Needles & Sins

by John Everson

  Her husband straddled him from behind and yanked both of his wrists together, holding them with a steel grip to the small of Talman’s back.

  This is it, a voice in the back of his mind said. You escaped from this kind of shit, found a nice girl, made a baby…and you had to come back for more.

  “Why did you do it?” Talman found himself asking, still staring at the quiet glaze of the dead woman’s eyes.

  “She didn’t know when to mind her own business either,” James Jenkins answered, pressing cold steel to the back of Talman’s neck. Suddenly the voice got closer, and hot, sour breath whispered in his ear.

  “I give the boy a little discipline and she can’t keep her trap shut. Boy needs discipline to be a man, you know. Or didn’t your father teach ya that?”

  Suddenly Talman was 10 years old again, and in his old bedroom, in the dark. He smelled stale cigarettes and beer, and felt the sting of leather crack across his rear end. His father had pulled his pants down and bent him over the mattress for a whuppin’.

  “You need discipline, Talman,” his father said, voice slurring ever so slightly. “I’ll teach ya.” The belt cracked down again, and Talman’s whole body screamed.

  “No more,” the older Talman whispered, a tear forming in his eye. It rolled to the carpet, slipping into the blood of a dead woman, and the fight seemed to leak out of him with the saltwater. His whole body relaxed, and he waited for the last stroke of the knife.

  “I’ll take care of you,” James Jenkins promised, still leaning in close. “And then I’ll teach the boy a thing or two about listening to his father.”

  “Leave him alone,” Jimmy yelled. The boy shoved his father, trying to dislodge him from Talman, but the man only laughed. With a backhanded slap, he pushed the boy away. Talman heard a thump as Jimmy lost his balance and hit the floor behind them.

  Talman felt the ghosts of cigarette butts burning his bare arms, and saw the purple of bruises on the face and back of poor Jimmy Jenkins.

  Are you going to just lie down and die?

  He let out a fierce scream and put all of his heart into flipping the bigger man off him. Twisting around, he caught James off balance, and punched the man in the jaw.

  “Ugh,” the older man gulped in surprise, and then his eyes lit with anger.

  “Shoulda let me do you easy,” James said, and belted Talman in the face with a fist that left the buzz of bees singing in his ears.

  But Talman didn’t slow. He’d always been fast and nimble, and now he twisted and shimmied his way loose from the knees of the other man, punching at him again, this time in the gut.

  James yelled in fury and raised the knife to plunge it into Talman’s chest. But just as its blade nicked the skin, Talman was sliding sideways. The blade slit his shirt, and caught with a thunk in the floor. As the other man wrestled it out of the wood beneath the carpet, Talman grabbed the haft with both hands, and wrested it away from the other man.

  “No ya don’t,” Jimmy’s father grinned, and backhanded the younger man with his free palm. But Talman didn’t let go. His grip held James’ hand to the knife, and they strained against each other in a deadly game of arm wrestling. Talman was quickly on the losing end.

  “Yes I do,” he whispered, and threw all his weight against the knife. He prayed it would be enough, because if it wasn’t, he would be lying on the floor beneath the blade again in a heartbeat, and this time, there wouldn’t be a reprieve.

  It was enough.

  The older man fell sideways at Talman’s attack, and before James could regain his balance, Talman screamed a whoop of fury and thrust both hands forward, still holding tight to the knife.

  “Ugh,” James said again, and this time, his surprise was terminal.

  A wash of white-hot heat burned Talman’s chest as the knife sunk deep into James Jenkins’ heart.

  The older man slumped backwards, falling to the floor next to his wife, holding the haft of the knife with both hands. He stared in surprise at the wooden stub for just a moment. And then he lay down, eyes blinking as he gasped for air.

  “Fucker,” he hissed.

  And was still.

  “Oh my god,” Talman murmured, staring at the blood quickly soaking James’ shirt. “What have I done?”

