Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu (12 page)

“Hear that, Tom? I rest my
case,” Sligo said. “There are plenty of rumours circulating about
these creatures, but very little fact because so few people have
seen them up close and lived to tell about it. When I bought him, I
thought that would be the draw, like putting a ghost in a cage.
Here he is folks, a supernatural legend, as elusive as the Yeti or
the Loch Ness monster, real and in the flesh. But then I saw him
yesterday and realized I had it all wrong. The mutant’s got
something special, a kind of glamour. He can turn that morbid
curiosity, that shiver of fear, into another emotion entirely –
lust. We’ll make bank. We could charge extra for the lube to take
home.” He grinned as if he could count the money already.

“And I’m tellin’
you
,
Quin, something ain’t right with this monster you’ve bought. It
stirs up emotions I don’t want stirred up. Whether it’s fear or
lust, I think it’s dangerous. Plus, I’m not happy dealing in human
trafficking, which is, of course, illegal. He’s going to need
guards twenty-four, seven.”

“You’re such a paranoid, Tom.
He isn’t exactly human so, to my reading of it, the trafficking
laws don’t apply. It’s either this or you can send yourself a last
paycheck because this business is going down the shitter, along
with the rest of this sorry world. You and I both know it.” Sligo
puffed thoughtfully on the pipe and then eyed me through the haze.
“What’s your name, boy?”

“Jareth Nine.”

“Well, now, Jareth Nine, you
look like a healthy young man with some muscle. Care to make a
little more scratch?”

“How much?”

“Two bucks more per hour for
the duration of the tour.”

Ah, now we were talking. “What
d’ya want me to do?”

“In between your shows, I want
you to watch the freak. That face of yours should scare anyone off.
Make sure no one harms him and that he doesn’t harm himself.”

I could feel my teeth grinding.
I’ve no self-control sometimes. Already thoughts of knives, guns,
poison leaped to mind. “What if
I
harm him?” I growled.

Dr. Sligo flashed me a
yellow-toothed grin. “Somehow, I don’t think you will.”

The circus grounds seethed in
an anthill of activity. Roustabouts raised tents; the concession
owners set up trailers on the midway; horses whinnied; elephants
trumpeted; lions roared. Pungent, familiar smells enveloped me:
sawdust, gasoline, horse shit, frying grease, buttered popcorn, and
human sweat. This was the circus. It was home now. My other home
was gone. My foster family was done with me, having told me to get
out. Partly my fault I supposed. I walked through the commotion
with the self-contained calm of someone isolated from the rest of
my fellows and therefore having no need to concern myself with
them. Why had I accepted the job from Sligo considering my feelings
about mutants? Well, first off, there were the increased wages to
consider. I was saving to get out of this hellhole, to take myself
off to some desert island where I could be alone, without staring
eyes or stupid questions. That was my goal. Then, there was
curiosity. I wanted to see this mutant for myself, wanted to know
if I had the balls even to be in the same room with it, because the
very idea knotted my guts. I’d heard the rumours, that they raped
people and shot some kind of weird stuff up in ‘em that corroded
out their insides. That was the stuff of nightmares, enough to give
anyone the willies, even though I wasn’t sure I believed it. There
was something else. A call perhaps. I didn’t know, then.

Dr. Sligo had refused to say
exactly where and how he’d picked up the creature, but he had
admitted that it had cost him a bundle, an investment, he said, and
that the truck had arrived last night with the cage. They’d backed
it up to the tent that would be the mutant’s new home. Apparently,
it had required an electric cattle prod to get it to move from the
cage in the truck to the one in the tent. I approved of the cattle
prod. So far the creature’s whereabouts were top secret and that
put me in possession of a valuable bit of scratch in the circus
community. Gossip.

I decided to stop by the
trailer I shared with Esmeralda, the bearded lady, and tell her. We
had a good arrangement, Ez and I. We were both single, needed a
place to crash, and the rent on the trailer, being that it was a
piece of shit, was cheap. Anyhow, neither of us needed much space.
No one wanted me for the night, and so my preferences made no
difference, and she often spent her nights catering to weird kinks
in whatever town we were in. She was quite a sight, as big as she
was, tooling off in the evenings on her huge black motorcycle, her
rear sagging off either side of the seat.

