Green Eyes, a Fantasy fanfic - FictionPress.com

Green Eyes

A short story

He awoke, as usual to the sound of excited chattering. Judging by the rather small number of people staring at him from the other side of the iron bars, he realized that the night had only just begun. Eventually larger crowds would form around the cage, everyone staring at him with a blend of awe and fear. As much as he would have preferred to stay asleep, he knew that the owners would eventually come and wake him up with long, sharp poles anyway just to get him up so that the visitors could see him. And it wasn’t really easy to stay asleep with the noise these people- mostly children as far as he could see- were making, coupled with the sour-salty scent of sweat that they carried due to the unbearably humid conditions in the tent.

The wooden floor of his cage was wet, partially from the spilt water in the steel bowl that was meant for him, partially from his own urine. There were his claw marks everywhere on the floor, along with some of his shed fur mingled with the dry grass which made up the place he slept in. The cage itself wasn’t really very big- at most, as long and as wide as a car, and the ceiling was only so high enough that he could stand, but not completely upright. The two chains attached to the leather collar round his neck didn’t really hold him down too much- they were long enough to allow him to move and pace around his cage. The collar itself made his neck itch, but he knew better than to try and remove it- not that he knew how to anyway.

The cage wasn’t entirely comfortable, but then he had never had a choice in the matter anyway. Because he couldn’t remember any other home apart from it- he never felt any discontent. He vaguely remembered being uncomfortable here once- when he’d been first put in here. Now it was his home. Everything, from the noise made by the neighboring lions to the stench of his own shit, were things that he had gotten used to enough.

“What is it?” he heard one child ask.

“Are you sure it’s not just a man in a costume?” another said.

“Looks real enough to me.”

Different place, different faces, but they all said the same thing. He might have happily told them that he was real if only he could speak- right now the only noises his tongue was capable of making was low, gutturals growls and yelps. Either way, he wouldn’t have been able to answer the most popular question asked anyway-

‘What is it?’

He wished that he knew. And even if he did, he wasn’t sure that he would be able to put the words together. He had lost track of the years since he’d last spoken a word- at this point he could only understand some of the simpler, short words these people were saying anymore. Even his thoughts weren’t built out of words anymore- they were mostly images, or sights, scents or sounds.

He looked over at the cages beside his. The lions were getting agitated- pacing around furiously in their cages as loud music started to play, pulling the crowds of people away from the cages into the main large pyramid of cloth where he himself would be taken to eventually- it was his only other world apart from his small cage. Yet it wasn’t a place he looked forward to- in fact, every time his owner stopped somewhere, he would dread nightfall.

That was when the show would begin.

Clarice hated the circus. She hated the loud music. She hated the freak sideshows that normally came with them. She hated the huge crowds of people, and she found the idea of sitting in a humid tent for hours watching people jump up and down, walking tightropes and lashing at animals with bullwhips insanely stupid. Worst of all was her fear of clowns. Well, perhaps ‘fear’ would be too strong a word to put it. She had been deathly afraid of them in her early teen years. Now she only found them annoying. What was so funny about a bunch of pathetic men wearing makeup and rubber noses anyway?

Unfortunately for her, her husband and her children didn’t seem to share her hatred for the circus.

And now here she was, walking a few feet behind her family as they walked on excitedly amongst the large mass of people heading into the main tent, ushered on by a group of clowns dressed in painfully colorful outfits. She contemplated staying here- the tent where the lions and animals were kept- until the show was over. She didn’t exactly like the lions, but they would be taken into the main tent anyway, and then if no one shooed her away she could just sit here alone until everything ended. Or she could just loiter around outside by the car.

The buttery sweet scent of popcorn was strong in the air- only slightly stronger than the unbearable animal stench of sweat, fur and urine coming from the cages. The lights in striped red and yellow tent were starting to dim, giving way to the bright lights coming from the inside of the main tent, beckoning towards the crowd who had paid to come here. The lions were growling menacingly, but even their growls were drowned out by the sound of the excited crowd- chattering and excited high-pitched squeals from little girls.

If only Jenna and Sam hadn’t pleaded for their mother to come along with them, Clarice wouldn’t be here- and would instead be at home, happily waiting for the next episode of Desperate Housewives to come on. Or she might even spend her time reading ‘The Golden Compass’, by Phillip Pullman. Clarice herself was no fan of fantasy novels- but like most things she ended up doing these days, it was a result of the twins’ determination to include their mother in almost everything they did.

She glanced at the cage where they had been last plastered at before John had taken them by the hand and led them on.

At first, she thought it looked like an ape. She couldn’t see very clearly due to the dim lighting, and the fact that the creature was crouched in the darkest part of the small cage. It was most definitely not a lion- that was for sure. It didn’t seem so much like an ape either. Emblazoned in an iron plate above the roof of the creature’s cage was the word, ‘Monster’.

Odd. They normally came up with cheesier names than that. She considered taking a closer look just to see what the ‘Monster’ was…

“Momma! It’s gonna start!”

With the twins both staring at her disapprovingly, and her husband looking rather impatient, she forgot all about it as she rushed towards them, bracing herself for a very long night.

Green eyes.

They didn’t actually meet his- he could somehow tell that she didn’t see him well enough in the darkening cage. But the moment she had spared him that glance, something reacted deep inside of him. Almost as though she had cast a spell on him.

