by Jeff Gelb
He sighed again. He was definitely not in the mood to study, and the magazine wasn’t as good as he’d hoped. He dug the church bulletin out from under a stack of papers on his desk and found out that the fiesta started at seven. He checked his watch, took a quick shower, and headed across the street.
The carnies had done a pretty remarkable job in such a short amount of time. There were ten or twelve food and game booths spread over the baseball fields, and there was actually a midway to walk down. The rides loomed over the far end of the lot like gigantic eyes on metal stalks. None of them—a Ferris wheel, a Hammerhead, circular swings, something called Cyclone, and a bunch of smaller rides for the kids—looked safe enough to justify the ticket price. The Hammerhead seemed to be constructed of metal, even though it was decayed and weakened by rust, but the Cyclone had a wooden base. There were long lines in front of all of them, though: people were having fun, kicking up dust and dirt—which would be murder late for his hay fever—so Russ decided to stick to the booths.
As he went from booth to booth, losing his money at dime toss and at other games, Russ became less and less impressed. The tents were made of moldy canvas, and some horrid country-western music was piped into crackling loudspeakers. There was an annoying trilevel siren on the Cyclone ride, which creaked painfully as it turned; a maniacal hee-ing giggle taunted him from the House of Mystery. He bought a small pizza, tossed a pocketful of dimes at some Budweiser glasses, then decided to leave. Rather than cross the busy parking lot, he headed for a break between two tents that led to the street.
Next to the Mystery tent sat a small stage. The words “Live Freaks” were printed in small letters on the curtain off to the side. The entrance was marked with a small sign that read “$2.”
Russ stood undecided. Across from him, one of the metallic tentacles from the Cyclone viciously clawed the air. The siren squealed. Smoke swirled off the chugging gears—souls of past riders, possibly.
He fished inside his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill. He wasn’t too thrilled at the prospect of seeing living deformities, but it’d certainly be more interesting than the rip-offs out here. Anyway, how bad could a freak tent at a church carnival be? He unfolded his money and pushed back the flap.
It was dark and stuffy inside; Russ saw a light bulb overhead, but it was so grimy he couldn’t even tell if it was lit. Someone stood in the gloom up ahead; dust swirled in a jagged beam of light across its feet. Russ stepped forward.
Eyes adjusted to the darkness, Russ stared open-mouthed at the creature before him. It was obscenely thin, as seemingly malnourished as the kids in those “Feed the Children” spots on TV, but what astounded Russ most was its height: It had to stoop to fit under the tent’s ridgepole. Even more disconcerting was the way it tottered forward, like a giraffe before a tall tree. Dressed in a black body stocking, it wore a straw hat and white mime’s cuffs around tube-thin wrists. The creature looked rubbery, boneless, like a hollow puppet-kite from a Mardi Gras parade.
“Goin’ in, dude?” Breath on his neck from behind. Russ held out his money.
The thing swooned forward, bobbing on the fawn-weak support of its legs. Instinctively, Russ leaned back, afraid it might fall over. Instead, it took his money, then counted off three singles into Russ’s palm. “Three back,” it said, then it turned to pull back the stained flap to the main tent area.
Quickly, Russ stepped through.
Just ahead, two large specimen jars sat atop a metal folding table. A human infant had been canned in one of the jars. Suspended in the other was a two-headed fetus Russ couldn’t identify. He bent down to peer at it more closely, but he still wasn’t sure what it was; its eyes were open, thought. A chill clawing him, Russ moved away.
In the rear of the tent, reclining on a sofa perched atop a rickety plywood stage, was the fattest woman Russ had ever seen. She must’ve weighed half a ton, literally. She wore a blue, floral-print muumuu, and her knotted black hair stretched like soggy licorice sticks all the way to her waist. She had a bullfrog’s throat, cheeks the size of softballs, and her bare feet, supported by a peeling Ottoman, were so monstrously oversized they nearly swallowed her toes. Russ thought of that joke: He didn’t know where the tits ended and the belly began. Flesh hung off her upper arms like bleached saddlebags, and even the muumuu couldn’t hide the triangular outline of fat drooping down between her thighs. She munched on potato chips and watched an I Love Lucy rerun on a portable black-and-white TV.
