Contortion

by Aurelia T. Evans

  If there was one thing the cast of Arcanium got used to, it was being viewed as an object, often a sexual one. Arcanium did nothing to discourage it. It was usually the point. Not all of the members of Arcanium were intended to be viewed sexually, of course—although Kitty had often pointed out that everyone appealed to someone, and Kitty should know. Sex appeal and curiosity. That’s what paid the bills around here.

  People didn’t need an incubus and succubus to be oversexed assholes. Having Lady Sasha and Lord Mikhail around didn’t always help either. However, it had been a long time since Valorie had had to call for Bell because of a belligerent customer. By and large the visitors to Arcanium were as respectful as normals could be. Ignorant little shits, sometimes, but Valorie had learned to tune out most of the bull.

  Kitty had a lot more patience for people’s stupidity than Valorie, which was why Valorie was glad she didn’t interact with people as much as Kitty did. When Valorie left the tent to do her act among the commoners, she didn’t do the talking thing like Kitty, who was Bell’s little pusher both inside and outside the circus. Valorie just played human sculpture. As long as someone didn’t think that meant she was human furniture, everyone got to keep their face unmarked. Valorie didn’t have to be a demon to leave claw marks.

  So while in another life she might have gotten in someone’s face for catcalls and wolf whistles, here they were just part of the job. The audience could admire her ass and fantasize about her pussy all they wanted, as long as they kept it to themselves or in their little bubble of personal space, which was a good rule of thumb in Arcanium and out.

  While Valorie was twisted between her legs, John passed by. Usually she wouldn’t bother with a second glance, especially since he wasn’t looking at her. But he also had a lit candle on his head, and that caused a double take for more than just her.

  The red candle was about the width of a man’s fist. It had been partially melted, the wax at the bottom molded to John’s head, which was why he was able to walk without painstaking balance, although he still had to keep his back and neck perfectly straight to avoid jostling the candle. The grass was dry and brown. A single candle would go out before it hit the ground—and if not, wasn’t likely to cause a fire—but that didn’t mean walking with an open flame wasn’t without risks. With teenagers around, there was an increased likelihood that someone might try to startle him or trip him up.

  Valorie caught a glimpse of Ciàran with Moss on his shoulder, shadowing John on the other side of the Row, with its line of additional souvenir booths, the makeshift ring that the clowns used and Misha’s open platform.

  She didn’t know what was so serious. All John seemed to be doing was walking with a lit candle on his head, his expression intense in its professional blankness. He wasn’t even putting anything into his mouth.

  Valorie shook her head, unraveled herself and eased into a new position.

  With one hand on the arm of the armchair, her body made a C with her legs above her head and her other arm out in front of her when John walked by again.

  This time he had the lit candle on his head and one on each of his shoulders. He’d amassed a small group of followers, some of whom were taking video or pictures with their phones.

  She’d tucked herself into pretzel mode on the seat of the armchair—as surprisingly comfortable as shutting herself in the suitcase—when John walked by again.

  He had his forearms out like a man in meditation. He looked mellow enough, as though the repetition of his routine had sent him into a trance. Two candles had been tucked into his elbows, resting on his forearms to join the other partially melted candles, still going strong.

  Valorie stayed in her pretzel mode, which wasn’t all that interesting for the audience—or rather, it didn’t keep them sticking around in front of her tent instead of moving on like window shoppers. However, a lot of the Oddity Row audience had turned toward the center of the Row, waiting for the fire-eater to return. They wanted to see where this stunt was going.

  She was curious too. She didn’t want to miss him.

  He had candles in his hands this time, seven candles in all, flickering merrily in the light breeze. In a big wind there would be no way he could do this, but today was a perfect day for it, and Oddity Row was in shade to best show the light.

  This time John stopped just past Valorie’s tent, like a soldier called to attention.

  He turned around as though finally aware that he had been followed and was now surrounded by an audience.

