Manik

by Amo Jones

  Ae tosses my jacket to me and I flick my long hair out from under it. “Nah, it’s not what you think. We go almost every year when they come. It’s not actually a circus, and it is definitely not for children.”

  I button up my long coat before putting my coconut lip balm on my lips. I rub them together. “And Kat didn’t want to come this year—why?” I ask, tilting my head and trying to ignore how sexy he looks in his dark blue Henley and dark jeans. Everything is dark except his polished white high top sneakers.

  He tucks the black bandana into his back pocket, the same one I’ve seen him wear almost every time we’ve been somewhere. It’s always on him, or around him, or somewhere close to him. It’s only really now that I’ve noticed its presence.

  He shakes his head, walking toward me and pulling me under his arm as he leads us out his door and down the hallway. “She’s occupied, babe. Why? You can’t go one night without your other half?”

  I flush because he’s right. Me asking where Kat is, is stupid. This is the first night Aeron and I have been out together—ever, and it was just last week that we were all sitting around in his sitting room trying to figure out his dad’s next move. I can’t ignore the obvious. Something shifted since that night, because Kat didn’t come back to Aeron’s, she disappeared somewhere and I haven’t seen her since. This time I’ve been keeping in contact with Kyle, so thankfully, I’m not a missing person case, but he says he hasn’t seen her much either, but that she has been staying there.

  I slide into the passenger seat of his car and wait patiently as he gets into the driver’s side.

  “Is there something I should know?” I ask, watching for his reaction. Sure, so he and I are very new and to be honest, I know that I won’t be jumping into anything one-hundred percent with him, if ever. But for right now, I think we’re both just taking it as it is—despite Katiya’s reservations about me getting hurt, I’m stronger than she thinks.

  “No,” he answers, flooring it.

  We drive for around thirty minutes, the music changing between his old music and other artists. We pull up to a long dark road where streetlights are surging, and the wind seems thicker. He slows down and smirks at me. “You ready, Cub?”

  “For a circus?” I ask, eyebrow quirked.

  He chuckles, but it was a deep, lazy rumble. “Yeah, babe, just a circus.”

  There are a few lines of cars that are parked on a big old football field. To the right, I see neglected seating, benches, and an old hot dog stand. Aeron parks us beside another car and I watch as people start getting out of their vehicles.

  “Where is it?” I ask, confused as to why people are exiting their cars but there’s no bright yellow or orange tent anywhere in sight. In fact, everything is dark outside. There’s a single streetlight that hangs beside the seating and over the old hot dog stand but other than that, to the front of us where the massive field is, it’s black.

  I feel Aeron’s hand come to mine, his thumb grazing over my knuckles. “You trust me, Cub?”

  “No…” I answer truthfully. I wish I could see his face. I reach for my phone in my pocket to turn my flashlight on when his hand comes to mine, halting my movements.

  “Good that you don’t, but can you go with it tonight and trust me enough to do that?”

  I ponder the question, a quick glance to the digital clock on the dashboard telling me it’s 11:58 p.m.—as in almost midnight.

  I swallow past my nervousness and nod my head. “Yes.”

  His lips warm over mine and my hand comes to the back of his neck, wanting more out of the kiss that he’s taunting me with. My stomach is flipping and my head aches from the overload of what is happening between us, but it feels good. It feels good to swim in the danger zone, as long as you know where the exit routes are.

  “Come on.” He opens his door and I follow suit, catching the clock one last time before I climb out completely.

  12:00 a.m.

  Bright lights flash in front of me in a sudden assault. Thick tea lights are braided into the structure of the tent, rising up to showcase the tip and arches, with a thrashing of lights dangling delicately.

  Midnight Mayhem reads above the door in bright white neon scripted in a cursive font. The tea lights that line the tent are a shining lilac pastel, not the conventional white. The sign Midnight Mayhem in itself is like a clean promise of something extraordinary.

  “Wow,” I whisper, in awe already.