  He staggered to his feet, and stepped back from the bodies. All of a sudden, he could see the whole room at once, as if from the air. A brutally butchered woman. A murdered man clutching in death at the knife in his chest. A young, beat-up boy, cowering and crying in the corner, head between his knees. And his own hands, smeared with the blood of both of the dead. Talman started moving towards the door. “Shit, shit, shit,” he said aloud.

  For a split second, as he looked at Jimmy, he saw the father’s heavy, dark-haired hand balling into a fist and connecting hard with that small, freckled face. And then he just saw the boy, alone now, and scared, rocking back and forth.

  Talman took a deep breath, shivered, and moved back into the room, stepping carefully around the bodies to put his arm around the hysterical child.

  “Shhh,” he whispered in the boy’s ear. “You’re going to hyperventilate that way. C’mon, and let’s get out of here, okay?”

  The boy nodded, and Talman guided him out of the room and back to the toy-strewn bedroom.

  “I just wanted to watch cartoons,” Jimmy said finally. “Dad said no but mom said okay.”

  Talman nodded. It was always something simple. Something stupid. He’d lived through it himself. And escaped.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”

  The boy hugged him, then looked up, tears streaming down his face.

  “Can I go with you?”

  “I don’t know,” Talman said. “We need to find your grandma… or your aunt or uncle.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Don’t have a grandma. Or aunt. Don’t have anyone now.”

  That brought a fresh bout of tears, and Talman pulled the boy close.

  “Don’t worry,” he promised. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

  “Then you’ll take me with you?”

  Talman thought for a second. If he went to the police, the kid would end up in an orphanage, and he himself might end up behind bars. If Jimmy really didn’t have any other family…

  ««—»»

  Skyy grinned at him from behind the ticket booth.

  “’Bout time you got back,” she said. “You missed all your afternoon shows!”

  “I know,” Talman answered. “Couldn’t help it.”

  “And who’s this?” she asked, smiling at the pale, red-haired boy clenching Talman’s hand.

  “This is Jimmy,” Talman said. “He’s going to be staying with us awhile.”

  A frown crossed her brow, and Skyy looked at him suspiciously. “Talman, what did you do?”

  He ruffled a hand through Jimmy’s hair, and then patted it to her tummy. His heart instantly burned. But it felt good.

  …In the field behind the elephant’s pen, a toddler struggled to throw a baseball. He pushed the ball out into the air with his hands, but instead of flying across the field, the ball fell to the ground, just a couple feet away. An older boy with a thatch of sun-red hair reached down and picked it from the dirt. “How bout you try to catch instead?” the red-haired boy said, and the younger child grinned and held out his hands…

  “I think I just found our baby an older brother.”

  He knelt down next to the boy. “Welcome to the circus, Jimmy Jenkins.”

  A grin spread across the Jimmy’s face for the first time that day. Talman felt his own emptiness melt away as he spread his hand out towards the chaos of the big top, the animal trailers and the mobs of people laughing and talking and clutching stuffed animal prizes under their arms.

  “Welcome home.”

  — | — | —

  IRRELEPHANT IN ANATHZEBRA

  I shot the zebra right between the eyes. It didn’t die quickly. Its feet bucked, and the mouth shuddered
, shivering open and closed, open and closed as it fell. Didn’t make much sound though. It lay on the floor kicking for a minute or two, one drop of blood greasing the way across its white and black stripes for more. Soon there was a pool of it on the hay-strewn floor beneath the zebra’s head, and after a while its eyes stopped accusing me. All its life, I had brought it carrots and a pat on the head. Now, I made it hurt. And die. I had gone from its saint to its anathema. Anathzebra, I thought, in a crazed moment of foolish mindplay. My chest, which over the past weeks had grown strangely cold and numb, suddenly burned in scorching pain.

  Have you ever killed someone that you loved?

  It could drive you more than a little crazy, I thought.

