Strategies Against Nature

by Cody Goodfellow

  Everywhere the fleas leapt, they served as pixels in an animated pointillist panorama like a nocturnal sequel to Seurat’s fussy French beach scene, where the models run wild to release the pressure of posing for those millions of dots. Parades of acrobats, clowns and spangled, gyrating dancers cavorted down the midway, steering rootless rubes into games of skill and chance, the burlesque or boxing tents, or the boisterous brawl in the beer garden.

  Lena moved closer to the table, leaning into the purple light to see more.

  Through the yawning mouth of the big top, lions reared and roared petulantly at a doughty, whip-cracking tamer in the center ring, but bowed to him and leapt through a flaming ring, only to emerge as skinned, roasted lambs. In the flanking rings, twenty acrobats formed an inverted pyramid on a bicycling strongman’s back, while a laughing vixen clad only in flowing Godiva locks stood on the backs of two charging stallions as they executed elegant waltzing steps to the band’s mute rendition of The Blue Danube.

  High overhead, lithe little firefly acrobats twirled and somersaulted in space to catch the tiny swinging trapeze in a flying human chain, inspiring the crowds in the bleachers to boil over like popcorn.

  A comical thief in motley stole the ringmaster’s hat, and the Keystone Kops gave chase in a darling toy paddy wagon. When they cornered the thief in a cage of upright elephants, the black sandstorm of dots that poured out described an uproarious stampede of uniformed clowns—all assholes and elbows, huge floppy shoes and clobbering clubs, honking red noses and greasepaint grimaces—as they tripped and sprawled in a tangled ball back into the yawning doors of the paddy wagon, arresting themselves.

  Her eyes burned, but she only noticed when her tears blurred the circus. She had not blinked in a long time. She looked and looked, but there was always so much more. . .

  On the sideshow stage, the bearded lady let a doubting Thomas give her whiskers a tug, while the India Rubber Man curled up like an abused pillbug and tucked himself into a hatbox, bringing stiff catcalls and shrieks of outraged decency from the crowd. The barker—a shrewd-faced little man in tux and tails who could’ve played her grandfather in the movie of his life—promised more shocking sights inside the enclosed tent, and the fluttering phantom faces of the crowds streaming out bore mute witness to something within that had utterly shattered their minds.

  Of course, Lena knew she wasn’t seeing any of this, not really. She was sucking fumes, or going loopy from something Morrie had slipped in her drink. Bless his heart, almost sixty and still couldn’t admit he was gay—but they’d both had martinis, so maybe he’d botched drugging himself.

  Her rambling fancy clamped up and voiced the silent crowd’s long oh of anticipation as the next act appeared. A miniature cannon rolled out into the center ring, and with a puff of oily smoke, it fired a stiff-necked daredevil out through an open flap in the big top roof, and on into the heart of the purple sun. The hordes on the midway went silently wild.

  She was losing her mind. She had to get away from here, but it slowly dawned on her, with each new phantasm the flea circus unfolded, that she could not look away to save her life.

  She could not even blink.

  Joe Sudweeks did not ever, and never would, partake of illicit mind-altering substances. Drugs were for losers. Incidental ingestion of unorthodox mixtures of pesticides in his years as a Rat Patrol commando had educated him thoroughly, on the kinds of tricks the mind could play on you.

  Like now, for instance. The weird light made him see those jittery black spots, and maybe it was the power of suggestion, but they seemed to do that trick where they made a face just as he started to look away. For a split-second, it looked so real, he reached out to touch it.

  “Stay clear, you fool!” The old professor thrust out a cane with a tripod of rubber stoppers on it, but dropped it. He hacked up something wet into his gas mask, in no shape to order anybody not to do anything, but he whipped the mask off and fixed a baleful, bloodshot glare on Joe. His eyes were soft-boiled and runny with red drainage. He had no eyelids.

  “The wee beasties want you to touch them, but you mustn’t, do you understand? They’re starving refugees, with barely a toehold in our space. I can’t seem to send them back without destroying them. . . the mirror only lets them out. . .” He pointed at a tall, narrow black shape propped against the wall behind Joe. It looked like a matte-black canvas, but kicking it over proved it was a pane of glass.