He kept her eyes on her all the way until she left, in a hurry, without looking back.

There was something about circus tents that always made them seem larger when you were inside them than they looked like from the outside. Still Clarice couldn’t help but wish that this one were bigger still, as the seats in the red and white striped, stadium-like tent were packed rather closely together, held up on wooden platforms and iron scaffoldings. She didn’t mind being pressed against Sam, who was busy arguing with Jenna over which was more dangerous- a lion, or a tiger. What she did mind, was the grossly obese man sitting on her right carrying a tub of popcorn in one hand, supporting it with his chest as he held a stick of cotton candy in his other hand. She was close enough to actually smell the beer from the stains on his white ‘I Love New York’ T-shirt. The fact that he was chewing loudly and talking to his hands-free set at the same time with pieces of his food flying out of his mouth to the unfortunate, unwary couple sitting in front of them made her wish there were room to inch further away from him- but there simply wasn’t.

They were seated at one of the best seats- the ones high up back where you could see most of what was going on. Sam had insisted that being closer to the ring was better- after all, that way you would be closer to the lions when they got into the ring, and maybe the clowns would come close enough for you to shake their hands- which was precisely why Clarice was absolutely certain that further from the ring was better.

The clowns had just left the ring, much to Clarice’s relief. The crowd was still cheering to them as they were leaving the tent, returning to Clarice what little sense of calmness she had entered the tent with. She could stop fidgeting now. The kids had loved them- something that she intended to remedy with a certain Stephen King movie called ‘It’ the moment she got home- she was quite certain that the old tape was somewhere in the attic. Before the clowns there had been the acrobats, which she hadn’t minded so much. These were the ‘one of the best’, she had been told- apart from the typical trapeze acts there had been this one particular act where they used these silk ropes hanging from the tent ceiling without the safety of a net. Then there were contortionists- people who could twist and bend their limbs around like rubber. Now those were just plain weird, along with the people who swallowed swords, breathed fire…

Clarice shivered just thinking about them. She wasn’t really the kind of person who found bizarre things fascinating. Normal was fine enough, thank you. Better than fine, even, it was swell. Yeah.

The ringmaster was a tall, pale-skinned man with a lean yet muscular figure, dressed in a red, long-sleeved overcoat with glittering gold buttons and a frilly white collar. He had a kind of arrogant air about him which could be plainly be seen whenever he strode into the ring in order to announce the next event. His voice was loud and commanding, the kind which she imagined normally belonged to captains who barked orders to soldiers- only a bit with a bit more silky charisma and a little less roughness. If anything, she always welcomed his entrance into the ring, normally heralded by the sound of trumpets playing over the speakers hung above the trapeze platforms at the top of the tent. His entrance normally signaled the end of one show- and the beginning of another. What Clarice was really waiting for though, was for him to finally come in and tell them all to go home.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the man said over the cordless microphone in his hand. Instantly the crowd fell silent to listen to him speak. All the lights in the tent turned off save for the white spotlight focused on him. “I hope that our humble shows so far have kept you entertained. Now, however, it is time for the main event.”

In the darkness, Clarice could see silhouettes of men pulling up tall iron bars all around the ring, setting them upright with cords attached to hooks they had planted into the ground. The iron bars all joined together to form one huge circular cage around the inner ring where the ringmaster stood, unmoving.

“I thought they already did the lion taming show,” Clarice muttered to no one in particular when she saw six huge, muscular, bare-chested bald men from one of the previous shows pull in a smaller rectangular cage on wheels into the ring towards where the ringmaster stood waiting.

“Maybe it’ll be tigers this time,” Sam said hopefully, his eyes lighting up.

But there weren’t any tigers in the animals tent from before. And whatever the thing was in the cage- regardless of the fact that it was a bit hard to see in the dark- Clarice knew for certain that it was not a tiger.

The scent of the humans was overwhelming- and the noise that they made seemed to be amplified a hundred fold now that there were so many of them. The owner’s voice silenced them, as it always did- though he knew that the silence wouldn’t last. Soon the noise wouldn’t be coming from around him, but from within his own head. That was when things would get unbearable. That was when these humans would get what they wanted out of him.

A red spotlight was shot down towards his cage, completely removing his cover in the shadows. The owner continued talking- his loud voice seeming to come from all directions. As loud as the voice was, he couldn’t understand what the owner was saying- the voice was too loud, so much that it hurt his ears, agitated him, enough to make him growl menacingly as he struggled to break free of the chains attached to his collar. There were gasps of surprise coming from the crowd as his face was revealed for all to see.

The sight of him growling and snarling savagely, almost rocking the cage with his struggles was what the crowd had expected to see. He didn’t know it, but it was how the owner expected him to act. The bloodthirsty monster, frothing at the mouth and roaring its hatred at the world around him was what he became when faced with his owner, here in the ring.

In truth, his hatred was only directed at one thing- and that was the owner, who was now producing a bullwhip from his coat.

Seeing this, he stopped snarling, and started backing away from the cage door, a look of definite fear in his eyes.

He could not win.

The men outside the cage started unhooking the chains from outside the cage attached to his collar. In unison, they gave one violent shove, and he was brought forward towards the bars, pressed enough so that his head stuck out through the bars.

The owner walked up to him and leaned closer towards his left ear-

And he knew it was over.