  My eyes misted as I stared at that beautiful animal, resplendent and grand even in defeated death. Its stillness screamed injustice. I looked at the empty iron cages to the left of me and shrugged. The lions were performing right now, so I’d have to come back for them. Instead, I turned toward the chimpanzees. They screamed and threw themselves away from the cage door when I approached; they’d seen what I had done to Angla.

  In a minute, though, the animal tent was quiet.

  Quiet, but filled with the scents of metal and gunpowder. Blood and shit. The elements always win over the flesh.

  Slipping out the front flap of the tent, I confirmed that nobody was around to hear the sounds; barely anyone had come to opening night besides the circus performers, and they were all at the Big Top. Which was my next destination.

  Skyy watched the ringmaster announce the lion act with a rising surge of panic. You could count the audience by the handclaps. You could be blind and figure out attendance, but she had three eyes; so it was especially hard not to notice. Her stomach twisted and threatened to upchuck right there. She put a hand to her mouth and turned from the words she had heard ten thousand times.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please. These lions are some of the fiercest beasts to ever inhabit the earth. With one snap, those jaws can take off your arm or your leg, or…if someone was so foolish as to put it near them, your head. And that’s just what the lovely Ms. Katrina is about to do. Please be absolutely quiet now, as she lowers her head into the mouth of our lion king…”

  Skyy ran from the tent to her trailer. It was too much. The tears let go, and the summer night turned a blurry mess of black velvet sky and running reds and yellows. The circus was a maze of primary colored signs and tents, and they all turned to a viscous swirl as she ran. Somewhere, she heard the chimps screaming in irritation, but she couldn’t go check on them now. Her breath came in great hitching gasps, and she needed to lie down. She needed to let it out. She needed Talman to hold her.

  But he was working the ticket counter out front. The ticket booth that nobody was visiting. That nobody had visited in the last dozen towns.

  Skyy threw herself on the bed and cried. She and Talman had been running the Barnett & Staley Circus now on their own for a few years, but every season had brought fewer and fewer patrons. Every town brought her stronger premonitions of empty stands and starving performing animals. And Talman’s heart—which once found empathy in the visions of others’ hurts—had grown hard from the insistent defeat as each town brought fewer patrons. And even those that came seemed as if they came out of duty. Perfunctory. The circus seemed to have no place in today’s world.

  Ms. Katrina was amazing at what she did with the lions…but nobody cared enough to come see the act anymore.

  And ever since Yvette, the three-breasted woman had died, the circus had lost its top-drawing “naughty” freak show. Talman’s “illustrated man” act simply didn’t draw that many people anymore; what interest is there in an Illustrated Man when tattoos were all the rage these days among regular people? You could see guys and girls with more tatts than Talman had managed to accumulate on the pages of magazines in any bookstore…and sometimes just walking down any street. In a culture obsessed with body modification, he simply wasn’t that much of an oddity anymore. And as for Tonya, the smallest woman, and Yvette’s kids, Wen and Wong well… lots of people had met and seen dwarves. They just weren’t that unique.

  Media killed the circus star.

  Barnett & Staley’s had plenty of things you don’t see in the average subdivision of Beloit, Wisconsin or Loveland, Colorado. But the fact was, that didn’t matter anymore. You could see weirder things on 500 channels of cable than you would ever assemble in the circus, and with HD TV, you could actually see most of them better from the comfort of your couch than if you came, parked your car in a rutty field, paid your ticket price, bought your popcorn and sat on the bleachers behind some fool with B.O. and an unwieldy collick.

  Kids went to the mall and played sports and battled addictions to X-Box and Nintendo. They didn’t go to see lions and monkeys and musclemen and dwarf women at the circus. It was passé. Their fathers might have gone to see a three-breasted woman and dragged them along…but those days were gone. And Yvette’s always mutated children had never seemed to live long enough to take her place as a centerstage attraction that could have truly brought in some spectators for the freakshow.

  She’d had some doozies, that was for sure. Her daughter Yvonne still showed off her extra set of legs and arms… but…somehow, it wasn’t enough.

