Utopian Circus

by C. Sean McGee

Chapter 24

  Ruff jumped forwards, his teeth dripping with saliva and his eyes on fire. Hair fur stood on end as he raced past The Intriguing Figure and into the secret room where small human children lay bound to collars and chains like caged animals, tubes fed into their arms, siphoning the pure blood from their tiny bodies.

  The young boy with a sliver of hope now eroding in his eyes watched as the small matted dog changed its behavior and ran in his direction, its mouth agape, snarling and drooling as its raced towards him, diving into the air and latching onto his neck.

  The young boy had fight in him. He fell backwards as the small matted dog dug its fangs deep into his throat and flung its head to and fro, shredding like paper, the tiny weak veins and muscles that had kept his hanging head above his shoulders.

  As the small matted dog tore at his flesh, the young boy simply gasped, choked on a thick clump of phlegm and scalloped flesh, closed his eyes and died.

  When the small boy’s pulse was gone, Ruff turned to face The Bitch Queen with blood dripping from his jaw, staining the white tiles beneath his padded feet. He walked slowly over the dead boy’s limp body, leaving a trail of red behind him as he stopped beside the dark ominous figure that had not flinched and stayed unmoved, standing beside the lever.

  “There shall be no more spilling of human blood for your vanity,” he said to The Bitch Queen.

  “You can’t do this. I am immortal” she screamed.

  “Then why would you even bring me here?” he asked.

  “Pride goes before the fall,” said The Intriguing Figure.

  “You shut up. This is all your fault. You did this. You made me this way” she screamed, looking at the black form standing beside the small matted dog.

  “What do you do with their blood?” asked Ruff.

  “She bathes in it, up to her neck, but she fears to let it spill across her mind. Why is that?” asked The Intriguing Figure.

  “It’s none of your concern” she exclaimed.

  “You have guilt. You know what you’re doing is wrong” said Ruff.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said The Bitch Queen ardently.

  “Your instinct is grander than your ego. You are a dog. You; like all of us, dream of being a man, of standing on your hind legs and being followed. Your hounds, how many of them are conscious? None? You keep them on all fours. You have become what you did without” Ruff said.

  “He is cunning this one, so acute for such a short conscious life,” said The Intriguing Figure.

  “If you had of known the love that a human could bring, regardless of how they attended their own fears and spiritual abandon, however, many palms thrashed your buttocks, to have known their love would have been enough for you to have never wanted anything but. If you could have felt that love, maybe you would never have been adorned with this curse of consciousness. You told me before that everything was now conscious, but it’s not. It’s only you and now I. And even in a crowded room, whilst basking in a shower of adoration it will always be just you. And I; in this conscious prison of my own, will always be, just I. You needed to be loved so much that you invented yourself and now you are master and slave and this…” he said ushering his bloodied snout about the room.

  “This circus is as far from ideal as one can imagine. You are not a man and you are not a god. The absence of hate is not a show of love. This here, this is nothing. This is a joke and you, I have seen deeper meaning imprinted on a cattle’s ass. Go above, into the conscious realm, there are millions just like you, all wanting to be noticed, all needing to be loved and none able to love themselves” proclaimed Ruff.

  The Bitch Queen lowered her head and sank her conscious state into accepted defeat. She felt small and unusable, completely non-affecting as if she were stripped of her fur and being paraded in front of a hundred thousand joking, leering eyes.

  The young girl still sat with her, running her small hands through the Chihuahua’s short fine hair and as she did. The Bitch Queen abandoned for a moment, her conscious prison and felt a wave of energy trickle down the length of her spine and it piled in her legs causing her to pound her paw against the white tiles.

  “It feels good, doesn’t it,” said Ruff.

  The Bitch Queen didn’t speak; she just absorbed herself in the young girl’s touch, being completely immersed in the warmth of human compassion. When she gave herself completely, the young girl squeezed her tiny hand around The Bitch Queen’s throat, digging her sharp nails deep into her skin.