Russ was repulsed by the sight of her—he hadn’t realized until now that his upper lip and nose were crunched slightly in disgust—but he couldn’t stop himself from taking a few steps closer to the sage. He gagged slightly on the odors of moldy upholstery, stinking feet, and the body odor indigenous only to the grossly obese, yet he almost didn’t care. She was gross, but she was the ultimate fat model, even if no one would dare print nude pictures of her. Weird.
Two boys with skateboards stepped up beside him. Russ glanced down at them, then over to the pancake-sized calluses on the fat woman’s feet; then, her face.
She was staring right at him.
Russ couldn’t look away.
Peripherally, he saw the boys with the skateboards turn to peer at him.
Slit eyes in the doughy face. Red clown cheeks.
He was immobilized.
Still eyeing him, she leaned forward on the couch and said, “Now the real show starts, honey.” Her voice was thick and husky, in some way mutated.
Without moving his head, Russ glanced down. The boys were gone.
Movement on the stage brought his eyes forward again. A girl, apparently normal except for the absence of her legs—she had feet and ankles but they seemed soldered to her torso—had made her way up on stage. She duck-walked over to the couch, a shiny black vibrator clutched firmly in her hands, big brown eyes fixed on Russ’s. After the fat thing had hiked up her muumuu, she took the vibrator from the girl’s outstretched hand.
She stuck the tip of it in her mouth to moisten it, then turned it on. Shifting her weight to the edge of the couch, she lifted the caul of flesh between her thighs and slowly inserted the vibrator into her vagina. She moaned; the legless girl, glowing with excitement, clapped her hands together; the vibrator purred.
“No hands,” she stuttered at Russ, exposing rotted teeth. The visible end of the vibrator resembled a bruised, thickly overgrown clitoris.
Russ was able, finally, to pull himself away. He crashed into the rubber freak on the way out but didn’t slow down. Once outside the tent, he experienced a severe attack of ground vertigo and threw up in the cotton-candy booth.
Russ showered for nearly half an hour when he got home, but neither the Lava nor the scalding water did much good. Sticky disgust filled his pores like tar.
He couldn’t figure out why she’d do something like that. It was a church carnival, for Chrissakes. Was she doing that for every-body who paid their two bucks? It was downright perverse. Fuckin’ carnies—what a dirty buncha scum. Leering at everything in a skirt, blind and deaf to everything else. What had that cow Russ had worked with last summer in the student store said to him once? “I’m sorry you hate your job.” Exactly. Fuckin’ scum.
He was fixing a microwave pizza when Vicki finally got home. He offered her half, but she scrunched up her nose in disgust, then kissed him deeply. “I guess that’s a no,” he said, as they went upstairs. While she took of her khakis and T-shirt in the bathroom, Russ munched on the pizza.
She doesn’t even look like herself, Russ thought, staring at Vicki as she brushed her teeth. He felt a twinge of guilt, thinking something so odd, but when she stood in just her bra and panties, her weight loss was plainly evident. She weighed a mere one-thirty now, sixty pounds less than a few months ago, and now, for the first time since she’d begun dieting and working out, Russ wasn’t sure he liked her so thin. He had always liked girls with a little meat on their bones—he’d even liked the ones who were a bit more than simply meaty—but he
was the one who had told Vicky that he thought she was getting a little thick, which was as magnanimous as he could be. She had agreed, surprisingly enough, and it had felt really good for Russ to think that he was part of the reason she was dieting. But he never really expected her to drop so much weight so quickly. Of course, he couldn’t say anything after urging her into the whole thing, but he didn’t like her like this, and he had never really admitted it to himself before tonight.
Good goin’, you dick.
Vicki moved to his desk. “I see you were busy,” she said with mock sarcasm, leafing through his plumper magazine.
“All work and no play, y’know.” Russ was still looking her over.
