Freakshow

by Jaden Wilkes

  I closed my eyes, hating to lose sight of him for even a moment, and curled my toes in the earth. I reached down, sensing the power of the earth just below me, and tried to draw it up into my body.

  I would heal him, I could fix this and all would be fine. We could live our lives together.

  It wouldn’t connect though, it was like trying to start a car with a low battery, I couldn’t bring the power into my body.

  I opened my eyes and he was bleeding out, his life force sliding over his muscled body into the dirt below him.

  I tried again, keeping my eyes open and focusing on Cairo’s face as I demanded power from the earth.

  I held my hands out over his body, my arms began to glow with the familiar blue haze, but this time it was definitely weakened.

  I felt movement beside me and Orion fell to the earth next to me, he began to weep and claw at his own face. “I killed him, my own son. God, please forgive me, what have I done?”

  I had to ignore his grief and began to channel the light towards Cai, feeling my own body wilting as I gave him everything I had.

  Orion noticed the light and turned to me. I squeezed my eyes shut to block him out, but his voice was right in my ear. “What are you doing? You’re hurting him.”

  “She’s trying to help him!” Milan screamed at him behind me.

  “She’s hurting him!” Orion raged at my side.

  His hand gripped my arm and my eyes snapped open to see the blue light spark and almost catch fire at his touch. He bellowed, his grief giving way to pain as he pulled his hand away.

  Blue flames clung to his skin and he fell back, writhing on the ground next to me, screaming in pain.

  It was then that I understood the benefit of my condition, I’d never felt the damage the blue fire could do and by the sounds of Orion’s screams, I never wanted to.

  I enjoyed the fact that it hurt him though, he’d effectively destroyed my life in one short impulsive moment of revenge. I wanted him to hurt, I wanted him to burn.

  Orion scrambled back, leaving me alone with Cairo once more. My failing attempts to heal the shredded heart tissue threatening to wash me under a tide of sorrow. I tried, god, goddess, I fucking tried, but nothing helped. Every time I knit his muscle together, a new leak sprung and the blood kept pumping out. Each beat took him closer to the other side, and there was nothing I could do.

  I finally had to stop trying, I had nothing left. I had drained myself in my attempts to revive him, and I was on the verge of collapse myself.

  Milan and Paris appeared on either side of me, flanking me, begging me to do something.

  “I can’t,” I said, my voice no more than a hoarse whisper. “I don’t have anything left to use.”

  “It’s my fault, I took all your powers,” Paris cried and begged Cairo to come back.

  I didn’t have the energy to reassure her, to offer her comfort. I had nothing.

  I was silent as I lay on the ground next to him, my face close to his. I drew as much power from the earth as I could at that point, just to keep him with me even a few moments longer. Even half a second was an eternity for me, half a second more with the only man I’d ever love.

  His mouth tried to move, but he was too far gone at that point to talk. His eyes found mine and I knew then that he was lost to me, and I felt my heart slowly disintegrating.

  It didn’t shatter as I’d expected it to, but it felt like a slow flaying, somebody stripping it apart piece by piece until there was nothing left but stone.

  I talked him to his death, told him the things I would tell our son about his father, how I would honour his memory and live my life thinking of him...and how Brigid had promised I would find him again.

  And I knew I would. I told him we would be together, and for him to wait for me on the other side. Keep watch for me, and I would come to him the first moment I could.

  We would always be together.

  I wasn’t even aware of the exact moment of his death, I didn’t mark his last breath, I kept talking until I had nothing left to say. I silently watched people go by as if in another dimension. I held his body as it cooled and the police tied off the crime scene. I couldn’t lift myself off the earth, the grief in my brittle heart weighed me down and threatened to suffocate me.

  I was uncomprehending as Detective Smythe tried to introduce himself, to tell us that they had suspected Carl and Alexi previously, they didn’t know why or how, but the two of them were running illegal shows that ended in a girl being torn apart. Orion wasn’t directly involved, but he benefited financially, so he would be arrested on sight.