  He kept on turning, again and again, each rotation getting a little faster. The candles were at risk of blowing out.

  Then John pursed his lips and blew, and the flames roared up like flamethrowers. He spun faster and faster. The fire trailed behind the candles and seemed to make burning circles around the dervish that John had become. The crowd cheered him on.

  When he’d stopped, Valorie noticed that the wax had melted more with the rise of the flames, which had stuttered back to their original size when John stopped spinning. The red wax must have burned with each drip, but John showed no sign of distress.

  To the audience’s delight, he dropped into a crouch and jumped back up again. He did that a few times then began to kick out a leg with each drop. They all applauded at his impromptu Russian dance. The whole time he kept the candles on his head, shoulders, arms and hands balanced like in a bottle dance. He popped up and down to the rhythm of the audience’s claps. When they realized they could control his speed, they clapped faster. He eventually couldn’t keep up, and that was when he couldn’t help but grin and stay crouched near the ground, running and kicking at half height.

  As soon as his legs probably ached from sustaining that position, he jumped back up and spread his arms for applause, still balancing the candles.

  Then he walked up to a young teenage girl and lowered himself to one knee.

  “Fair maiden,” he said, “would you do me the honor of blowing out the candle?”

  The girl giggled with her friends at the melodrama, but her face had gone red at being singled out. It didn’t matter how scarred he was, John was still attractive, and the girl was old enough to crush on him.

  John closed his eyes as she leaned forward and blew out the candle on his head.

  All the other candles puffed out at the same time. The girl jumped at the crackle of their extinguishing, but she smiled and clapped with the rest.

  “Take it,” John said, nodding his head slightly to indicate the candle she’d personally blown out.

  She removed it from his head.

  “Bring it here,” he instructed, and she cautiously but excitedly did what he said.

  He pursed his lips again. When he blew, mostly invisible flame that became blue two inches from his mouth and orange at the very end hit the wick, igniting it once again.

  John winked at the girl, who giggled again. He stood and walked to a woman standing with a man who appeared to be her husband. John seemed to wisely hesitate to gauge the atmosphere. Then he handed the woman the candle in his right hand. The woman offered it back to him, and he lit it for her before moving on to another.

  He varied his audience participation, although they were all female. He picked the last candle off himself and stepped through the crowd, which parted for him.

  John came straight to Valorie and held the candle out to her.

  There were a series of awwws and a smattering of applause from the audience, the kind that often accompanied spontaneous proposals in public places.

  It kind of put her on the spot. Not only did she have to break the fourth wall, but she slowly had to untwist herself and emerge from the chair to meet him. She wasn’t sure how she felt when she sat on the edge of her platform and took the candle. With both their hands still on it, John blew his fire from a distance. She felt the hair-sizzling warmth of it, but he had a good grasp of how to manipulate the fire that came out of him these days, and he focused it on the wick, which burst into a high flame before sett
ling again when he let go of the candle.

  His body still had remnants of wax on it. He brushed at those places as he backed away.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  Valorie had never had a moment where she couldn’t improvise, but here she was, staring like a fool, not smiling, not contorting, not carrying on the performance as though he’d handed her the baton. Annoyance and anger swelled in her stomach, but no one else seemed to notice her temporary paralysis. They gave their final applause to the stunt, and John bowed before jogging away in the direction of the carousel.

  She stared at the candle, which flickered merrily. It didn’t care about awkward. It just cared about chemistry and physics.

  Valorie made to blow it out, but people were watching, and she instinctively understood that would be a disappointment to them.

  She set it on the side table next to the armchair and let it burn.

  * * * *

  As soon as she felt it would be appropriate to leave for a while, she blew the candle out—safety first—and escaped behind the red mini-curtain to the solitude at the back of her tent.

  She sat down on the ottoman and wove her fingers through her hair, restrained today in a simple low ponytail that kept it out of her way.

