by IGMS
The creatures extended their taloned hands toward the stage and took wing.
Violet's scream, amplified by her microphone, pierced the rising cacophony. The demons answered with grating screeches of their own. The nearest of them reached the stage, jaws wide to reveal mouthfuls of sharp teeth. They battened on her.
Barrett turned away. Something warm and wet splashed against his back.
Violet had been right about one thing: people would be talking about this night for years afterward.
And he had to get out of here fast, before someone thought to blame him, however rightfully, for the carnage. On unsteady legs, he exited stage right.
Barrett needn't have worried. He went unheeded by the screaming audience members, the fleeing backstage crew, or the swarming monsters. As if he'd become invisible to all of them. He might have laughed if he hadn't been so terrified. Instead of Violet, he had disappeared -- right before their very eyes.
Schadenfreude
by Michelle Scott
Artwork by Scott Altmann
From the moment Chad pressed the big, red button that set his latest machine into motion, his audience was laughing. They cheered as the helium balloons rose to lift levers which released marbles that triggered switches. Every cockeyed operation was met with greater and greater applause. Yet while his Rube-Goldberg fly-swatter seemed to be a hit, Chad knew the entire thing was doomed to failure unless he managed to make the big finale work.
His heart pounding, he tracked the progression, ready to step in at the right moment. Timing was everything. Then, a split second before a spring-loaded boxing glove punched its target - an enormous plastic fly stuck on the wall - he moved into place so that the glove struck him right between the eyes.
The impact brought no pain, but it knocked him backwards onto his butt. Disoriented, he staggered to his feet. He reeled drunkenly about the stage as bright bursts of light cartwheeled before his eyes, and blood gushed warmly down his upper lip. Sounds receded; he could no longer hear his audience. But they were applauding. He was certain of it.
As the curtain came down, Chad staggered offstage. Al, his manager, helped him into a chair, then gently pressed on his head to get him to lean over the bucket.
Finally his hearing cleared, allowing him to appreciate the audience's frenzied applause. "They really loved it," Al said. He handed Chad a clean towel.
Chad could only nod. The pain might be gone, but he was still in distress, his body a bewildered animal desperate for relief. He felt weak. Dizzy. Sick.
"You're doing an encore?"
It wasn't really a question. In this business, you were only as good as your last performance. But they both knew that the act was taking its toll on Chad's body. Even with the latest generation of nanobots, his body didn't heal as quickly as it used to.
Still, the show must go on. After a moment, Chad handed back the bloodied towel and stood. Immediately the floor under his feet pitched upward and he staggered, clinging to Al for support. His stomach lurched. Bots could repair damage and block pain, but they could not compensate for blood loss as quickly as he needed them to.
"Get a grip, already, and get out there," Al said. "They're waiting for you." His tone was sharp, like the bracing sting of smelling salts. Chad struggled to obey. He took the water bottle Al pushed into his hands, rinsed his mouth, and spit into the bucket. He could do this. He must do this. Al helped him change from his bloody lab coat into a spotless white one and gave him a new pair of thick-framed glasses to replace the pair that had been broken by the punch. He wiped Chad's face a final time to get rid of the blood, and motioned the makeup girl forward so she could touch up Chad's eyes. Then Chad, pasting on a smile, went back onstage.
The encore involved a three-hundred pound weight and a rolling grand piano, a broken collar bone and a dislocated elbow. But it was worth it; like the pain bots, the audience's laughter would keep him going.
After the show, Chad lay on the couch in his dressing room, a cold compress pressed against his still swollen nose, a bag of ice on his shoulder. He tried to remain perfectly still. Though his pain channels were still mostly blocked, if he moved too quickly, he'd suffer a spike of agony. Shoulder injuries always took the longest to heal. Closing his eyes, he envisioned the tiny bots working inside of him, repairing muscle, rebuilding bone. He owed them so much.
