“I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.”

-W.C. Fields

Bedlam

№3

The freak show is a long, skinny tunnel under a tent, with small consecrated platforms blocking off each performance space. Since that school had just left, most of the performers had saddled up and hit the hay, or gone off to the canteen to get some food in their freakish bellies.

When not in use, each platform has a little curtain that sort of veils whatever mysterious occurrences might be taking place inside. Of course, it’s usually the performers farting or sleeping, or playing cards with other carnies. Edward usually stays on his platform between performance breaks, so I figure it would be the best place to search first.

Inside the freak show, almost every platform’s curtain is pulled down. Jamal the Chicken Eater is wrapping up his performance near the entrance flap, with a few people watching him and gagging from under the stage. At the far end of the tunnel, I see Edgar’s platform with an open curtain and bright lights, but no people around. That’s just like him—to leave the curtain open even when he’s not even performing. He’s very full of himself.

Edward’s platform is towards the middle, and the felt curtain is closed, just like I expected. I try to make a whole lot of noise before I lift the flap, just in case he’s doing something embarrassing inside—like picking his nose or playing with his boobs again.

He’s so big that he has boobs. Man-boobs. And he’s always playing with them when he doesn’t think you’re looking.

After I lift the curtain up, I see Ed’s cot shoved in the middle of the unlit stage. Someone’s sleeping inside of it, but it sure as hell isn’t my brother.

I lift the blanket up from over the person’s head and see Scariel, the Woman with Freakishly Skinny Arms, with her eyes wide open.

“Hi, Ethan—I was just trying to take a nap.”

“With your eyes open.”

“Yep; with my eyes open.”

She kind of freaks me out, what with her freakishly skinny arms. It’s not just that they’re skinny—you can see all the veins and muscles and bones underneath, clear as day. It’s like looking at skeleton arms with skin.

She’s nice though; always telling me about her life before the circus. She was a thespian on the stage. Always got roles like Chorus Member #7 or Curious Bystander. But this one time, she tells me, she got to play a Holocaust victim. It must have been her best performance yet.

“Do you know where my brother is?” I ask her.

She shrugged at me, still tucked under the bed sheets. “Beats me.”

“Any reason why you’re sleeping in his cot?”

She shrugged again. That’s the thing with the circus—no privacy. No one her believes in personal space or respect for your belongings. Although, I do have to admit, Edward’s cot is the comfiest. It’s all stretched out and dips down low and is very, very soft.

I wave goodbye to Scariel and pull the blankets back over her head, just the way I found her. Ed must either be in the canteen or visiting with Edgar or Leora, his fiancé. I decide Edgar’s the closest to me, so I slip from under the platform curtain and jimmy down the stage stairs.

At the other end of the tunnel, the big spotlight is on Edgar’s stage, and he’s sitting sideways on a stool, fixing his stage makeup. Everyone always thinks he’s older than me, because of the way he carries himself I guess, but he’s really only seventeen. It’s pretty disturbing to think that’s how young he really is. Makes me feel like an old man.

He has on this brimmed hat and a grey suit, with all this mime makeup on his face—just the way he usually is—and all you can see is his left half. The spot light might illuminate the left side of his body, but the right side is just a large shadow. Although, based on shapes, you can sort of see that there’s something wrong with this picture.

“Hey, Ethan kid! Nice face.”

“Thanks,” I’m still wearing all that sweaty, runny clown-makeup. I sort of hop onto the stage and give him my best evil eye. “Where’s Eddie?”

“Edward’s at the canteen with Leora; no surprise there.”

I knew I should have just stuck with the game plan and gone to the goddamn canteen.

“Do you think I look manly enough today? One of those little kids shouted ‘that woman’s trying to be a man!’ at me and I almost flipped.”

“Sure, you look manly. Sure you do.”

“Good,” he smiles, “Now how’s my better half?”

He swings around in his seat, hiding his left side and exposing his right. Now he’s a woman in a red dress, with a pointy high-heeled boot, and dark red lipstick. He’s even got on his red wig and a little black beret where the manly brimmed hat had been.

You see, if you look at him from the front, you see half a man’s costume, and half a woman’s. It’s his gag—his little two-cents joke at the end of the tunnel—for all the patrons to laugh at.

I always wondered if he likes his job. It’s his own perverted deformity, just like Edward’s and mine.

See, Edward got the gland problems, making him a giant, and I got the deformed chest. Edgar got beauty—an absurd amount of beauty. Just looking at him, without all the makeup and stuff, you swear you’re looking at an ambiguous angel.

He smiles at me, sweetly from his feminine half, and says “I heard about your little performance today—because of Calcutta little...vice.”

“Word travels fast.”

“So it does.”

Listen, I want to say, I enjoy being teased by your freaky woman side and all, but I’m sick of your faggy-acts and will probably shoot you if you don’t promptly die.