It happened today that I found
her in her room, seated in front of the mirror, boobs erupting from
a push-up bra, carefully gluing on her beard.

“Oh there you are, Jareth
honey,” she said, her voice as deeply resonant as a man’s. “Show
tonight, you know. They sent over a new costume.” She waved a meaty
arm at an open box on her bed from which spilled something lacy and
shiny green. “It’s even worse than the last one. I’m gonna have to
wear a corset to get into it. Could you be a luv, and get some
whisky for me – with ice.” She batted her lovely brown eyes at
me.

I obliged.

“This stuff is expensive you
know, Ez,” I called down the hall as I pulled the bottle from the
cupboard, opened the freezer and got some ice, which I tossed in a
glass. I listened to the glug of the liquid as I poured. “Maybe you
should lay off.”

“Maybe you should lay off the
pipe,” Esmeralda hollered back.

“My smoking’s medicinal,” I
retorted. Yeah, that’s what all the dopers say. I padded down the
hall with its ripped shag carpet, orange and red, even more hideous
than my face, and walked into her room. “Helps with the pain.”

“So does this.” She took the
glass, raised it, cubes clicking.

“I have some news.” I straddled
a chair backwards and rested my chin on my forearms. Oh, this was
going to be good.

“What’s that?” She was frowning
at the mirror.

“There’s a new freak. They just
brought it in last night.”

“It? What’s an ‘it,’ honey? Is
it some old department store mannequin?”

“Oh, it’s real all right. I
heard Sligo and Tom arguing about it. Tom says it gives him the
creepy-weirdies.”

She paused in her gluing
attempts, the beard half hanging off her round black face. “Okay,
Jareth, quit fooling. Spill. What is it?”

“A mutant.”

“Huh? A what? One of those
things that lives in the big-city ghettoes? Honey, I thought they
was just stories to scare people with. Something to sell the
tabloids.”

“Not stories, Ez. Remember, the
mutants are the ones that burned me. Or didn’t you believe what I
told you?”

Her eyes flinched away. She
took a gulp of the whisky. “To tell you honest, honey, what I
thought about that story you told was that your foster parents made
up somethin’.”

“Why would they do that?”

“A hundred reasons, young’un.
All having to do with protectin’ you from the truth. So, this thing
is real? And Sligo has the nerve to bring it here? Uh huhn.” She
rolled her eyes.

“Yep and he gave me the job of
guarding it, between shows. Got a raise to do it.”

“Well now, that’s pretty good.
Won’t it be dangerous though? From what I’ve heard, those mutants
have some weird powers that can mess with your head. If the stories
be true.”

“It’s in a cage, Ez.”

“You sure they haven’t jus’
found some poor starvin’ kid and put a costume on him, like they
did last year with that girl that had the fake twin coming outta
her side?” She chuckled.

“Maybe. Wanna find out? Let’s
go see it.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

She sighed, took another
swallow, set down the empty glass, then pulled off the beard,
wincing as it came free. “Ow! Damn thing. Guess we better check out
the competition, huh honey? Gimme a minute or three to get
dressed.”

Yeah, who could resist a
genuine freak? She was now as curious as I was.

We found the new tent set up in
the sideshow row – Freak Alley we called it. For now, there were no
glaring signs, nor was there a talker stirring up a crowd, all of
which would surely be there later. The tent was a nondescript blue
and white stripe, just like the others, but already a small crowd
of the community had gathered outside, all buzzing like cicadas on
a hot June day.

Pavel, one of the lion tamers,
with his mop of curly blond hair, stood outside. He raised bare
arms, exhibiting tufts of underarm hair like so much dandelion
fluff and said, “All of you keep your fuckin’ pants on. I know
y’all wanna see it. Me too. But Dr. Sligo gave the orders and my
ass is hamburger if they’re not carried out. No one’s to disturb
it. Nobody. I think it’s sick or something. Wait ‘til the crowds
get here tonight. If ya wanna see it, come back then.”

“What and pay for the
privilege? I don’t think so,” Renny the clown hooted. He was always
a loud mouth. He was wearing pyjamas and had shaving cream on one
side of his face, so he must’ve come at a run. “Ah come on, Pavel,
just a peek.”