Almost instantly the monster started thrashing violently again, as though whatever it was that the ringmaster had whispered to the pointed ears at the top of its fur-covered head had snapped something inside of it. Its snarls seemed to be louder now, and the hatred in its dark blue eyes seemed to be replaced by madness.

The men who had hauled the cage into the ring left in a hurry, closing the iron grille behind them securely as the ringmaster drew a set of keys from the left pocket of his white pants. He fitted one of them into the lock quickly before turning it and withdrawing his hand just in time to avoid the monster’s swiping hands.

As though it understood that the door was unlocked, it burst through the door with one single leap, landing only a few feet away from the ringmaster with its loose chains rattling on the ground behind him.

The two figures shared the single red spotlight now, engaged in a staring match of sorts that the audience watched with bated breath.

“What is that thing, Papa?” she heard Jenna ask her father in a low voice.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” came John’s response, his eyes fixed on the ring with his house hanging agape as he finished the sentence.

“A bear,” she heard someone from the row behind her say.

But it wasn’t. It just wasn’t.

The inhuman song inside his head, the dark, menacing voice that belonged to his owner was picking up in speed and volume, so much that it felt like his head was going to explode. At the same time, however there was an underlying sense of bliss- a kind of numbness that he couldn’t explain. It was like going through excruciating pain on the outside while his inside relaxed. He didn’t like it. It felt wrong. But there was nothing he could do about it.

He did only as the song allowed him to- as he took his first leap towards his owner. And as usual, no contact was made as the owner sidestepped- there was the cracking sound of a whip- and he knew that he was bleeding. It didn’t hurt one bit. It never did, thanks to the owner’s voice- still his body reacted in the way as it was supposed to, and he gave out a loud yelp of pain.

He got up and made his second move, swiping at the owner’s face- a move which was again avoided, followed by another lash from the bullwhip which he again recoiled from. This time, the audience cheered along to the sound of the whip and the sound of his pain.

It went on for a while- none of his attempts were meant to achieve anything other than to receive punishment so that the crowd would cheer for his owner. In the end, he slumped down to the ground after the umpteenth lash- as he was ordered to by the song. The ground was hard and unpleasant beneath his fur, with dust rising up into his eyes. The only scent left that flooded his nose now was the scent of his own blood. With his apparent defeat, the cheers grew louder still. Yet they couldn’t break the noise that was in his head- reminding him that the show wasn’t over.

The song in his head changed its tune to a slower, softer tune.

He got up slowly, only onto his knees as the owner approached him. He lowered his head, and the owner grabbed a fistful of his fur near the shoulder, hoisting himself up onto his back. His head between the owner’s legs- like a parent carrying a child- he got up as the song commanded and started walking on his hind legs, parading his owner around as the human waved to the crowd- their cheers now rising to a deafening mixture of applause and entertained shouts, wanting to see more.

And they would be given more- the song told him in its wordless way. It was in a steady beat now- a soothing, relaxing melody that kept him calm regardless of how he had been treated tonight. He would forget for now, and remember the morning after, during which there would be nothing left to numb the pain both inside and outside his body.

That’s how it always was for him. How it always would be.

Clarice watched disbelievingly as the ringmaster continued to give it different commands, from rolling over to playing dead, with the kind of authority that would normally be enforced on dogs. And it obeyed. This monster, this thing that had been filled with bloodlust before was now as tame and as docile as a puppy. The audience laughed and cheered as they watched the tricks it had been taught, amused at how the monster they had started out fearing was now acting.

She didn’t know why she wasn’t laughing along with her children and the rest of the crowd. Something about this show was just so undeniably wrong.

And as the ringmaster led it back to its cage, holding the thing’s chains as though he were holding a dog by the leash, she decided that no force in heaven or hell would make her come back here to see this again.

Ever.

The song wasn’t over. It seemed to continue slowing down, as he lay down on the floor of the cage. It told him to sleep, as the cage doors slammed shut behind him and the cage began to move, being hauled out of the ring by the same men who had brought it in. As his eyelids grew heavy, just before they closed completely, he caught one last glance at one particular place in the crowd where he saw what he had been hoping desperately to see again.

Her green eyes.

They still didn’t meet his- how could they, with her vision so limited from such a distance? Either way, it brought him more calmness than the song could possibly hope to achieve.

It was past midnight and Clarice was still up, on the blue leather armchair in the living room of her two-storey farmhouse at the outskirts of town. The steel ceiling fan was turned on above her head, though for some reason not strong enough to chase away the heat from the room. The Sony television on the huge, oaken cabinet propped against the ceiling opposite the main entrance to the house was turned on- with some Britpop singer wailing his heart out on MTV- not that she paid it much attention. The TV was only on to give her some sense of company- she hated total silence. She found it more disturbing than overwhelming noise. Her attention was fixed completely on ‘The Golden Compass’, which she still couldn’t seem to wrap herself around even though she was on her twentieth page. Now that she realized it, the book seemed just a little bit too complex for eleven-year olds. She had to wonder how the twins could find it so fascinating, considering the fact that she didn’t really believe they could even understand it.

One of life’s mysteries that would probably never be solved until they were old enough to start explaining things.