  “I’ve made some progress communicating with them, but they are ravening shadows. . . not to be trusted. . .”

  Joe shuffled in a steady Jovian orbit around the globe until he stood behind the recliner. He didn’t want to look at that waxy white face, which was the twin of the face the dancing black dots kept flashing at him.

  He tried not to look at the pile of dead people, but he almost tripped over them. Safe to say they weren’t just napping like that. The two fussily groomed old men in twin corduroy jackets and the old woman in the plaid nightgown looked familiar from the pictures in the other apartments, but the guy on the bottom wore a Rat Patrol uniform. He had Tim Bananas’s legendary nose, but not his eyes. In fact, none of them had eyes. Just black, bloodless holes where tiny motes of glistering light like flakes of television snow, stray motes of dancing blackness succumbing to the pull of the light came buzzing out of their nests in the dead people’s heads.

  Now, the picture expanded, the flickering images fighting their way through static to show the old man in his chair, and Joe behind him, waving the limestone bookend, Hi Joe!

  The pictures came furiously now, a new one every time he blinked. Wealth, women, fame, revenge on those Rat Patrol cocksuckers. All of his secret dreams came true at once in the light, came to life and eyeballed him from the shadowy blueprints of his future. . . if he wanted it bad enough to take it.

  “They’re made of nothing, but they’re quick like anything, Joe Sudweeks. . . yes, they told me your name. . . They are so endlessly entertaining, but I fear. . . oh no, you mustn’t. . .” The professor’s voice trailed off as he stared into the mad solar system he’d created. Joe took comfort in knowing that the professor must have seen it, too. It meant he wasn’t losing his mind, after all, and all the other stuff was true, too, or would be, when he did what the image of Joe Sudweeks had done.

  Joe bent over and felt around for a while before he found it. The professor shrieked and jabbed him with his cane, but didn’t thwart him. He was just a pest. Nothing could stop Joe from pulling the lamp’s big weird wall-wart plug out of the socket, and nothing did.

  In the perfect void that followed and swallowed them, Joe could not see the black dots, but he could hear the sound of them cleaving the air into whispered promises.

  And then he felt them.

  She had no idea how long she had stared at the circus. She might have stared at it forever, feeling jostled and jeered by the fun-mad crowd, hearing the hysterical laughter, the lion’s roar and elephant’s trumpet, and the madcap calliope that almost coaxed a swaying jig out of club-footed Lena Spielbaum, if things had not begun to turn sour.

  Drunks grappled and brawled on the midway. Wildly swinging, synchronized fists spread out in waves. Inflammable splashes of grain alcohol ignited in cigar-chomping men’s faces like napalm, but only made them fight harder. Virtuous women bawled prayers to shame rapists, only to stab hapless passersby in the throat with hatpins and knitting needles.

  Under the big top, the skinned lambs turned on the lion tamer and devoured him to regain their true natures. Grown huge with hunger, all yawning jaws and scimitar claws, they plunged into the audience. Parents tripped their children or hurled them over their shoulders into the mouths of the monsters at their heels to make good their own escape.

  Lady Godiva’s hair was shredded and ripped away by the plague of snapping, snarling mouths like burst ulcers in great swathes across her breasts, belly, thighs and crotch. Her panicked horses reared and charged into the crowd. A gang of drunken hayseeds mad with lust pounced
on her and dragged her down from her mounts. In seconds, she ate them all.

  The boxing and burlesque tents seemed to have gotten their smoke signals crossed. Bloodied, black-eyed men staggered out of the latter with their teeth strung like pearls on red thread down their starched white shirtfronts. Buxom harpies in corsets and fishnet stockings harried the stragglers and lopped off their wilting manhoods with straight razors, while burly, mustachioed pugilists vamped and gyrated as they stalked sobbing spectators out into the brewing riot, tackling and sodomizing puny men and boys until the crowd blindly trampled them all to mush.