But it was worth it. The pain was moderate, the injuries repairable. His audience was what mattered. All his life, he'd loved to make people laugh. As a kid, he'd always been cutting up in class. He'd escaped punishment by amusing his teachers. Even the principal chuckled at his antics. But his biggest laughs had come the day he'd fallen off the monkey bars. Everyone thought his ungainly plunge to the blacktop was part of the act. His best friend, Teddy, had laughed so hard he'd peed his pants. Those were the days before the nanobots, of course, yet even in midst of the red haze of pain from his broken arm, Chad had reveled in the laughter of his school mates.
He'd been pretending to fall down and walk into doors for most of his life, but nothing had made the other kids laugh like seeing the real thing. On that day, Chad understood how funny pain really was.
Al gave his familiar rap on the door, then poked his head into the dressing room. "You ready for some company?"
Chad, still slightly woozy, said, "Not tonight."
"You sure? It's a woman."
Even this didn't spark Chad's interest. Every year, the post-show letdown was harder and harder to shrug off. "Get rid of her."
Al came into the room and shut the door behind him. "It's Constance Gestler."
"Who?"
"Crazy Connie Lingus."
At this, Chad sat upright so quickly that his shoulder screeched in protest and his vision momentarily swam. "Are you sure it's really her? No one's seen her in years." Crazy Connie had crossed the comedy frontier by introducing the world to pain comedy, and as a result had been hailed as the Lenny Bruce of the modern era. Nothing had been too over the top for her. During her last performance, she'd done bit called "Van Gogh's Wife" in which she actually sliced off her breast. Unfortunately, the result had been as tragic as it had been funny. While the audience had watched, frenzied with hilarity, she'd nearly bled to death on stage.
"It's Connie, all right." Al, whose gamut of emotions seemed to run only from disgust to greed, sounded humbled. "She's got the scars to prove it."
"Give me a minute," Chad told him. As quickly as he could, he changed his shirt, ran a comb through his hair, and brushed his teeth. He'd never met the woman, but he'd always had a thing for her. Her act was unequalled. Her stunts, her timing, her monologue - everything was amazing.
But when she stepped into his dressing room, he felt a wave of disappointment. This couldn't be Connie Lingus. Connie had flaming hair and a wide, red-lipped smile. She was brazen and wild; nearly frightening. The woman standing in front of him now, this Constance Gestler, was short and dumpy. Her hair was pale and wispy; her eyes were dull. The worst part, however, were her scars. One ran across her forehead, mangling her right eyebrow and making her eyelid droop; the other cut through her lip, giving her a permanent sneer.
Suddenly, he didn't know what to say. He offered her a seat on the couch, then sat on the little stool by the dressing table. The room was so small that their knees almost touched. She folded her hands in her lap and glanced at the pictures on his wall: the one with him in his stage getup mugging at the camera, the one with him standing next to three buddies in a comedy club in Phoenix, the one where he was bent over at the waist, his arms and head up in a kind of salaam to the audience.
Constance pointed to the last picture. "What happened there? Was that part of the act?"
"Not really," he admitted. He got up and pointed to a corner of the picture where it was just possible to see the outline of an airplane wheel. "One of my props - this life-sized model of a Messerschmitt - came crashing down on me and fractured my hip. But the crowd loved it." He shrugged. "I guess you could call it
improv."
She continued to stare at the picture. "I've seen you. You're pretty good."
On the dressing table lay a pair of the glasses he always wore on stage. He put them on. "Dr. Chad N. Freud knows vat is funny," he said, adopting the ridiculously thick German accent. He made a grab for the glass of water by the mirror, purposely missed it, and sent it crashing to the floor. Even the simple stunts of the absent-minded professor usually got a chuckle.
Constance, however, didn't even crack a smile. "You don't need to perform for me," she said, cutting him to the quick. He took off the glasses and tossed them aside.
She finally looked at him, but her gaze was so starkly appraising that he turned away. "You're good," she said, "but your act is getting old. You didn't even sell out tonight's show, did you?"
His back stiffened. "Did you come here to break my balls?"
"No, I came here to make you an offer."
"An offer?" He knew that Constance had connections. She might be able to get him his own television special. Maybe even his own primetime show. "What kind of offer?"
