by Jeff Strand
Nathan shook it. “Is that your real name?”
“If you’re asking if my first name is Professor, no, it is not. And if you’re asking if the last name I inherited upon my birth is Mongrel, no, it is not. So the answer to both potential variations on your question is no. But it’s the name I use now. Is Nathan Pepper your real name?”
“Yes.”
“Unimpressive. You need a stage name. How do you feel about The Appalling Biting Boy?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Then how about The Appalling Chewing Boy?”
“I don’t like that, either.”
“The Appalling Munching Boy?”
“No.”
“Is it the ‘Appalling’ part that you dislike?”
“I try not to be appalling.”
“Well, we’ll break you out of that habit. You can’t be part of Professor Mongrel’s Theatre of the Macabre and remain socially acceptable.”
“I don’t want to be part of it,” said Nathan. “I want to go home.”
“Then go home,” said Professor Mongrel. “Nobody is stopping you.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Professor Mongrel gave him a bright smile, which suddenly turned dark and sinister. “But you’ll have to walk all the way into town. Alone.”
“I can do that. I lived in the woods for a year all by myself.”
“Oh. I see. I didn’t realize that. Then, yes, I’m afraid somebody is stopping you. Let’s go meet your new friends, shall we? Kleft, repair that coach.”
Mongrel took Nathan by the hand and led him to the building. The front door opened onto a long, dark, hallway that had bare walls and a floor that tilted just a bit to the left.
“Are you scared of spiders?” Mongrel asked as they walked down the hallway, which seemed endless.
“Not really.”
“Are you scared of eating spiders?”
Nathan had honestly never thought about that. “I wouldn’t want to do it, if I could help it.”
“Oh, you should, and you will. When I heard about the miracle fang-toothed boy, I said to myself, ‘That’s a boy who should be eating spiders in front of my audience.’ Finish them off in ten bites. One for each leg, one for the abdomen, and then flash the customers a fang-toothed grin before you pop the head into your mouth and chew away. Entertainment!”
“That’s cruel!”
“What, to the spider? Don’t be silly. Spiders don’t have nerve endings. Besides, I thought little boys enjoyed tormenting arachnids.”
“I don’t like hurting anything.”
“Is that why you were in jail for nearly biting somebody’s arm off?”
Nathan was horrified. Had his exploits really been exaggerated that much? Had news travelled across the land that he was some sort of barbarian? “I didn’t bite it off!”
“Nearly.”
“No. Almost all of his arm was left. I didn’t swallow a thing. It wasn’t at all what you were told.”
Mongrel shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Whether you reduced his arm to a skeletal stalk or merely clipped his fingernails in an unorthodox manner, we will sell you to an audience looking to get their half-coin’s worth. ‘If He Weren’t Eating These Spiders, He’d Be Eating You.’”
They were still walking down the hallway, which seemed to be narrowing. Nathan was finding it difficult to breathe.
Oh, such terrible misfortune! What was he going to do? Eating spiders wasn’t going to solve the plight of Penny and Mary. He had to escape!
He didn’t want to bite anybody else, but did he have a choice?
He had to act now, before it was too late.
Or was it already too late?
Should he have acted before they walked into the building?
No, because Kleft was outside of the building. If Nathan had acted earlier, he would have had to contend with both Kleft and Mongrel at once. If he acted now, he could contend with Mongrel first, and then Kleft later. That was a much better plan.
The longer he waited, the higher the chances that he’d have other people to contend with.
What if the others were prisoners? What if he could convince them to rise up against their captor? By waiting to act, he could find himself in a much better position for the action he was eventually planning to perform.
Or his position could be much worse.
I really should do something, he thought.
Now?
Soon?
Now.
He opened his mouth wide, showing off every tooth available to him, let out a fearsome roar, and lunged at Mongrel.
The expectation was that Mongrel would recoil in horror, putting just enough distance between the two that Nathan could turn and run back the way they came. Nathan’s legs were shorter, but he also had the advantage of youth and the ability to move without waddling, and he was certain he could make it back to the entrance before Mongrel caught up to him. Kleft would not be expecting Nathan to burst out of the building unannounced and would be unprepared to stop him, leaving Nathan simply to run into town for rescue.
Unfortunately, Mongrel did not recoil. He merely regarded Nathan as he would an adorable puppy who’d gotten carried away while playing with a chew toy but was otherwise harmless.
“It disappoints me that you did that,” said Mongrel. “I had hoped not to have to cause you to be zapped, but apparently that shall not be the case.”
He reached into his inside suit pocket and took out a long metal pole, although it wasn’t so long that it couldn’t have credibly been resting inside the suit all this time. He touched the end to Nathan’s chest. Nathan yelped at the shock, then felt dizzy, and then realized he was lying on the floor, twitching a bit. Then he realized that it was much darker than it had been before the shock, and getting darker all the time, and then he couldn’t see anything at all, and then he didn’t care.
SEVENTEEN
When he woke up he was on a theatre stage, surrounded by monsters.
They were seated around him in a circle, nine or ten of them. None of them were currently devouring (or attempting to devour) his flesh, so they didn’t seem immediately hostile, but they were certainly intimidating.
