Simba was stuck. And he stayed stuck, while outside, the night danced beyond his reach. He struggled against his net of iron for a while, scraping himself, stretching himself into forms he did not know he could hold, until, finally, he was free, if slightly bruised. The other two tigers gave their tacit approval, and he melted into the night. He was no longer a tiger. He was a Tyger.
The white tyger slipped beneath the tent, and onto the darkened midway. The spoils of man, his wrappers, popcorn and flyers littered the path. He slunk close to the ground. He found a half-eaten sausage sandwich, which he devoured in less than two seconds. He looked up in the sky, and saw the clouds part, and saw the light in the sky whose color he half shared. The carnie trailers were silent, their lights out. He moved on, silent as shadow that was the color of his other half. Rats scurried and bolted from him. What little grass there was rustled at their escape. During his scouting, the tyger passed by a lone dog, a fellow competitor in night hunting. The cur started at the sight of the big cat. A bark began in its throat, then froze there. Simba’s green eyes caught the moon, and flashed in seeming approval. The cur trotted away, towards the quiet trailers.
The tyger headed towards the fence that hemmed in the perimeter. It stood solid, as his metal cage had not. He galloped its length, seeking a weakness. There—where the stray dog had got in the grounds. The hole in the fence was too small for such as he. Besides, he was not too keen on repeating the night’s earlier bruising birth. He turned away, turned back. Still—it was flimsy, here where the dog made his entrance. Perhaps— Maybe—
Simba launched at the makeshift fence. 650 pounds of muscle and intent cracked it wide open, with a loud snap. The noise almost was enough to disturb sleep. But the thick heat dulled reflexes. Naps resumed. One insomniac geek was startled as he imbibed morphine, and swore as soon as he finished, he’d investigate. But the unfurling tendrils of the drug lulled him into blissful stupor, freeing his mind from thoughts of bloody feathers.
Meanwhile, the tyger was free, and exulted in this newfound sensation. True, this sleepy hamlet was no jungle (the stink of man was everywhere), but it awoke long dormant instincts and abilities. A small wood at the periphery of town beckoned. He doused himself in its vegetable dankness. Simba stood still for a moment, just listening, tasting and testing the wholeness of it all. An owl hooted in some nearby tree. A cluster of bats flutter-flapped between the trees, with their tiny screeches. A lone pigeon soared and was silvered by the moon. Somewhere, a skunk flatulated. The ammonia smell assaulted his nostrils; it was time to move on.
Striding through the undergrowth, he remembered the dance of life and death in the jungle. The decay, the gases, the surging movement.
A rustle to his right, the flash of a hare. He took off after the bounding thing. No antelope, but it ran and consented to the game of the hunt. He swerved, and caught the pitiful thing. It practically leapt into his jaws in terror. He was merciful, snapped its neck and paid homage to its life by ingesting it—meat, blood, bones and all.
During his first night of freedom, he killed two more creatures of the unjungle (a squirrel and a possum) before he found a suitable place for a quick nap. He purred as he surrendered to sleep.
- - -
“Mumma, there’s a munster in the woods.”
Caro turned to face her dirty son, with his sweat-slicked hair and mud encrusted overalls.
“Baby doll, we’ve been over this a million times. There’s no such things as monsters.”
Caro turned back to the stove, and gave the simmering liquid a stir.
“But, Mumma,” Jason said, “this monster’s real.”
“I’m sure it is, darling.” She didn’t turn around; she was mesmerized by the bubbling pattern on the surface of the syrup. “Now, you just go along and play. Or least, take a bath.”
“But….”
Caro spun around. She noticed for the first time how he trembled. Maybe some wild animal had gotten in the woods, or a hobo.
“Alright. Where’s the culprit?”
He pointed out the back door, towards the wooded area where the creek ran.
“OK, little man, let’s have a look-see.”
Jason stepped further away.
“Oh, come now. You can’t be all that frightened. After all, you are mother’s little man. And you’re not going to let your mother go outside all by herself.” She turned off the stove—the soft ball stage was just coming up, but she could make her White Divinity later.
Jason tentatively stepped forward. His mother grabbed his hand, and together they propelled forward, through the door and into the backyard. The heat was awful, and everything, even the air, was moist; it was as if everything was wrapped in chamois. Caro’s heels had feeble purchase on the ground. She made a mental note to ask that colored man (Moe? Joe?) to take care of the lawn.
“Where’s your monster, mister?”
