by Hugo Damas
He’d show them, he would!
The Circus Freak put up a street act. He juggled with his one hand, he balanced himself across wires that ran between the houses for one reason or another. He did acrobatic stunts, flipping and cartwheeling and jumping through tight spots. The crowd grew, people interchanging between joining and leaving, but majorly staying.
By the end, he was approached by a man in a cloak which was being held by a pin bearing the symbol of a crow. Seemed royal enough.
“That is quite some skill, lad. Tell me, are you satisfied with today’s winnings?” he asked.
Hugo hadn’t made any winnings. Or earnings or tips. It always confused him he was supposed to. What for? He hadn’t yet learned. He’d have to ask another street performer eventually.
“I’m never satisfied,” Hugo answered with a smile.
“Yes, yes, you’d be crazy if you ever were,” the fat man agreed, joyously. “I want to hire you, lad. The king will enjoy your freak of nature act, I’m sure he will.”
“Will he? Oh, joy!” Hugo mocked, “will he come by tomorrow, then? He can watch me!”
The fatty chuckled.
“No no, my boy, don’t be dense. I want to hire you. Come with me, and I’ll set you up in a room where you can spend the next couple of days eating whatever you want, and getting ready for the show!”
“Whatever I want?!”
“Best of all,” the joyous belly continued, “when you do leave the room, it will be to entertain the court! All the lords and ladies.”
“Oh wow, I can meet the lords?” Hugo asked, in an exaggerated tone. It was funny to him how the man couldn’t tell.
“You sure can. And there’s a quite enormous sum that will be waiting for you after it all, too.”
“Oh boy!” The Circus Freak rose his arms as if to clasp his hands, but his empty sleeve merely brushed against his hand. “Sum of what?”
“What? Why–”
“Is it berries? Is it raisins?” The Circus Freak frowned, sticking his tongue out. “I don’t like raisins!”
“Of money, lad!” The man edged in closer, eyeing him piteously. “You really are dense, aren’t you?”
“Well, I should hope so,” the Circus Freak said, tapping his tummy. “It’d be pretty weird if I wasn’t, right?”
The man exasperated. “You want the job or not, lad?”
“Oh yes!” He said, excitedly nodding. “Let’s have fuuunn…” his freakish monstrous voice clawed out of his throat there, a fact that made him cough to save it a bit. He couldn’t freak out the recruiter, no matter how much fun it would be, it would cost him the job.
“Sorry about that, something in my throat,” Hugo lied.
The man looked a bit doubtful but still believed it, probably imagining the praises he would get for arranging such unique entertainment.
“Right…well, follow me then, I just have a few errands to run.”
The Circus Freak cursed in his mind. Now he had to behave for how many breaths? The torture!
How he fidgeted while the man dictated some servants to cart around some food. How he trembled, trying to contain himself from stealing a piece of fruit off a child’s hand, to see that adorable face twist in confused betrayal. The Circus Freak would find himself chewing hard on his knuckle when not being seen, trying to stay behaved.
Eventually, he finally climbed into the back of a carriage, along with some servants. They had a better sense of things than their master, they eyed the Circus Freak anxiously as they went in. He just grinned, happy to finally get going, and even happier he would get to play with those servants.
One of them jumped off the carriage as it was moving, darting off in a run while yelling. The thing stopped, and the man came to check on them, but all he found was Circus Freak, normally smiling with his closed eyes, apparently due to stitches in the form of crosses, but it was just make-up. The three remaining servants were looking away, white as white could be.
“What happened in ‘ere?”
I turned my head around and ripped a nail off my little finger, Hugo thought, but that wasn’t what he said. “Who knows? Fickle people, these servants of yours, just run off at the drop of a hat.” That was what he said, his arm innocently behind his back.
“Hmpf,” the balloon man grumbled. “A lower stock of people, you cannot find. Look at this, you lot, even the Jester has more self-respect than you do.” He smacked their knees with a cane and closed the door in annoyance.
The Circus Freak eyed the servants, but none of them would look at him.
“You sure are squeamish, huh?” He brought his hand forward, a thread of his glove had stuck to the bare skin the ripped nail had left behind. “Oh boy,” he bit the piece of clothing and pulled, slowly getting it unstuck. Even without looking, the servants winced. “Well, I have to, what if it gets infected?”
They finally looked at him like he was crazy. Like he was crazy and they wished they had never met him. The Circus Freak giggled and ripped the piece of clothing aside so that his entire little finger was bare.
The Circus Freak then bent left to make his left hand match but caught nothing in the air. “Oh, that’s right!” He giggled, “I don’t have it anymore.”
The Circus Freak leaned back against the curved wall of the carriage.
“I’m taking a nappy nap, but don’t worry!” He closed his eyes, the crosses showing up above a spooky smirk. “’M keeping my eyes on you.”
He fell asleep pretty quickly. The Circus Freak was used to that, he slept easy, but lightly. He woke up when he felt the carriage coming to a complete stop.
“Get out ‘ere and help with the baggage, you rotten’ lot!”
The servants scurried out, more relieved to get away from Hugo than scared of their master. The Circus Freak stepped out of the carriage after them.