The living room was her favorite room in the entire house- probably because the paintings on the walls were all hers. She never did give up her fascination for sketching and painting regardless of how her parents had tried their very best to get her fascinated with science or accounts- anything other than this ‘useless hobby’ of hers. Most of the pictures were really sights around the farm at different times of day- her best work being the one hung right above the fireplace- a picture of a different farm only twenty minutes drive away from this one- the one that still belonged to her parents. It was a picture of the sun setting over the neighboring meadows, with the silhouettes of two faceless figures running amidst the tall grass.

The walls were painted white- plain and simple. She preferred it that way. The furniture around the room like the small coffee table on the green, square carpet in the middle of the room was something she had brought over from her parents’ place. There were still marks on one of its legs- carvings made with a knife that spelt ‘C-L-A’. She had meant to put her entire name there long ago- her mother had caught her before she could even get to the ‘I’. Despite the fact that it wasn’t really that big, the paintings of scenery on the walls somehow gave the room the illusion of spaciousness- not to say that she wasn’t doing her reading in the room because it was cramped. The only reason she wasn’t reading by her sleeping husband with the newly bought table lamp on was because, to put it simply- her husband was a loud snorer. She had gotten used to it over the five years of their marriage- but only enough so that she could fall asleep beside him given enough effort and willpower. Reading beside him while he snored was something she still couldn’t, and probably never could, accomplish.

She was just about to give up on the book when she heard a crashing sound coming from the kitchen.

It startled her enough that she immediately jumped up onto her feet, dropping the book onto the carpet.

“Oh God, Arch, not again!”

Archie, their white Siamese cat had been responsible for at least twelve broken dishes since he had been introduced to the household. Every time it happened, she was always the one who discovered it, and, true to her duty, she was always the one who had to clear it up even if it was in the middle of the night- for fear that her children or husband might get up earlier than her the next day and injure themselves over the broken shards. It had happened once already to John- who had only decided not to send Archie back to the animal shelter because Sam and Jenna were experts when it came to pleading.

Fuming with anger, she marched straight past the stairs towards the doorway leading into the pitch black kitchen. She felt her way along the wall for the light switch- found it, and turned it on, ready to throw an angry glare at the culprit.

Only when the lights turned on, there was already a glare aimed at her.

Had she not been paralyzed completely with fear, she probably would have screamed at the top of her lungs. Even when her senses did come back to her- which took quite a while, she chose not to scream, for fear of provoking it into leaping at her and tearing her to shreds. She didn’t have a bullwhip, nor did she have lightning-fast reflexes like the ringmaster did- if and when the monster would choose to kill her, she would die. Plain and simple.

Or well, bloody and messy.

He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to escape- not that it mattered now anyway. All he knew was that there was a voice in his head stronger than his owner’s that had told him to escape, and come to her. Just knowing that he had to had been enough to propel himself out of his cage at the first opportunity that had presented itself- that was when one of the cleaners had made the mistake of opening the cage doors and unlocking the chains before firing the tranquilizer at him. Had the owner even seen him before he had left the tent, he would have failed. As it was, the owner had arrived mere moments too late- finding only mutilated bodies left in the wake of the disappearance of his prized possession.

And now here it was, on the other side of town in the woman’s house, in a wide kitchen with a black and white tiled floor, down on all fours by the wooden dining table from where he had accidentally knocked down a bottle of orange juice which now lay in pieces on the floor. There were only two windows on one side of the room from which moonlight seeped in through red flowered curtains. The sweet citrus scent of the drink he had spilt onto the floor along with the bottle was strong, but not strong enough to mask out her scent- the only scent he had focused on to get him this far.

She was afraid of him, that much he could tell. He could read it in her eyes, and the look on her face as she inched away from him slowly, towards the kitchen counter by the window where the knives were. All the while he made no sound- he just kept looking at her eyes. He didn’t know why exactly he was doing it. But it felt like he was waiting for something to happen.

Even when she withdrew a long, sharp kitchen knife from the wooden block by the sink, he didn’t move.

It was when she was about to make her first move, that their eyes finally met.

Time seemed to freeze then, for the two of them. After what felt like an eternity, the silence was finally broken by the sound of the knife clattering to the floor.

He began to change, not so much on the outside, but images were beginning to pour into his head, enough for his tongue to be allowed one word.

“Cl..ari…ss..”

And that confirmed it. Her legs turned to water as she dropped to her knees before the beast. There was still disbelief and hesitation in her eyes, but it had been weakened enough for her to reach towards him with her shuddering left hand. She didn’t touch it, but her eyes widened as she said aloud, finally, “It’s you.”

Her mind took her back into the painting back in the living room- the picture of the old farm, of the meadows, and she went beyond the limits of the frame and deeper into the grass, towards the two faceless figures she had put there. She gave one of them back its face, paying special attention to its eyes as though trying to confirm something.

“Oh my God,” she gasped when she had confirmed what she wanted to know. Her mind started racing- so many questions, so many possibilities, and yet she knew that this was not the place for it. She shuddered to think of what would happen if her husband got up and came downstairs.

Gathering herself to her feet, she immediately reached for the keys hanging from the holder hung by the doorway.

She looked at him again, and wondered if she could understand him.

“We can’t stay here,” she said.

Seeing that it brought no reaction, she reached forward- no longer hesitant- and grabbed him gently by his left hand, far up the elbow away from his clawed hand. She gave it a slight tug, and he complied, following her unquestioningly out the back door which John had no doubt left open after taking out the trash. Just this once, she wasn’t going to scold him for it.