"You and I pair up and start doing a new routine. Something different."
"You mean that two pain comics would be funnier than one?"
She shook her head. "No pain. No broken bones and bloody noses. No bots and nanos to clean up the mess afterwards."
"So, what, we return to the old days? Standup? Vaudeville, maybe?" He snorted, disgusted, then winced at the painful vibration in his nose. "Or maybe you think we should fake the whole thing?"
The very idea of it repelled him. The previous summer, top comic Joe Dixon had been caught doing a phony act. When his audience discovered that there'd been no real pain, just clever stunts and cow's blood, his career died so quickly and got buried so deep that his subsequent suicide only made the public scratch their heads and wonder where they'd heard his name before. "I would never go for that," Chad said, dabbing at his bleeding nostrils.
Constance glanced in the vanity mirror behind him. With a finger, she traced the scar above her lip. "Don't you think things have gotten out of hand?"
He couldn't believe it. This was Connie Lingus he was talking to. Connie Lingus! The first comedienne to draw blood - her own blood - on stage in front of a live audience. The woman who had battled the courts and the social conservatives for the right to continue her show. Freedom of expression and all that jazz. The wretched person sitting across from him bore no resemblance to her. Sure, the face was hers, but her fiery personality was gone.
Chad retrieved his icepack and placed it on his faintly throbbing shoulder. "I've got better things to do than boost your failed career."
She flinched and looked away. "You and I could be good together."
"Forget it."
She nodded, as if expecting this. "Call me if you're ever ready to talk." She got up to leave, but when she reached the door, she hesitated. "You're playing a dangerous game. I almost died doing that show, you know. Even my manager thought it was a gag."
"But you ended up okay, didn't you," he argued. "I mean, the bots were able to re-grow your . . .?" He made a cupping motion in front of his chest.
Her lips pressed together in a thin line. She looked deeply disappointed in him. "My breast? Yes."
So what's your beef then, Chad wondered after she had left, and he was once more laying down on the couch. Why didn't you return to the stage? Sure, there were scars, but every pain comic - Chad included - had scars. Occupational hazard.
Chad hadn't even finished reading the headlines about Sam Jaber's death when his phone rang. Numb with shock, he picked it up. "Yeah?"
"You heard the news?" It was Al.
Chad sank down onto a chair and pressed his hand to his forehead. "Sam. I can't believe it." Sam had still been in his teens. Just a kid, for God's sake. "What happened?"
"Prop malfunction." Al's voice was breezy, just like it was whenever a problem cropped up that he didn't want Chad to be concerned about. "That kid was always using those non-union chumps to set up his show. You can't depend on them. He should have been using a better class of crew. Like you do."
Chad knew that Al was telling him not to worry, but he could feel sweat forming along his hairline. A prop malfunction. Even among pain comics, Sam Jaber's act was known to be intense. He worked with instruments of torture - everything from a medieval rack to one of those car battery/electrode rigs that made Chad squirm and want to cup his balls protectively whenever he watched Sam use it. But while the professionals cringed at Sam's audacity, his audiences had loved it. Sam, his body wrecked and bleeding, could deliver one-liners to his would-be torturers like nobody's business.
And now the kid was dead.
"I wanted to make sure you were okay," Al said. "You good?"
"I'm good," Chad said, still feeling numb.
"Ready for tonight's show?"
"Yeah."
When Al hung up, Chad turned on the television. One of the news channels was interviewing a girl who had seen Sam die on stage. Chad turned up the volume.
"At first, we didn't know what was going on." The girl, not much older than Sam himself had been, was wearing a skin-tight halter that showed off her nipples. Her hair was dyed bright orange. "I thought it was part of the show, you know?" She clutched her purse and smiled uncertainly at the camera.
"When did you know it wasn't?" the interviewer asked.
"Well, he was thrashing around and stuff. Because of the electricity, I guess. It must have been like his insides were cooking or something, because we could smell him." Her smile wavered and she looked away. "Even in the back row we could smell him."
There was more, but Chad didn't hear it. He was racing for the bathroom.
