“You’re going to have to improvise,” Sligo said. “Just watch what he does and create some drama. Try turning up the music now, so I can hear what it sounds like.”
Through all this Kithara was standing in the cage in his glittery red costume with one hip cocked, arms folded, shooting us all a look of scorn.
Sligo turned to him. “If you’re a good boy tonight, you’ll get a reward, an actual bed to sleep in. Maybe a shower.”
“And if I’m not?” Kithara asked.
“Cattle prod. Up the ass this time,” Sligo said. He leered.
“Do you know if I even have an asshole?” Kithara said. He raked his teeth across his bottom lip in a way that was just completely sexy.
“Shut up,” Sligo said. “Jareth! Hey, quit staring and come up here.” He beckoned. “I want you to put the cuffs on him.” I climbed up on the stage, noticing that they’d locked the chains around some steel loops in the stage floor.
“What’s this for?”
“Audience can’t see him so well in there behind the bars. With this he can come out as far as the edge of the stage.” He turned to Kithara. “Now then, boy, I’m standing here with the prod, so don’t try anything.”
“As if I could get far if I made a run for it,” Kithara scoffed. He held out his wrists. “Go ahead, slap them on, Jareth. I’m finding this rather kinky.”
Sligo unlocked the cage door and I went in with the cuffs, which I fastened around his wrists. Standing so close to him was actually causing me to feel feverish. “I’m sorry about this,” I mumbled.
“It’s not so bad, Jareth,” Kithara said. “We do what we must to survive.”
We worked like fiends to get set up. I was wondering the whole time what on earth Kithara was going to do. It looked like I was going to find out this time because Dr. Sligo told me to stay to create the fog, which meant I got out of my own little show. That suited me right down to the ground. I kept my mask on and hung out in the curtain at the side of the stage, ready with a bucket of boiling water, the chest of dry ice, and a blow dryer. It was twenty past midnight when we were finally ready. I could hear the crowd outside: buzzing, restless.
“Consider this a rehearsal,” Sligo told us. “Bring down the lights, Ricky. Mood music on low. Let them in.”
We had a full house. Dr. Sligo got up on the stage and made an impressive speech. He told about the rumours of strange mutant beings that had arisen in a city ghetto east of here and were now secretly spreading out across the country. I poured some of the hot water on the dry ice and blew the fog out across the stage as Sligo described a horrific scene of a boy lost in a back alley coming across a gang of mutants who attacked him, ripping off his clothes and raping him. He writhed in the way the boy might have done and described the smoking ruin of his body graphically enough to make me shudder. “Now, we have captured one of these creatures, a mutant hermaphroditic being. Soon you’ll see the truth for yourselves. Here it is – a creature from your darkest, sexiest nightmares!”
The spot hit the cage. Music swelled, an exotic Eastern sound with softly pounding drums and clacking finger symbols. I conjured some more fog. Kithara moved in the cage, weaving back and forth for several beats. Then he pushed open the door, emerged onto the stage, and began to dance. When he moved, you had to watch, whether you wanted to or not. It was as if he had invented the word seductive. He had unbraided his hair, so that it flowed about his body like a rippling cloak. Arms swirling as if gathering air, he stalked towards us, red scarves trailing from his hands. Murmuring, the crowd recoiled. Kithara laughed, throwing his head back and whirling about. He bent backwards and walked over his hands. I had no idea he was that flexible. The chains dragged and clattered along behind him, but he incorporated them into the dance, pulling them around his body, beating them on the floor in syncopation with the drums and running them across his mouth.
He slowly pulled off his halter top and let it fall, so that he was bare-chested, the effect of that disrobing so much sexier than if he’d started out that way. He removed the sheer, glittery veil from around his hips and used it as a banner, swirling it about, holding it spread in front of himself and dancing behind it, then pulling it through his legs like the most wanton stripper. He came right to the edge of the stage, threw himself onto his belly, reaching out towards the audience, beckoning, playing to both men and women. It was almost as if he was calling out to us, touching our deepest desires. He invited a young couple up on stage with him, a guy wearing a baseball cap and a woman with long blonde hair, and danced around them, caressing them both with light teasing touches. He was mesmerizing. I was hard as a rock and had visions of grabbing him, bending him over, and ravishing him. Faces in the audience looked fascinated, shocked, desirous. All eyes were riveted on him and I realized we had a star on our hands.
