Ringmaster

by Aurelia T. Evans

He lowered his head when she glanced at him, confirming what she’d already guessed.

  “But the other part of the rant not dominated by your five stages of grief came from culture shock. It’s not unusual among those brought in as oddities who weren’t born with it. You can talk with any of the others. I’m afraid that while I’m a good ear, I can’t empathize very well. After all, I don’t know what it’s like to be normal, even back when I was still trying.”

  Victor shook his head slightly, frustrated with himself. “It’s funny. I’d always considered myself someone who could empathize with you about not being normal. It wasn’t until Bell changed me that I learned what I should have already figured out. Strangers, acquaintances, even some not-close friends didn’t know I wasn’t normal. You didn’t know. I got to decide whether someone knew unless they were helping pay for my medical bills or giving me my paychecks. There’s a whole slew of issues with not being normal and no one knowing about it. I’ve dealt with those most of my life. But it’s nothing like what you’ve had to deal with. When I shed the illness and gained this…” He held up his hands and arms, presenting himself. “I had no idea how the problems would change.”

  “Hey, birdies, time to leave the cage. You can talk outside too,” Maya said, leaning in backstage long enough to deliver Bell’s message.

  Bell was probably annoyed at having to corral Kitty so often lately, but this was important to the functionality of Arcanium, and he knew it. If he wanted this over with more quickly, then he could step in and show all the sympathy and compassion himself with the patience he’d shown Maya. Kitty doubted he cared enough to give the same time and energy to Victor.

  “You really don’t have to explain,” Kitty said, standing with him as they headed back out into the fray.

  “I don’t understand everything you’ve ever had to go through, Kitty, but I’m beginning to. It’s not the same for me, I know,” Victor said, gesturing to himself. “Isn’t this what so many men are trying for? Not exactly like this, but I can think of a few guys who’d cut off their right hand to have rock-hard abs, pitting and all. But…”

  Kitty stepped into the sun, shaking her head and smiling sadly. “But who’d give up their right hand to look like me?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes, it was,” Kitty said. “And you have a point. No one would. You got a dose of what it’s like to be objectified, darling, in the literal sense. Seen, but not really seen. Believe me, we’ve all been there. It takes getting used to.”

  “Is it too much to expect some common decency?” Victor asked. “I was right there, three feet in front of them while they pointed, and the things they were saying about me… Don’t they know we’re human beings? I mean, not all of us, but they don’t know that,” he added under his breath so that the people they passed couldn’t hear.

  “The important thing to remember is that it’s our job to be objectified like that. We’re here for them to look at. That’s the extent of the interaction that we can expect from them and vice versa. It means they believe they can speak as though we’re not there, treat us as though we’re not human, say things and ask things they would never say in front of ordinary people. Were they cruel?” Kitty asked.

  “No. They were…crude,” Victor replied. “I felt like a stripper must feel, actually.”

  “Probably not as threatened, based on the comments I hear near Lady Sasha’s tent versus Lord Mikhail’s,” Kitty said.

  “Are they cruel to you?” Victor asked.

  Kitty raised her eyebrow. He shouldn’t have to ask. Some of the things he’d said to her himself had been just as cruel as anyone else.

  A group of customers interrupted them and asked for pictures, asked to touch Victor’s skin, asked to stroke Kitty’s beard—which had been woven into a single braid and done through with ribbons—and her arm hair. She received a few compliments on her costume and her spiky black crown.

  Victor held his forehead and laughed when the customers left, because there was nothing else for him to do other than choke on his naïve disbelief.

  “I’m a freak, Victor,” she said. “I chose a freak-show life in which what I looked like would always matter, with no one pretending that it didn’t, like they would in some normal job these days. It also means that—as stupid as it sounds when I have mirrors all around me—I’m constantly reminded of my own strangeness. Every single day. I’m never going to be normal. I decided to be okay with that, but it took me till my twenties to reach that level of acceptance. Being a freak and not trying to be normal means going through life a little differently. It means constantly having to tell people how to treat you and where the boundaries are. It means discarding some of the usual boundaries—like letting people touch your arm hair and your ladybeard.”

