Chapter IX: Sideshow Freak

NOTE!!!!! This is the NINTH part of a book I am Writing!!!

      Okay…  Here we are in… well… I’ll be blessed… I have no idea where the Heaven we are!  Aha!  Look, a newspaper… let me see… okay… looks like it says “South Brenton Daily” on it…  Date… July thirtieth, 1945.  And judging by the position of the sun… I would say it is about ten minutes to six….

      Here, take the file and read up on it.  While you do that, I’ll tell you what has happened here.

      There, my friend, look, inside that barred cage on wheels.  Do you see it?  That lumpy and distorted figure?  What is it doing, you ask?  It is hiding from the world.  Well… not really.  In truth, it is only sleeping.  Unfortunately, for me, that thing is not fated to die today.  No, the next person to die is not going to be revealed as of yet.  We will have to wait for a minute or so until the carnival opens, only then will today’s victim be revealed.

      A half hour later, the carnival begins to bustle with activity as the crew spread out among the cages on carts.  Some hung banners describing the creatures inside them; the Elephant Man, the Bearded Lady, the Human Spider, the Colossus, and dozens of others.  Others held extendible cattle prods.  Here comes the star of the show; the Master of all the creatures, the one who introduces the mutant prisoners; the Ringleader.

      The gangly man struts out into the brightening morning and starts calling out to the early morning risers, telling them to ‘Step right up!  For just a measly five dollars, you can see the children Mother Nature and God gave up for adoption!’ and to ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry!  This is the chance of a lifetime, folks!’

      He succeeds in drawing a small crowd of about two-dozen people.  He then proceeds to take them around for a tour of his traveling freak-show.  The man grinned as the audience of people drew back in terror at the sight of the Elephant Man.  Laughed when they taunted the Bearded Lady.  Reassured them when they turned to run from the Human Spider.  This continued for the next five or six cages.  Then, they reached the cage I showed you before, the one with the unrecognizable bulge.

      The Ringmaster begins to introduce this next freak as the workers stick their prods between the bars to awaken the pile of blankets.  It is billed as the carnival’s biggest attraction; the Colossus.  The bulge starts to rise as a giant of a man; standing at least eight and a half feet tall and muscular like a professional bodybuilder, rose and stretched.  The crowd oohed and ahhed at this abnormally tall, almost inhuman, figure.

      The tall man told the spectators that the creature behind him was completely harmless and offered them all the chance to shake the giant’s hand, for the small price of two dollars, of course.  The eager crowd lined up, wallets and purses opened, and dollar bills flashed and waved everywhere.

      A slot opened in the side of the enclosure and the giant slid his hand through it.  The first spectator was a young woman of twenty-five.  She reached out her dainty hand and placed it inside the creature’s.  Comparing her hand to his was like comparing an ant to a dog; the size difference was enormous.  She almost pulled back as the freak enclosed her hand in his, then she stood, amazed at the extreme delicacy with which he grasped her hand.  She stared into the man’s eyes and immediately felt a connection.  What kind of connection, she did not know, but she knew that this thing was… different.  She knew he was just a human like everyone else there.

      Her trance was shattered like thin ice when the head of the carnival shoved her roughly out of the way.  She stumbled back, tripping over a rock, and twisted her ankle.  Crying out in pain, the young woman began to sob, cradling her purse in one arm and clutching her foot in the other.  A man in the crowd, no older than twenty-six, came to her aid.  He looked around and spotted a payphone on the other side of the street.  He squeezed her hand in assurance and was just about to run to the booth when his entire frame tensed and shook.  His eyes rolled back into his head until nothing but white was showing, and he fell to his knees as his mouth began to spew a rabies-like froth.  He collapsed to the ground; one of the shady crew members had slammed an electric cattle prod between his shoulders, grinning as his target twitched on the dirt in front of him, the torturer continued to keep the tool pressed into the man’s skin.  As the odor of singed flesh and hair filled the surrounding air, the thug grabbed at her purse and she clutched it even tighter, shaking her head and screaming.

      She felt a sharp, stinging sensation as the Ringmaster struck her across the face with his long white cane.  Immediately, she heard panicked screams coming from all around her.  Not two seconds later, the horrible sound of twisting metal came to her ears, and the Ringmaster ran past her; pure fear in his eyes.