  The Bitch Queen tried to scream, but only the tiniest slip of air passed through her swelling gums. Her body thrashed wildly, but the young girl had her thighs pressed hard against the Chihuahua’s weak body and the young girl tightened her grip and as she did, her eyes glowed just as Ruff’s had when he charged at the dying boy’s neck.

  The Bitch Queen fought for air, lifting her nose and snarling as her life started to thin. The young girl put all of her force; the fight she had been saving herself as she waited for this moment, every inch of it, she put into standing on her feet keeping the struggling Chihuahua in her grasp, squeezing tighter every time the dog moved.

  She walked to where the small children lay dying, connected to tubes that drained their blood and made The Bitch Queen watch as Ruff rushed towards the children and gnawed at their throats; in one second, opening their jugulars and freeing them from this insufferable hell, all of them dying within seconds, setting them at ease.

  The Bitch Queen was choking and close to death, but she could see and even intellectualize in her fading consciousness, the fall of her reign.

  The child had never loved her. The child had never feared her but the moment she lowered her guard; the moment she descended into self-decline, the child’s consciousness awoke and took advantage and that was nothing more than the acting out of a rule of nature.

  The Bitch Queen thought this as she watched the small matted dog tearing at the throats of all of her trophies and then before she expelled her final breath, the young girl turned her to face her own reflection, to look into her own eyes, to die in the first and in the third.

  And The Bitch Queen lamented in her thoughts as she saw sadness in her own eyes and remembered as a young puppy how she had seen that same reflection as every set of human hands passed her by and chose another dog. She wore that same heavy look that pulled on the corner of her eyes.

  The young child squealed and tore out The Bitch Queen’s eyes as her hands still clenched her neck and the tiny Chihuahua yelped once before the sound of a light snap sent her body limp and young girl squeezed more and more until eventually her own force vacated and she dropped The Bitch Queen’s limp body to the floor before collapsing herself, closing her eyes and expelling her own final liberated breath.

  “You should attend to your friends before the beasts,” said The Intriguing Figure.

  Ruff didn’t think.

  He ran.

  He leapt over the still and peaceful bodies of the dead young children laying on the cold blood red tiles and past the body of the young girl who in death, lay across the tiny Chihuahua, seemingly cradling the small dog into eternity.

  “Humans,” he thought to himself, in an impressive tone.

  And on he continued, out the door and down the corridor, blinded by adrenaline but thinking only of getting to his human friends.

  He pushed through a group of hounds standing about the entrance to the arena and rushed towards the door where his human friends had been ushered through. When he reached the doors, two giant Doberman’s stood before him blocking his path.

  “Halt” screamed one of The Dobermans as Ruff came sliding to a stop.

  “It’s the prisoner,” said the other.

  “The Queen is dead” screamed a voice from behind as a massive roar filled the arena with thousands of hounds all baying in dissonance to the damp cold air, bounding from where they sat and coming together like a swarm of bees to encircle the small matted dog and like the passage of air in a hurricane, t
hey swirled about him in rising fashion.

  “Traitor” yelled one of the hounds.

  “You’re all free” shouted Ruff to the indifferent mob.

  It was no good. It wasn’t freedom they were pining for.

  “You’re free, don’t you understand?” pleaded Ruff.

  “What is freedom without a bind? We long to be free, we do not wish for freedom. The two are not in the same” said a hound from within the pack that now encircled Ruff and were waiting upon a collective order to pounce upon him and tear him apart.

  “What is it we should do? How do we treat him?” asked another hound.

  “The Bitch Queen is dead, what do we do?” said another.

  “What would the Queen do?” said a third.

  “She would throw him in the pit” yelled a voice form behind.

  “So throw him in the pit” yelled the first hound.

  “Wait,” said Ruff. “Your destiny can be different. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to reign here in the shadows. You can help me. Come with me. Be the honorable hound you were born to be. Come to the surface. Fight with the humans. Fight with me” screamed Ruff to the surrounding crowd.

  “Kill him” screamed a voice from behind.

  And soon, the two words became a thunderous chant as the two Doberman guards stepped forward, their teeth bared and their growls drowning out the anthemic violence.

  Ruff thought only of his friends as the two guards leapt into the air and came crashing down on his tiny body.