Dr. Sligo came up next to me, chuckling with glee. “He’s a natural. He just needed a little prod, that’s all.”
“No pun intended,” I said dryly and he laughed some more.
When it was over and we’d chased out all the people, Kithara collapsed into a heap on stage.
“Where did you learn to dance like that?” I asked, like some mooning fan boy.
“Some time I’ll tell you,” he said. “Right now, I’m starving and exhausted. Sligo better make good on his promise.”
Dr. Sligo practically oozed delight. He said, “You’ll find that I reward good behaviour and punish bad. You have pleased me, Mutant.”
“His name is Kithara,” I said.
Sligo laughed. “I see you’re working your magic on our burned boy. Watch out, Jareth, or you’ll end up fried inside as well as out.”
I glared at Sligo, but his attention was on Kithara. Narrowing his eyes in menace, Sligo said, “Well, then Kithara, I’ll have Pavel escort you to a trailer where you can get something to eat, shower, and sleep in an actual bed. The place will be guarded by large men with even larger guns. Just so you know.”
“You’re such a humanitarian,” Kithara said.
That night I tried to sleep in my stifling trailer, lying naked on my bed, tossing and turning. Feverish. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see him, dancing on that stage like he owned the world. Maybe he did. I took care of myself numerous times, but couldn’t be sated. He replaced all the dream boys I carried in my head; the only lovers I had ever known or would know. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer and got up, intending to smoke myself into a stupor. Took out the pipe, tamped a little black chunk of choi in the bowl and hit it. Lay back for the rush. The sweet, pungent smell drifted around me, taking away the pain.
Outside I heard the purr of Esmeralda’s motorcycle, back from her nocturnal prowling. It stopped. The door creaked open. I put on some shorts, wandered into the kitchen area where she was fixing herself a drink.
“Oh hi, Jareth honey,” she said. “What are you doing up?”
“Can’t sleep,” I mumbled. The curtains were undulating in a light breeze. Looked like dancing fire, prismatic colours, spiralling out of control.
“Well, I gotta tell you, the whole town’s abuzz about your mutant friend,” she said. With a sigh, she dropped down on the sagging couch and put her feet up on a stool. “Leastwise, folks in the bar were talkin’ about him.”
I sat down in an armchair across from her. The early morning air felt good because I was sweating like a pig. “What are they saying?” The words came out of my mouth, elongated, my lips moving slowly, as if I was under water.
“They’re saying that he or she or whatever it is, is hot. Very, very hot. There were lots of arguments about whether it’s a man or a woman or if it’s really a mutant, like Sligo says.”
I laughed. “Who knows. He’s a freak, like us. Freakin’ fuckin’ freak.”
She pursed her lips, leaning forward to look at me. “Are you all right, honey?”
“Fine, fine, I’m just fine,” I said.
“Well, there were some of ‘em talking smack about him. Said he made the
m feel dirty, that he was a homosexual abomination. One woman claimed he was a devil, said the Lord was going to punish anyone who went to see him.”
“I don’t know what he is,” I said dreamily. “Devil or angel, I want to hate him, I really do. But Ez, you should see him dance.”
Lying back, I felt the room tilt gently, whirling. Carousel music. Wooden horses with red, screaming mouths and flying manes, moving up and down. The paint on their long faces crackled and peeled back. I slipped into blessed oblivion.
