by Jaden Wilkes
by
Jaden Wilkes
Table of Contents
Title Page
Freakshow
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Epilogue
About the Author:
Copyright © Freakshow 2015
by Jaden Wilkes
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used
in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Basically, don’t be a dick. I work hard as an independent writer, and it sucks every time I come across some douchey pirate site with my books on it. If you seriously can’t afford the very low price to buy my book, then email me and we’ll talk about it. Most likely I’ll send you a copy if it means you aren’t downloading it for free online somewhere.
And if you do download this for free from some rip off site, just remember, karma is like 69, you get what you give. It’s coming for you, asshole. Enjoy your shitty luck.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
She’s a freak
Born with congenital analgesia, Olivia York’s inability to feel pain is expected—feeling nothing at all is not. Betrayed and unemployed, Olivia joins Cirque des Curiosités, a traveling circus with heavy emphasis on the strange and exotic. She’s hired to sell tickets, but when her unique oddity is discovered, she becomes Orion the ringmaster's assistant in a dangerous performance on the centre stage.
He’s off limits
Cairo, the son of the Cirque's ringmaster is the one man Olivia needs to stay away from. But his rippling muscles, dark tattoos and sensual lips intoxicate her, and before long she surrenders.
When girls start to go missing, her burning need to solve the unfolding mystery leads her to After Dark, the erotic late-night version of the Cirque. Orion is determined to break her bond to Cairo through any means possible, even if it leaves Olivia scarred or dead.
In a world built on illusion and deception, Olivia’s quest to feel something more than curiosity might come at a very steep price.
** Deals with sexual themes that some readers may find offensive. This is a standalone dark urban fantasy novel.
For Grandma Zana, 1925-2014.
Without you, none of this would be here.
Prologue
The girl ran faster than she’d ever run before. She could feel the tall, dry grass whipping the tender skin on her pudgy legs, but she didn’t care. The sensation of the wind in her hair and the rush of blood in her ears was too intoxicating.
Sweet freedom.
“Olivia,” her mother called from the back door, “where are you sweetie? I’ve got lunch.”
She didn’t turn back, she wanted to escape and this was her only chance.
She couldn’t stand being caged any longer, she couldn’t stand being confined to play in the living room, child gates up preventing her from moving more than ten feet in any direction.
She was four now, she needed to feel the wind in her hair and the earth under her feet. Grandma always said she needed to touch the ground to develop her gifts. That always made Mom angry, and they fought.
Olivia didn’t care about their fighting though, she just wanted to be free.
Her mom had let her take ten minutes in the back yard as long as she’d promised she wouldn’t go farther than the garden gate.
“Olivia,” mom called again, her voice had that hysterical tinge to it that Olivia hated. “Baby, where are you?”
She stopped running and turned back to the house. She was well into the wheat field where her dad would be doing the fall harvest. She could hear the harsh thump of the heavy machines in the distance.
Dad was miles away though, and Olivia was farther from the house than she’d ever been on her own.
The thrill, it was too much.
She was tired, her legs wanted to move, but her body was starting to give up. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and even then she’d only nibbled on a piece of homemade bread with thick rhubarb preserves.
Her body needed more fuel, just like those tractors.
She heard her mom screaming her name now, and she knew she’d be in big trouble when she was found.
She ran a little farther and found a nice clump of wheat, lay down and closed her eyes, ignoring the continued pleas of her mom to come home. The earth felt so good under her hands, she pressed her fingers into the dirt and felt like she was flying.
*****
“Olivia,” Dad’s voice was very loud and came from very near. Olivia had just been having the most wonderful dream about racing through the forest
She rubbed her eyes and stretched her legs. She felt better; less tired and thought she might try to run again.
She got up and gave a little kick, her legs were great and her body felt revitalized, the time spent with her fingers in the dirt had done the trick. It seemed Grandma was right in this respect.
She looked around and started to run away from her dad’s voice, knowing the trouble she’d be in if he caught her now.
She had no plan, but knew she didn’t want to give up this thrill quite yet.
She hit the edge of the wheat field and stood on gravel. She was momentarily confused. She spotted their house on the other side of the low, long barn where they kept their few dairy cows. She was in their driveway. The roundabout they used for loading machinery and grain.
She decided she’d spend some time in the barn before going back, she loved the smell of the cattle and the way they looked at her with their big, kind eyes.
She pushed herself faster, concentrating on the sliding door at the end, not paying attention to anything on either side of her.
It happened with a thud. Later the man in the truck swore he’d never seen her, and she hadn’t comprehended the flash of the headlights and the roar of the engine in time to get out of the way.
She pitched forward, landed on her belly and got a face full of dirt.
