Freakshow (2 page)

T
he sun hit my face like a steel-toed boot to the teeth. I yawned, rolled over, checked my clock and saw that I was late for work.

And immediately remembered I didn’t have work anymore. Not since last week. So technically I was late for job hunting, and me not being an early bird meant that I rarely got the worm. I resolved to try harder at this employment thing. Starting right away...well, as soon as I completely woke up.

I rolled off my futon and stood on the balls of my feet, stretched and sniffed my armpits. I grimaced. Today smelled like a good day for a shower.

It had also been a week since I’d caught my boyfriend Jason and my best friend Becs in his bed. I checked my phone and saw the inevitable texts from the two of them begging for me to reply, forgive, understand.

I wasn’t capable of doing any of those things, so I hit delete and went on pretending they had been hit by a meteor or something.

I couldn’t completely slough them off though. I hadn’t realized how much I’d depended on my best friend Becs until she was gone. And I hadn’t realized how much of a distraction Jason had been until he no longer filled the empty spaces in my life, my head and my bed.

I was lonely, horny, and starting to worry about my money situation. Clearly there was a reason I didn’t like getting up in the morning.

I had a quick shower, shaved my legs and pits, and scrubbed my greasy hair until it squeaked. Being stingy on soap and shampoo sucked, but I couldn’t afford to waste much these days and my hair suffered or it.

The cut on my arm was healing nicely at least. I could still remember the look on my office manager’s face when she caught a good look at exposed muscle and dripping blood. I’d been fired...sorry...
let go
in record time. Most places at least tried to wait a few days to fire me after a brutal injury or the realization that I was
different
.

I half-heartedly picked at the scab and wondered how long I could hold out given my current circumstances. I had a small amount left in my savings. That gave me a solid month to survive before I had to be moved out or find employment.

Sometimes my life overwhelmed me, depression kicked in and it felt as though my body was simply convincing my mind to give up. I should have, by all means, given up years ago. The day I was born really.

I’d come into the world with congenital analgesia, the inability to feel pain.

As a baby I’d chewed through my own tongue a few times, bitten my lips almost completely off, and broken bones more than once or twice.

Mine was a strange case though, I could feel everything else, touch, tickles, kisses, just not pain or heat. For some strange reason those particular receptors had been damaged somewhere along the line as my DNA had knitted together and created me inside my mother’s womb.

The one thing I did miss was my parent’s touch. The gentle comfort of a hand on my shoulder or my dad pulling me into his arms for a bear hug. I felt so detached from humanity now, and didn’t know how to reconcile it.

My parents had been killed in a car accident when I was thirteen, and I’d been raised by my older sister who had been nineteen at the time. She hadn’t spared one chance to let me know how much of a burden I was, or how terrible it was that I was even alive.

My sister had blamed me for our parent’s death even though logically I’d had nothing to do with it.

I’d left home at seventeen, never finished high school and never went to college in spite of my love of reading and an uncanny ability to retain information.

I’d moved from Moose Jaw to Vancouver and had ended up in Richmond a few months back.

I was now in my twenty fifth year and was completely, utterly, devastatingly directionless. I felt as though I were living in an alternate reality, just inches away from the real world. How did all those people do it? How did they manage to live normal lives and work and eat and fuck and
feel
?

I had nobody; even Becs who had followed me from Saskatchewan was lost to me now after screwing my boyfriend. If only I hadn’t walked in on them, the image wouldn’t be burned in my mind and I might be able to forget and potentially forgive. Becs at least.

Jason, in all honesty, wasn’t a big loss in the grand scheme of things, but losing Becs cut me deep.

Still, I had to be honest, I’d dropped my guard with Jason. I’d been lulled into this strange world where he didn’t think of me as weird. I’d believed that he bought my act and thought of me as normal.

His words had rung in my ears every day since the breakup, that he needed a woman who enjoyed sex.