  What the ever-loving hell had he been thinking? They’d had one night of little more than itch-scratching and he’d presented her with the candle as though it had been a date—as though he thought it had been the start of a beautiful romance. Arcanium wasn’t a Harlequin novel, despite what the makeup on her eyes and her harlequin catsuits suggested. No one got a traditional happy ending around here, especially not with misogynistic criminals like John.

  It had been a sweet gesture, which made it dead suspicious in her eyes. What had he hoped to accomplish? Push all the right buttons and get another gooey reward? Classic Nice Guy move, only for him to blow his top when his fucktoy got taken away. Valorie was going to have to talk with Bell about encouraging him.

  John didn’t return to Oddity Row again for the rest of the day, as far as she noticed. If he did, he stayed on the other side of the curved Row where she couldn’t see him, and he stayed out of her way whenever she left her exhibition tent. If she wanted to tear him a new one, she’d have to wait until after the evening performance.

  * * * *

  There was a light on in his tiny trailer. John probably had to curl up in order to sleep in his own bed, the trailer was so small.

  The door was unlocked.

  Valorie burst in, storming up the stairs. She had to hunch to keep her head from hitting the ceiling.

  John was reading a science fiction novel, looking like Papa Bear in Baby Bear’s bed. He had a blanket over his lap. He looked up when she came in.

  She was so incensed after the build-up through the day that she didn’t immediately register that the whole wall of the trailer across from him was charred black, like logs burned to a crisp. Nothing had lost its integrity. The cabinets were still cabinets, the drawers still drawers. One of the drawers was open, and Valorie could see unburned clothes inside. So the things around him could be burned, but Bell had put some protections up. He wouldn’t want the trailer to need to be replaced, and he wouldn’t want Kitty and Lady Sasha to have to constantly make John new clothes. Nor would he want his fire-eater to spontaneously combust. Bell couldn’t use him if he was dead.

  There was no way for her to determine when the burns had occurred or whether they’d happened over the course of multiple accidents. Valorie guessed, though, given his state of calm curiosity, it had been a while since the last accident.

  So she ignored the burned walls and turned her attention once more to John.

  “What the hell was that little stunt supposed to be?” she shouted, stabbing her finger toward Oddity Row in case he needed reminding which stunt he needed to answer for.

  “That?” John said. “It was just supposed to be fun. I cleared it with the Man before doing it. He thought it was a good idea.”

  “I’m not talking about the candle walk and dancing, stovetop. I’m talking about when you broke away from the audience you were trying to impress—”

  “Trying to impress?

  “And handed me a candle. Which, by the way, did not impress.”

  “Sometimes a candle is just a candle,” John said. He set his book down. Valorie noticed that he set it down behind him, away from where he was facing.

  “Let me make something clear,” Valorie said, this time pointing at him. “Last night was a one-time deal. You’ll be lucky if you get me once a year.”

  “You’re right,” John agreed, infuriatingly calm. It made her think he was mocking her, even though he just looked like a studious college boy who’d lost his Internet and had to make do.

  “So you don’t get to go around giving me a candle like a normal boy giving his girl a dozen motherfucking roses,” Valorie continued. “You give it to another girl—or a guy, for all I care. Just don’t put me on the spot like that, when I have no choice but to take what you give me for the sake of the audience. If you’d tried to kiss me, though, I would have had something stronger than profanity for you right now.”

  “I get it. No more candles,” John said. “It was just supposed to be an audience pleaser, that’s all. I didn’t want you to read anything into it. I know you better than the others is all. You were the one I thought would take it.”

  “Kitty’ll take it,” Valorie snapped. “And she doesn’t have to unknot herself to do it.”

  John turned around on the bed, placing his feet on the floor and hunching his shoulders in a shrug as he looked up at her. He kept the blanket wrapped around his waist, which was how she knew he was naked underneath. The blanket bunched in such a way she couldn’t tell whether succubus magic had gotten to him. She hadn’t felt a surge in her own need, but she doubted one fuck had been enough to eliminate all of it in him, even though she’d been leaking semen the whole time he’d been showering and some in the shower too. One of the unpleasant but inevitable side effects of sex, and like most sexual things in Arcanium, she was used to it by now.

