A/N: This is a one-shot for a writing class, and also the latest revision of Gray and Aidan's story. Anyone remember them? Well, now they're not the main characters, they're side characters in a circus of fear. Liffre and Mischa were such fun to write about, I needed to bring them back in something that would work. After I finish "The Principle of Intrusive Relationships," I'm going to work on more short stories like this one.

The Roaring Twenties. Every woman had bobbed hair, and every man was The Great Gatsby. Especially the wicked ones. The ones that stole souls as a hobby. And that’s not some kind of metaphor; I knew ones that really did.

Liffre’s Traveling Circus of Magic and Thrills was on its ‘American Tour’ when I became the barker to the freak show. It was the best I could do, being just back from the war and all. He said I had an honest face, and a loud voice, which was exactly what was needed to draw folks in to see… whoever the freaks were. The Seal Boy, who had these hands that had never really developed fingers (it looked like had hands that were wrapped in cellophane, and if he tried hard enough, he could break the film, but he told me that the time he tried to cut it off, he bled so much he fainted) was named Simon Rice, and was the star freak in every third city we went to.

The other freaks weren’t as special, or rather, I didn’t know them as personally. There was a set of Siamese Twin Girls, joined at the hip, and then their dead baby brothers, joined at the face, of all places. They called him Janus, and I called it Satan, which I knew was rude, because Satan was my boss, but I couldn’t stand the sight of that dead baby with two faces in a jar, floating around, wrinkled and grey. I’d seen enough of death in the trenches; I rarely set up the displays of pickled punks.

The “fat lady and human skeleton” were Sophie and Nathan. They were nice enough, but I think she was having an affair with Robert, one of the people who set the tents up… But enough of that. I liked most of the freaks, didn’t like the geek, and would have hated the dwarf, save for the fact that Susan liked to look at it.

Susan, oh Lord, Susan. She was a beautiful testament to the good that humanity can do. I remember her from before the war, especially, when she came to wave off all the recruits at the train station. The odd thing is, she was never interested in me, and hated her looks.

Sure, she was no Louise Brooks, but she had a very simple and pretty face, a round chin and mousy brown hair, and bright green eyes that were hidden behind thick glasses. She wanted to be a flapper so badly, but was afraid of her father’s reaction.

And she really liked the freak show. She was fascinated by the little midget and the fat lady. She spent so long looking at them with wide and wonderful eyes, but whenever someone suggested that they see one of the acrobats or sword-swallowers or horse-rider girls, she would always sigh and say, “But they’re so beautiful…” under her breath.

Now it wasn’t long before this caught the attention of one of the side-show runners. Mikhail, who was Russian, but had learned French before he learned English, and so sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, and had a bad habit of wearing purple all the time, was always noticing potential “candidates.” That’s what he called them, the people who may be willing to sell their souls. And Liffre always paid attention to Mikhail’s candidates.

“What do you know about this girl?” Liffre asked me one early morning after a show. He had sharp yellow eyes and a way of speaking that made you feel warm and slightly nervous at the same time.

“Susan’s an old friend. She lived next door to me when I was little. Why?”

“Do you know what she wants more than anything in the world?”

“Probably Tommy Larson.”

Tommy Larson was the biggest bully I knew. He had gone to war with me, and didn’t have a single qualm about shooting another man. He was tall and strong and crude, but could be very gentile when the occasion presented itself. He also happened to be very rich, and hadn’t ever shown his real colors to Susan. Maybe he was different with women, I don’t know. What I did know was that Susan had been madly in love with him since the third grade, and he had only really been with her when it was forced on him.

“And what would she need to do to be with Tommy Larson?” Liffre asked, unbuttoning his coat and tossing it to his young assistant, Albert, who scurried off.

“Well, catch his eye, I suppose.”

“Hm…” Liffre seemed to be thinking, but I knew he already had it all figured out. Liffre had been around for a long time, and if he didn’t know how to capture a human’s soul by now, he would have been a pathetic excuse for the Devil Incarnate. “Thank you, Nick.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

I tossed and turned, prayed that Susan wouldn’t come by the next day. ‘Please, God, don’t let Susie end up like the rest of ‘em.’ I earnestly asked of the little wooden cross at the end of the train car I shared with five others. But I don’t believe that God hears the prayers of bakers in the Devil’s Troupe, because Susan was there, like every other day.

“How long are you staying in town?” she asked.

I shrugged, “Maybe two or three days more?”

“Oh. That’s too bad. It’s been nice to see you again.”

“Aren’t you still hung up on Tommy?”

She giggled, a slight blush on her face. Why couldn’t she see that I would have taken her? “Well… Yes.”

“What would you be willing to do to get him?” Liffre asked, appearing in all his glory. Dressed in coat as red as flames, embellished with gold like his eyes. “I’m a wish granter.”