Jason waved a chubby paw at a particularly dense patch of foliage. Caro shaded her eyes against the sunlight, and only saw shadows in the matted distance. They stood together, silent for the length of a monster’s breath, and heard birds twittering and crickets chirping—the pizzicato of summer. And focusing, she heard—
Breathing? Heavy, asthmatic, purring…
She glanced at her son, who glanced back with You hear it, too? A tense, sullen watching and waiting.
Stupidly, she asked, “Who’s there?”
There was no reply. Save, maybe, a snapping branch. It was as loud as a thunderclap. Jason jumped back.
“Sweetie, why don’t you go back inside.”
“Mm…mm,” said Jason. Poor thing, he couldn’t even say her name.
“Momma will be right behind you.”
She glanced to him, watching his chubby legs carry him to the back door. In response to the fleeing child, the forest crashed, and out of it burst the monster. It was huge, the color of White Divinity, striped with licorice. Caro saw white fangs, the awful strawberry color of its mouth, and felt on his face its wild stench. It was Death, and it was chasing her little man.
“Run!” she screamed.
Jason reached the door, and wisely closed it. Caro was hit by a wave of relief—her baby was safe! But after that crested, a wave of fear rose in its place. She’d never felt anything like it. The heat of the day left; she could have been standing in Antarctica. She was bone cold. The beast turned away from the house, and faced her. The eyes were emerald green, set with in the mask of its face. How could evil be so white, and so beautiful? The tiger—for that was what it was—stood still, sniffing the air, sniffing her.
When she gave herself up to the fear, it was almost euphoric. She screamed as if ravished. Her panties soaked with wetness as if she’d been aroused. A final wave, of blackness, covered her, as she watched the tiger approach her. She fell towards the ground, in the throes of an enchanted sleep.
- - -
The blackberry bush was not too deep in the woods. Thoughts of his mother’s cobbler made Ernest recklessly crash through the undergrowth, startling birds and, at one point, a rabbit. Dust rose up and collected on his overalls. He could hear Mama now, scolding him about how long it took to beat the dirt out of it. And Daddy gently reminding Mama that he was just a boy, and that boys are naturally dirty. Mama would throw her hands up, while he and Daddy chuckled.
It was hot and humid; this meant, in his short experience, that the berries would be plump and juicy. He turned off the path to where the grove of bushes proliferated. A white tiger lay in the shade of the bushes. It was a tableaux of moonwhite, blackberry stripes, all framed by green. Ernest thought it was some magical visitation, that the tiger would lead him to some fairyland. Then he remembered that there was a white tiger at the carnival in town. The scene before him blurred, and he dropped his tin pail. The beast turned in his direction, stood up, stretched. The tiger yawned, revealing teeth and an endless red cave.
As Ernest started to run, he thought about how angry Mama would be about him losing th
e tin pail.
- - -
At first, the Azaleans didn’t know what to make of it. The carnies were rather tightlipped about it. But the hordes of them, including the bearded lady, crocodile man, flamingo girl, midget couple, and of course, Sambo, were frantically scouring the landscape for something—that raised more than a few eyebrows. Then, what had happened to Caroline Crawley, and Ernest Gibney spread through the town like wildfire.
A monster was in their midst. Carolyn’s hands had been almost disconnected from her arms, when she was protecting her boy. She was now a gibbering mess of morphine and wet bandages. Ernest had been found in the woods barely breathing. His left leg bitten, the wound tarblack, brown and bright red, and you could see through to bone. Sightings of the white tyger were frequent and unreliable. Sambo, disconsolately wandering the town, calling out in his basso profoundo, was a more common sight. Night and day he could be seen, in wooded areas, parks, Wisteria Heights, Clovertown and Darktown. Both man and tiger were ghosts that haunted Azalea. At first, people gave him a wide berth. If anyone could control the escaped beast, he could. But when Ernest died of a fever, Sambo was no longer tolerated. Women in Darktown would chase him away with curses and Bible verses. He moved passed the crowd, oblivious, a messiah spurned. Folks in Clovertown threw bottles at him; Sambo ignored them, even when glass cut him. Swarms of children and teenagers followed the black giant, chanting childish songs:
Eeny, meenie, miny moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe…
Sometimes another word was substituted for ‘tiger.’ He still ignored them, a shadow passing through their midst.
Mobs from all corners of Azalea formed one night. They scoured the humid night with their torches and guns. Their paths crossed at the bank of the creek where Ernest had been attacked. Black, white, Irish Catholic and Protestant. Wordless, they joined into one mob, leaving mutual distrust and hatred behind, blending it into one whole with a single target.
The night sweated their prey into existence: the giant and the tiger were by the creek. The tiger had been chained around the neck by his master, who gave harsh commands in French that it sullenly obeyed. The demon and his familiar.
