blue Fairy and her kind to know while she could grant wishes, beyond that she found her hands tied. Her abilities were powerful, but the laws that bound those same abilities also prohibited her from taking action. Her little wooden pet could be smashed and pulped, and he could be screaming for help, and she could not do a thing.
While he wasn't happy the idiot Fox and cat had drawn her attention to his island, although if she hadn't known what Pleasure Island was for the coachman would be really surprised, the coachman knew she wouldn't be stopping his operation and he did not care about her opinions on the matter.
The coachman shrugged his shoulders. It made no difference; soon, the wooden boy would become a donkey or not, but in the meantime, he had a lot of work to do.
And all that time he paid attention to the sounds outside, waiting for the moment where the air was filled with the sounds of braying.