They were moving, that much he could tell by the wind blowing in, threatening to throw off the black tarpaulin covers draped over him. He kept deathly silent, confident that she would stop and take it off him when the time came.

And that time did come, eventually, where they stopped in a place that smelt strongly of ash. He heard the sound of the truck door opening and closing again, followed by her footsteps which drew closer until the cover was removed and he was once again exposed to the open sky. He looked at her first, then at the surroundings, at the place he had been taken to.

It was mostly a vast open field, with thick, tall grass. There was the sound of crickets chirping, along with an owl hooting from a nearby large, red structure made of wood. Beside it was another building, only it was made of stone- or at least, what was left of it was made of stone. Its walls were charred black and the top floor was gone completely, along with some parts of the wall that revealed the inside of the place that he had once called home a long time ago.

He heard her say his name. Yes, he remembered that now. As she talked to him, leading him towards the red barn beside the old burnt farmhouse, he realized that he was starting to understand her more and more. The words were coming back to him. Not all at once, but enough to get the gist of what she was saying.

“We tried…couldn’t…folks…gone…”

He spared her a glance when she said this, looking slightly confused. But she didn’t notice this, and so she didn’t realize that he did not understand her last sentence. Something felt important about it, but he didn’t want to press her for answers- partially because he wasn’t quite sure how yet.

Walking into the old barn brought to him a set of mixed feelings. The feel of it was completely different now- not that he could easily recall how it used to be back when he’d used to come here often. It felt like coming home, and yet at the same time, the part of him that had buried his humanity deep inside for the past years told him that this place was completely alien. The faint scent of the cows that used to be housed here aroused a sense of hunger in him, and saliva started to flow down his chin. Almost instantly, he reacted and wiped it off, not wanting her to notice him like this. The ground with him was covered with bits of hay, probably from the upstairs mow where the hayloft used to be. There were some holes in the walls of the barn, though not glaringly big, only enough so that there were some beams of moonlight lancing in towards the ground. The wooden ladder leading up to the mow was still intact- though climbing it felt rather awkward with his less than human hands. She climbed up with him- and indeed, the hayloft was still there, right beside the upper barn door. He could smell rodents now- there weren’t many of them, but he was sure that they were here. In any case, he decided to wait for her to leave before he’d try to catch one for food.

She lay him down on the bed of hay. It was thicker than his own back in his circus cage, but the hay was rougher, and it poked and scratched at the wounds left behind by the whip. It was only a discomfort though- nothing he wouldn’t be able to sleep over.

She looked at him before backing off towards the ladder. She said something to him which he couldn’t really catch save for the word, “Sleep.” He nodded weakly in response, and watched her climb down. He listened to her footsteps trailing off, followed by the sound of the closing barn doors.

“Sleep now, I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said softly. She wanted to know more, but she didn’t want to stay out too long for fear of her husband finding out. By the time she had gotten back to her husband’s blue Ford pickup truck, she sat at the wheel for a few minutes, staring out towards the vast open grass field, wondering now, how she had managed to walk away without asking any questions. Because there were almost a hundred forming now, and more still.

‘Isitreallyhim?Whynow?Aftersolongwhywhywhy?WhatthefuckhappenedtohimohGodnoidon’tthinkiwanttoknowohgodnononono.’

Her thoughts were all mixed up now. There were so many questions, so many emotions surfacing- doubt, fear, anger, disbelief… What had made her so sure that this thing was him? Now that she’d put him in that barn which used to belong to his parents who had long since died, she had to question her conviction that that thing was indeed him. And how had she trusted it so easily?

“He said my name,” she whispered to herself, tears forming in her eyes.

She could have sat there and kept on crying all night if she wanted to- weeping a blend of tears of joy and tears of sorrow. But then she didn’t have that luxury. She had a husband and two children at home.

Wiping the tears off using the sleeve of her denim jacket, she started the engines and drove off without looking back.

She came back next morning, saying that she needed to get groceries after dropping off Sam and Jenna off at school. The fact that she didn’t get enough sleep the night before showed clearly- partially from her long unkempt, untied auburn hair, and partially from the fact that she was wearing last night’s white t-shirt and the same blue jeans and matching denim jacket, with the t-shirt still having coffee stains from last night. When she had told John that she was getting some food for the kitchen, she was only half lying- in her hands was a paper bag filled with meat straight from the butcher. Getting off the truck, she quickly hurried for the barn, half-expecting him to be gone when he opened the door- possibly proof that last night was just a dream, or that he was just a wild animal after all.

He was still there when she opened the door.

He looked up at her and squinted as the sunlight rushed in to reveal him crouched by the hayloft.

The first thing she noticed when she saw him were the changes.

Firstly, his body had shrunk in size- from the size of a bear he was now the size of an adult man, though his body was still mostly covered with brown fur. His head had also changed shape somewhat, now vaguely resembling the look of a human’s face, though still retaining his sharp teeth.

“You…changed,” she muttered softly as she walked hesitantly towards him.

He looked at her, his expressionless face remaining so, and stood up on his hind legs, with a bit more balance than usual. He squinted his eyes slightly, as though trying to recall something, his mouth hanging open. Then, slowly, he began to talk, his voice still sounding deep and throaty.

“Back…slowly….broken. Eventually…might….remember,” he said.