How could I enjoy something that I couldn’t
really
feel? I liked sex, I just didn’t seem to have the ability to lose myself to it, release the stubborn grip my body had on my mind and let myself soar into orgasmic oblivion.

My doctors had always insisted that the pain and pleasure connection shouldn’t alter my sexual gratification, but what the fuck did they know? They weren’t connected to my pussy, and quite frankly, it seemed as dull as the rest of my skin.

Imagine trying to live your life with a layer of bubble wrap covering your body, I was like a walking sensory deprivation chamber. It got to a person after a while, and right now it was really getting to me.

This is why I did stupid shit sometimes, to feel
anything.

This is why I was covered in tattoos, brands and ritualistic scars. Not my face, thankfully, never my face, but from my neck down I was a piece of art. Or just a piece of work. It depended on how one looked at me.

I had piercings too,
shit
. I got talked into piercing my clit a couple months ago. I’d hoped it would help me feel
something
when Jason was pounding away on top of me, but it hadn’t changed a thing.

I’d have to take it out and throw it away, to forget the asshole.

My nipples were done too, but years ago, when I was still in high school. Those were purely aesthetic, I loved the way they looked when I was naked, and I loved the hint of barbells poking through my business attire.

Business.
God I need a job.

I settled down on the laptop and cruised the job seeker websites. I’d apply for anything, but the economy was down and it was an employer’s market. I was competing for secretarial positions against people with MBAs and degrees from universities back East, and I hadn’t even graduated.

Scrolling past scam after scam and every job I’d already applied for, a brightly coloured graphic at the bottom of the page caught my eye.

I clicked on it and was taken to an external website, some kind of circus. I was about to close it when the words, “Help Wanted” flashed across the header.

I clicked it, why the fuck not?

Cirque des Curiosités
was apparently a freak show of some sort, a good old-fashioned house of horrors kind of place. I’d heard of it somewhere, I had a vague recollection of a newscast or a flyer. It was something like
Cirque du Soleil
but with more of society’s outcasts instead of athletic beautiful people performing impossible feats of skill.

I wanted to close the page and pretend I’d never seen the employment ad, but something compelled me to stay. I had always tried so hard to be normal, to find normal work, why not take a chance and dive into the world of Freaks? I read the details of their request; they were looking for everything from concession workers to security...to performers.

As much as I wanted to earn more money for performing, there was no way in hell I’d ever get out in front of a crowd and dance around or whatever the fuck they did.

Besides, my freak was a little more hidden than the rest. To the naked eye, I appeared almost normal, which is why I could usually camouflage myself long enough to work in a respectable job.

This time it seemed it was the bad economy, not my condition that was getting in the way of me being hired. Not to mention my general malaise and overall lack of enthusiasm when filling out applications. Somehow it seemed to translate over the internet and scare potential employers away from me.

I half considered begging for my old job at the paper company back, but just couldn’t stomach the disgusted looks on everyone’s faces when they looked at me and saw dripping blood. If only I had paid more attention washing the dishes in the break room and hadn’t sliced my arm open on a broken glass, I might still be working and still convincing myself I was in love with Jason.

Would that have really been the better option?

Fuck it. I decided to submit the world’s sketchiest application, just to fulfill my recent commitment to apply for every legitimate job I came across. I didn’t even know if I’d spelled my own name correctly on the application, I’d been in such a hurry to get it over with. I might have just applied as Liv Yark instead of York, but hey, it was a submission.

After sending off a couple more, one for a Wal Mart greeter out in Coquitlam, and one for a golf ball collector at a driving range down the road from me, I flipped the laptop shut and looked around my tiny bachelor apartment.

I started to calculate the shit I could sell in order to make the rent next month. Sadly I didn’t have much, nothing more than a couple hundred bucks if folks were being generous.

Even my laptop was an old, clunky thing that still ran on a ten year old operating system. My phone was nice, I’d splurged on the latest iPhone when it had come out, but I needed a phone number for employers to contact me.