  Victor cracked up again, eventually collapsing on one of the wooden benches that dotted the circus and park grounds.

  “Sorry. It’s not even funny,” Victor said. He took her hand and playfully guided her onto his lap. “I just…”

  “Jesus, people don’t want to see that,” said a regretfully not slurring male voice behind them. “No one should have to see a fat, hairy queen bitch getting all nasty with a guy. You freaks get a room.”

  Both Victor and Kitty looked up. A group of eight guys had gathered around them. They were college-age, some with beers and ales, laughing and talking too loudly, but not because they were anywhere close to drunk—too early for that.

  She hadn’t gotten ‘fat’ in a while. Most people were too distracted by her hair and boobs to concern themselves with the way she didn’t mind taking up space—also, most people didn’t automatically jump to ‘fat’ just because she wasn’t petite. It was almost quaint.

  “Where exactly do you think you are, gentlemen?” Kitty asked, covering Victor’s mouth before he could spit some kind of scathing retort to rival the ones he’d leveled at a much better-intentioned James. She dialed her expression up to ‘why do I have to handle stupid?’ and said, “Maybe you had trouble reading all the signs, but you’re at a freak show.”

  Some of the young man’s friends found this reply utterly hilarious and raised their beers.

  “If you don’t want to see this magnificent queen getting nasty with a charming, god-like statue man, you might want to toddle back to your car, because things are about to get hairy,” Kitty said. She turned back to Victor, making sure that he was okay with it.

  Victor nodded infinitesimally before tightening his arm around her waist and raising his mouth to kiss her. As Kitty coaxed his mouth open and caressed his tongue with hers, some of the boys gagged, but most of them whooped, calling the attention of more of the crowd. The majority joined the cheers, and the few boys who thought only pretty people could get it on in public retreated, outnumbered and soundly defeated.

  Kitty didn’t make the kiss too intimate. After all, there were kids here. But damn, it felt good to kiss Victor and not care whether the crowd was cheering or retching.

  Kitty had a working theory. The reason people like them were bullied, insulted, even sometimes attacked, wasn’t just because other people were turned off to the point of violence. Kitty thought the reason was because, deep down, normals realized that oddities like them hadn’t chosen what they were. Easier to treat them like they had, as though normal was a matter of will.

  Those with invisible problems like Victor had once had, people refused to believe them, accused them of faking it, and insisted that staying positive, never giving up and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps would fix it. They believed that if they couldn’t see it, it had to be something that the one suffering could control or that it was all in the mind—which, in the world of the normals, meant that it wasn’t real.

  Oddities like her, however, were clearly not normal and not in control of it. They couldn’t be ignored.

  And normals unconsciously understood that it could have been them. Or it could be them in the future. They could get a disfiguring disease. T
hey could become paralyzed or have their limbs amputated. That fear made them asses, only because they didn’t want to admit how fragile normality really was and how it wouldn’t be a choice when fickle, pernicious fate—or Bell—came after them.

  “You see? There are some benefits to being a freak in a freak show,” Kitty murmured near his lips. “Then they’re the stupid ones when they think you shouldn’t be a freak.”

  “But sometimes you wish you weren’t,” Victor said. He lifted her up in his arms for the crowd’s enjoyment then deposited her back on her feet. “Oh. Oops. I said the W-word.”

  “It’s okay,” Kitty said, backing away to a more family-friendly distance from him. “I used up all my wishes. I can use and respond to the W-word as I please.”

  “That’s right,” Victor said, furrowing his brow. “You were going to tell me why you didn’t—”

  “Later, Victor,” she interrupted him. “When we have some privacy. We need to mingle now.”