She nodded, hoping that he was telling the truth. It saddened her to see him in such a pathetic state- straining just to get words that barely made a sentence across. But then, he could at least speak a few more words now. That was an improvement. It was proof that there was indeed a human mind trapped in that body, and it was slowly coming out.

She looked at the contents of the paper bag she was holding, and suddenly felt ashamed.

Seeing her face redden, he leaned closer. “What?” he asked.

“I…well…I got food for you,” she said. Which was true. Only now that he seemed just a little bit more human, it felt wrong to be feeding him raw meat.

He reached into the bag, and withdrew a red steak with his bare hands. He regarded it for a while before tossing the plastic wrapping aside, sinking his teeth into the meat as he crouched back on the ground. After he was halfway done, the words came and he said, with some evident effort, “Thank you.”

As he ate, she sat down beside him, staring at him as she hesitantly asked him her first question.

“You are…well, you are…right?”

He stopped and stared at her. She looked at his eyes, then looked away as he didn’t answer. “Right,” she said. “Of course you are.”

She refrained from asking more questions as he continued eating- until she noticed that there were marks on his skin, barely noticeable through the fur, but they were clearly noticeable. Some of them were even still bleeding. Suddenly remembering the bullwhip, she cursed herself for forgetting to bring a first aid kit.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, ready to get up and drive home to retrieve the first aid kit for him.

He stopped eating again, taking time to find the answer. “A little,” he said finally before he continued eating.

Deciding finally to leave him alone, she got up and set the paper bag down near him and started backing off towards the door. “That should last you the whole day,” she said. “I don’t suppose I have to remind you that you shouldn’t leave, should I? The circus is still here, probably outraged with you missing. They might be looking for you.”

He stared at her and nodded slowly, without saying anything.

Sighing deeply, she turned around and walked away.

The words were beginning to make more sense now, and he found himself understanding her easier. Speaking was still a problem though. Finding the right words felt like wading through a thick pile of words that he still could understand to find the ones that he did, and would convey what he wanted to her. The memories were coming back too, though it wasn’t much of an improvement. Most of the things he was starting to recall were recent things- circus shows, mostly. Though how long he had been part of that world still wouldn’t come back, nor did much fragments of his life before. There was only the owner’s voice, the circus, the woman’s name, and his own.

He looked around him, standing up slowly.

He’d grown up here. That in itself gave the place power to bring back memories, to reawaken his past self which she had helped surface. Even though he hadn’t changed enough to show expressions yet, he understood the disappointed look in her eyes when she had heard him, seen him in this condition. He looked down at his hands, clenching them until they bled as though he were telling his own body, ‘Heal, damn you. Let me out!’

For her.

She came back later that afternoon, bringing some bandages and antiseptic. She wasn’t really sure how to use it- John was the one who usually treated the children’s scrapes and bruise, bless him- but she was prepared to try it until she got it right. How hard could it be, anyway?

Entering the barn, she climbed up to the mow to find him lying curled up on his bed of hay, asleep. As she got closer, she noticed that he looked even more human now- his face was human now, and the fur on his body was short enough that she could see his skin. Enough of it that she stopped and contemplated driving back again to get him some of John’s older clothes. Then she decided that it would be too much of a hassle and continued walking up to him anyway. Besides, she’d seen him naked before. A long time ago, when they were both young and carefree.

He still stank vaguely of urine and shit, though the odor wasn’t as strong as it was the night before As she sat beside him, she opened the paper bag she had with her and started taking out the bandages-

She stopped when she heard a sobbing sound.

She looked at over at him and realized that he was crying in his sleep. His voice still sounded rough, making the sobs sound more angry than sad. Was he crying because of the wounds on his body? Or something that ran deeper? As she resisted the urge to cry herself, she stroked him gently on the shoulders, before pulling him over gently and cradling his head in her lap as she looked down on him, wondering if when he woke up, he would finally be himself again. And so she sat there, with him lying asleep for what felt like hours. Even when the sun was starting to set, she didn’t move for fear of waking him.

John, Sam, Jenna…none of them came to mind.

There was only the two of them, just like it used to be.

When he finally did wake up, their eyes met, and he moved away slowly.

“Hey,” she said softly. “I came back. I brought something to treat your wounds.”

He looked at her, then at the bandages on the wooden floor beside her and said, “Thank you.”

She proceeded to do what she came here to do- there was some difficulty at first, but she eventually figured out how to do it. He flinched and growled slightly sometimes, just like Jenna and Sam, except well, they didn’t growl of course. By the time she was done, they sat opposite each other on the hayloft, and she decided to try and ask him some of her questions.

“What happened to you?” she began. “When you disappeared all those years ago...were you kidnapped by the circus people?”

He shook his head and answered, his reaction noticeably faster than it was this morning. His speech was still rather slurred, and there didn’t seem to be much emotion behind it. But it would do for now. “No,” he said. “I left. My choice.”

“Why?”

He hesitated for a while, gritting his teeth while he looked for an answer. Then he said, “Changing. Was turning into it. Had to. Dangerous.”

Her eyes widened with surprise. “So those circus people weren’t the ones who did this to you? What caused it?”

He shook his head again. “Can’t remember. Own- Ringmaster…found me. Faster up change. Made change permanent. Made it worse.”

She didn’t understand this. Any of this. She’d assumed that whatever it was that had happened to him had been the ringmaster’s doing somehow. That there was some kind of magic or drug that he used. From the looks of it, even if he did get his memories back, there were some things that he still wouldn’t be able to explain.