Another clown named Sparks
said, “Yeah, what’ll it take? A bribe?” He held up a pipe, which
immediately got my interest, but Pavel glowered at him.

Esmeralda spoke in my ear,
“Shove up there, honey.” She raised her voice. “Hey, coming through
on Sligo’s business.” Esmeralda’s girth made for a formidable
plough and we managed to jostle ourselves through the twenty or so
circus folks, who gave us sour looks.

“What do you want, kid?” Pavel
said, bending down to look at me, then snapping his gaze away. Like
usual.

I looked him in the eye. “Dr.
Sligo said I’m supposed to watch the mutant between shows. He’s
paying me to do it. Didn’t he tell ya?”

“Yeah, but if I let you in now,
there’ll be a riot. This ain’t the time.”

“But...”

“Later, like I said.” Pavel
stood up straight and folded his massive arms, looking like some
genie from old vids that I remembered as a kid. “That goes for all
of you,” he roared.

Grumbling, the crowd dispersed.
Esmeralda shrugged. “You heard him, sweetie. I’m sure in a few
months we’ll all be sick of looking at this thing, whatever it is.”
She went off with them.

Being stubborn, I wasn’t going
to let it go so easy. There was more than one way to turn a trick
and I’d learned to be a master at not getting noticed. I headed
down the line of tents until I was enough distance away from
Pavel’s beady eyes, then I slunk through a gap between tents and
came around the back along the dry dirt tracks where the trucks
drove. I found the rear of the mutant’s tent and partially unzipped
the service entrance. For a moment I rested my forehead against the
rough fabric and thought I could feel something, like a humming in
my ears, or white radio noise. I pushed the flap aside and
entered.

It was hot in there, stifling,
and stunk like canvas. I came up behind the platform they’d
erected, one of those portable stages. On it sat a cage, about six
by six feet. Black curtains hung from the ceiling ribs on either
side. It looked like it was meant for an animal. That gave me a
strange feeling. What was this thing? There were rows and rows of
chairs set up on risers in a semi-circle around it. Clearly, they
expected a big crowd. But if there were chairs, that meant an act
of some kind. My show had a different set-up. I was stashed away in
one of a series of booths, each with its own freak. People filed by
in the semi-dark. No one stayed long enough to sit down. Some
gawked for a few moments, but most took a look, shuddered, and went
on. What was so damn fascinating about this thing that it could
attract a sit-down audience? The humming sensation in my head
increased.

Cautiously, I walked up the
stairs onto the stage, peered through the bars, and found myself
looking down into the eyes of a being of startling and ethereal
beauty.

Yelping in surprise, I stumbled
backwards, and sat down hard on the stage. Slowly, I summoned the
nerve to look again. He hadn’t moved. I stared at him and he stared
back with brilliant, heavy-lidded eyes as deeply blue as the sky at
twilight. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cage with
his hands resting on his knees, wearing nothing but a pair of black
leather jeans. I thought he looked a little older than me, maybe in
his early twenties. The artist had some details right: a
heart-shaped face with a sharp chin and high cheekbones. His hair,
cut short and spiky around his face, shone platinum blond, almost
white. The back was plaited into five braids that hung down to the
middle of his back. His body was slim and athletic: strong arms,
belly muscled like a washboard, and broad, bony shoulders. Small
brown nipples decorated his chest, no hint of breasts there. Torque
tattoos like flames encircled his biceps. The one physical flaw
that I could see was a long white scar nestled in the crook of his
right arm.

To my eye anyway, there was no
difference between this creature and some stunning, androgynous boy
model from one of the fashion zines, the kind that I couldn’t get
enough of, the kind that I stared at for hours while locked in my
room with my hand firmly in my pants. He didn’t look exactly human
though. Not completely, because he seemed to glow. I know that
sounds strange, but it’s true. Luminous, that’s the word. It was
how I imagined an angel would look. Not an angel like we think of
in white robes, strumming a harp. No, he looked like a biker-gang
angel. Fey and dangerous. I could only sit there stupidly, and
stare.

And then he spoke.

“So, you’ve come,” he said.

It was like he’d been expecting
me. Like he’d been sitting there waiting all his life until I came
along. I can’t tell you how that threw me.