“Wake up, my actors. The midnight oil is burning away and why put off till tomorrow what must happen today?” I say as I sit among to my unwilling stars as they begin to stir. All of them are bound and they sit in a circle, with me completing it. The young woman next to me opens her eyes and looks around her. I wonder what she thinks of being contained in a large, grey stone dungeon. I stand up, making sure the bare light bulbs strung across the high ceiling illuminate me.

“Good morning,” I say in a cheerful voice as I walk around their little group, observing them and making sure they all see me. I must give them a very strange impression, a mix between ancient fantasy and their modern reality. I wear black pants and a long sleeved, white button-up shirt, but I also wear my red as blood cloak fastened with an obsidian stone set in silver. Black leather boots are on my feet and a black bag with my faithful camera inside rests on my hip. My whip is coiled at my belt and my dagger is there in its sheath as well. My dark red-black hair is pulled back into a ponytail behind the elven pointed and pierced ears would give me away as inhuman if they were observant at all. “I’m glad you are all awake. We can get started now.”

A middle aged man among the group looks up at me. “Untie us and let us go,” he demands “We didn’t do anything to you, kid.”

I simply laugh, completely ignoring the ignorant comment of ‘kid’; I am no ‘kid’, not even by even my own race’s standards, though I may look young to an untrained eye such as his. “Of course you did nothing to me.” I draw my dagger and start to cut the bonds of each of them in turn to comply with the rather rude request to be untied, though of course they cannot be let go. I take a few steps back and smile while I watch them rub their raw wrists and stand up. They are confused and it is apparent from their faces that they do not know what to think of me. There are six actors here, three men and three women, one adolescent, one adult, and one middle aged individual of each sex.

The middle aged woman, whom I believe has children at home, stares at me. “Who are you?” she asks, in a bewildered voice. “Did you save us?”

“Who am I?” I ask, before beginning to laugh, turning my blue-violet eyes onto the woman who spoke. “I am an author of film, the director of the macabre masterpiece you have found yourselves in, an demonic designer of death, and auteur of human suffering. My name is Kasdaye, if that is what you mean.” I give them a small bow but do not take my eyes off of them. “I did not save you; in fact I did the opposite. I am the Ringmaster and I welcome you all to my circus.”

My players begin to mutter among themselves and look nervous. “What do you want with us?” The teenage girl pipes up, her voice squeaking and cracking wonderfully with horror and fear.

I tilt my head at her and smile as I begin to pace thoughtfully. “Well, my anxious entertainers, I have been having the most horrible creative block lately. I have lost interest in current project, a direct reproduction of the Inferno of Dante. Seven circles into construction and I’ve simply become bored. The exciting part is over now that the river of boiling blood for the violent has been made and I have to set into the drudgery of creating a chimera that will mimic the look of Dante’s three faced Satan. In short, I tire of it and so I have decided to make another film, a short snuff film like those for which I have gained my fame.”

The young man looks confused and backs up a little before speaking. “S-snuff film?” An older male goes to quiet him and respond, but I begin to explain first. Why let a simple mortal minimize my art?

“A wonderful genre devoted to recording pain and suffering. I cater to the monsters of human society and to the true devils of the world. The Ringmaster’s Productions are renowned as the absolute best, which of course means I am the best. All of my work is dedicated to the capture of screaming, crying, bleeding human agony.”

“I pay no actors.” I continue, as a few of my captive audience begins to back up away from me. “I buy no broken slaves. I capture those who I believe will scream and fight, or purchase those proven to do such. I want no beaten down dogs who will simply whimper and accept their death. I want humans who have something to loose and will fight like the beasts you are to survive. I take mothers, fathers, and lovers, for that emotion tends to spark the greatest resistance. And by the way,” I say at they continue to back up away from me. “I would not take another step if I were you.”

They freeze and I walk through their group. The six humans shy away and allow me to stand in front of them. They apparently nearly ran into a pair of naked corpses, one male and one female. The male’s body is sitting, its back slumped against a pillar in my dungeon, its head flopped backwards and its mouth ajar with its eyes open and glazed. The female corpse lies on its back, its legs bend at unnatural angles and spread wide.

“You would have regretted bumping into them.” I state. I think I can hear one of my poor actors being sick. Humans always seem to have such weak stomachs. It’s a pity, really. I uncoil my whip and crack it loudly against ground near the corpses and I smile as they begin to move.

The male’s corpse leans in the direction of the whip crack before its calves swing outward, turning sideways with loud crunches as it destroys its kneecaps. It lurches forward and stands up slowly, its feet planted in a wide stance. Its arms dangle at its side and the head drops forward, its chin meeting its chest with a dull thump. It turns toward me and the group of humans, its head lolling to one side as it does.

The female’s elbows and shoulders crack as its arms bend back backwards. It pushes itself up onto its knees before slowly getting to its feet. Its blond haired head flops grotesquely back when it stands, its mouth opening halfway because of the force. The female stands with its back towards me, and I can see its watery, yellowed eyes.