A low growl alerted Sambo to look up. He paused, while the tiger strained at the leash. The crowd spread out on the bank in a semicircle. Torchlight starred the dark water behind them. Guns angled towards man and beast.
One of the crowd said, “Ernest died.”
They waited in silence while Sambo absorbed this news. A most unexpected thing happened at that moment. Sambo’s fierce face fell and crumbled. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he began to sob. His body shuddered with grief. “Pauvre garcon,” he said between tears. Confused men shuffled in the mud, and lowered their guns and torches. Some men removed their caps, and mopped their glistening faces with them. Sambo’s anguish was genuine and affected the crowd deeply. The period of communal grief, led by the howling giant, lasted no more than a few minutes.
But someone broke the spell. “Your creature also harmed an upstanding citizen, not just a nigra child.” His sentiment was echoed by others as grief gave way to rage. Guns were raised again. The castanet clicking of their cocking resounded through the night. Torches licked the night and set the gasoline-tension on fire. The tiger sensed this, and yowled. Muscle coiled and it lunged, breaking free of his master’s leash.
A gun cracked, and the tiger fell like a piece of the night on the river’s bank. Blood poured on the ground, and Sambo ran to the felled beast. He muttered in French, as he cradled the tiger, immune to the stench of voided bowels, the mud and the blood. They grabbed the sobbing giant, putting a noose around his neck and pulled him like an animal on a leash. They hung him in a tree. The branch broke as he crashed down. It took three different branches until they found the right one. The mob watched the absurd dance of his feet as breath left him, and his face turned purple as blood veins burst. When Sambo died, his eyes were open and filled with blood.
The mob then cut the body down, and laid it on the corpse of the tiger. They set both on fire. The smell of roasting meat rose and flavored the air. Embers hovered in the air like fireflies before they were faded out.
Sambo, like flambeaux.
If He Hollers, Let Him Go
Fiorelli’s Carnival packed up quickly and left Azalea one night. They left a dusty plain, full of flyers and piles of dung. A fury of flies descended on the area, black and jeweled, as heat radiated from the ground. The entire area stank, of rotten food, stale air, urine and excrement. The grass had withered in the area, leaving it barren. Not even animals visited the site. For its part, Azalea went on as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, the heat rose and rose. Mercury fingers went beyond the 90s, while humidity crushed and flattened everything down.
In the woods, a pile of ash and bones fused underneath the merciless heat. Asia and Africa, man and beast, Sambo and Simba. It joined with particles floating in the air, both psychic and corporeal. Guilt and grief, murder and madness, wonder and terror. Ash and bone crumbled into powder, imbued with a strange energy. In the hot siftings, something rose.
A new freak was born.
It stood up from the grey sand. Manshaped, its dark skin was wounded with white. The black stump of a tongue protruded from a violent purple head. Flames outlined the body. Flames that writhed but didn’t burn. More tiger than man, it stalked the night. It visited the dead village of the carnival. Drowsy flies, drunk from manure and old food, rose and left the scene in swarms as the freak walked the area. Its flames surged before it vanished.
It began stalking Azalea—its new hunting ground.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to everyone who supported me and this avocation of mine. Here are my props: Ashe Journal, Gwenda Bond, Matt Cheney, Clarion West 96, Ellen Datlow, Sven Davison, Samuel Delany, Peter Dube, Thomas Drymon, Chip Gidney, Evan Gidney, Robert Guffey, Elizabeth Hand, Tanith Lee, Christopher Rowe, Rebel Satori Press, Tiffany Ricci, Serendipity.
And, of course, the kindness of Steve Berman and Lethe Press.
- - -
Lethe Press is pleased to donate 10% of its profits from sales of this book to the Carl Brandon Society.
About the Carl Brandon Society
The idea for the Society first came about at the feminist science fiction convention, WisCon, in response to a request from people of color in the community by scheduling more programming items that addressed race, and by having a focus group where people of color could meet and formulate strategies for increasing the awareness and representation of people of color in the genres and in the community. The Carl Brandon Society publish lists of speculative fiction written by people of color. Among their goals is working to make fandom a more pleasant place for people of color.
For more on the Carl Brandon Society, including membership, their awards, and how to donate to this worthwhile cause, please visit www.carlbrandon.org.
About the Author
A recent finalist of the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Story, Craig Laurance Gidney is a graduate of the Clarion West workshop. His fiction has appeared in Spoonfed, Say…Have You Heard This One?, Ashé, and the anthologies Magic in the Mirrorstone, Madder Love and So Fey.
His book reviews have appeared on the online sites Bookspot Central and the blog The Mumpsimus. He lives in his native Washington, D.C. with two roommates and two cats.
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