“You follow me, Jester,” round house called, “I’ll take you to your room.”
“Ooo! Good, good.”
The castle was impressive.
The place, much like the city of Fedrerikst, was a far cry from the development he was used to witnessing. There was no electricity, scarce even any steam technology. The whole place was downright medieval, down to the castle, which had four towers unevenly spaced and high, looking very much like a crown if seen from the outside.
It was big, very big indeed, but then it had to be. These things were built to house thousands, so no less could be expected of the main castle of the kingdom, the capital of the capital city of the capital country of the northern monarchies.
“Wow, it’s really big!”
“Yes, indeed!” Mr. Rotund answered. “What it lacks for shiny lights and gizmos, it makes up for in constitution, eh?” He was obviously proud of the place, “won’t find a stronger, sturdier structure in all the world!”
“Oh I dunno about that,” Hugo said. “I’ve seen some pretty sturdy mountains.”
“I mean man-made, clown.” The walking beach ball grew instantly annoyed. “Save the jokes for the show, will you?”
“Well, if you insist. Will I get some yummies, meanwhile?” Hugo asked.
“What? Of course, I told you you’ll be fed. These will be the best days of your life, jester, I can promise you that,” the dancing egg assured.
“Ooooh! Does that mean I’ll be getting awesome socks?! I really need some! And a new glove!” The Circus Freak showed his ripped glove to the man, the base of course, so as not to show the wound and incur any kind of suspicion.
“Uh…I guess? I don’t know. You’re starting to make me wonder if I made a mistake, are you really this crazy? I thought it was just for show.”
“I am the show,” the Circus Freak said with a proud nod.
“Ah,” the apple shaped man seemed to understand. “I see, one of those, huh? Never turn off, do you?”
The Circus Freak grinned excitedly. “Can’t turn off who you are!”
But some can delay it, or suppress it, even if just temporarily. And all t
he easier, too, when it’s for something they really want, and they kind of know when it’s coming. It’s much easier to be patient and a fake then.
Oh! Hugo thought, having an epiphany. So that’s what romance is!
He had been struggling with that one for a while. Now he understood it. He was still not interested but he liked to understand stuff, it could always come in handy for a particular scare.
He was given his own bedroom, his own latrine, too.
“You can walk around as much as you want to. Just listen to the guards when they say you can’t be there.”
The Circus Freak eyed them mischievously. “Guards, right. Will anyone freak out if I just follow them around giving them the old death-stare?”
The wordly man shrugged, giving off a far more apathetic reaction than the Circus Freak expected to see.
“They’ll probably ignore you. I dunno where you’ve been performing but we’re very much used to jesters around here. All your antics will get laughs, not attention.”
The Circus Freak paused, actually left without a reply as the pie-shaped man turned his back to him.
“Anyway, see you sometime later.” The man left and closed the door.
It was minutes before the Circus Freak’s mouth wedged and curved, slowly, into a grin. Had he really been challenged, directly and straightforwardly, to do what he did best?
“Fantastic,” Hugo whispered in delight. “Challenge accepted, fat man.”
He left immediately.
It took him all of two hours to get quarantined to his quarters under locked key. They didn’t care about the ordinary servants he had scared, but after making the main caretaker to the heir weep like a crazy person and try to escape the castle just so she wouldn’t have to see the Circus Freak again, they decided they better contain him before he does any worse.
It was funny how, if it were anyone else, he would have been arrested, or at least expelled, but because he was perceived as not knowing any better, they showed him patience and compassion. Or enough of it, anyway.
The Circus Freak was fine with that.
* * *
As promised, new gloves were brought, as were socks. The Circus Freak tried to put the socks on his hand to see how it went but it just made him look silly, and that was never his intention at all. Everything about him had to be unsettling, not explicitly horrifying, or even scary, just unsettling. He was the horror, and the makeup provided the question mark, making him into: “the horror?”
The Circus Freak was also offered to have his sleeve fixed so that “it didn’t hang around like a sock that was used as a contraceptive and then left forgotten somewhere, hanging in shame”, which was an analogy he didn’t much care for, or really understand. Needless to say he kept the ragged sleeve.
The food was good, though. It consisted mostly of vegetables and rice, with some fruit on the side, which was the poor man’s meal in that country’s eyes, as opposed to large quantities of cooked meat and fish. He thought that was a weird perception of things but who was he to judge?
The Circus Freak spent the two days exercising. The whole experience reminded him of his first time in prison, where he had exercised the most often because what else was he going to do?
He practiced his wall-running, cartwheels, vaults and flips, and spins. He practiced his splits, stretches, and impossible contortions like licking his elbows. Hugo also practiced his dancing, a particular style that had transfixed him during his time in the Orient some years ago. It helped his sense of timing, tempo, and overall increased his overall physical endurance. It was a good way to practice it without flat-out running, which he, unfortunately, couldn’t very well do while confined to a room.
Eventually, and at last, the night arrived. The Circus Freak knew it not only because he was counting the minutes but also from the sounds. First, the horns, erupting with every arrival of a guest. They started in the afternoon and grew more frequent as dusk took over. Then, the noise of party crept into the air, clattering amidst voices growing in volume and number.