I fished around my loose change jar and came up with a couple bucks and decided to go crazy, maybe buy a small coffee and a medium cone at McDonalds.

Right? Crazy, out of control, somebody break out the shopping police.

I walked the fifteen blocks to McDonalds, had my treat and wandered around the shopping mall watching people richer than me spend money I would never have on shit I would never want.

I was chilling out in front of a fountain that displayed repeating coloured patterns of water when my phone buzzed.

It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize.

Can you come in tomorrow at nine? We’re setting up next to BC Place.

I was thrilled to finally get a bite on a resume, but could not place the number for the life of me. I wrote back,
Sorry?

Is this Olivia Yark? This is Eloise from the Cirque. You just submitted an application.

Oh shit, I had spelled my own name wrong. But they must be desperate. That could work in my favour. If they were in Vancouver for more than a couple weeks, I could use them for a paycheque to bridge the gap between this and a real job.

Sure thing, I’ll be there at nine.

Come to the ticket tent, the red and blue striped one. Ask for Orion.

Will do, thanks.

I slid the phone back in my bra and felt a small buzz of excitement. After all the resumes I’d sent out, I finally had a reply. I might just be able to afford to live after all.

*****

I
walked the short distance from the SkyTrain station to the tents set up under the viaducts near BC Place Stadium. I’d always loved this area, it was a former industrial space getting crowded with overpriced high-rise apartments and specialty food markets. But it still had a feral feel to it, with impromptu skate parks and graffiti everywhere you looked.

My knee-high army boots clicked on the sidewalk and I had my hands shoved deep into my thrift store Edward Scissorhands hoodie. As I didn’t
really
want this job, I’d said fuck it on my wardrobe choice. They’d hire me or they wouldn’t, and given the nature of the organization, it probably didn’t mean shit to them if I dressed a little outside the corporate box.

I had to admit, I was feeling pretty desperate though. Maybe that’s why I was in such a
fuck it all
state of mind. I’d spent the morning going over student loan applications and trying to decide if university would be a good stand in for full time employment.

I was a little miserable at the moment, the rain matching my shitty mood. I’d scanned the entire University of British Columbia course catalogue and found zilch that seemed interesting.

In short, I guess I didn’t know what I was going to be when I grew up, and apparently I was already grown up.

I sniffled and wiped my nose on the back of my arm, catching a look of disgust from a dog walker with ten or so purse dogs yapping on leashes strung onto her arms.

I stopped at the crosswalk and waited for the light to change. I turned back and saw the dog walker scoop up a mound of shit in a little plastic bag and shove it into her pocket.

I shot her a look of disgust to match my own, but the dog walker thrust out her chin and kept moving.

Great, dissed by a shit scooper. I must really look like I rolled out of bed on the wrong side this morning. Or the cardboard box, they might think I’m homeless given my current attire.

I walked to the ticket booth and was greeted by a huge man stuffed into a striped suit with a black top hat. His face was painted white and he had old school sad clown make up, very subtle but still leaning a little more to the terrifying than the cheerful.

Sad, murderous clown perhaps?

“Hey,” I said and he put down his paper to look at me. “I’m here to see Orion about a job.”

The clown looked me up and down, might have found me lacking as his expression didn’t change. He said, “All the showgirl positions have been filled, sorry.”

“I didn’t apply for a showgirl, I want concession or tickets.”

“Okay then you might be in luck. I think our ticket girl ran off with her loser boyfriend last night. She didn’t come in for her shift this morning which is why you have me. Why don’t I take you to see the big boss?” He smiled and stepped out of the booth.

“Sounds good,” I replied and wondered what the probability was that I’d be taken behind a tent and slaughtered by murderous sad clown dude.

Probably fairly high, but I guess wasn’t in any state to argue. Besides, who would miss me? Becs would move in with Jason and they’d never say my name aloud again.