“I’m gonna go find Edward,” I say, instead, and walk off his stage. When I turn around, just to throw him a sour look, he’s back to his manly half, facing away from me. I exit the freak show and walk through the circus, getting strange looks from all the remaining patrons. I really need to get this makeup off my face before someone decides euthanasia is the most humane thing to do for a sad clown like me.

There are no sinks except for in the trailers and in the kitchen, but those places are off limits when it’s not your off time. Since I’m still, technically, supposed to be out and about until the next clown performance in the evening, I can’t get to any sinks.

Instead, I take the resourceful route. I order a bottle of water at the concession booth and steal a bunch of napkins from the paper-napkin dispenser at the hot dog stand. I wash off my clown makeup in the grass, getting my sweatshirt soaked and my hair all messed up.

When I look up again, this middle-aged old woman is staring at me like I just admitted to having herpes or something. I snarl at her.

I walk to the canteen and try to act like everything’s peachy. I had been in a good mood—a great ass mood, really—but now I’m kind of cold and pissed off again. Gretyl might have been the highlight of my day—maybe my year, it’s too soon to say—but I can’t shake the feeling that my intense love for her is a little irrational. I mean, sure I only said five words to her, but she had on my father’s mask, and that’s a sign. I read into signs sometimes—the real metaphorical ones.

The canteen is just a small tent with a big sign at the only entrance, saying ‘NO PATRONS BEYOND THIS POINT’. I walk past it, reverse and walk past it again, and then give it a good kick in the post.

I enter the tent and see all the plastic tables amuck with people trying to eat. Peanut butter sandwiches. My favorite. For the past three years.

Oh yeah, I’m not sick of those.

Edward isn’t hard to fine in a big crowd of people. In fact, a big crowd of people might not be as big as you think it is once you take Edward out of the equation. I joke around a lot, about his size, but he really is a big guy. He’s tall—really tall—and it’s not that he’s fat as much as he’s just very big boned. I’m serious—people who are fat are fat; people with big bones are just thick looking. The worst part about him, or at least the part that scares small children, is his face. It’s hideously out of proportion because of his gland/thyroid problems. He looks like a monster, I guess, but a loveable one. If you can really love a monster.

He’s sitting at one of the tables in the middle of the room, on one of the metal benches especially reserved for him and his big self. Leora’s sitting across from him, like a good little fiancé.

She’s something else, I swear. It would be funny if she was petite or something, but she’s actually a little on the tall side. Probably taller than me, anyways. But the big comparison between her and my brother is that she’s bone thin. She’s a contortionist, and a damn good one. I like her immensely, but only because she’s good for Edward. He needs something pretty to hold.

Well, it’s not that she’s pretty, exactly; she’s just so nice, I dares you not to consider her pretty. It would be like saying “that dog is one ugly bastard” when the little pup is jumping all around in a grassy yard and flipping onto its back, like a cockroach, begging to be petted. You can’t call something that sweet ugly—it’s rather impossible. For me, at least. Edgar thinks she’s hideous. He always makes lame jokes about her big nose during dinner time, when he thinks she can’t hear. I know she does—hear him, that is—and I know she’s thinks he’s a hideous person too, on the inside.

And he really is an ugly person under all that beauty. That’s why it’s such a deformity.

Edward waves me over and I jump up on the bench and sit on the table—very rebellious. Leora smiles at me and Edward lifts his big bear paw to pat me on the head. “How’s it going, little brother?”

I blink. “How’s it always going? Straight to hell in hand basket. That’s how it goes.”

Edward jeered and sucked down some soda from a straw. His pink finger extends from his hand and lightly—discreetly—pokes his boob.

I tell him all about Gretyl and how she was wearing one of dad’s masks, and Ed goes nuts laughing up a storm at my expense.

Leora smiles softly at me and pats my shoulder. “That’s sweet, Ethan.”

I thank her, then tell Edward to shut his yap before I bust a bullet his fat, greasy head.

He’s so easily offended. He snubs me instantly and gets up, slowly, to throw his trash away. Leora rolls her eyes at me and follows him out, giving me a playful hit on the back before she leaves completely.

I stare at the canteen entrance, where they had just disappeared, and where Dodd, my evil clown nemesis, had just entered.

“Palmetto,” he says.

“Dodd,” I say.

He’s such a fag—I just wish someone would off him. Throw him off a skyscraper roof top, into the propellers of a moving helicopter, and unto a bed of previously used needles, covered in hypothermia inflicting bacteria.

Kind of harsh, I know, but I really can’t control thoughts like that.

I get to thinking about how some people—like him and Edgar—just aren’t fit to be alive. Just like me. Unfit for functionality. Totally erasable for the good of all mankind.

God, I hate people.

Author’s Note:
Wow, what a quick update! I sure am a master at the art of writing.

JOKE!

So, if you noticed any discrepancies between this chapter and the last one (for instance, if in chapter 2 I said it was summer, and in this one I said it was spring) please bring it to my attention. I have forgotten every unimportant fact about this story, and that’s pretty sad.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: I love my friendly reviewers! And that is the truth!