Page 61 of The Circus

He breathes the last part, his words spoken from the darkest parts of his cracked and ruined soul, one that is so beautiful it makes my bones ache to behold.

“You freaks?—”

Teddy smirks. Time stands still. The ghost of his wife buzzes with sick excitement.

“Yes,” he says, sinking his knife into skin and muscle and viscera, thick red blood cascading out as the man’s eyes widen in a way I’ve never seen before. It’s the look of someone who knows with utter certainty they are about to die at a monster’s hands.

Mymonster’s hands.

“We are freaks,” I seethe as tears pool in my eyes, threatening to spill over like his coppery blood. He gags and clutches at his throat as Teddy takes the dripping knife away, his cut soseamless and precise, deep enough to be searingly painful, but not deep enough to kill him immediately. The cut of an expert.

“I’ll give you a head start again, little ghost. If you make it back here without getting caught, I’ll let you finish him off. But if I catch you…” he trails off darkly as the man slowly bleeds out.

A girlish smile lights my face, and I spring from the chair so fast it skids across the floor, my heart racing, my stomach twisting in fear and disgust but also something deeper and far more heinous than love. Teddy’s eyes spark as he flips his knife and grabs the man’s wrist at the same time. He forces his hand splayed over the table and drives the blade through all the tendons and bones, pinning him there amidst garbled screams and moans.

“Run.” He commands.

And I do.

THIRTY-FIVE

EDEN

The last timewe played this game, I cut my feet to shit, and Teddy spent no less than two hours diligently and gently plucking splinters from my flesh before washing and bandaging me up. They still ache even in my shoes as I sprint down a darkened corridor, windows along one side allowing scant, icy moonlight to seep in, and mirrors on the other, reflecting that silvery light. Laughter bubbles up in my chest, a giddiness there I feel in my soul.

I was never allowed to be a child. The backs of my hands would be bruised and bloodied if I ever dared to run through the house, or even outside. Running wasn’t considered ladylike. Playing make-believe created cracks where the Devil could sneak in and tempt you to sin. Having an imagination was equivalent to being a literal witch, and we all know what happens to witches.

By the time I escaped that hell, I was on the cusp of adulthood and forced to care for my ailing father. I never knew what it meant to be creative, to allow your mind to wander, to feel intrinsic freedom as wind whipped through your hair and your lungs ached for breath.

What Teddy and I have is twisted and sick for sure, but he ignites the child in me and allows her a safe place to play for the first time in my life, and I don’t think that’s bad, or evil. It’s so cathartic, this macabre game of tag we’ve invented for ourselves, and the prospect of him catching me again makes me giddy with dark excitement.

I hope he always finds me and catches me.

I’ve seen the dead and dying, spent the majority of my life around things of the past, so now I want to be greedy and taste what it means to live, and live the way I want to.

I take a sharp left down a pitch black hallway, slowing my pace and keeping my footfalls light. Hushing my rapid breathing is far more difficult, because I am not athletic in the slightest, and the only reason I have an A in gym is because Miss Peterson has taken pity on me through the years.

Hands outstretched before me, I creep forward, blind in this darkness but unafraid. Nothing can hurt me here, nothing but Teddy, and the pain he inflicts is tempered with pleasure.

Something makes a soft noise behind me, a footfall or the rustle of fabric, I cannot tell, but it makes me freeze in place. Sucking in a breath, I hold it as my heart pounds and my head grows dizzy, the image of Teddy slicing that fucker’s neck replaying on a loop in my mind. It was morbid, and fascinating, and I can tell there’s a disconnect in my brain, some sort of short that allows me to witness a voracious murderer at work and not bat an eye.

I’ve always known I was fucked up deep down, and Teddy holds a mirror to that with a smile.

My hands brush against the edge of what I assume to be a table, and I pause, listening intently again for anything as pure excitement courses through my thudding veins. Swallowing thickly, I run my hands along the table and search for a way outof this darkness, but his voice floats to me in the night air, both taunting and menacing.

“You’ve cornered yourself, little ghost,” he calls from somewhere in the long hallway, and I slap my hands over my mouth to curb the screech and subsequent laughter that spills from my lips. My giggle is met with his threatening chuckle. “You think this game is meant to befun, baby?”

His voice grows closer, and my shaking hands find a door. Giddy, I push the handle down, surprised to find it unlocked. When it opens, more moonlight splinters the darkness, and I make a run for it down another hall, this one dusty and strewn with cobwebs, white, gauzy sheets covering the paintings and decor residing here. There’s a chill here that cannot be explained by anything rational, and I know in my bones I’ve discovered his deceased wife’s wing of the mansion. Her presence here is thick on my tongue, her anger and fury in death so potent it frightens me far more than the man chasing me.

The door slams behind me, and I glance over my shoulder, screaming with glee as the tall form of Teddy looms in the darkness, the glint of another deadly knife clutched in his hand. I grin, although he doesn’t return it. Taunting him and those voices he talks about is far too entertaining to me to be truly afraid, but there’s always some level of fear that curls in my gut when I poke at the killer in him.

Turning forward again, I push my legs harder, full out sprinting toward the door at the other end of the long room?—

And trip over a stack of books piled near a covered piece of furniture. I crash to the cold, dusty marble floors, my hands and knees taking the brunt of the fall as I hiss in pain, but he’s on me in the time it takes for my brain to comprehend what is happening. Both of us pant, but I laugh and twist and struggle to break free of his grasp, his body wrapped around mine from behind, one hand fisting my hair.

“I win,” he taunts breathlessly in my ear, and I can feel the long, hard heat of him against my ass. I buck against him, but he only cinches down tighter. “Have to make this quick, baby.”

I smirk, although he cannot see it, and claw my way forward across the floor, his strength so superior to mine that it’s pathetic. My muscles strain and cramp, but I refuse to give in. Gritting my teeth as I send an elbow flying toward his face, I growl, “No.”

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