Several days later, they began to picket us. A bunch of locals stood along the roadway outside the fairgrounds holding big signs and shouting that we were going to hell and that the circus housed abominations. Yep, that’s me, an abomination. The local news scrambled out there with mikes and cameras. They interviewed Sligo, who appeared without his make-up, wearing regular clothes. In that disguise, he looked just like a decent human being, talking about how he was a businessman with a right to make a living. No laws being broken. No lewd acts. No minors admitted to the show and so on. He refused to let them interview Kithara but allowed them to film a portion of his dance. “Free publicity,” he said to me with a pleased chuckle. The lines to see Kithara grew longer.
Meanwhile, I walked around in some kind of poppy-coloured haze. Sligo took me off other duties, had me work on Kithara’s show. He said Kithara had requested me, which made my insides flutter like a drunken butterfly. We improved the lighting, staging, costumes, make-up, and props, and Kithara continued to knock ‘em dead. His hands had healed remarkably fast with no trace of the burn. I stood behind the curtains and drank in his every move. I wanted to be like him. No, I wanted to be him, beautiful as a god on both sides of my body, an object of lust and worship, a shining Wraeththu angel able to rise above my sordid existence.
Sligo had given Kithara his own trailer, which just showed how tickled he was but he never allowed Kithara to go anywhere without an armed guard, both for his protection and to prevent him from escaping. Sligo carried that cattle prod around with him like a cane and occasionally popped Kithara with it, just to show him who was boss.
More people came to see his show. Both men and women danced along with him in their seats, watched him in fascination, writhed in frustrated lust.
The picketers outside the circus grew more numerous.
Six days into this madness, Esmeralda came home early. “I don’t like the way it feels in town,” she said. “There’s some local preacher man who’s got people all riled up. He’s been holding rallies, telling everyone that we’re harbouring a demon here. He said our mutant influenced his son to commit sodomy. All kinds of people have testified that they can’t get images of our freak out of their heads and it’s making them do lewd things.” She laughed. “As if people need an excuse for that. I guess I’ve missed out. Haven’t seen his show yet. Is he really that good?”
“He’s something else,” I said. “It’s more than how he acts or what he does, although his dancing is incredible. It’s something he projects. Glamour, that’s what Sligo called it. Maybe he’s a witch.”
“Uh huh, well, if you ask me, Jareth honey, I think Sligo’s playing with fire here. I ain’t too religious, but I do believe in the Devil, and your boy over there, could be he is a demon of some kind. Have you thought of that? I mean, where did these mutants come from?”
That stopped me. It was a good question. Why would they appear like that, out of nowhere? Was Kithara just a freak of nature, or was there something more to it? How many other Wraeththu were there? Were we really in danger from his kind, as he said? Then again, maybe it was all just a big story. Maybe he wasn’t really a hermaphrodite, just an effeminate boy who was fooling us all and having a big laugh behind our backs. I realized that I’d been avoiding the hard questions because I wanted to stay glamorised. Anger reasserted itself and crawled around in my belly. I vowed, if he was playing us, playing me, that I’d break his pretty neck.
That night after his show, I went up to him with clenched fists, told him I wanted to talk. He nodded, invited me to eat dinner with him in his trailer. I was foolish enough to be pleased.
Kithara cooked an omelette for me. I was surprised he could cook. When I ventured to tell him that, he laughed. “We’re not monsters, Jareth, eating raw flesh or dead things out of garbage cans. Besides, I was human once and my mom taught me to cook.” He took a spatula and cut the omelette in two, sliding each half onto a paper plate. Then he poured more Merlot into two plastic cups. We’d already consumed a bottle and I was feeling pretty good. It didn’t seem to have affected him much. He was wearing his black leather pants and nothing else; his eyes were smudged with black liner from the show, which made them look even larger, bluer, and more exotic than normal. He sat down in a rickety chair, pulled the plate towards him, and dumped an impressive amount of hot sauce onto it. Covertly, I watched him, watched the muscles in his arms bunch and shift under those flaming tattoos. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to eat him up.
“I don’t think you’re a monster,” I said.
“Don’t you? When we first met, you wanted to spit on me.”
“Worse. I wanted to kill you. But now I’m confused. I don’t know what you are. Maybe you’re an angel or a demon or maybe you’re just a human boy who’s pulling one big scam on us all.”
