The cops dragged me outside and down to a stone building with lion statues guarding the door. (1)
The statues, actually puppets, turned and glared at me as I entered the building.
I passed through a marble hallway, entering a courtroom filled with puppets of every color. They sat in stands and on benches, guarded the podium. One puppet, a gray cylindrical thing with a stern looking bird face, scowled at me when I glanced at it.
An old man puppet in a robe sat behind a tall wooden box in the center.
A giant metal disk embossed with the image of a female puppet with a blindfold, holding scales hung on the wall behind the judge's box, and Rosedale Square apparently had its own state flag.
My trial proved to be a short open and shut case. Witnesses said that I did it, the forensics evidence damning, though oddly accurate, and ultra specific.
For example, they somehow had dental records and glossy photographs of Reverend's corpse.
For an attorney I had a green turtle named Eugene, who did a pathetic job arguing for my defense. His plea that I didn't know any better got shot down by the judge, saying that some jail time would teach me a lesson.
A group of puppet versions of myself stood as jurors, but they weren't truly like me, for none seemed sympathetic enough for an acquittal.
When Gretchen Goose took to the witness box with her condemnatory testimony, I felt hurt and betrayed, but she said she only wanted what was best for me.
The jury unanimously decided that I should be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Once this had been established, and the judge destroyed his gavel banging pad by hitting it too many times, the officers marched me down a flight of stairs to a small prison where puppet rats played harmonicas and seedy looking criminal puppets glared at me with disapproval.
They threw me in a large jail cell, locking the door.
The bars had gaps large enough for me to squeeze through, but since I had the cop puppet as my warden, I wouldn't have been able to get far.
My cell contained only a bed, a mirror and a toilet. With a sigh, I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, which, for some reason, had been covered in educational graffiti that taught me how to spell words as I stared at it.
Suddenly a fat hairy purple thing with googly eyes leaned close to the bars of my cell.
"So," it said in a low growly voice. "Me arrested for stealing candy. Why you in here?"
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(1) See original version at Chapter 129: Dream Neighborhood, Section III.