  He wove between people in the crowd to grab her arm before she could get too far away from him. “About that guy,” Victor said, “the guy you were with yesterday. He was good to you?”

  Kitty stroked his cheek. “Yes. Look, you’re going to get people who are curious or attracted to your not-normal appearance. That doesn’t make them bad people. You’re not going to be able to get away from how you look. Of course, I can’t tell you to accept propositions based on how human they treat you. If you want to pop your cherry with the first freak fetishist that comes out of the woodwork to take care of whatever needs Arcanium causes to arise, that’s between you and your higher power. However, there are plenty of women who are going to want you because they’re curious but still view you as a person. People like to step outside of their box now and then to try something new.”

  “Like I did with you,” Victor said, lowering his eyes.

  “Exactly,” Kitty said. “And you were right. I like to roll in the hay with normal guys most of the time. Sometimes it’s an ego trip. I’ll cop to that. Nice-looking men digging the furry, bearded broad. But it’s also because the world is full of normal guys. It’s much harder to find abnormal guys outside of Arcanium.”

  “At least ones that tell you they are,” Victor said.

  She pressed her lips to his with undeniable affection. “Are you willing to take the time to adjust, Stone Ranger? Find yourself a couple girls of your own to warm those cold, lonely nights, indulge a few curiosities for them…indulge a few of your own?”

  “I think I might stick a little closer to home for now,” Victor said. “This is the world I have to adjust to, and Bell’s not letting me out for a while, remember?”

  “Whatever you need, Victor. You’re not alone here, not by a long shot. You don’t have to do this all by yourself.” Kitty rested a hand on his arm, admiring its strength but avoiding his gaze. “And no matter what, remember that you’re not dead.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. Then he took a deep breath. “Into the breach?”

  She squeezed his biceps. “Be brave.”

  His brown eyes were warm in the gray as he looked up toward the sky.

  “I am a man made of stone. Nothing can touch me,” he said solemnly, overdramatically.

  He jogged away to her hysterical giggles.

  She was still giggling as she rounded her tent to grab a snack before going back out into the park to get her beard and arms stroked some more, like a goat in a petting zoo. It was a good thing she loved her job.

  She stopped short before nearly running into the Ringmaster’s back.

  “Wh-what are you doing in here?” Kitty asked.

  The Ringmaster turned around. He was holding a cup of iced, blended coffee, exactly how she took it every day.

  He handed it to her without a word. Before he could make a graceful escape, Kitty grabbed him by the tails of his jacket. Anyone else in Arcanium would have been too horrified.

  “Oh no you don’t,” she said. She held up the coffee, wading through the confusion one step at a time. “Has this…has this been you this whole time?”

  He gave her no gesture, offered no reply.

  “Was it just today? This season? Or have you been doing this for me the last eight years?” Kitty asked.

  He stepped out of her hold on him and mingled back into the circus before she could stop him.

  Kitty just gaped for a few moments before realizing her mouth was open. “My God,” she muttered. “Wrong is right, up is down, and I’m going to hell in a fucking handbasket because a torture demon’s bringing me coffee.”

  She shook her head, gathering her wits about her. Then she went back out again as well. The Ringmaster, as usual, was nowhere to be seen.

  Kitty approached the first golem she saw selling merchandise.

  “Do you or any of the others give me coffee twice a day every day during Halloween season?” Kitty asked.

  “Not to my knowledge,” the golem replied. “But my knowledge is limited.”

  “Have any of you ever given me coffee during Halloween season, to your knowledge?” Kitty asked.

  “No,” the golem replied.

  Kitty set the coffee down for a moment so that she could use both hands to hold onto the side of the table against a sudden bout of lightheadedness. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered.

  “If you say so,” the golem said before turning back to her table.

  Kitty decided not to analyze the golem’s sass. There were just too many out-of-character things going on lately as it was—as though Bell thought Arcanium had been too quiet lately and had decided to make the circus less like a carousel and more like a tilt-a-whirl.