The hungry, incorporeal demons never do learn how to use their dead human host bodies correctly. Their joints get ground to dust because of such behavior, but it never seems to restrict their movement. Of course, that could be because the minor fiends are never meant to be embodied, but I don’t see the harm in breaking a few rules into pieces.

“What are they? What’s wrong them?” a woman’s voice asks, laced with lovely terror. “Their faces don’t move.”

I chuckle. “Why should they? It is not like they actually use their faces for anything.” This was true. The corpses only make minor expressions, reflexes from when their bodies were controlled by human spirits, rather than the minor demonic batteries in them now. They do not use their host’s eyes or mouths for anything functional. They do not need to.

The male approaches me at a slow, deliberate pace as if it was difficult to make the body walk. I do not move, but I can hear the shuffle of feet behind me. My actors retreat. One of the women scream. “Meet the clowns of my circus whose presence marks a film as my own. These are my harlequin corpses, my marionette cadavers. Their kind are your co-stars.” I say as I gesture towards the approaching male. It reaches out an ashy, death white hand towards me, a slit forming between its index and ring fingers. The slit opens into a blood red mouth lined irregularly with jagged and bloody white teeth. The beast reaches forward in an attempt to take a bite out of my own hand, all the while its head is tilted in a completely other direction. I laugh, draw my dagger, and lop off its hand before sheathing the weapon again in one quick, smooth motion. The appendage falls to the stone ground and the unearthly mouth closes.

The male marionette twitches, but does not draw away. Its arm slits in two and opens up again into a larger version of that supernatural mouth, reaching towards me once more. I crack my whip against its shoulder and it draws away slightly, as if confused. I coil up my whip as I walk away, the female stumbling slowly after me and the male following suit soon after. I shake my head as I catch sight of my actors. They are all pounding in vain at the stone wall and their cries for help finally reach my ears.

“No one will help you, friends. Nothing good will come to your yells.” I declare as I approach. They pay me no mind and I narrow my blue-violet eyes. I do not take kindly to those who try ignore their director. I crack my whip, striking three of them along their sides and smirking when I hear them shriek. My weapon has always been used equally among my creatures and my humans actors. I make no exceptions for this group.“Get away from the wall. Trust me, my stars. One should not allow the clowns to back one into the corner.” I continue to smile, but my expression is cautionary.

“What the fuck are those things? Who the hell do you think you are?!” The middle aged male of my actors screams at me, his hand over his arm where a small line of blood from my lash is apparent. I twitch at his cursing because I hate those vile, crude words. They serve no purpose and do my actors no good. The players in my films always seem to scream them, however, and my audiences always seem to laugh when they do. I raise my hand and snap the whip back down against his shoulder. The man grimaces and curses again. I sigh; I suppose some cannot learn quickly.

I turn my back on them, walking towards the other end of my dungeon studio as the pair of cadavers shuffle past me, walking in the slow, deliberate gait of their kind. The female turns slowly, as if to follow me instead of meeting my performers as a good clown should. I crack my whip across its chest, breaking skin in a thin, scarlet line across the ash white flesh. It does not bleed; the marionettes never bleed. Instead, the wound opens to reveal a large, bloodshot eye. The eye blinks, changing in that hidden split second into a gaping, jagged toothed mouth. I strike at the puppet again and it turns once more, revealing to my actors the ravenous motivation of its kind.

I step up a shallow staircase on the far end of the room, allowing the players and my clowns to get acquainted. Once on the raised platform it led to, I shrug my camera bag off of my shoulder, opening it and quickly putting together my tripod. I pull out my faithful camera and set it up, looking through it to check my angle. Perfect, as usual.

I smile a little as I watch my actors stumble away from the lurching pair of marionettes. It looks almost like a perverse little race around the roughly round room and I cannot help but laugh because it reminds me of a former film of mine that was a test of the endurance of my demon inhabited corpses against that of a few humans. Though the puppets cannot ever move their bodies well enough to make a true chase, humans actually tire after hours of constant retreat and panic. The slow process of those collapsed entertainers being devoured brings a smile to my face and makes me just laugh again as I adjust the focus a little, zooming in a little on a young woman who backed into a pillar. I watch as she is pulled away from the outstretched, splitting hand of the female corpse by a man. He turns after the girl is pulled away to safety and he stares into my camera lens. “You fucking sadistic bastard!”

I laugh harder, straightening up and looking at him without the aid of a lens, ignoring his horrid language. They always fall into idiotic cursing when frightened. “I am no sadist, friend. I am an artist, and the fact that your flesh is my canvas makes little difference in the matter.” I clap my hands together and grin at them before pressing record on my camera. “And now, my dear protagonists, it is time for us to begin.” I spread out my arms, reaching out with a simple power and taking hold of the metal grate doors in the walls of my studio. “Think of this as your final audition rather than your final performance. This is an example of your mediocrity rather than artistic perfection and whether you succeed or not is completely irrelevant to my intended result because I do not expect you to. Action!”