Professor Mongrel sat in the circle as well, as did Assistant Kleft.
“Welcome back,” said Mongrel.
Nathan wiped some dried drool from the side of his mouth. “Thank you.”
“You may have noticed that you’re still alive. I can’t always guarantee that this will be the case after I poke you with my zapper, so I’d advise you not to give me further reasons to use it.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. Now let me introduce you to your new friends.” Mongrel pointed to a boy who looked about seventeen, with long red hair. “This is Donald. He can swallow a coin and make the necessary change when it emerges. Show him, Donald.”
Donald popped a coin into his mouth and swallowed.
“It’s not a quick process,” Mongrel admitted, “which is why he tends to serve in more of a janitorial capacity than as one of the performers. But still, it’s an impressive trick if you can stomach it. Moving on…” Mongrel pointed to a very large woman with a long, thick beard. “This is Mildred, the bearded lady.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, in a voice that wasn’t nearly as gruff as Nathan might have expected.
“Does she frighten you?” Mongrel asked.
“Well, no,” said Nathan. “I mean, it’s just a lady with a beard.”
“But it’s unnatural!” said Mongrel. “Deeply unnatural! Doesn’t such a departure from the norm strike you with fear?”
Nathan wasn’t sure if he was supposed to just play along. He didn’t want to get shocked again. “I guess it could be scary.”
“No, you were right the first time. It’s not. We’ve tried dyeing it a multitude of colors and trimming it into the most frightening shapes imaginable—even a bat—but nothing works. It causes nary a tremble.”
“I even tried
throwing things once,” said Mildred.
“Next we have Gondola and Horatio, the former Siamese twins. They used to be joined at the waist, until they were separated in a not-so-gruesome accident. Now, they look very similar, and yet they are two individuals. Does that frighten you?”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? Look how similar they are! If it weren’t for the mole and the scar, you might almost mistake them for two copies of the same person!”
“I see that, but it’s really more confusing than frightening. They’re just twins.”
“Twins who used to be joined together into a four-legged, four-armed, two-headed, one-shirted monstrosity! How can you not fear them?”
“Well, I suppose if they were attacking me or something, I might be uncomfortable.”
“We don’t want uncomfortable! We want a level of fear that makes you lose control of every bodily function you’ve got, including the ones hidden within your skin! We want our audience to be reduced to blobs of boneless jelly wobbling in the breeze!”
“Twins aren’t going to do that.”
“Blast!” Mongrel sighed. “I’m going to skip most of the other introductions to save time, but feast your eyes upon Gabriel the Alligator Boy!”
Nathan looked at Gabriel, who sat calmly on the floor.
“He doesn’t look like an alligator.”
“Perhaps not, but he acts like one!”
Nathan watched Gabriel for a moment.
“In what way?”
“Alligators spend most of their time lying in the sun. If there was sunlight in this room, Gabriel would be lying in it.”
“Oh.”
“If you stumbled upon an alligator out in the wild doing the exact same thing, you’d be frightened, wouldn’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Oooohhh, well, listen to the big brave alligator hunter! Admit it, if you encountered an alligator sunning itself in the water not six feet away from you, your mind would be an absolute mess. Admit it!”
“I’ll admit that,” said Nathan. “But him just sitting there pretending to be an alligator sunning itself isn’t particularly terrifying.”
Mongrel let out a deep, long sigh, and then nodded. “I’m not going to lie to you. Professor Mongrel’s Theatre of the Macabre should really be called Professor Mongrel’s Theatre of Disappointed, Angry Customers.”
“Or Professor Kleft’s Parade of the Macabre,” Kleft muttered.
“What was that?”
“I did not speak.”
“Though we try not to publicize this, every bearded lady, ex-Siamese twin, alligator boy, stretchy man, lobotomy recipient, meerkat-tongued woman, and investment banker in this room knows that we offer a feeble theatre-going experience for an audience that desires fear.” He grinned. “But that’s where you come in, Nathan. I would not have to offer ten minutes of verbal buildup to convince customers that you are scary. You are the real thing. And you will save us all!”
Everybody in the room applauded.
Nathan looked around at all of the performers, their faces lit up with a sense of hope, except for those who were staring at him with resentment, which was about half of them. He didn’t know what to do. Could he really devote himself to a life of scaring people? Did spiders taste bad?
“I’m not sure I want to do this,” said Nathan.
“You’d be part of a family,” said Mongrel. “You’d never be alone again. Nobody would ever judge you for the way you look.”
“They’d be judging me all day! That’s the whole point of what you’re asking me to do!”
“Yes, but you need to understand, exploitation is the purest form of acceptance.”
“What?”
“Tell me, Nathan, does a mother love her child?”
“Yes.”
“And does she love her child more if he enables her to profit from his existence?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Of course she does, just as a wife feels the love in her heart for her husband bloom when he brings home a larger paycheck. And if you can save us from complete financial ruin, well, I think you’ll discover that you’ve never been so accepted in your life.”
“Will I get paid?” Nathan asked.
The bearded lady and alligator boy both shook their heads, just a little, not enough to be noticed by Mongrel.