  I said nothing, Milan was too stunned to tell him much. We both knew how they had done it, and would only know which shifters were involved by the people who disappeared from the show tomorrow. They knew I could compel them to confess, and I didn’t know what punishment was traditional, but I was ready to kill for what they’d done.

  Still, I lay there. I wouldn’t let them take Cairo away when the paramedics first arrived. They’d finished patching up Paris and came to us. They saw his body and knew it was too late, but they worked on him anyways. After failing that, they exchanged knowing glances, but they left me to mourn for a short time.

  I closed my eyes finally, letting his memory wash over me, inhaling his scent for the last time. The tears came freely, weakly sliding down my cheeks, but my sobs were contained by my exhaustion.

  I knew they’d come, I knew my body would be wracked with agony as his death hit me. When I was in private, when I woke up at night and reached for him, when I called his name in my dreams and found nothing but a white plain, empty of him, as empty as my heart.

  At last Milan approached me and whispered that it was time. She helped me to my feet and I had no fight left, I couldn’t protest. I was stiff as I walked to the corner of the stage and watched them take Cairo away, his great, beautiful body covered by a white sheet, all my hopes and dreams and desires leaving with him as they wheeled him out of the tent.

  I could barely feel Milan’s hands on my shoulders, comforting me the best she could. I could barely feel the breath in my lungs and the tears on my face, but I knew I would survive. For our son, for him alone.

  I felt my stars burning out that day, one by one. But with a universe of love housed beneath your bones, you can survive an awful long time before they’re all gone.

  I would survive without him, but a hollow kind of life it would be.

  Epilogue

  The boy was running faster than he’d ever run before. He darted across the wooden floor of the temporary dance hall. He reached the side, leapt off and fell.

  He rolled on the ground and started to cry, holding his knee and calling for his mom.

  “Sea,” I yelled and ran to him, “are you okay? Let me take a look, show me where it hurts.”

  He removed his hands and tears ran down his cheeks. He had a scraped knee with the tiniest bit of blood welling up on the surface of his skin.

  “It hurts Mommy, it hurts so much,” he wailed and clung to me like a little monkey.

  Every time he hurt himself, I breathed a sigh of relief. My greatest fear had always been that I’d have a child like myself. He wasn’t like me at all, he was more like his father, with his dark eyes and flop of thick, black hair. Even at three, he had a charm that made girls giggle and other kids follow him loyally.

  It remained to be seen if he would be a slave to the moon cycles as his father had been, but with Brigid in his blood he would most likely be able to control them. Even with the world’s perception changing and the slow steps back into the ways of old taking place year after year, his life would be so much easier without it.

  He would be a warrior one day, but for now he was my little boy. My little miracle and the one bright spark of joy in my life without Cairo.

  “Shhhh,” I said and rocked him gently against me, “You’ll be okay. Let’s go get a band aid.”

  “Can I have a popsicle too?” he asked and I nodded.
He giggled and jumped out of my arms, suddenly fully recovered at the promise of his favourite treat.

  “Aunty Milan, Mommy says I can have a popsicle! I want cherry!” he yelled to the girl strolling into the tent at just that moment.

  “Can you now, Mister Seattle,” Milan asked and eyeballed me. I nodded yes, and Milan held her hand out for him. “Well, let’s get you one and leave Mommy alone here to set up for tonight’s big party.”

  “Let’s go!” he agreed and ran ahead, dragging his long suffering aunt behind him. “Maybe Grace can have one too!”

  Grace was Ethan and Paris’ firstborn, a beautiful little girl a year younger than Sea. She was two now, and already learning to tumble and put on a show for the crowd. It would be interesting to see if she became a wolf or a cat when she shifted, but that was years away, not until she hit puberty.

