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

Goddamn, I’d pay double to
see that,” says one of the group.
    “ Quadruple,” says the
barker. “Once for each chin.”
    The group laughs, then falls silent as all
eyes turn to me.
    The barker beats on the cage with his stick.
“Give them a show, freak.”
    I eat the finger again. It is shredded now
and bits of dirt and straw stick to the knuckle. Two of the people,
a man and a woman, hug each other. The woman makes a sound like her
stomach is bad. Another man, the one who would pay double, says,
“Do they really eat people?”
    “ Faster than an alligator,”
says my barker. “Why, this very one ingested my esteemed
predecessor in three minutes flat. Nothing left but two pounds of
bones and a shoe.”
    “ Doesn’t look like much to
me,” says the man. “I wouldn’t be afraid to take him
on.”
    He calls to the man with him, who wobbles and
smells of liquor and excrement. “What do you think? Ten-to-one
odds.”
    “ Maynard, he’d munch your
ass so fast you’d be screaming ‘Mommy’ before you knew what was
going on,” says the wobbling man.
    Maynard’s eyes narrow and he turns to the
barker. “What do you say? I’ll give you a hundred bucks. Him and
me, five minutes.”
    My barker points the stick toward the tent
ceiling. “Five minutes. In the cage with that thing?”
    “ I heard about these
things,” says the man. “Don’t know if I believe it.”
    My mouth tastes his courage and his fear. He
is salt and meat and brains and kidneys. He is one of them. I love
him.
    He takes the stick from the barker and pokes
me in the shoulder.
    “ That’s not sporting,” says
the barker. He looks at the man and woman, who have gone pale and
taken several steps toward the door.
    Maynard rattles the stick against the bars
and pokes me in the face. I hear a tearing sound. The woman screams
and the man shouts beside her, then they run into the night. Organ
notes trip across the sky, glittering wheels tilt, people laugh.
The crowd is thinning for the night.
    Maynard fishes in his pocket and pulls out
some bills. “What do you say?”
    “ I don’t know if it’s
legal,” says the barker.
    “ What do you care? Plenty
more where he came from.” Maynard breathes heavily. I smell poison
spilling from inside him.
    “ It ain’t like it’s murder,”
says Maynard’s drunken companion.
    The barker looks around, takes the bills.
“After the crowd’s gone. Come back after midnight and meet me by
the duck-hunting gallery.”
    Maynard reaches the stick into the bars,
rakes my disembodied finger out of the cage. He bends down and
picks it up, sniffs it, and slides it into his pocket. “A little
return on my investment,” he says.
    The barker takes the stick from Maynard and
wipes it clean on his trouser leg. “Show’s over, folks,” he yells,
as if addressing a packed house.
    “ Midnight,” Maynard says to
me. “Then it’s you and me, freak.”
    The wobbly man giggles as they leave the
tent. The barker waits by the door for a moment, then disappears. I
look into the torchlight, watching the flames do their slow dance.
I wonder what the fire tastes like.
    The Fat Lady comes. She must have been hiding
in the shadows again. She has changed her billowy costume for a
large robe. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, her face
barren of make-up.
    She sees me. She knows I can understand her.
“I heard what they said.”
    I stick out my tongue. I can taste the torn
place on my cheek. I grip the bars with my hands. Maybe tomorrow, I
will eat my hands, then my arms. Then I can be like Juggles. Except
you can’t dance when you’re dead.
    Or maybe I will eat and eat when the barker
brings me the bucket of chicken hearts. If I eat enough, I can be
the World’s Fattest Murdermouth. I can be one of them. I will take
money for the rides and pull the levers and sell cotton candy.
    If I could get out of this cage, I would show
her what I could do. I would prove my love. If I could talk, I
would tell her.
    The Fat