  The sideshow went on as usual, but the barker who looked so much like Isidore Spielbaum felt it necessary to wield a torch and bullwhip to manage the blow off parade. A myriad of pathetic defectives stumbled across the stage on slippers, flippers, wooden pegs and dainty baby feet that split and wept pus under the elephantine tread of the seven hundred pound woman. The barker demonstrated her wondrous insensitivity to pain by playing the torch over the galloping fat of her buttocks. Her obtuse ballerina costume caught fire. Simmering pockets of fat popped and gushed scalding cooking oil, but she shambled on, gnawing on the bones of an organ grinder’s monkey.

  Twin giggling pinheads locked arms at the end of the thrust runway and executed a crazy, spastic little ballet maneuver that reminded Lena of Duni and Suri. . . such lovely children, and with the money they earned from TV, they got separated by a visionary surgeon in Brazil, and both died. Funny. . .

  As the pinheads danced around the oblivious freaks, they hoisted their plain burlap skirts up to their hips to let the incomplete Siamese twins sprouting from their nether parts embrace and kiss.

  The horrified menfolk put the pinheads to the torch, but there were damned few among them, it seemed, who could resist dropping their overalls and sticking their grimy, uncircumcised pricks in the pirouetting freaks as they burned to death.

  Stop, please, she begged silently. Her tongue was a mummified mouse in her dusty mouth. Stop, you’re ruining it. . . The magic was there, it was real and good, I saw it. . . but if it’s a hallucination, then I’m doing it, but I’m not, am I? Am I? Is . . . any of . . . that

  . . . coming from me?

  Lena’s hand had stirred some time ago, reaching out over the little world on the folding card table, aiming to satisfy its own innocent curiosity about the solidity of the ghostly circus, but it hung in the empty purple space before her like a derelict satellite. Now, she only wanted it to stop. Her other hand rushed to her mouth hold back a gusher of vodka-laced vomit. “Turn it off!” she cried. “Please. . .”

  When her hand reached into the light, the geek seized it in his and twisted it just enough to make her cry out.

  “Let go of me!” she screamed, but he did not. She screamed again, quite beyond words, this time, as his sleeve rode up to reveal the inside of his forearm.

  The flea circus disbanded in a flurry of soot and returned to restlessly circling the purple globe.

  “Do you like them?” he asked.

  She tried to bite back the scream and just nod. If she didn’t let on that she saw them, maybe he would let her go, and they could talk business. But something in the nasty mockery of a grin the geek gave her said it didn’t matter. “They like you, too.”

  “I think,” Lena began, as she grabbed for her solid gold bullshit bag, “that your act. . . with some polish. . . cosmetic, presentation stuff, mind you. . . has a lot of potential for the county and state fair circuits, casinos. . . family resorts like Branson or Wisconsin Dells. . . and maybe even theme parks. . . after we. . . understand a little better. . . how safe this is. . . and if I could please. . . have my hand. . . ?”

  “We want to go on television.” He twisted her arm harder, bending her over, while his other hand reached under the table.

  The controls that fired up the light were under the table. If he turned it off, she doubted the black dots would just drown in the dark. Without the purple light, they would be free to frolic and find a host, and Mr. Sudweeks (how did she know his name?) already looked dangerously overbooked.

  She didn’t want to, but she forced herself to look at him again. It made her sick and so scared she couldn’t breathe, but it had to be seen and accepted, or it would happen to her.

  There were holes in his arm. Ace bandages covered a few of them, but the condition had spread out of control. Some holes were the size of a cigarette burn, while one in the crook of his elbow almost bisected his meaty gray forearm. And in every hole, there were fleas.

  These ones were bigger. From mere motes of hungry nothing, they had swelled to range from cockroach to horseshoe crab in scale, and the way they were embedded in his flesh suggested much more to them that, mercifully, she couldn’t see. And yet their chitinous black exoskeletons reflected the light poorly, or her eyes compiled it badly. The shapes were insectoid, but the details never came clear, as if the light, or her eyes, or matter itself, didn’t know what to make of them.

  They fed on something much more fundamental than blood. The very matter, molecules, atoms and such. The edges of the wounds they made were oily but dry, like rancid prosciutto, the flesh crumbling away around the seething pits where they shuddered against each other, hungry little engines, busily converting him into them.