I raise my arms and lift the metal grates. More of my marionette cadavers slowly stumble out of the openings, nearly twenty in all. Some of them are turned completely backwards, yet they walk just as well as their correctly oriented counterparts, further proof of the fact that the puppets do not use their eyes. A small corpse stumbles out of the door closest to the middle aged woman of my acting troupe and falls forward onto its face. I grin and zoom in on the scene that will unfold. This harlequin’s host is the body of an eight year old girl and I believe the woman whose feet it fell at has a child about that age.

The older actress takes a step back and claps her hand over her mouth. Her reaction is not especially interesting, so I focus upon the demoniac doll. It picks itself up into a handstand position and, falling forward, a slit forms that splits its small death white body perfectly in half from between the legs to abdomen. The supernatural mouth snaps shut with the force of a steel trap around the waist of the actress in front of it. I look through the camera’s eye, watching as woman’s body falls in two with a rather large section missing from the middle. The child cadaver lands hard on its knees as the slit seals itself back up. It shakily holds out its arms, both of the small hands splitting in half to form new mouths to devour the remains of the victim it caught.

I focus the camera upon the rest of my actors who, like fools, have clustered together and ignored my advice of not allowing my marionettes to back them into a corner. One of the women claws at the stone behind her, strikingly reminding me of a former documentary of mine. A teenage girl set in an small, all white room with nothing but a noose hanging from the ceiling, and left there alone. It was a test in the duration of human sanity, and it took around three days of nothing but the blinding white room for her to commit suicide, but not before she tore off her fingernails clawing at the white walls like a caged beast and marking them with crimson stripes. It made for a fascinating short film when all of those hours of film were set on high speed, played back, and then slowed back to real time at the end.

It is only a matter of time now, as the marionettes begin to split to form their jagged tooth mouths. One female corpse splits from skull to abdomen as it jerks forward and snaps shut onto an actor. A mouth forms in a male’s chest as it grabs a victim and forces her head into the hole. A feeding frenzy ensues now that more blood is spilt with the marionettes occasionally snapping at each other as well as their co-stars, as a few minutes of film ticks by, recording the sounds of humans breaking and screaming, as well as my own pleased and amused laughter

My laugh is heard in nearly all of my films, though I am seen in very few. It is another thing that marks my work as my own, giving it a personal touch. I was also known for my laughter in my Red Circus before humans created the wonderful technology I now use. I miss my live audiences sometimes but there is so much more control with film.

The marionettes, having performed their part quite well, shuffle towards my platform. They cannot work their bodies well enough to climb stairs, but their continued drive to devour always makes it irritating to put them back in their cages. I stop my film, letting the last shot be focused on the approaching cadavers reaching towards the lens, I myself reach out and take hold of a stone door in the wall, watching it pulse slightly blue as my magic anchors onto it. I lift the door and a large human face peers around the corner.

My Inferno project forced me to make many chimeras, but I am very fond of this particular one as he has become very useful. My Geryon pads into the studio, his huge lion paws never actually touching the stone of the floor. I am very proud of my skill for managing to make his huge bulk able to walk on the air like the literary beast he is created after. His body is that of a huge cat and the tawny fur of a lion covers his feline feature due to my preference against the spots of the beast of fraud and the fur gives way to deep green scales on his tail. His long, curling tail is like that of a dragon with ridges running down it and sharp spines on the end, simulating the scorpion attribute of Dante’s monster. His head is maned like that of a lion, but is face is like that of an honest, if rather slow, older man whose long bead melts into the mane.

Geryon tilts his head at me like the curious animal he is. His face is deceiving because he is not as intelligent as he would appear. My chimera cannot manage speech nor does he seem to be capable of thought beyond that of an obedient child. He does, however, understand orders very well. The chimera has come to help me move my various creatures since his creation, as none of their attacks seem to harm him enough to matter. “Put them away, will you, Geryon?” I say, contemplating my film. A black screen after the clowns reach toward the lens and then the logo of the Ringmaster’s Productions at the end of it, followed by my actors names should suffice for the editing. I always credit my actors; I keep careful records of their names specifically for the purpose.

I gesture at the marionettes and I begin to put away my camera back to its place in the black bag. As I fold up the tripod and place it back it its bag, I hear the soft, species-less grumble that Geryon has come to make. I look up and watch as he pushes many of my marionettes into the openings in the walls with his tail. The possessed corpses snap at his tail, but cannot grip on the hard scales. He knocks them off of their already unsteady feet with a sweeping motion and they tumble down in heaps. I pull down the gates with a magic assisted gesture when they are all in place and Geryon pads through the air over to my platform. The chimera sits, his body still hovering and only his tail touching the floor as he lashes it back and forth.

I pat his human forehead with a gloved hand as he leans forward. “Good beast. If only my actors listened like you do.”