  And so Skyy and Talman had continued to take the circus from city to town to village, first following a long-travelled route, and then gradually moving to less traveled markets as the old venues found reasons not to have the circus come back.

  The towns, and the attendance shrank and shrank until now, she and Talman had had to dip into their savings to pay the performers after recent shows. And they didn’t have much themselves. It would only take another bad date or two to bankrupt both them and the circus.

  Skyy clutched her pillow and pressed it to her face, a swollen mask of heat and painful tears. She had grown up in this circus and had no other skills if the bigtop stopped putting down spikes and putting up marquees.

  She opened her lips against the wet pillowcase and let out a long, drawn out sob. Her cries drowned out the sounds of bullets just a few yards away.

  ««—»»

  Desperation is an insidious thing. You can live with it for a long time, and probably not call it desperation. You’ll say, “yeah, I’m kinda down today,” or “it’ll get better” when someone asks you how you are. You’ll tell yourself for a long time that the blackness that gnaws at your neck and threatens to engulf every word you try to utter before it can get out is just a phantasm. Ephemeric pathos. You’ll drink a lot, and think a lot. You’ll consider how long it might really take for the blood to leave your body if you draw a sharp object across your wrists. You might consult physics texts and arithmetic to arrive at a formula to determine how long it will actually take your heart to bleed your body dry with open veins. And when that seems a pointlessly extended option, you’ll consider the odds of surviving should you somehow manage to find yourself standing in the path of an oncoming train. Is a 5% chance of survival as a quadriplegic worth the risk?

  Throwing out these uncertainties as foolishness, you’ll instead concentrate on first making your surroundings better…and then you’ll convince yourself in resignation that the world you inhabit is certainly better by far than that of many and you have no right, no fuckin’ right to complain.

  And then you’ll drink again.

  Mind you…the world did not change. It stayed the same as it ever was. But somewhere along the line, you came face to face, not with a bit of “oh bummer” depression. You came face to face with desperation.

  And it haunted you because you refused to acknowledge it head-on.

  But when you did, you didn’t take the pussy-boy way out. You didn’t finally drag the blade or stand in front of the iron horse for release. You decided to change your world. You were going to get out…but still stay. And you bought a gun.

  Okay, maybe you didn’t. But I did.

  Because I knew in my heart tha
t the circus was dying. I could feel its horrible gasping breaths struggling for intake and release every day. But I was a merciful guy. As much as it was going to hurt me, I knew what I had to do. I had to put it out of its misery. Euthanasia.

  The zebra was only the first in a long line of mercy killings on my agenda tonight. Biting back the tears, I started towards the elephant tent. I could almost feel the fuzzy hide of Emily slipping between my fingers from the last time I’d given her baggy neck a hug.

  ««—»»

  Jimmy slipped out of the trailer with his stepbrother when he heard Skyy crying. The baby opened a fist and pointed at the moon as Jimmy stepped onto the dark path that led to the midway. Something popped and popped again in the distance, and Carl jumped.

  “Shhh,” Jimmy soothed the child, stroking the wispy dark down on its head. “We’ll go see the lions. You know you like lions.”

  The baby made a roaring sound at the word “lion” and grinned, showing all four of its teeth.

  “That’a boy,” Jimmy said, and moved faster down the path. The night was quiet, but for the occasional cheers from the Big Top. Quiet and cool. He shivered at the goosebumps that rippled up his arms, and hugged the baby closer, enjoying its burning warmth, and sweet baby smell.

  In answer, the child wrapped a chubby arm around his neck and pulled at a lock of the hair by his ear.

  “Luv ya, buddy,” Jimmy whispered and slipped into the Big Top from the side. He carried the baby up the rows of weathered wooden planks, and sat high in the tent, away from the paying customers.

  Above the center ring, Reind walked the tightrope, his mouth a tense line of pink concentration, as sweat beaded in glinting lights on his forehead. The small crowd drew in a breath as one and exhaled, as the performer wavered on a step, threatening dramatically to fall to the nets below, but then recovered his equilibrium.