      She turned to see what the problem was, and then an enormous shadow blocked out the sun.  Trying to crawl away, the young woman felt a giant hand close over her shoulder with a vice-like, yet gentle, grip.  She froze, not even risking the possibility of escape, when she heard a low, gravelly voice mutter something inaudible and indistinguishable.  The voice then repeated itself, louder this time, but stopping here and there, as if it was having trouble putting together sentences.

      “He … should not … have … did … that.”  The giant lifted her up as though her petite frame would snap at any moment, carried her to his mangled enclosure, and placed her delicately on the floor of the cage.  Looking around, she saw the young man who had tried to help her propped against the wall of the cage.  She looked thankfully at their savior, who gave a wide, crooked smile and whispered (as quietly as he could), “Thank you.  …  You have … been … kind to … me.  …  You have … helped me.  …  Now … I help… you.”

      She smiled shakily, kissed the golem’s grimy cheek, and uttered a soft, “Thank you.”  The humongous human rose to his full height (an unreal nine feet, seven inches), let out an earsplitting war cry, and lumbered off in the direction of the Ringmaster’s double-wide trailers.  As the earth-shaking footfalls faded across the open field, the young man he had rescued opened his eyes and moaned quietly, shaking his head groggily.  Our young starlet, on the verge of tears, hugged the stranger and told him what had happened while he was out.  Stunned, he comforted her, rocking her gently and pulling her tiny form closer to his.

      Meanwhile, their liberator had tramped halfway to the trailers.  He was being attacked from every side by the Ringmaster’s cronies.  They tried to overcome him using whatever they had been carrying at that moment.  Cattle prods felt like ants crawling over a dog’s coat, pipes cracked bone, tools made only flesh wounds.  Adrenaline propelled itself through his entire frame as he tossed his assailants left and right like ragdolls.  Necks snapped, spines broke, and inhumanly bloodcurdling screams flowed effortlessly from the throats of the wounded as they twitched.  The last attacker was the dodgy kid who had stolen his lady-friend’s bag, and the little b*****d was using it as his only defense!

      The fool did not even have a fighter’s chance to swing his makeshift flail.  The enormous man clamped his plate-sized hands around the thief’s skull and squeezed.  The kid howled and tried to loosen the grip on his cranium with his empty hand, but his attempts were for naught.  The giant smiled, held his captive by the head with one hand, and tore the idiot’s bony arm right out of its socket with the other.  The young man he held swiped at the purse with his remaining hand, intent on keeping it for himself, when his captor swallowed the lad’s head once more between his hands.  He tightened his grasp like a vice, the helpless hostage letting out ghoulish screams, and then there was dead silence.

      At this point, the monster of a man was about a hundred and fifty yards from the “Master’s” living quarters.  He effortlessly heaved one of the injured workers towards the trailers, watching with delight as it busted a hole in the thin steel door.  Clapping his hands, he ran into an all out dash, charging the trailers.  The one thought going through his loving mind was that he must kill who hurt the lady and man so they could never hurt anyone again.  He let out a second howl of rage, ready for anything.

      The Ringmaster had been quickly loading his sawed-off double-barrel shotgun, his revolver, and his tranquilizer gun, when the door was flayed in two by the flying corpse.  Hastily, he stuck the revolver in his waistband, hefted the shotgun in one hand and the tranquilizer gun in the other.  If he were unable to subdue the rampant beast, then he would have to kill him, consequences or no, it had to be done, for his own safety.  He hurried to the split entryway, lifted the tranquilizer gun to his eye, and emptied the five-round clip into the stampeding bull-of-a-man.

      The giant faltered, pulling the opaque needles out of his chest and arms, and hurled them back where they came from; the Master dove for cover as the expended darts breached the hull of the camper.  The giant leered, bees cannot stop bears from climbing their trees; therefore, these oversized, rounded bees would not stop him.  He accelerated forward once again, now about a hundred yards away from his target.

      The Ringmaster pulled out his revolver; he now had no choice but to punch some holes through his insane attraction.  He regained his stance and yanked back on the trigger.  The first shot flew wide and bore a nice clean hole through the arm of the ape.  The next three shots shredded the creep’s right lung; yet this thing still advanced towards him.  Awestruck, the leader, now desperate, fired the last two shots from the hip; they missed entirely.

