Page 1 of Circus From Hell

PROLOGUE

Body parts lay scattered around the metallic-scented room, pools of dried blood splattered against the fabric of the tent walls. Death clouds the air, but something new has started to fizzle along with it.

Life.

Stolen life.

Donned in a doctor’s gown, but he’s not saving—he’s taking. Mashing together and pulling apart, stripping and snipping and sewing. The thread slips through the needle despite hands shaking with excitement. It’s potent in the room.

A rattle sparingly steals his attention, and he kicks the cage by his feet, silencing one of his first abhorrent crimes against nature. A rat. With the tiny legs of a chicken, a forked tongue of a snake, and bulging eyes of an unknown animal that barely fit in its small body. Brought together with string and created with power that no human should be capable of. A creature that should not have been born, and the room is full of them, hissing and shrieking and barking and rattling, but he pays them no more mind as he focuses on his final creation.

His masterpiece.

His centre stage.

The metal table creaks as he bears his weight down. One more thread. He slips it in and out of the blue-tinged flesh and takes a step back, using the rear of his cloaked arm to wipe the sweat off his clammy forehead.

Suddenly, the room goes still. Silent. The creatures made from the darkest depths of his mind know what is coming, and the static air stills between them.

“Let’s see if you really work.”

He reaches out with a long, slender arm, grabbing what one can only describe as a metal hat with padding, holes, and wires protruding from the top. Gently, so as to not irritate the stitches in the creature’s neck, he places it atop its head, using a makeshift belt connected to the side to strap it beneath its chin. More leather belts wrap around the creature’s arms, legs, waist, wrists, and ankles.

The ringmaster is taking no chances with this one.

Beside the bed is a rectangular metal contraption decorated with buttons, switches, lights, and bulbs. With the flip of a particularly big switch, it comes alive, foreshadowing what’s to follow when it’s in use.

Disaster.

But life.

Bright white sparks of electricity protrude from the cracks of the metal, dancing around the rusty nails acting as sealants. The generator inside produces a whirring noise followed by the repeated clanking of shifting internal components. The ringmaster’s heart pounds hard against his chest as he fiddles with the dials, the sound of every click as it increases in power matching the beat of his heart.

“At last. Your time has come.”

As he clicks the final button—the largest and brightest of the circles, its red a calling card to sadistic minds—the whirring increases tenfold, the sparking of the machine intensifying along with it. The air swirls with energy and expectation, the short hair on the ringmaster’s head standing to attention, static and sharp.

“Now rise, my child. Rise!”

Lightning travels from the machine, the wires acting as bridges, zapping every surface it can latch on to. The constricted limbs, brought together with thick black string, vibrate under the shocks, body racking with every strike of power. The creature’s face remains slack as its vessel convulses and electrifies, until finally, the machine overfires, and the blinding white light shoots across the small room, blowing everything back in its path. The ringmaster falls to the floor, the morphed animals scurry or fly to the corner of their cramped cages, and the body on the table goes still.

The machine ceases power. The room falls silent. The world stops moving.

And then it starts again.

The ringmaster rises to his feet, eyes wide as he takes careful steps back to the table.

He watches, never veering his attention from the creature’s face.

Eyelids pull open, and bright, green, glowing eyes fixate on the ceiling.

“It’s alive… It’s alive!”

As the creature turns its head, pulling the wires attached to the metal hat, the ringmaster laughs. It’s a deranged noise. So loud it bounces off the walls and cage bars.

“Come, my child. Let me see what I have created.”

The ringmaster briskly removes the restraints and waits as the creature follows its command, lifting from the table to sit on the edge, limbs twitching uncontrollably from the power coursing beneath its dead flesh.