  Aeron tucks me under his arm as we follow the crowd, moving closer to the tent. “I’ll ask you again,” he whispers into my neck as we finally reach the front of the entry—now it looks a lot bigger than it did before, making me feel like a mere subject in their show.

  Two guards stand on either side of the archway, both wearing masquerade masks, shirtless with oil spread over their rippling chests, dark slacks and dress shoes. They look striking, yet intimidating.

  There is no welcome. No smiling faces to greet their guests.

  Aeron is right, this circus isn’t like the others. I can feel it already and we haven’t even stepped inside yet.

  Aeron hands one of them our tickets, I watch as his eyes widen on Ae, and then come to me before they go back. He nods, nudging his head toward the dark small bubble-shaped hallway. It’s more of a greeting than anyone else got from them so that says something.

  “This circus isn’t like others for a few reasons—all of which you will learn tonight.” Aeron directs me down the dark pathway as my eyes catch a small warm lilac and white glow at the end of the aisle, a shimmer of excitement igniting inside of me. “But the most important thing is that they don’t use animals to perform. At all.”

  “Really?” I whisper, because I feel like any sound of a voice would be an invasion to the illusion, even though it hasn’t started yet. The magic is in the atmosphere; the walls carrying the residue from all of the mystic acts that have happened in the past. It’s dream-like and hypnotizing. “So, what performs?”

  “Them. They are the subjects because they choose to be. Animals don’t get that choice. Midnight Mayhem is smashing the level of mediocre that is in a usual circus.”

  “Two hours of trapeze? I don’t know, I feel like that could get boring.”

  We finally reach the end, and the bright lilac light is now a soft warm glow that carries out over the seating. My eyes go to the ring, waist-high whiteboards barricading it around, but leaving the seating just on the other side.

  “We’re ringside,” Aeron says, gesturing for me to sit at our assigned seating. The ring floor is black and there are silver stars that ring the outside rim. My mouth drops open as I take in everything. The trapeze is all assembled to the roof, locked and ready to drop, and the lilac main curtains are drooped shut with a gold rope tied to perfection.

  Everything about the atmosphere feels elegant but questionable. I gaze up to the roof, to see it’s plastered in black with bright white stars glowing against it.

  Aeron’s arm hooks around my back as he pulls me into him. “I’ll ask you again…” Ae whispers into my ear, biting down on my lobe. “You ready, Cub?”

  A woman comes out in a tight purple leotard looking suit over white tights and a red tight little jacket on. She seems to be in her early to mid-forties, holding a mic and wearing a high red top hat with over exaggerated makeup. You could see she was beautiful though, even more so with the onslaught of the bright lighting directly on her face.

  “Hello, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Midnight Mayhem, where witching hour is no myth. I’m Delila Patrova and I’ll be here all night to make sure you’re enjoying yourself. If you are new this year, might I remind you that there is a no photo rule that applies during the entirety of the show. This is to not only protect our performers and their identity but to also preserve our originality. People like to say that Midnight Mayhem is a circus, but it’s not. It’s Midnight Mayhem, I just hope you’re ready to lose your mind…” She fades in and out, flicking in and out until eventually, she disap
pears in a cloud of smoke.

  “What just happened?” I whisper to Aeron, who is watching my face closely.

  A spotlight explodes in the middle of the ring as the heavy curtains raise slowly, giving a sneak into what might lie behind it. A sharp silhouette of a woman is there, her posture bent in a way that has my skin crawling.

  Another light flashes onto her and she bends all the way into the bridge position before crawling—in the same way—out to the middle of the ring. Strands of orchestrated piano and violin music starts playing in the most uncomfortable tune I have ever heard. A tune that reminds me of a widow in black, crying near a corpse. The music pauses, and her body slowly comes up to a standing position from the ground. She turns to face the crowd, her face still, somber and deflated. She has platinum blonde hair that flows perfectly down from the high ponytail it’s in and big blue eyes.

  She lifts her leg up, straight into standing splits and curls it, looking out toward the crowd.