Susan looked at him critically, “Aren’t you the ringmaster?”

“That’s my second job. My first is to grant a single wish to beautiful maidens like yourself.”

“Really?”

I wanted to interject, to scream that no, he didn’t grant wishes for free. You needed a soul to get into the afterlife, never-mind heaven. A soul was a ticket, and you needed tickets for admission into most things. But Liffre just nodded, “Just one.”

“I want to be beautiful enough for the men to notice.”

“All the men?”

“Yes.”

Well, that was it. Even Liffre’s eyes revealed surprise. All was a bad word, a very… all-inclusive word. She hadn’t said it as: ‘I want Tommy to notice me, or, I want nice men to notice me,’ or anything like that. And I felt my heart sink as I watched the soul of my favorite gal be taken right before my eyes.

Liffre just smiled his charming smile. “Alright then, my sweets.” He took her glasses off and kissed her forehead, and she was instantly markedly different. Her eyes shown bright and clear, her complexion clean and her hair long and thick. But I couldn’t look at her for very long. She wasn’t Susan now; she was something sick, more hideous to look at than that two-faced baby in the jar of formaldehyde.

I didn’t say my prayers that night. I heard that Tommy and Susan kissed while Jack breathed fire. And they said that he intended to marry her, and she was supremely happy. She didn’t come back to look at the freaks that week.

“What happened to your little Jane?” Simon asked me finally, helping me the best he could to take down the large canvas flyers that advertized the twins and their pickled punk brother.

“I don’t know. She got what she wanted, I guess.”

Simon gave me a significant look, “You let your gal sell her soul?”

“Well, if she was dumb enough to even say yes to a man with eyes the color of piss and vinegar…”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” Simon said with a wicked grin, “She’ll get what’s coming to her, trust me. Probably sometime tomorrow or the day after. One doesn’t just sell their soul and expect to walk away free.”

I nodded. “I guess so.”

That night I didn’t pray for anything. I just laid there and listened to Mikhail and some unfortunate woman outside. She sounded drunk and he sounded angry. About what, I’ll never know, but the next thing I heard was a scream and a dull thud, and then Robert stumbled out of his bed and headed to the door, saying over his shoulder, “If any of you sons of bitches are awake, you damn well out to come and help me.”

I stayed very still and silent, afraid that he could sense me avoiding work. One of the other men got up and followed him. There was commotion outside, and I began to worry. God didn’t listen to the Devil’s men, but what about misguided girls? My father used to say “God favors the truly stupid,” but what about the willfully stupid?

My dreams were tormented and full of the smell of gunpowder and dirt. I saw flashes of Susan’s face in every corpse I encountered in that nightmare, I heard men laughing, and somebody was saying something so soft and sweet and far away that it was almost a haze on the horizon, and yellow began to grow on the landscape… I opened my eyes to bright-sunlight and a newspaper headline that read “CRAZED MAN, INNOCENT GIRL.”

Liffre was smiling contentedly, “You were most helpful in this one, you realize.”

I nodded, pulling my blankets tighter around me and feeling sick to my stomach. “Yeah.”

“Really,” He started laughing as he folded up the paper, “All. She should have thought about that word.”

“Yeah.”

“Hm. Well, our work here is done. What do you say about going to the Mid-West?”

“Mid-West?”

“I get so dreadfully tired of the south. It’s not like you have any say in it, anyway, is it?” He winked at me and all I could do was nod.

I didn’t get out of bed for the rest of the day, and Simon brought me some soup, holding it close to his chest and then hesitantly up to me. I sat up and took it, looking at him dimly. He was a fine looking guy, despite the whole hand (and probably foot, though I hadn’t seen) thing. “They say the killer knifed your girl on her way back home. There’s nothing to say it was because she was stupidly beautiful. It could have just been an unfortunate coincidence.”

I nodded slowly. “Thanks.”

He shrugged, “I know you’d do the same.”

I had to think about that for a moment, but then I decided that yes, I would. I liked Simon. I had a responsibility for him. Hell, I had a responsibility to the Siamese Girls and that damn geek, and the creepy little dwarf. I didn’t need a girl, I had a family. In an off the wall kind of way…

We struck the Big Tops and loaded the animals onto their cars. The Texas sun was shining bright, a soft breeze was blowing up from Mexico, the day was perfect. What we were going to do in the Mid-West, I didn’t know. I had brief images of freezing to death in some Chicago alley, but that was all worthless.

That night the rhythm of the wheels forced me to sleep, and in my mind, I saw that fetus in the jar, and the face in the front was that of a baby’s, wrinkled, screaming, fat and dimpled, and the face on the side was Susan’s, grey and rotting, soulless and hopeful, beautiful until she really was. The way I would have preferred her.