“um-hm.” She put the magazine down and climbed into bed, put the plate with the half-eaten pizza on the nightstand, and kissed him. She burrowed her crotch into his; then she ran her tongue over his lips; finally, she sucked his dick, but even that garnered scarcely a half-decent response.
“Not in the mood, I guess.” She stuffed everything back into his underwear.
“My stomach doesn’t feel too good.”
She lay down next to him and he held her. “Probably the pizza, dip.”
“Probably,” he said. Then she turned on her side.
After a few moments of silence, Vicki was asleep. Eyes closed, Russ listened to the noised from across the street. In his head, he saw the obese thing lift the apron of flab from between her legs. He heard the vibrator buzz.
His penis began to stiffen.
“Fuck,” he grumbled, then rolled out of bed. He hurried downstairs—always effective in ridding oneself of unwanted boners—and grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator. He drank half of it, then headed back upstairs. After thoughtfully maneuvering Vicki beneath the covers, he stepped over to the window.
The fiesta was still going strong. Lights were blinking, flashing, rides were grinding, the music was faint but distinct. He even heard dimes clinking on the glasses in the dime-toss booth.
He realized suddenly that he was holding his breath. His heart beat as loud and fast as automatic-weapon fire.
With a shaky hand, he wrote a quick note, in case Vicki awoke, ad put it on his side of the bed. Russ got dressed.
It was nearly ten-thirty when he awoke the next morning. Vicki’s side of the bed was empty, of course.
Russ showered, dressed, and crossed the street. He told one of the priests milling about that he’d like to help out if he could, so the priest gladly led him to the hall where some Knights of Columbus members were setting up for bingo.
Russ helped an older, balding man set up chairs while two more older, balding men set up and arranged metal tables. One of them was talking passionately about something, but Russ only caught bits and pieces of the conversation. “Nobody really knows why anybody does anything,” he said, as Russ hefted another metal chair off the nearby flatbed, unfolded it, and shoved it into place. “A lotta people think they know why he did it, but nobody’ll ever really know.”
“What’re you two talking about?” the man assisting Russ inquired, sounding peeved, since he seemed to have barely enough air to work and breathe, let alone gab.
“That freak who shot all those people,” the other man said. “Over in L.A.”
“Oh.”
The mention of freaks made Russ’s stomach lurch. Excusing himself for a moment, he stepped outside. Why was he back here again, anyway? He couldn’t really answer himself. Maybe that guy was right. Maybe nobody knew why anybody did anything, Russ thought, looking past the booths to the freak tent. Maybe he should just go home and forget about it. Take Vicki to dinner tonight, come over with her, and lose some dimes, forget all about it.
Maybe that’s what he should do.
Fuck it. Russ headed back into the hall. When he was finished setting up for bingo, he walked toward the freak tent.
When he’d come over alone last night, heart still firing, he’d noticed only a few small groups of people hanging around the booths and rides. A gang of dirty carnies was gathered outside the freak tent. One lifted something shiny up to his nose, then passed it to one of his greasy buddies. Russ shook his head slightly, then went home.
But that was last night; now, the day was sunny. He knew there was nothing to be afraid of, dark or light, but satisfying his curiosity—going in for another look, whatever—felt much better with the warmth of the sun on his shoulders.
Russ palmed his two dollars and stepped inside the tent. A stool squatted beside the main entrance, but the rubber man wasn’t there. Rather than pocket his money, Russ left it on the seat. He pressed through the next flap.
The stage was empty. The table was set up, but the fetus jars were missing.
Russ checked his watch. Officially, the fiesta had been open for twenty minutes. He took a last glance around and turned to leave.
Peripherally, a flash of something hideous and malformed appeared from behind the tent flap, near the sage. Quickly, though, it disappeared. Russ turned again, bent, peered into the knee-high gloom, and saw only the dull glow of eyes staring back at him. He was about to ask if it was all right, when something beside it moved—then something beside that, and something beside that. “Finally,” one of them uttered with what sounded like relief.
Russ straightened. His panicky heart ballooned in his throat. They had been thinking about him, too! They were fucking waiting for him to come back. He spun on his heels to break for the exit.