  After the blonde, the crowd goes silent as a large square cage is wheeled into the ring. Fog dances around the ground in flickering red strobe lights, I gaze at Aeron briefly, excitement coursing through me.

  He grins. “Yeah, you’ll like this part…”

  Then his fingers slip under the front of my jeans and I freeze at his cool flesh touching my bare skin.

  I close my eyes, biting on my lip to stop a moan, and when I open them, there are two girls strapped to the inside of the cage, a MX bike, three half-naked men, and a stick that’s on fire being flicked around.

  Ho boy.

  “Violent”—Obie Trice

  “Oh my God I’m so late.” I rush around Aeron’s room, trying to find all of my clothes.

  He rubs his eyes clear and shakes his head. “What’s the time?”

  “It’s twelve, I’m supposed to be at work in twenty minutes!” Most of my clothes are already here because I’ve been here for three weeks now, but last night I didn’t expect to sleep for so long. I’ve been getting good sleep here, which is the excuse I’ve been feeding Kyle every time I need to go home to get something.

  Being at Midnight Mayhem was a game changer for me, and for us. Being with Aeron alone and in the open like that. People recognized him, sure, but he didn’t hide the fact that I was with him. His hand was always on mine and his arm was always draped over my shoulders or around my waist. His lips were almost always touching my flesh and then there was the cage scene, and then the trickster’s scene…

  I don’t know whether to be ashamed or worried by the events that happened during the show.

  He reaches for his car keys and throws them to me, flopping back down onto the bed with his arm covering his face and the sheet only just hiding his waist enough that I can see he’s naked—if I didn’t already know. “Take my car, but don’t fucking leave without kissing me.”

  A big smile comes to my face, not from taking his ridiculous car, but his words. As I said, Midnight Mayhem was a major game changer for us. I realized that maybe his way of not talking about it is his way of declaring it. Not all people are vocal with their feelings, Manik quite obviously included, but I’m willing to work with it. With him. With whatever it is that we will need.

  I jump onto the bed, straddling his waist and his arm drops away from his face, his hair messy and disheveled on the top of his head and his eyes lazy from sleep.

  Gosh. How? How can someone be so effortlessly flawless? “How are you so perfect?” I ask him, watching as his lips part and his tongue slips out to moisten them.

  “I’m not perfect, baby…”

  I nod. “Yes, you are.” Him calling me baby has my ovaries exploding. I don’t know if I’m going to survive this.

  “No, I’m not.” His hands fall to my backside and he squeezes. “The word perfect is a flawed word in itself, because perfection doesn’t exist. It’s a word lazy people use to describe other people.”

  “I think it does…” I answer, wrapping my fingers behind the back of his neck.

  “You only think I’m perfect because you haven’t seen my soul.”

  I press my finger to his lip, over the curve that dips onto the bottom. “I don’t care if you’ve done bad things, Aeron.”

  His eyes narrow, searching mine. He exhales. “That’s because your brain isn’t capable of thinking of the horrific things I’ve done, Cub. If you could, you’d run and there’s no doubt about that at all, but if you did run, I’d chase you, so don’t even fucking think about it. Just saying.”

  I kiss his lips and then climb off, remembering I’m now super late for work. “I’ll see you later?”

  He nods his head. “Yeah, babe, we’ll come in tonight and I’ll drive us home.”

  I rush down the stairs, the keys dangling in my fingers as I quickly rake my hair into a messy top knot. I’m shoving my Chuck Taylors on when the front door opens and Vlad walks through.

  His eyes fall on me and then drag up and down my body.

  Shit.

  Shoving his hands into his pockets, he tilts his head. “I thought I was clear about my message the other week, Beatrice.” He’s wearing a black suit with a black dress shirt underneath and a bright green tie. It’s an emerald color that looks photoshopped enough to give away all of the bright pigments in one tone…

  Strong hands clench together on our kitchen table. The man wore a suit like the ones Daddy wears. He has a bright green button that sits on his cuff. The green is so bright, I squeeze my eyes closed to try to block it out. I don’t like that green, even though it is a lot like my eye color.