  I watched them leave the tent and felt that familiar pang of grief. It had been almost four years since I’d lost Cai to Orion’s rage, and yet it still seemed like yesterday. I would give almost anything for him to see his son, to know what a beautiful, courageous, bright little boy we had made.

  Four years and the dull ache that resided in my heart never seemed to ease off, the hollow he’d left had never been filled. I hadn’t been with anyone else since then, having gone through the pregnancy and delivery alone. I knew I wouldn’t find anyone who could make me feel the way Cairo had, and I didn’t think it was fair to Sea to forget about his amazing father in the arms of another man. It was in the prophecy for me to carry the burden alone, and I knew I would find Cairo again.

  I sighed and sat on the edge of the stage, looked out over the scene and remembered a time when I had danced with Cai on this very spot. We’d spent the night grinding against each other before we’d broken apart, and subsequently gotten back together with all the subtly of a solar flare.

  Ours had been a hot and fiery love, fast burning, but slow to end. If he had lived, I believed we still would be crashing into each other every chance we had, eternally seeking the heat of our passion together. If he had lived, I would have been burned to ash in the fire, but it would have been worth the sweet ache to keep him with me.

  Orion had never been found, and the one truth he’d told all along had been that most of the employees had shares in the business, therefore they had voted me in as their new CEO. I’d effectively taken over Cai’s former position, even though I lacked the education to back me, I’d taken to the job like a duck to water.

  The men behind the killings in After Dark had all been caught, five of them in total. Well, Carl hadn’t so much been caught as torn apart. Alexi and the others were doing time in some American jail somewhere, hopefully being tormented each and every day.

  I’d essentially taken over Orion’s position of leader of the family, my magic making it a natural choice, and as predicted by Mila, freaks and shifters flocked to me. They found me from all corners of the earth, and sought relief in my presence.

  I still looked into the audience every night they performed, and at times I swore I saw Orion’s dark eyes, watching from the shadows.

  The first time I’d almost stopped the show and called for security right then and there but the only thing that had stopped me was the pain in them, as deep and profound as my own.

  I’d decided to let him go, to let him live with the knowledge that he’d killed his only son. It was worse than anything a prison could do to him. I wanted him to wander the earth, an outcast, knowing he’d destroyed all that he’d loved.

  I touched the spot on my ribs where I wore a tattoo to match the one Cairo had gotten for me so long ago in Seattle.

  I carry the universe in my house of flesh, I will love you until the last star burns out and the heavens descend into darkness.

  I still didn’t know where those powerful words had come from, but it felt like ours, like the magic was meant for us alone. I still imagined him deep inside of me, burning brightly some place in the spaces between my bones and blood and sinew...somewhere close to my heart. His stars hadn’t all burned out the day he’d died, they’d flared like a constellation of supernovae and found themselves next to mine, carried in my house of flesh.

  It still hurt though, God it hurt. It hurt like a motherfucker.

  If I wasn’t supposed to feel any pain, then why did it hurt this much? And it hurt all the time, my emotional pain was my constant companion.

  And yet the hurt made me a better leader, a better healer...and a better witch, if that’s what I really was. I didn’t think about it that much, labels didn’t define me, I was just Olivia, the freak who’d fallen in love and had a child against the odds and dreamt of a goddess with a honeybee voice.

  The irony was not lost on me though, I’d gone from a girl who could feel nothing to a girl who couldn’t stop feeling. I couldn’t stop aching for him if I tried.

  “Thinking about him again?” Rose asked as I approached. I sat down next to her and rubbed my shoulder.

  “Always,” I said with a sad smile.

  “Wherever he is, you know he’s thinking about you too.”

  “It feels like that, you know?”

  “I know, which is why none of us bug you to move on or try and set you up with anybody. Although, Richard has a super cute friend...”

  Richard was Rose’s fiancé, a lawyer in Montreal who was getting close to demanding that Rose give up her job with the circus. I was pretty certain that Rose would agree, this could be the last time we were able to travel together.