  “I’m sorry I made you think I believed there was something more. All I wanted to do was try something new,” he said.

  Valorie huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “What are you doing?”

  “What do you mean, what am I doing?”

  “I mean, why are you acting all nice when we both know you’re not, like you care about Arcanium when we both know you’d stick a torched stake through Bell’s heart if you thought it would do any good?” Valorie said. “You’re not fooling me.”

  “I’m not trying to fool you,” John said. “What makes you think I am?”

  “Because people don’t change like that, especially here—not this much this fast,” Valorie accused. “What’s your end game?”

  “My end game? I’d ask why you’re so suspicious, but I’ve lived here for the last…you know, I don’t even know what month it is.”

  “November,” she answered.

  “Over a year,” John said. “Seems like longer. The point is, I’ve been here. I know what I did to get here. I know why you’re suspicious, why all of you guys treat us like crap.”

  “We treat you like kings in comparison to how you should be treated for what you would have done,” Valorie said.

  “I didn’t say you shouldn’t,” John said. “Whether or not it’s justified, we’re treated like crap on top of Bell turning us into Mengele experiments. Melanie is too inhuman and…occupied for it to get to her like it does to Shawn and me. And Shawn’s still too far gone for him to do anything about it.”

  “But you think you can do something about it?” Valorie asked. “Everything you do, Easy-Bake, we’ll know none of your motives are pure. They’re purely selfish. You want to be treated like a man, when you’re here because you were always a monster pretending to be a man. If you’re occasionally treated like a man, that’s not a courtesy, that’s a fucking gift. At least when the dem
ons are monsters, that’s what they’re supposed to be. Scum like you are what’s really wrong with the world—the monsters that are us. And you don’t get to choose when to stop being a monster.”

  “Before I was brought here, I was a football player with Shawn and C-Cameron,” John said, stammering over his deceased friend’s name. “I didn’t think I was a bad guy. I didn’t think anything I did was bad. That’s how all that shit gets to you, you know. People who aren’t ‘bad guys’ do it and don’t lose their status. And you think, ‘I’m not a bad guy either, therefore this shit isn’t bad’. It’s all just something you’re supposed to do, or if it stays quiet, it’s okay.”

  “Charming.” She purposely infused iciness that could freeze saltwater into her reply.

  “You come up with all the excuses in the world why you’re not the one in the wrong. She was drunk. She came onto me first. She liked me. She said yes then changed her mind. She got in the way. She won’t tell anyone. She can’t stop me. And it’s not just the girls. We didn’t take during football season, or at least I didn’t, but sometimes we took things from stores or didn’t pay at restaurants. Sticking it to the Man, we’d say. Fuck capitalism and fuck the police. The world is full of excuses that it gives you, and when you’re surrounded by other people doing it, it’s easier to justify. Get it? Because these not-so-bad guys can’t all be wrong. It’s such a little thing, and they can’t touch us. We’re too good for that. We’re too nice. My future’s good, and nothing’s going to get in the way of that. If it does, there are ways of getting rid of obstacles.”

  “Are you getting to a point, or can I just vomit on you now?” Valorie asked.

  “When Bell made us wish and I had to watch Melanie change—and Shawn—and when I heard what happened to Cameron, I couldn’t talk. None of us could. I couldn’t argue my case or try to sway him with logic. And it would have been bad for me to try.”

  “You think?” Valorie said.

  “Look, I know that now, but I didn’t then,” John said, finally showing signs of exasperation. “I thought for sure that if Bell hadn’t silenced me, I would have been able to convince him what we’d been doing wasn’t so bad, that nothing bad really happened, that I didn’t have to be put into my own personal hell for doing nothing.”