  “I’m sorry, I’m late for work,” I say, trying to step past him. He scares me, like holy hell he frightens me, but my flight or fight impulse is kicking in hard and I quite like living, so I’m going to try and run.

  Just as I step out the door, his words stop me. “You’re on your last warning, Corvo.” Then he shuts the door and I’m left standing there for a few seconds, wondering when exactly he decided to give me a pet name. I rush to Aeron’s car and make my way to the bar.

  “The Hardest Mutha Fukas”—Kurupt

  “Syn, get up.” Dad walks into my room like he fucking owns it.

  “Wow, not even going to knock? Or are you getting senile in your old age?”

  Dad stops and looks over my body. “This isn’t a joke, Syn. We need to talk so get dressed and I’ll meet you in your office.”

  “You mean the studio. I’ll meet you up there.”

  He hesitates but leaves through the door that is in my room which further takes you to the studio.

  I rub my hand through my hair, licking my lips and savoring the taste of Beat still on the tip of my tongue. I don’t know what’s going on between her and me, but whatever the fuck it is, I like it, and I’m a greedy bastard because I take what the fuck I want for as long as I want, and right now, that’s her.

  I get out of bed and throw my jean shorts on, going commando, grab my smokes from the bedside drawer and my lighter and then quickly dash into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I’m climbing the obscure stairs when Dad starts in.

  “Syn.” He looks directly at me as I light up my smoke and inhale.

  “Yeah? What’s up, old man?”

  He ignores my mouth. “End this shit with Beatrice Kennedy. You’ve had your fun, now do what you’re so good at and move on.”

  I inhale deeply and blow smoke out of my nose and mouth. “Not quite done with her yet, Pops, and what’s with you paying her a visit at her work?” I watch his expression, his reaction. Dad is old school Russian Bratva. I mean, his dad—my pops—was the OG Krestny Otets back in Russia and my family crime lineage goes right back to the founding brothers in the Tsars. In other words, Dad isn’t human, he’s not even the same race as the rest of us. No one walking this earth can decipher anything from him. If he’s hiding something from you, you will never find it. He only shows what he wants to display, but I throw it out there and ask him anyway because why the fuck not.

  “To tell her to sta
y away…” Dad says, leaning forward. He takes a seat on the sofa and I follow suit.

  “Is there something you feel like you need to tell me? Because I gotta say, I got nothing. You have Kat scared too, and just FYI, you should probably have the same talk with her. She has permanently attached herself to Beatrice.”

  Dad is silent, which isn’t something new. Dad doesn’t speak unless his words are of value. I look at him. “Is there something I need to know?” He fucking knows there is.

  Spit it out, old man.

  He seems to ponder my words, and then shakes his head, getting to his feet and patting my shoulder. “You know what, son, no, not right now. You keep doing what you’re doing.”

  He goes to walk out the door.

  “So now you’re a fan?” I ask, flicking the end of my smoke with my thumb.

  Dad chuckles softly, and it’s enough to raise every fucking warning flag I have inside of me.

  This isn’t good.

  “Yeah, Syn. Naslazhdat’sya.”

  He just Russian’ed me.

  Shit.

  As soon as he leaves, I take my phone out of my pocket and dial Kat.

  She answers on the first ring. “Yes?”

  “We got a problem.”

  “Oh? A you problem or a me problem?” she brazenly asks.

  “It’s an US problem because it involves Cub. Where are you, by the way? Haven’t seen you for weeks.” I put my smoke out in the ashtray and make my way back down to my room.

  “Uh, just with a friend. Okay, I’ll be up soon and we can talk.”

  I hang up on her.

  “Thugs Get Lonely”—Nate Dogg

  The music is pounding and the drinks are pouring. Kyle is in a good mood too, dancing around the bar as he pours drinks.

  “You’re overly nice tonight,” I tease, twisting the bottle and putting it back on the rack.