  They came into this world through a mirror, which became a door when it reflected the unholy purple light. Any old mirror would probably do, so long as that fucking light hit it just right.

  And they wanted to go on television.

  For just a second, she pictured the flea circus beamed into a few million households as one of David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks. When that light spewed out into the bedrooms, bars and dorms of America, would every mirror in sight of the poisoned cathode glow turn black and spit hungry fleas, or would the screen itself be a good enough mirror to vomit clouds of all-dancing, all-devouring nothingness out of every hi-def mouth of the media monstrosity?

  Lena twisted in his grip, but he jerked her hand into the corona of the globe, into the mad dance of the fleas. She felt a prickling like sleep needles and pins in her hand.

  With her other hand, Lena batted at Sudweeks’ head, dug in with her well-manicured nails. The bad haircut flopped back like a toilet lid. Underneath, his skull was a convertible with the top down, and filled to the brim with the largest fleas yet.

  They quivered and chirped in alarm like anything you’d startle by overturning a rock or a trash can, but the same crackling undertow of sheer will that tamed and tortured the circus radiated from them, now. They could make her dance and drink and burn until she was all gone. In the end, she would beg them to eat her.

  Joe Sudweeks’ shades slid down his nose and fell on the table. His eyes were portholes looking out of the cramped quarters of his skull. Thickets of jointed feelers fumbled out of the dry sockets and tasted the air.

  Sudweeks himself made no move to rise from the bed, but the dancing motes of the flea circus broke out of their beguiling electron orbits and became an angry, chaotic cloud, a dagger, aimed at her.

  Jumping back and almost toppling off her chunky heels, Lena raced to the far corner of the room, hoping only to get as far from the flea circus as she could. When she bounced off the far wall, her hand caught a sheet nailed to the wall over the window, stretched tight as a drum. She wrapped her fist in it in a deathgrip and dropped to her knees. The sheet and curtains ripped and fell over her.

  The light that streamed in was weaker than motel room coffee, and it was purple. She looked outside and shrieked at the sight of the livid bruise-hued sun hanging over the horizon, swarmed with monstrous cosmic fleas. . .

  She rubbed her eyes, but the afterglow of the purple globe still corroded her vision. The sun peeked over the jumbled sand dune horizon. The trucks crawled by on the highway like submarines in molasses, but as she stared, chewing strips of dry, flaking flesh from her lips with gritted teeth, they gradually thawed out and became fleeting red-shift blurs of a world unaware.
<
br />   The geek slouched on the bed. His manager stood in almost comical boxer’s crouch, just beyond the border of the pool of dishwater sunlight. Her hand tingled.

  “You clowns want to make it in showbiz? Okay. . . I’m here to help. Good news is, you have a new twist on a classic act. Marquee quality, but VIP room only. No big venue crowds will sit still for this, and the audience. . . correct me if I’m wrong

  . . . changes the show. You can’t turn this act loose on the main stage at Caesar’s, but I can get you plugged into the high roller cabaret circuit. It pays better, you cut your own schedule, and the patrons tip like Larry Flynt the day his dick starts working. You need real management, no offense. I don’t do this for just any act. . . but I’ll take you on.”

  “We want—”

  “No television!” Lena saw she had them cowed, but it almost made her feel bad. The manager still looked like a mannequin from a gorilla-suit store, but his partner, the ringmaster, was something else again.

  The sick smile on the eyeless geek’s face told her she wasn’t just talking to the fleas. His rubbery mouth twisted into that same thoughtful, serious professional look every dolt slapped on, when you pitched him a deal, but kept cracking into an insane, gleeful grin.

  Though they’d hollowed out his brain like termites in balsa wood, some residual bit of the dumb, insecticide-huffing kid still dreamed of being a bigshot, still kidded himself he was the star. Maybe he let them into his head, to control and manipulate the circus fleas. Maybe someday, everyone would want one.

  “We will—”

  “You’ll do as you’re told, if you want to work in this business. What you’ve got. . . it’s special. Unique. You want to flood the market with copycats, fine, but what’s your hurry? You’ll get what you want, eventually. Everybody does.”

  She saw them buckle and accept the yoke, but she still had to demonstrate that she was not to be fucked with.