Which, now that she thought of it, was probably for the best. She didn’t want to know more than she needed to. Not about things like this.

Before she could even begin to ask her next question, to her surprise, he had a question for her.

“How long was I gone?”

She fell silent. It was her turn to hesitate.

He reached forward and held both of her hands in his- his first most human gesture since she’d found him.

“Seventeen years,” she said, as calmly as she could.

Silence.

From the shocked look on his face, she could tell that he hadn’t expected it to be that long. But it wasn’t something she could hide. It had been seventeen years ago that he had left town without even saying goodbye. Since then so much had changed- she’d graduated, she’d gotten married, and now she had children.

Yet not everything had changed, she realized, as she found herself embracing him tightly, hoping that it would comfort him. In the end she was the first to let out tears.

When she pulled back, he saw that there were tears running down her cheeks. Slowly, gently, he wiped one away with his right index finger.

Seventeen years.

And yet here they were. Together.

Somehow, she had saved him.

He leaned closer towards her, and their lips met.

It was in the middle of it that she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to be here. The kiss had lasted barely more than a few seconds, but it didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t supposed to happen. She pulled back quickly, and scrambled to her feet, shaking her head as she repeated to herself at the back of her mind, “No! No! No! No!”

He looked at her, surprised.

Not giving him the opportunity to ask ‘Why’, she started climbing down the ladder and rushed for the doors without looking back, even when she heard him cry out her name, she didn’t look back.

Too much things have changed. And even if their feelings hadn’t, it wasn’t enough, it just wasn’t enough.

The boy she had known was still alive there, trapped in a man’s body. But the girl she had been had died a long time ago- the day he had left. Since then she had come too far, changed too much to be allowed a chance to go back. Why did he have to reappear in her life now? Why like this? And why did she have to be the one with the power to save him?

She didn’t know, nor did she want to find out. It was another one of those things better left as though it never happened.

As she drove away, she saw him coming out of the barn in her sideview mirrors- and she stepped on the accelerator harder.

He didn’t understand, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to rest until he did, and so he followed her scent back to the farmhouse where he had finally found her again the night before. It took a while, considering the fact that his sense of smell wasn’t as strong as it used to be. But he wasn’t completely human yet, and what little traces of the monster that was left in him, he found her house again. He didn’t understand- why did she run away? Why now after she had saved him from the ringmaster’s spell? Was she not the one meant for him, since she was his savior?

He had left a long time ago to protect her from himself. From what he was slowly becoming. Ironically, his journey away from home had led him not to answers on how to salvage his humanity- instead it had delivered him into the hands of one who had locked it away for seventeen years.

Seventeen years!

She had saved him from the owner’s spell, and somehow, it seemed like the monster was subsiding after allowed so much time in control. He knew it wouldn’t be permanent- as strong as their love was, it wouldn’t be enough to defeat it, else he wouldn’t have had to leave in the first place.

But now she knew what he was! He didn’t have to hide from her anymore.

Or did he?

Was that why she had run away? Because she somehow knew that he wasn’t, and probably never would be completely human?

He had to know.

Under the cover of the night, he crept up to the house and found his way towards the kitchen from which he had entered the night before. The lights were on, and he could smell the tantalizing aroma of roasted chicken as he neared the windows. Already he could hear her voice.

“Jenna, Sam, for crying out loud! Dinner’s ready!”

The voice of a man answered her. “They’re on their way down, honey. No need to get all worked up.”

He looked into the window, and he finally understood.

Seventeen years.

So much time had been stolen from him, and in that time, she had changed. The man standing beside her as she set the table was testament to this. The contented look on his face, the way he was leaning over towards her ear and whispering something which turned her guilty frown into the same mischievous grin he was wearing…it all made sense.

She hadn’t been able to wait seventeen years.

When he looked at this man, this person who had taken her in his absence, he felt the monster in him roaring with fury, itching to crash through the windows and rip his throat out.

And he probably would have, if the children hadn’t came into the kitchen.

Two of them. A boy and a girl. Both of them had the dark brown eyes belonging to her husband- but they both had her red hair. And they had her spark. He could see the life in their eyes as the sister chased the brother into the kitchen, the both of them laughing at the top of their lungs.

“Sam! Jenna! No running in the kitchen!”

He took a step back from the window.

Children.

He kept staring for a while, hoping that it was an illusion. And yet they stayed there. All of them. A family. And despite the guilt that had been on her face earlier, he could see her smile now at the children as she sat down opposite her husband at the table. He saw her husband’s contented smile, and he knew that she had found happiness in her absence.

What right did he have to take it away?

“Sam and Jenna,” he repeated, tasting the words on his mouth. Blinking back tears as a smile crept upon his face, he backed off, fading into the darkness of the night.

Clarice wasn’t sure why she even bothered coming back as she came out of the truck with two paper bags- one containing a red, long sleeved checkered shirt and a pair of jeans that both used to belong to John. The other contained extra tuna and egg sandwiches she had made for the twins for breakfast earlier. She felt like she was dragging herself towards the barn- partially out of hesitation to do what she had came here to do, partially out of exhaustion after a long night in bed with John.

If she had slept with him to relieve her own guilt, it clearly didn’t work. There was only one way to achieve that- she didn’t like it, but she had to do it.