“Mmm,” he said around a mouthful. “What do your senses tell you about me?”
“I told you, it’s confusing.” The omelette was good. I tapped a little of the hot sauce onto it.
“That’s the trouble with you. You don’t trust your gifts. And you are gifted, Jareth. I can tell.”
He had a way of getting to me, worming past my defences. It made me wary. “You’re just flattering me.”
“Now why would I do that?”
“Maybe because you have designs on my body,” I said jokingly and was immediately horrified that I’d said that.
He slanted an eye at me. “Is that such an absurd idea?”
I could feel the good side of my face flaming. “Why would you make love to a freak like me?” I snarled, which only made it worse.
He cocked his head. “I thought we were both freaks, each in our own way. I find you interesting, Jareth. I want to learn more about you.”
“I told you all you needed to know when we first met.”
“I know you think the burn defines you, but it does not. There is more to be learned, I’m thinking. You express yourself elegantly sometimes, you know, better than most of the people around here. Where did you learn about Janus, the Roman god?”
“Oh, uh, after I got burned and the Ramseys adopted me, well, I didn’t like trying to be with other kids so much. Too painful. Most of them ran away or taunted me. So I stayed inside by myself and watched movies and read books, everything I could get my hands on. I loved all the stories about the ancient Greek and Roman gods and heroes. I read a lot of those and fantasy and well, other stuff,” I ended lamely.
“I did too,” he said softly. “Maybe we aren’t as dissimilar as it might appear.”
Suddenly I had the bad feeling that he was just flattering me for some nefarious reason of his own. “What do you want, Kithara? What are you doing here, in this circus?”
He shrugged. “I thought it was obvious what I’m doing. Trying to survive.”
“I know you hate it. Do you have a plan for getting out of here?”
“Do you?”
“Damn it!” I slammed a hand down on the table. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I presume you have, um, people, others you can go back to.”
He took a sip of wine. “How do you know this isn’t just part of the master plan?”
“Was getting zapped by a cattle prod part of the plan? Because if so, you’re a lot kinkier than I thought.”
He smiled and I felt my mouth relax into an answering smile, which I quickly suppressed.
“You have no idea what kinky is,” he said. He raised his cup towards me.
“Are you going to talk
to me or just say vague and irritating things while you sit there all beautiful and mysterious?” I growled.
“Okay, Jareth, what do you want to know?”
“Everything. Tell me how you got here. Tell me about the Wraeththu.”
“You want my story, then? I thought you’d already made up your mind to hate me. Why would explanations make any difference?”
“I want to understand,” I said. I didn’t tell him that I didn’t hate him anymore, couldn’t hate him.
He leaned forward, his eyes glittering. “Understanding is a sword that cuts both ways. How far are you willing to go to understand? To be pushed out of your comfort zone into a wider reality?”
“What?”
“Because you might not be the same again, once you know some truths.”
“I’ll take the risk,” I said.
“At some point, I’ll remind you that you said that,” he replied. “More wine?”
“You’re just trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me,” I said.
He chuckled. “As tempted as I am to, as you say, take advantage of you, I can’t. You would not survive the experience.”
Despite the danger he presented, I was absurdly pleased. “Then, is the story true that Sligo tells when he introduces your act?”
“It is.”
“How does he know about it?”
He sighed and got up. “Are you done? I’ll take your plate.” He dumped the plates in the trash, picked up the bottle of wine and his cup and moved to the mattress that served as a bed, which, along with the table and two chairs, constituted the only furniture in the place. He patted the pillow beside him. “Persistence should be rewarded. Come sit and I’ll tell you.”
I kicked off my tennis shoes, picked up the pillow, put it behind my back, and leaned up against the wall, keeping my good side facing him and sweeping my hair forward to cover my burn. He was seated about a foot away, lolling back against a pillow. I felt a heightened awareness of where his body was in relation to mine. We were actually on a bed together. It was more intoxicating than the wine.
Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu Page 11
