Page 135 of Circus From Hell

There’s a book dedicated to Spiral.

I laugh, an exasperated, furious sound, as I read the tests he performed on my man. My clown. Because laughing is the only thing that’s stopping me from destroying.

His pain. The pain he told Spiral he couldn’t figure out. He lied.

Kreo knows how to cure it, but he won’t. He writes about how it keeps Spiral complacent, waiting for the final fix that’ll never come.

How dare he? How dare he lie to Spiral, keep him on a leash like he does me?

I nearly rip the pages as I flip through them, trying to figure out what the answer to his pain is, but it doesn’t say. No causes. No reasons. No cures.

Nothing.

Kreo holds the answer in his mind.

Spiral will be devastated.

I drop the book to the floor, and it lands on another I’d thrown in anger. But I didn’t see it before.

I fall to my knees and pick it up, reading the spine that says ‘Chaos’. This book is older than the others. Worn, darker leather, pages that have rips along the edges, and dust coating the top and bottom.

When I open the book, I can tell many pages have been torn apart and thrown away. The first one is scribbled in so badly I nearly can’t make out what it says.

I have made a monumental mistake.

This thing should have NEVER been created.

She was supposed to fill that void the death of my wife and daughter created.

I gave it eyes and hair as black as night. Skin from the bodies I dug up. I’d created it to be mine. A daughter.

But what I created… is a monster.

A true monster.

The devil.

Made of pure evil that can never see the light of day again.

It killed my entire circus. I have to rebuild everything.

My one reprieve is that whilst I may not have succeeded in taking back the life I gave it, I managed to pull apart the creation and lock it away in a box, never to be found. No one will enter that trailer. No one will touch that box.

Chaos will live on in wood and metal, and it’ll never be able to take another soul again.

I wasn’t the first.

‘Chaos’ was the first.

But Kreo couldn’t control it, so he locked it away and tried again with me.

I’m Project Human Two.

Because I’m never number one. Never his first. Just his second attempt.

Fury fuels my movements.

I tear the books apart. Pages fly as I rip them open.