Chad paced the dressing room. He was always worked up before a show, but he hadn't been this nervous since he'd first started in the business.
The knock at the door made him jump. "Hey, hey, hey! Dr. Buzz is here." Buzz Whitely strode into the room without waiting for permission. He had the shoulders of a linebacker, and his presence in the tiny dressing room made the place claustrophobic. But Chad was glad to see him. Everything was going to be all right.
Yet even as he thought this, he felt a tremor of disquiet; Buzz's eyes were all wrong. The pupils were a little too wide, the gaze slightly unfocused. Everyone knew the good doctor was a user, but Chad didn't want him using before performing a procedure. "You okay?" he asked.
"Never better," Buzz said. And though Chad was still wary, he had to admit that Buzz's hands were steady and his speech was clear. Besides, Chad was desperate for a shot. Before he went out on stage tonight, he wanted to make absolutely sure he wouldn't feel any pain.
"When Al said that you wanted another boost, I was surprised, but who am I to argue with my favorite client?" Buzz clapped Chad on the back, hard, and motioned for him to lie down on the couch.
Chad lay on his side, facing the wall, and drew his knees up to his chest. His guts churned. He just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. But where else was he supposed to get pain bots two hours before a show? Legally, he shouldn't be using them at all. That kind of nanotechnology was supposed to be reserved for cancer patients and burn victims, not pain comedians. Chad's legal monthly dose had been used up weeks ago. Dr. Buzz was the only alternative.
In back of him, Chad could hear Buzz rummaging about in his bag and readying the syringe. "I know you just came last week," Chad said, "but I wanted to be sure."
"No problem," Buzz said.
"You heard about Sam?" Chad asked.
"Sam Jaber? Yeah, that's a shame. He was a client of mine. But don't worry about Sam. He might have gone out in a blaze of glory, but he was feeling no pain when he did."
This should have been comforting news, but it wasn't. When Buzz touched Chad's back to lift up his shirt, Chad flinched.
"Hey, easy there, big guy. Relax." Buzz massaged Chad's shoulders, working muscles that had gone stiff from tension. Chad tried to, but couldn't. Buzz wa
s no doctor. He was hardly more than a massage therapist with connections. But, so far, his work had been impressive. Chad had yet to feel any of his injuries.
Once more, Buzz touched the bare skin at the base of Chad's spine. "Little poke, okay?"
It was more than a little poke, but Chad endured the pain of the hypo, gritting his teeth as the needle entered his spine. In a moment, it was over, and Buzz gently rubbed the site of the injection. "You relax and let those little pain bots do their job, okay?" Buzz said, now sounding every bit like the doctor he pretended to be.
Despite Buzz's assurances, however, Chad just couldn't make himself relax. When show time came, the audience didn't seem to notice - they laughed at all of his stunts - but during intermission, Al took him aside. "What's up?"
Chad shrugged. "Maybe we should scratch the new bit. Give me some more time to work on it."
"Are you serious?" Al stared at him. "How much more time do you need?"
"A week. Maybe two."
Al blew out his breath and looked away. Chad knew that his manager was trying to decide whether he needed to be a hard-ass or an understanding friend. To his relief, Al settled on the friend routine. "Look, it's a good bit. You've been practicing it for months." He put his hand on Chad's shoulder. "It's up to you, but I say let's go for it."
"Okay," Chad said, already working himself up. "Okay."
Compared to the stuff that Sam had been doing, Chad's new routine was fairly simple. All it involved was an exploding beaker. Dr. Chad N. Freud would pick up two test tubes of solution, mix them together, and have the result literally blow up in his face. There'd be glass embedded in his cheeks and forehead - nothing new on the Dr. Freud front - but there would also be the added hilarity of Chad's hair catching on fire. That was the tricky part. The part that had kept Chad awake the night before.
When he went out on stage, the crowd's cheers bolstered him. This would be great. They'd love it. And it just might be enough to boost ticket sales once more. Chad gave his spiel, building tension and gaining confidence as he went through the act. Everything was going to be fine. Just dandy.