She looked up and saw his long, white face in a grimace of horror. She would have laughed at him if she’d been able to move.
She tried to push herself up, but couldn’t make her arms work.
She tried to kick, to get her body off the ground, but her legs weren’t moving.
Olivia started to scream, not for any reason other than simple frustration that her bid for freedom was over.
The man in the truck, it turned out, was kindly Mr. Jacobs’ son, Ryan. He had come to help look for her out in the wheat.
Her parents came racing over, her Daddy looked more scared than Ryan, and Mommy was screaming louder than Olivia herself.
“I’m s
orry mom,” Olivia said, “I just wanted to run.”
“This is why you have to stay inside. Oh my god, I should have never let you out,” Mommy started to sob and placed her sweater under her.
She saw Grandma’s worried face looking at her over her mom’s shoulder. “Let her touch the ground,” Grandma said, “She can fix this if you let her dig her toes in the earth.”
“I’m not putting her in the dirt,” mom spat and hunched over Olivia, as if to keep her from her Grandma’s prying eyes.
“Call the god damned ambulance,” her dad bellowed and the small group that had assembled all broke apart as they ran to get help.
He knelt in the dirt next to Olivia and stroked her hair. “You’re not like other kids, baby girl,” he said, “you’re going to be okay, but you have to be more careful.”
“I just wanted to play outside,” Olivia said and wondered where all the blood had come from, her dad’s arm was covered in it and it stained her mom’s pretty white blouse a bright red. It was such a pretty blouse, usually so bright and billowy. Olivia felt shame that she might have made it dirty as it occurred to her where the blood came from.
She knew blood scared people, but it didn’t bother her, it never had, but that much had to come from somewhere.
She managed to edge herself up against her dad’s legs and he held her there until they heard the sirens in the distance.
“What are we going to do with her?” her mom asked nobody in particular. “She’ll never be normal.”
“Let her touch the ground!” her Grandma’s voice came again, harsh and demanding. Olivia’s mom winced at the sound of it.
“Stay out of this!” her mom yelled.
“Why are you so mad at me?” Olivia asked, “I said I was sorry.”
“I’m not mad, baby,” her mom replied and smiled at her, but her eyes still leaked tears, “I’m scared.”
Olivia struggled to sit up and noticed her arms and legs were all at strange angles. She tried to concentrate on moving her big toe, but nothing happened, her little sparkly running shoe didn’t shift. She did catch sight a big thing jutting from her leg. It was long, jagged, and the prettiest shade of light pink.
“What’s that?” she asked and tried to point. She noticed them jutting from her lower arm and other leg too.
“Those are your bones, baby,” her mom said and started to cry again, “we’ve told you, you’re not like other kids. You don’t feel pain.”
Olivia didn’t understand what her mom meant by pain. She’d never understood what her parents had meant, and she had the multiple scars to prove it.
From burns on the stove to gouged shins from walking into the corner of the coffee table repeatedly, none of it ever bothered her and she didn’t understand why everybody around her got so weird about it.
As long as her body worked, she was fine. As long as it healed and her legs moved and her arms swung, and she could do what she liked, pain meant nothing to her.
This was the first time it registered though. Pain meant sometimes your body didn’t work right, and that angered Olivia. She wanted to run and play and jump, she wanted to feel vital and whole.
For the first time in her life, she was afraid. She started to cry and her Dad held her tighter, whispered to her that everything would be all right.
And for the first time in her life, she didn’t quite believe him.
Chapter One
The sun hit my face like a steel-toed boot to the teeth. I yawned, rolled over, checked my clock and saw that I was late for work.
And immediately remembered I didn’t have work anymore. Not since last week. So technically I was late for job hunting, and me not being an early bird meant that I rarely got the worm. I resolved to try harder at this employment thing. Starting right away...well, as soon as I completely woke up.
I rolled off my futon and stood on the balls of my feet, stretched and sniffed my armpits. I grimaced. Today smelled like a good day for a shower.
It had also been a week since I’d caught my boyfriend Jason and my best friend Becs in his bed. I checked my phone and saw the inevitable texts from the two of them begging for me to reply, forgive, understand.
I wasn’t capable of doing any of those things, so I hit delete and went on pretending they had been hit by a meteor or something.
I couldn’t completely slough them off though. I hadn’t realized how much I’d depended on my best friend Becs until she was gone. And I hadn’t realized how much of a distraction Jason had been until he no longer filled the empty spaces in my life, my head and my bed.
I was lonely, horny, and starting to worry about my money situation. Clearly there was a reason I didn’t like getting up in the morning.