The time came for the door to open, revealing a man in plate armor. “You the clown they told me to fetch?”
Fetch? The Circus Freak asked in his mind, viciously. But he smiled, instead. “Roof roof?”
The drone chuckled.
“Go on then, go entertain the lords. Remember to stay away from the ladies.”
“The ladies don’t wish to be entertained?” Hugo asked.
“Not by you,” the steel pawn said. “Women entertain themselves. Now get going, you don’t want to be absent after you ate our food and used our bedding.”
Then, the guard just walked away.
It could be that Hugo would not know the way, or would just leave, so the implication was that nobody really cared whether he even showed up.
The Circus Freak was so insulted that he didn’t even feel like grinning. He was not accustomed to being so…irrelevant.
He shook his head once.
“Okay,” Hugo said under his breath.
Hugo marched out, turning his head to each side in loud cracks, and stared ahead like he was about to strangle someone. Even though he was smiling.
“Okay.”
His smile widened, and his eyes closed gradually closed shut as he approached the great king’s hall, where the party was being held. The Circus Freak turned a corner and was met with a pattern of long stretching tables. There were six of them, starting with the two which had the larger angle between them. Those angled tables led into a third and forth, which had a tighter angle, and those connected to a single dinner table that stretched until it met a table perpendicular to it. It was as if a long legged A met with a T, and at the center of that T’s top was what Hugo guessed to be the King’s throne’s smaller brother. The chair was very unlike every other chair in the room, and in it, the king sat.
A hierarchy was represented by the seating. It was the only real discernible order to an otherwise chaotic event.
People were already drunk, singing and yelling at each other, with food spread wide and messy, and drink abound and spilled, and laughter and joy given wings to de-stress from the weight of being constantly under threat of assassination.
A score of bards were spread about the room giving different groups of guests different tunes of fun and jolly, and some ten jesters and clowns were to be his competitors, outside of the five acrobats already in employ. One of the acrobats was currently walking a tightrope that had been assembled.
The Circus Freak realized then that he had been forgotten. He had been remembered only already after the party had well past started. His grin grew wider, and he released a cackling laugh, disturbing everyone in his approximate radius.
He opened his arms, reminding himself he only had one of those, and jumped. The Circus Freak spun so quickly that the drunkards wouldn’t be able to count how many times, and then flipped and landed on his one hand. He kept spinning like that for as long as his momentum allowed him, and once he stopped, bent and pushed to hop onto another performer, hitting him with the dirty end of his behind.
The acrobat hit his head on the ground, and then Hugo’s buttocks squarely enveloped around the young man’s mouth.
“Oh my!” the Circus Freak yelled, mock-shocked.
The onlookers burst out with laughter and applause while the Circus Freak stood up in a quick turn.
Touching or hurting the actual guests and hosts wasn’t possible, not if he wanted to reach the king, but that rule didn’t apply to other performers. If it amused the crowd, it was fair game, because, after all, that’s what they were there for.
To entertain the rot o’ the world.
The Circus Freak kept up his antics, his stunts and slapstick, providing the greatest entertainment all those people could ever hope for, and taking out his displeasure and frustration on his competitors.
The tightrope came down, a clown took a full plate of chicken and lemon to the face, and another was sent sliding across one of the tables
on top of a plate full of pastries crushed by her back. The nobles loved every part of it.
When he was close enough, close enough that he would not be stopped amidst the confusion, the Circus Freak began to let loose. When he reached that one table that led to the one the king was sitting at, Hugo took a good look at him. He seemed sort of pensive, and while he was still enjoying himself, he wasn’t really surrendering to all the liquor for some reason.
The Circus Freak performed the spinning trick again, only this time, he landed not on his hand but his foot, and his body still did the spin, even as the foot stood still.
The people paying enough attention froze in a shiver to the sound of the crack.
They cursed loudly, calling the attention of the others. All who noticed turned their attentions to find him standing on one foot, only his foot was turned to the wrong side. Unbothered, the Circus Freak crouched and bowed.
“Ahhhh,” yelled a woman.
“Eeeww,” commented a man.
“It’s a trick!” Said a stupid boy.
“A trick?!” The Circus Freak objected. “Who do ya take me for, some amateur? Why I oughta -- hold on!” He put his other foot on the floor and brought the broken one up and, in one swift painfully loud movement, turned his foot until the bones found their place. Everyone leaned back, freaked out.
“He’s a demon,” said a superstitious idiot.
“No,” the Circus Freak told them. “Those are black and all metalicky! I’m just the bomb! Check this out.” It was the first time he would do that trick. In front of others anyway. He did a handstand on his head, he laughed. “Look, one hand!”
They laughed, relaxing again. He took the hand off and balanced instead on his stump.
“Look! No hands!” Some clapped, the others vocalized amazement.
Now let’s see if I can do this without dying, Hugo thought, excited.
He turned his head and allowed his body to fall. The floor hit him abruptly, snapping his head all the way aside so that the left side of his face ended up flat on the floor.
For effect, the Circus Freak closed his eyes at the same time, and let out a mortal grunt.