  I rolled my eyes and Rose put her hands up, “Hey, I told them I’d give it a shot. He apparently saw you at some point and has fallen helplessly in love with our beautiful ring master.”

  I rolled my eyes and stuck my tongue out at her and we laughed.

  Rose got the hint though, and stood up to go get the ticket girls in line for tonight’s show. She was an excellent manager and I would miss her when she finally made her resignation official.

  I sat on the stage until the tent cleared out and a quiet fell upon the space. At times like these I swore I could feel Cairo next to me. I closed my eyes and imagined I could feel his fingers wrapping in my hair, possessing me, claiming me with his hungry, passionate mouth.

  To this day, the only way I could get off, even by my own hand, was to imagine him with me. I would have to have a singularly particular fetish, a bearded muscled man covered in beautiful tattoos with dreamy endless soulful eyes...named Cairo.

  Unfortunately in my case, my fetish was lost to me forever. I could never again feel the crush of his weight on me, the thrust of him inside of me, the look on his face, pure love, as he came inside of me.

  So I settled for my imagination and my hand. I still came hard when I thought of him, which was something at least.

  Life was inherently lonely, and we were often given our burdens to carry with nobody to help us along the way. Cairo had made it just a little less lonely for a time, and even though my love for my son fulfills me in ways I’d never imagined, I still miss Cai.

  For making me feel a little less lonely, I honour him by keeping the Cirque going and shouldering the burdens of those in our family.

  He would have wanted it that way.

  And so I sit and think about Brigid, I dream of her and I learn from her.

  I sometimes dream of that time she took us away, the moment just before his death, and gave us that choice.

  Gave him the choice.

  Somebody had to sacrifice themselves for me to achieve my final level of learning, my heart had to be broken for Brigid to piece it back together.

  Cairo chose in that moment, the out of dimension place between time, between the second the knives tore into his flesh and destroyed his heart.

  In that time he found out he was going to be a father, he was a father, and in order to save me and our son, he gave up his life. It was his sacrifice that let me ascend, and it was his love for us that completed the first cycle.

  And so the old ways are leaking
back into the world, with each love sacrifice, more of the old magic bleeds into our atmosphere.

  I know there’s somebody out there, somebody like me, who was born without feeling pain so she could handle the cold fire of Brigid’s magic. Somebody who thinks she’s a freak, somebody on the verge of discovering herself, falling in love, and losing her heart forever.

  My sister, and the second that has been prophesied.

  So I travel, I hang out online, on message boards for people like me, and look for her. Mila and I chat daily, and she comes to see us several times a year. We will find this sister of mine, and I will help her shoulder her burden, to ease the pain in her heart the same way Cairo and Mila did for me.

  I will teach her, and comfort her, and then we will look for our third.

  Our sister...the final piece of the puzzle and we will bring the old ways back.

  The gears of the earth are turning, the prophecy already in place, the inevitable will come to pass. Our sons will rule, our hearts will break, and us three will bring the goddess back to the land.

  And some time in the future, when Sea is an old warrior, and I am myself an ancient crone, I will lie down on my soft bed, close my eyes, and find my heart again.

  I know he waits for me, and that’s the only way the pain of this life is manageable.

  He waits, and I bide my time, and we will be together again in the galaxies between our bones, until the stars burn out.

  “Liv?” Lara, the giantess, broke through my flights of fancy.

  “Yeah?” I replied and opened my eyes. My friend was standing in the entrance to the tent, hunched over to accommodate her large frame. I smiled to think that Lara had seemed so strange at one time, now she was family as much as a friend and I was so pleased to call her both.

  “You coming for dinner? We’re all waiting,” Lara said and pushed through the entrance, walked towards me and looked down. “You’ve got him on your mind again, don’t you?”

  “It’s getting close to the anniversary,” I said, meaning his death. What I didn’t tell Lara was that today was another anniversary, four years since we’d fled the circus and planned our future together. Four years since Sea was conceived in that cozy hotel room by the water.