I had a quick shower, shaved my legs and pits, and scrubbed my greasy hair until it squeaked. Being stingy on soap and shampoo sucked, but I couldn’t afford to waste much these days and my hair suffered or it.
The cut on my arm was healing nicely at least. I could still remember the look on my office manager’s face when she caught a good look at exposed muscle and dripping blood. I’d been fired...sorry...let go in record time. Most places at least tried to wait a few days to fire me after a brutal injury or the realization that I was different.
I half-heartedly picked at the scab and wondered how long I could hold out given my current circumstances. I had a small amount left in my savings. That gave me a solid month to survive before I had to be moved out or find employment.
Sometimes my life overwhelmed me, depression kicked in and it felt as though my body was simply convincing my mind to give up. I should have, by all means, given up years ago. The day I was born really.
I’d come into the world with congenital analgesia, the inability to feel pain.
As a baby I’d chewed through my own tongue a few times, bitten my lips almost completely off, and broken bones more than once or twice.
Mine was a strange case though, I could feel everything else, touch, tickles, kisses, just not pain or heat. For some strange reason those particular receptors had been damaged somewhere along the line as my DNA had knitted together and created me inside my mother’s womb.
The one thing I did miss was my parent’s touch. The gentle comfort of a hand on my shoulder or my dad pulling me into his arms for a bear hug. I felt so detached from humanity now, and didn’t know how to reconcile it.
My parents had been killed in a car accident when I was thirteen, and I’d been raised by my older sister who had been nineteen at the time. She hadn’t spared one chance to let me know how much of a burden I was, or how terrible it was that I was even alive.
My sister had blamed me for our parent’s death even though logically I’d had nothing to do with it.
I’d left home at seventeen, never finished high school and never went to college in spite of my love of reading and an uncanny ability to retain information.
I’d moved from Moose Jaw to Vancouver and had ended up in Richmond a few months back.
I was now in my twenty fifth year and was completely, utterly, devastatingly directionless. I felt as though I were living in an alternate reality, just inches away from the real world. How did all those people do it? How did they manage to live normal lives and work and eat and fuck and feel?
I had nobody; even Becs who had followed me from Saskatchewan was lost to me now after screwing my boyfriend. If only I hadn’t walked in on them, the image wouldn’t be burned in my mind and I might be able to forget and potentially forgive. Becs at least.
Jason, in all honesty, wasn’t a big loss in the grand scheme of things, but losing Becs cut me deep.
Still, I had to be honest, I’d dropped my guard with Jason. I’d been lulled into this strange world where he didn’t think of me as weird. I’d believed that he bought my act and thought of me as normal.
His words had rung in my ears every day since the breakup, that he needed a woman who enjoyed sex.
How could I enjoy something that I couldn’t really feel
? I liked sex, I just didn’t seem to have the ability to lose myself to it, release the stubborn grip my body had on my mind and let myself soar into orgasmic oblivion.
My doctors had always insisted that the pain and pleasure connection shouldn’t alter my sexual gratification, but what the fuck did they know? They weren’t connected to my pussy, and quite frankly, it seemed as dull as the rest of my skin.
Imagine trying to live your life with a layer of bubble wrap covering your body, I was like a walking sensory deprivation chamber. It got to a person after a while, and right now it was really getting to me.
This is why I did stupid shit sometimes, to feel anything.
This is why I was covered in tattoos, brands and ritualistic scars. Not my face, thankfully, never my face, but from my neck down I was a piece of art. Or just a piece of work. It depended on how one looked at me.
I had piercings too, shit. I got talked into piercing my clit a couple months ago. I’d hoped it would help me feel something when Jason was pounding away on top of me, but it hadn’t changed a thing.
I’d have to take it out and throw it away, to forget the asshole.
My nipples were done too, but years ago, when I was still in high school. Those were purely aesthetic, I loved the way they looked when I was naked, and I loved the hint of barbells poking through my business attire.
Business. God I need a job.
I settled down on the laptop and cruised the job seeker websites. I’d apply for anything, but the economy was down and it was an employer’s market. I was competing for secretarial positions against people with MBAs and degrees from universities back East, and I hadn’t even graduated.
Scrolling past scam after scam and every job I’d already applied for, a brightly coloured graphic at the bottom of the page caught my eye.
I clicked on it and was taken to an external website, some kind of circus. I was about to close it when the words, “Help Wanted” flashed across the header.
I clicked it, why the fuck not?
Cirque des Curiosités was apparently a freak show of some sort, a good old-fashioned house of horrors kind of place. I’d heard of it somewhere, I had a vague recollection of a newscast or a flyer. It was something like Cirque du Soleil but with more of society’s outcasts instead of athletic beautiful people performing impossible feats of skill.