Russ tore the tent flap aside. A thin triangle of sunlight outlined the exit flap ahead. He smiled welcomingly.
But a strip of darkness gracelessly stepped forward and collided with him. Before he could even look up, it seized his throat in a python-grip.
As Russ struggled to break free, he was dragged bodily away from the sunlight—away from home—back into the main tent area. The grip on his throat tightened mercilessly. Sunspots speckled his fading vision.
Suddenly, he was slammed down onto the stage, and everything came soaring back into focus. Russ craned his head to see who or what was holding him.
Towering above him was the skinny giant he’d glimpsed the other night. It had a normal-sized head, but the skin stretched over the bald skill was as thin and transparent as cellophane. Still dressed in the black body stocking and white cuffs, it looked like a psychotic mime, stretched and altered by the rack. It released Russ’s neck but coiled its reed-thin arms around Russ’s chest, heaving the air from his lungs, then lifted him upright. A scream boiled on Russ’s lips.
“Come on,” the giant hissed, kicking dirt under the stage to arouse them. Effortlessly, it folded Russ to his knees.
The two deformed creatures that waddled out of the gloom were identical to the legless girl who carried the vibrator. Twin freaks, Russ thought madly. They were both naked, with tiny breasts, hairless gashes, and blond ponytails tied with red ribbons. They hauled Russ into a sitting position while the giant increased the pressure on Russ’s neck.
“Angela,” it hissed again. Calling. One more creature emerged from the darkness under the stage.
Russ finally screamed, only loud enough for the thing restraining him to hear, however.
Some kind of larva with a human head slithered forward on uncanny hands, palms slapping the dirk like seal fins. Promptly, it wedged itself between Russ’s legs. Bobbing unsteadily at a height above his waist, it unzipped his pants and plunged its moist hand inside his underwear. Cold slime gripped Russ’s penis. Gleeful hunger shone in the larvoid eyes.
Once Russ’s dick was extracted, the larva bent forward and began to suck him. The giant pulled Russ back to his elbows. The twin legless girls spread his legs open, to be helpful.
Russ shuddered again and again. Its lips and mouth were hot and greasy, lubricated with drool. He tried to deny the stimulation. Eyelids clamped shut, he concentrated on swallowing the bile lurching in his throat, but his body denied his mind’s plea. He bit his tongue until he tasted blood; he shrieked; he snapped at air, kicking and twisting, b
ut his penis continued to stiffen.
A few seconds later, Russ felt air on his erect dick.
He held his breath—he didn’t dare open his eyes.
Stench assaulted him like high tide on a polluted beach. His eyes jerked open involuntarily.
She was bending over him. Smiling, mumbling something unintelligible, lifting her muumuu, tit-bellies sparkling with sweat. She sank with a thud to her knees and skewered him. Her eclipsing vagina was waxy, coal-hot.
As she began to rock, the giant holding Russ in place slavered in its arousal; drool spilled into Russ’s ear while the fat thing worked. Finally, he ejaculated, felt it draining out of him, along with his will to fight, like water from a dribble glass.
They helped her off him. Russ deflated onto his side, curled into a ball. He was only remotely conscious when they dragged him behind the stage and out the back of the tent to a nearby trailer.
As they were leaving, one of the legless girls—the one who had carried the dildo—stopped to kiss the top of Russ’s nose.
Feverish from shock, Russ thought: Vicki? Vicki’s here?
The tiny girl’s face danced before his like meat on a hook. “You rest here for a while, then you can go home,” she said. Tears began to well up in Russ’s eyes. “Oh, don’t be sad. We’ll be back next year,” she confided cheerfully. “Just think: It’ll be three months old by then.” She smiled and put her lips to Russ’s ear, whispering, “I hope it looks like me’r my sister. Some of the others are, well, such freaks…”
At the Count of Three
Michael Garrett
The chill of a cool autumn night brought goose bumps to Eric Gentry’s flesh as he slide from beneath a thick cotton blanket in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. The hallway of the small river cabin was heated at this hour by only the dying embers of the fireplace in the living room, and Eric’s feet were numbed by the touch of the cold floor.
