Page 243 of Rage

You tore at your hair and tugged at your dress. It wasn’t insanity. It was fire, rage, and despair. You screamed yourself hoarse, then cried some more, grabbed at the bottle around your neck, and with all your might smashed it to the ground.

Though no bigger than a thimble, glass sprayed everywhere, the dust spread, and didn’t stop. It flowed like clouds on a breezy day, spreading throughout the four corners of your home, and spilling outside. You lay there momentarily stunned, watching the hazy mist move as though alive.

Calling you to it.

When you didn’t move, it shook the earth as persuasion. And you knew what was to come. This time though, you wouldn’t fly, you wouldn’t run. You would stay and see if the stories were true.

There was no great circle of dust keeping you prisoner. It seemed to know you’d stay. A faint note of music caught your ear, a jeering tone of horns and the deep vibrato of tubas, peaking with a calliope that thrummed the walls and forced you to your feet.

Night had fallen upon the homestead. You studied how the pitch black darkness made the fire of torches more garish, their dance sinister. You hadn’t taken a breath, forgotten to. How could you think of breathing when your wish had come true–lightning had indeed struck again.

It stretched as far as you could see, to where the night swallowed the torchlight. You took a step then another, shivering from a mix of excitement that blended into fear.

Rows upon rows of decadence enticed you, trays of succulent meats and fruits, stands with their lines full and spiraling of people waiting to swap coin to play. A whip snapped in the distance, followed by a creature's roar, garnering the loudest applause.

You stepped through the crowds and gasped as you recognized those you thought lost. The neighbor’s young daughter, wearing her yellow gingham she loved so much, not having aged a day. Her father right behind her, in overalls and his old leather hat. You raised a hand in greeting and began to approach with a hurried pace, forgetting all formalities as the question you wanted most to ask was about to spill from your lips when both father and daughter passed through you in an icy whiplash of chill.

Stumbling back in shock, numbed by the encounter, you took a closer look around. Shadowy shapes surrounded you. They moved without acknowledging your presence, they themselves there but not there, frozen in time.

Your hand absentmindedly went to the chain broken around your neck and you wondered, had you called this back? Had you done this? And if so, had it come to claim you too?

You tried to retrace your steps, but there was no way out. There was no childhood homestead leading you back to reality, only the circus and its shadows every which way you looked.

You pressed your clammy palms into your skirt, and jumped at another round of applause, louder than the last. But it was the voice that quieted the crowd that stomped your fear and sent you running past and through the blurry shapes that paid you no mind.

It was older, yet spoken with the same cadence that you knew so well, but you wouldn’t believe what you couldn’t actually see.

He kept speaking, taunting the audience while you ran. The place was a maze and though the beings weren’t corporeal, the structures, awnings, flags and the like obstructed your view. It wasn’t until you arrived at the great clearing, expecting a throng and seeing nothing and no one there but him standing on the stage with a painted smile.

The trap had been set, and you were the mouse.

His eyes appeared cloudy but blazing.

THUMP THUMP THUMP

The sound ground itself in your ears as tears streamed down your face, for the boy who looked just as you remembered him, but had been made into something you knew not.

Your eyes grew wide at the shotgun he used instead of a circus master’s whip, before the torches went out all at once and everything became black. There was no denying your fear now as you heard him draw closer, dragging it behind him. The clang of metal ominous in the darkness.

You trembled in a world gone cold, when a lit match danced before you. The comforting scritch brought a second of relief until you saw the lifeless eyes and artificial smile it illuminated. And before you could scream, the wooden heel of that familiar gun smashed into your mouth.

Blood spurted from your face and you fell back. Laughter, mocking and evil, echoed in the night, bouncing across the shadows. He stood over you, taking you in, then bent a knee to hover near your injured face. He rocked his head back and forth as if to shake something, and for one moment the cloudiness disappeared and he spoke in a tired voice.

“I’ve dreamt of you before.”

The cloudiness returned and with it your rage.

You fought back as he held you down and forced open your mouth. Scratched and clawed as an odor so foul frightened the shadows and advanced. But mostly you fought to awaken the boy that was taken from you and reduced to this. You grabbed at his wrists and ripped at the fabric of his shirt and just then did you realize you were holding on to something real.

Fabric and flesh.

And you doubled your efforts despite the pain in your jaw and the knee that kept your back firmly planted on the ground.

The revolting smell grew and your stomach lurched at the monsters that loomed above your head. Three faces, three mouths, and pounds of flesh, the Grim Mother and her Daughters needed a fresh soul.

Through muffled words you begged him to remember, choking on the taste of milk that hit your tongue.

In a husky breathless voice the Mother commanded silence and he lay down the match and gun to use both hands to keep you still.

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