He was waiting her at the foot of the ladder when she came in, as though he had expected her arrival. He looked human enough to pass off as one now, albeit the fact that he looked rather mangy with his untidy beard and long hair. The fur was still slightly visible, but it was nothing that couldn’t be concealed with clothes.

He said nothing. She said nothing. Avoiding looking into his eyes, she handed him the paper bags before turning away while he tried the clothes on.

They were surprisingly too large for him- the sleeves of the shirt hanging past his wrists. It went without saying that it wouldn’t have been able to fit the monster she’d seen at the cage in the circus, but he was human now, and so she hoped he would stay.

The words she had been meaning to say refused to leave her mouth as she stood in front of him, her head hung low. The silence lingered in the air between them for the longest time until, finally, he opened his mouth first.

“I can’t stay.”

She looked up with surprise, to see him smiling at her. It was a forced smile, she could tell, but that didn’t change the fact that he had successfully predicted what she was going to say even before she could explain the fact that she was married and had children.

“I followed you back,” he continued. “I saw.”

She gasped with surprise.

“I understand,” he said as he kept on smiling. “I’ll go. Leave town.”

She gazed into his eyes, and saw him there, more clearly than ever before. And again she found herself fighting back tears as she said to him, “I’m sorry.” So he had seen her family, then. She didn’t have to explain it to him, but it was plain to see that it didn’t hurt him any less than it would have if she had had to tell him. When had he come? How did he find his way? Who had he seen?

“Don’t be sorry,” he told her.

She hesitantly reached into her pockets and fished out her wallet, from which she produced some money. “I’ll buy you a bus ticket to wherever you need to go. Wherever you still have family.”

“Thank you.”

The sentences were still short and simple ones, but there was a noticeable difference now in that she could hear his human voice, which had been hidden for so long. There was sadness in it, and it made her guilty to hear it, but the important thing was that he was human enough now to be able to get to wherever he wanted safely.

“But,” he added, just as they were walking out the barn doors. “I’m going to need a haircut.”

By noon, they were both standing at Haven’s main bus station, near the center of town. Having cut his hair and shaved his beard at the barber’s, there was no way anyone would be able to guess that only a few nights ago, he had been the main attraction in the circus. Clarice followed him up to the main stop- which was one of the only two platforms at the station. They were technically the only people there- seeing the fact that hardly anyone came to Haven by bus anymore, and the few people who did leave it only did so on weekends. There was only one bus available which would take him to the closest city. From there he’d move on to somewhere else. He hadn’t planned it out completely yet, but he wasn’t going to look for his family members. He never knew them well enough, and they probably wouldn’t believe his excuse for being missing for seventeen years.

No, he was alone from here on. He didn’t tell this to her, of course. He didn’t want her to worry. Either way, he’d find a way somehow to make it. Hopefully he’d be completely himself by the time he got to the next station, he’d be himself enough again to plan properly.

Even then, things wouldn’t ever go smoothly- due to the thing that was inside of him that he realized would start appearing again once he left this town. Unless the circus found him again though, it would at least not be permanent.

The fact that he wasn’t completely free from his other side was another thing he didn’t share with Clarice.

As much as she didn’t want to, he could tell that she cared for him. Probably not as much as she did her husband, but at least enough to keep her up if she knew he had a rough road ahead of him. He didn’t want that.

Inside him was a pain that he was fighting to keep hidden. Once he got on the bus, he knew that it would only get worse. Part of him was telling him that it would keep on getting worse-

And if it did, there were two solutions. One was to find end his own life, plain and simple.

The second was to find the circus again, and resume living a life without memory, numb of this pain, even if it did subject him to another form of it.

If he ever had to make any of those two choices, he hoped that she would never learn of it.

They didn’t talk as they waited for the bus. Their wait didn’t last long anyway, much to the relief of both of them.

As the bus pulled to a stop, he turned around to face her one last time.

“Thank you,” he said again.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry that-

“No,” he insisted. “What you did was more than enough. Thank you. I’m free. Cured.”

She smiled. She still felt guilty, but she believed him. And that was enough.

He backed off towards the bus. Without any luggage to haul around, it made the goodbye simpler. Their eyes met for the last time and he said, “Jenna is as beautiful as we planned her to be, even if she’s not mine.”

She didn’t say anything to that. She just nodded, not trusting herself to say anything further without bursting into tears.

And at that, he turned around and climbed the metal steps leading into the air-conditioned bus. The bus was empty save for the driver, but he avoided sitting at the window from which he would be able to see her. This wasn’t the kind of goodbye where they would be able to wave at each other and promise to keep in touch. It was the kind of goodbye where they had to acknowledge that the world which they had once shared was gone.

He hadn’t been brought back to her so that he could stay.

“Goodbye, Clarice,” he muttered under his breath as he settled down, blinking back his tears.

As he disappeared up the metal steps, she turned around and started walking back to the truck without waiting to see if he’d smile at her through the window. It was over now, and she hoped that he’d find his way, but that was it. The end.

She glanced at the watch as she approached the truck in the parking lot, and realized that she had to go and pick up the twins from school.

They were her world now. John was her world now.

The only reason why she had been reunited with the boy in the painting was so that she could say goodbye.

“Goodbye, Sam,” she muttered under her breath as she gave one last glance over her shoulder, towards the bus pulling out of the station.