  * * * *

  Kitty finally got the opportunity to watch Victor with Valorie and Lennon in front of an audience that evening at the second performance of the night. She used the performance as an excuse to take a rare breather after making sure everyone’s hair and makeup was what it needed to be and before going back out into the circus again. Watching from the wings wasn’t the same as watching from the stands, but Bell had arranged it so that anyone peeking out from behind the red curtain couldn’t be seen as long as that person wasn’t outright sticking their head out or stepping into the ring.

  At this juncture, Victor mostly played the strong, silent foundation for both Valorie and Lennon to spring into the air. Lennon was shorter and more compact. Valorie was taller than Victor but willowy, tremendously skilled not just because of Bell’s magic but because she’d been doing this for such a long time, and she was no trouble to flip up into the air or catch.

  As far as Kitty knew, Victor had never had the same problem as Seth and Lars in their early days about having to touch another man. He handled man and woman, demon and human, with equal steadiness, grace and strength. It gave Kitty a sense of peace to watch him, though she felt Maya’s eyes on her until the tumblers came backstage and Maya went out for her high wire act.

  “Hey, you’re still here,” Victor whispered. He nearly tripped over Jason’s lion leg on his way to her. After the expertly engineered performance she’d just witnessed, Kitty found his clumsiness endearing.

  The tiger and lion were still out of the cages even though they’d already done their act before the trio of tumblers. Bell reclined his head against the tiger’s stomach. The lion panted nervously nearby. Neither Jason nor Lily needed to worry—they’d served well for the last few years, and Bell’s relaxation was genuine rather than feigned. He’d always had a soft spot for women. It was a weakness he was aware of and saw no reason to correct.

  In Kitty’s experience watching Bell throw his magic around, he punished men more often because they tended to be the primary threats to his people and his circus. Some women—like Lily under Bell’s head now—had been punished into Arcanium too, but it was worth noting that all of them had been punished into Arcanium in the company of men.

  Now that Maya was out in the ring, Kitty sensed Bell’s amused gaze on her instead. With Bell around, privacy was nev
er going to happen. She would always be poised for his amusement. It was part of living with him.

  Kitty did what she could, though, leading Victor behind the big cat cages, where they could murmur rather than whisper. He was expecting something else from her, she knew. The peace she’d gained from his performance dissolved. Her skin flushed with tension.

  She kissed him lightly, holding his hands. He wrapped her arms around his waist and took her face in his palms. This time, they didn’t need to stay so chaste. No one was watching, and besides, the kids had all gone home. Arcanium needed its performances to stay clean enough for teenagers during the day and early evening, but that didn’t mean that the incubus and succubus could completely withhold their magic any more than a person could stop exhaling. During the latest performance, so close to the sex demons backstage, it was nigh impossible to resist the lure of someone else’s touch.

  “God…” he moaned against her cheek. His chest warmed the bare tops of her breasts. His cock was smartly encased in his leather trousers, but the bulge still pressed against her lower abdomen. “After Lady Sasha does her bit, it’s near impossible for me to go out there in these tight pants and… But you won’t distract me, wicked woman. You’ve been avoiding this, and you keep promising to tell me.”

  He stepped back, forcing himself to hold her at arm’s length.

  “Why’d you use up all your wishes? Why didn’t you leave the door open for…?”

  That was a buzzkill if Kitty had ever heard one. She sighed.

  “For being normal?” she asked. “Because I was worried I might actually walk out that door.”

  “I don’t get it,” Victor said. “Valorie and Misha were pretty clear. They told me to leave myself an escape route in my last wish. Hopefully by the time I use it, Bell will be inclined to give it to me the way I want, especially since I’m voluntary like you. But Bell likes you. Valorie implied that he likes you a lot. He’d give you what you wanted. You’re probably the only reason I’m not some kind of Toad Man right now—or with my skin rotting off like Marcus.”