Read Online Ashes by Haunted Computer Books - Free Book Online Page A

schmuck. Ought to
put a bullet in your head.” Juggles lets the cigarette dangle from
his lips. He lights one of the others and flips it into my cage
with his foot. “Here you go. Suck on that for a while.”
    I pick up the cigarette and touch its orange
end. My skin sizzles and I stare at the wound as the smoke curls
into my nose. I put the other end of the cigarette in my mouth. I
cannot breathe so it does no good.
    “ Why are you so mean to
him?”
    It is she. Her voice comes like hammers, like
needles of ice, like small kisses along my skin. She stands at the
edge of the shadows, a shadow herself. I know that if my heart
could beat it would go crazy.
    “ I don’t mean nothing,” says
Juggles. He exhales and squints against the smoke, then sits on a
bale of straw. “Just having a little fun.”
    “ Fun,” she says. “All you
care about is fun.”
    “ What else is there? None of
us are going anywhere.”
    She steps from the darkness at the corner of
the tent. The torchlight is golden on her face, flickering
playfully among her chins. Her breath wheezes like the softest of
summer winds. She is beautiful. My Fat Lady.
    The cigarette burns between my fingers. The
fire reaches my flesh. I look down at the blisters, trying to
remember what pain felt like. Juice leaks from the wounds and
extinguishes the cigarette.
    “ He shouldn’t be in a cage,”
says the Fat Lady. “He’s no different from any of us.”
    “ Except for that part about
eating people.”
    “ I wonder what his name
is.”
    “ You mean ‘was,’ don’t you?
Everything’s in the past for him.”
    The Fat Lady squats near the cage. Her
breasts swell with the effort, lush as moons. She stares at my
face, into my eyes. I crush the cigarette in my hand and toss it to
the ground.
    “ He knows,” she says. “He
can still feel. Just because he can’t talk doesn’t mean he’s an
idiot. Whatever that virus was that caused this, it’s a hundred
times worse than being dead.”
    “ Hell, if I had arms, I’d
give him a hug,” mocks Juggles.
    “ You and your arms. You
think you’re the only one that has troubles?” The Fat Lady wears
lipstick, her mouth is a red gash against her pale, broad face. Her
teeth are straight and healthy. I wish she would come
closer.
    “ Crying over that
Murdermouth is like pissing in a river. At least he brings in a few
paying customers.”
    The Fat Lady stares deeply into my eyes. I
try to blink, to let her know I’m in here. She sees me. She sees
me.
    “ He’s more human than you’ll
ever be,” the Fat Lady says, without turning her head.
    “ Oh, yeah? Give us both a
kiss and then tell me who loves you.” He has pulled a yellow ball
from somewhere and tosses it back and forth between his feet.
“Except you better kiss me first because you probably won’t have no
lips left after him.”
    “ He would never hurt me,”
she says. She smiles at me. “Would you?”
    I try to think, try to make my mouth around
the word. My throat. All my muscles are dumb, except for my tongue.
I taste her perfume and sweat, the oil of her hair, the sex she had
with someone.
    Voices spill from the tent flap. The barker
is back, this time with only four people. Juggles hops to his feet,
balances on one leg while saluting the group, then dances away. He
doesn’t like the barker.
    “ Hello, Princess Tiffany,”
says the barker.
    The Fat Lady grins, rises slowly, groans with
the effort of lifting her own weight. I love all of her.
    “ For a limited time only, a
special attraction,” shouts the barker in his money-making voice.
“The world’s fattest woman and the bottomless Murdermouth, together
again for the very first time.”
    The Fat Lady waves her hand at him, smiles
once more at me, then waddles toward the opening in the tent. She
waits for a moment, obliterating the bright lights beyond the tent
walls, then enters the clamor and madness of the crowd.
    “ Too bad,” says the barker.
“A love for the ages.”
    “