      The freakishly tall man felt something big hit him, then three more.  He did not feel any pain though; there was too much adrenaline in his system to allow shock to set in.  The Master’s shiny tent was only a mere twenty yards away now, and he covered that remaining ground in three seconds flat.  His time to show the world he was not (and never will be) a freak, but a hero, had finally arrived.

      The Ringmaster pulled out the shotgun, gripped it tightly, and stood to face the beast again.  He barely had time to recognize that the demon was just outside when he was lifted into the air and jerked out of his refuge.  He brought his last resort to bear and fired the first slug into his beloved moneymaker even as the creature turned him horizontally and clasped his ankles and ribs in a death grip.  The inhuman life form, unfazed by the slug, clenched around him even tighter, snapping ribs like toothpicks.

      The godlike humanoid felt the buckshot pepper his insides, tearing his intestines and liver to shreds.  He did not care; he had already won.  He knew his sudden strength was fading fast, so he pulled the man in opposite directions.  He could see his Master cringe in pain and leered at him, pulling even harder.

      The Ringmaster was not finished yet.  He raised the weapon one last time and….

      The ‘gentle’ giant ripped his target in two, reached in, and wrenched out its heart.  He turned back in the direction of his friends and suddenly felt drained of all of his energy.  He looked down, breathing rapidly, and watched dark red ichor flow and his innards hanging from the wound in his side.  The last thing he ever heard was the blast of the shotgun as a final signal was sent to the Ringmaster’s trigger hand.

      The only two left alive and uninjured were the man and woman huddled in the enclosure.  They had heard everything and jumped every time they heard the shots ring through the air.  They had clutched at each other every time they heard the yelps of the wounded and the bloodcurdling shrieks of the dying.  And as the dead silence had dawned, they had both broken down in tears.  It had taken them almost twenty minutes for them to stop the flow of saline from their eyes.  Stumbling out into the warzone, they searched desperately for their colossal savior.

      They stepped cautiously through the blood-soaked field, picking their way amongst the massacre.  Twenty-eight of the Ringmasters employees lay dead; their corpses, twisted and broken; with limbs bent at inhuman angles.  Along the way, she tore her purse from the clenched fist of the bodiless arm, and then kicked its headless owner square between the legs.  He, however, had found the thing they were looking for and tried to divert her eyes from the grisly scene before them.  She saw the mangled giant and let out a Banshee’s wail, waterfalls pouring down her cheeks.  Reaching out, they both closed the man’s one remaining eye.

      An unnatural silence oozed out of the darkening sky, broken only by the occasional hooting of a distant owl.  They turned to leave the blood-soaked field, holding each other tightly, neither daring to let go of the other.  This was a night neither of them would forget for the rest of their lives, both natural and unnatural.

      Well… I must admit; that was just absolutely horrible; she was supposed to die.  Eh, it really does not matter; I managed to kill off thirty worthless humans and was able to meet my quota for today.  That makes me proud.  Well, onto the next victims, shall we?

      …

      What was that?  You say you know those people?  That is quite possible, yet I doubt it.  Why, you ask?  Well, aren’t you a nosey little brat!  If you were not so damn important to me, I would kill you myself!

      …

      Oh fine!  Leviathan, itself!  Okay, those two people are your grandparents!  And, might I add… they are sick f***s!  Think about it; they actually went to torment these helpless works of Lucifer!  They f*****g paid money to taunt these caged people!

      …

      But no matter; let us continue.

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A very good tale in this chapter. I like the many different type of characters. In the old days before not kind to desire to see people who were odd and different,. This type carnival show was a norm. Great description made the words have life and I like the ending. Than you for the excelelnt chapter.
Coyote

[Raven Starhawk]

Certainly this has appeal and I clearly see why. I was not sure exactly how to perceive this, but I am a bit senile at times so I read through with my full attention turned to your text and it was unlike anything I ever read before. ^^*

[Kim's Poems]

intriguing & interesting, I enjoyed this.

[Sahar moonlight]

What an imagination you have.
You know what i think about it.
D-n-e-o-s

Good Writing

[Alex Vidmar]

My personal favorite of all of my works. Enjoy!