“Naturally. Didn’t Kleft explain this to you?”
“He did, but then he seemed to take it back.”
“No, no, no, you will most definitely be paid for your services. Granted, there will be certain deductions for incurred expenses and service fees, but we would never even dream of not compensating you for your efforts.”
“How much?”
“It will be a fair wage.”
The meerkat-tongued woman and lobotomy patient shook their heads as well.
“I won’t do it for less than ten coins a week.”
“Ten coins? Are you drunk, insane, or both? Even I don’t earn that much, and if I did, I’d feel so guilty that I’d donate most of it to charity. I’ll give you a half-coin every two weeks.”
Nathan shook his head. “Eight coins every week.”
“A half-coin every two weeks, and I won’t smother you in your damn sleep with a crusty pillow.” Mongrel let out a cruel laugh. “Well, that charade of reasonable behavior on my part didn’t last long, did it? I usually do better than that.”
“Tell him about the oil,” said Kleft.
“Below the stage, I keep a vat of oil boiling at all times. When one of my prisoners—there, I said it—does not do as he or she is told, an extremity goes into the vat. Prisoners, hold up your affected extremities.”
Each of the prisoners held up three or four extremities, all of them burnt.
“It’s very inconvenient to keep a whole vat of oil boiling at all times,” said Mongrel. “It requires a great deal of wood and you have to check on it at least every forty-five minutes. That should indicate the depth of my passion for dunking parts of people into it. And don’t think that it’s just a quick dunk, in and out and you’re done. These dunks linger.”
Nathan wiped away the tear that trickled down his cheek. “Why is there such evil in the world?” he asked. “Everywhere I go, I find nothing but cruelty! Why is this so?”
“I don’t know,” Mongrel admitted. “But personally, I think it’s rather great.”
“Cruelty for all!” Kleft declared.
“Sadness and misery,” said Nathan. “I was born into a world that offers nothing but sadness and misery. Pain and sorrow. Heartbreak and agony.”
“Yes, indeed!” said Mongrel.
Nathan wallowed in self pity for a few seconds, but then decided, no, it wasn’t true. Penny and Mary had been nothing but kind to him. His parents had been somewhat ill-advised in their level of protection, but they’d always loved him. He had friends. Dogs were usually nice. He wasn’t going to let a reprehensible sadist like Mongrel taint his view of life on this planet. There was goodness in the world.
“I don’t care how heartless you are,” Nathan said. “I still love you.”
* * *
The boiling oil hurt even more than he’d expected.
* * *
“Don’t go thinking that your teeth are so special,” Mildred the bearded lady told him. “I could have fangs like that if I wanted, but I don’t.”
“Yeah,” said Gabriel the alligator boy. “If you came at me with them right now, do you know how scared I’d be? Barely.”
“Nobody’s going to pay to see you,” said Gondola and Horatio, simultaneously.
“If you’re to be our savior, then we must have required very little in the way of saving,” said Winston the Tattooed Man, whose tattoo of a star was mostly covered by his shirt sleeve. “Perhaps we were at ninety-six or ninety-seven percent saved already, and your contribution added the extra three or four percent, which I don’t have to tell you is a fairly unimpressive contribution.”
“None of this is my fault,” Nathan insisted. “I don’t want to be here. I’m a captive, just like the rest of you. I’m not getting any special treatment. You saw the way he put my arm in the oil. We should all be friends.”
“Friends?” asked Mildred. “With a freak like you? Surely you can’t be serious!”
“I am serious,” said Nathan. “But that’s beside the point. We should join forces. He doesn’t have enough boiling oil to stop all of us. I mean, he does, but he’d have to splash it all around. He couldn’t dunk everybody.”
“Do you think we haven’t tried to escape?” asked Mildred. “Rarely a week goes by when we don’t try to hatch some sort of scheme. And each time, as we bury one of our own, we agree that we shouldn’t have done it.”
Nathan was flustered. “Well, perhaps you could hatch a better scheme.”
“There’s no way out. The best thing you can do is put on as good of a show as possible. It’s not such a bad life, once you lower your expectations.”
“No,” said Nathan. “It can’t be true. I will escape tonight!”
* * *
The second dunking in the boiling oil hurt less, because many of the nerves in his left arm had been burnt away the first time. It still was not a pleasant experience.
* * *
“We’ve decided to call you The Human Shark,” Professor Mongrel announced, as Nathan struggled to get into his skin-tight costume. “What do you think?”
Nathan shrugged. “It’s better than Fangboy.”
“Fangboy? Why, that’s brilliant! I wish I’d thought of that myself instead of merely claiming credit for it in the future!”
“What if people think he’s a vampire?” asked Kleft.
“All the better! People are in favor of vampires these days. Fangboy it is! Finish putting on your suit.”
Nathan hated his costume. It was brown, with lots of fanged mouths sewn onto the fabric. (Not, it must be noted, actual mouths, but rather artistic representations of mouths. Though if Mongrel had come up with the idea and such a thing were practical, he very well may have tried it.) He straightened the sleeves and stood in front of Mongrel and Kleft, feeling awkward and self-conscious.
