Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu (15 page)

Outside I heard the purr of
Esmeralda’s motorcycle, back from her nocturnal prowling. It
stopped. The door creaked open. I put on some shorts, wandered into
the kitchen area where she was fixing herself a drink.

“Oh hi, Jareth honey,” she
said. “What are you doing up?”

“Can’t sleep,” I mumbled. The
curtains were undulating in a light breeze. Looked like dancing
fire, prismatic colours, spiralling out of control.

“Well, I gotta tell you, the
whole town’s abuzz about your mutant friend,” she said. With a
sigh, she dropped down on the sagging couch and put her feet up on
a stool. “Leastwise, folks in the bar were talkin’ about him.”

I sat down in an armchair
across from her. The early morning air felt good because I was
sweating like a pig. “What are they saying?” The words came out of
my mouth, elongated, my lips moving slowly, as if I was under
water.

“They’re saying that he or she
or whatever it is, is hot. Very, very hot. There were lots of
arguments about whether it’s a man or a woman or if it’s really a
mutant, like Sligo says.”

I laughed. “Who knows. He’s a
freak, like us. Freakin’ fuckin’ freak.”

She pursed her lips, leaning
forward to look at me. “Are you all right, honey?”

“Fine, fine, I’m just fine,” I
said.

“Well, there were some of ‘em
talking smack about him. Said he made them feel dirty, that he was
a homosexual abomination. One woman claimed he was a devil, said
the Lord was going to punish anyone who went to see him.”

“I don’t know what he is,” I
said dreamily. “Devil or angel, I want to hate him, I really do.
But Ez, you should see him dance.”

Lying back, I felt the room
tilt gently, whirling. Carousel music. Wooden horses with red,
screaming mouths and flying manes, moving up and down. The paint on
their long faces crackled and peeled back. I slipped into blessed
oblivion.

Several days later, they began
to picket us. A bunch of locals stood along the roadway outside the
fairgrounds holding big signs and shouting that we were going to
hell and that the circus housed abominations. Yep, that’s me, an
abomination. The local news scrambled out there with mikes and
cameras. They interviewed Sligo, who appeared without his make-up,
wearing regular clothes. In that disguise, he looked just like a
decent human being, talking about how he was a businessman with a
right to make a living. No laws being broken. No lewd acts. No
minors admitted to the show and so on. He refused to let them
interview Kithara but allowed them to film a portion of his dance.
“Free publicity,” he said to me with a pleased chuckle. The lines
to see Kithara grew longer.

Meanwhile, I walked around in
some kind of poppy-coloured haze. Sligo took me off other duties,
had me work on Kithara’s show. He said Kithara had requested me,
which made my insides flutter like a drunken butterfly. We improved
the lighting, staging, costumes, make-up, and props, and Kithara
continued to knock ‘em dead. His hands had healed remarkably fast
with no trace of the burn. I stood behind the curtains and drank in
his every move. I wanted to be like him. No, I wanted to
be
him, beautiful as a god on both sides of my body, an object of lust
and worship, a shining Wraeththu angel able to rise above my sordid
existence.

Sligo had given Kithara his own
trailer, which just showed how tickled he was but he never allowed
Kithara to go anywhere without an armed guard, both for his
protection and to prevent him from escaping. Sligo carried that
cattle prod around with him like a cane and occasionally popped
Kithara with it, just to show him who was boss.

More people came to see his
show. Both men and women danced along with him in their seats,
watched him in fascination, writhed in frustrated lust.

The picketers outside the
circus grew more numerous.

Six days into this madness,
Esmeralda came home early. “I don’t like the way it feels in town,”
she said. “There’s some local preacher man who’s got people all
riled up. He’s been holding rallies, telling everyone that we’re
harbouring a demon here. He said our mutant influenced his son to
commit sodomy. All kinds of people have testified that they can’t
get images of our freak out of their heads and it’s making them do
lewd things.” She laughed. “As if people need an excuse for that. I
guess I’ve missed out. Haven’t seen his show yet. Is he really that
good?”

“He’s something else,” I said.
“It’s more than how he acts or what he does, although his dancing
is incredible. It’s something he projects. Glamour, that’s what
Sligo called it. Maybe he’s a witch.”

“Uh huh, well, if you ask me,
Jareth honey, I think Sligo’s playing with fire here. I ain’t too
religious, but I do believe in the Devil, and your boy over there,
could be he
is
a demon of some kind. Have you thought of
that? I mean, where did these mutants come from?”

That stopped me. It was a good
question. Why would they appear like that, out of nowhere? Was
Kithara just a freak of nature, or was there something more to it?
How many other Wraeththu were there? Were we really in danger from
his kind, as he said? Then again, maybe it was all just a big
story. Maybe he wasn’t really a hermaphrodite, just an effeminate
boy who was fooling us all and having a big laugh behind our backs.
I realized that I’d been avoiding the hard questions because I
wanted to stay glamorised. Anger reasserted itself and crawled
around in my belly. I vowed, if he was playing us, playing
me
, that I’d break his pretty neck.

That night after his show, I
went up to him with clenched fists, told him I wanted to talk. He
nodded, invited me to eat dinner with him in his trailer. I was
foolish enough to be pleased.

Kithara cooked an omelette for
me. I was surprised he could cook. When I ventured to tell him
that, he laughed. “We’re not monsters, Jareth, eating raw flesh or
dead things out of garbage cans. Besides, I was human once and my
mom taught me to cook.” He took a spatula and cut the omelette in
two, sliding each half onto a paper plate. Then he poured more
Merlot into two plastic cups. We’d already consumed a bottle and I
was feeling pretty good. It didn’t seem to have affected him much.
He was wearing his black leather pants and nothing else; his eyes
were smudged with black liner from the show, which made them look
even larger, bluer, and more exotic than normal. He sat down in a
rickety chair, pulled the plate towards him, and dumped an
impressive amount of hot sauce onto it. Covertly, I watched him,
watched the muscles in his arms bunch and shift under those flaming
tattoos. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to eat him up.

“I don’t think you’re a
monster,” I said.

“Don’t you? When we first met,
you wanted to spit on me.”

“Worse. I wanted to kill you.
But now I’m confused. I don’t know what you are. Maybe you’re an
angel or a demon or maybe you’re just a human boy who’s pulling one
big scam on us all.”

“Mmm,” he said around a
mouthful. “What do your senses tell you about me?”

“I told you, it’s confusing.”
The omelette was good. I tapped a little of the hot sauce onto
it.

“That’s the trouble with you.
You don’t trust your gifts. And you are gifted, Jareth. I can
tell.”

He had a way of getting to me,
worming past my defences. It made me wary. “You’re just flattering
me.”

“Now why would I do that?”

“Maybe because you have designs
on my body,” I said jokingly and was immediately horrified that I’d
said that.

He slanted an eye at me. “Is
that such an absurd idea?”

I could feel the good side of
my face flaming. “Why would you make love to a freak like me?” I
snarled, which only made it worse.

He cocked his head. “I thought
we were both freaks, each in our own way. I find you interesting,
Jareth. I want to learn more about you.”

“I told you all you needed to
know when we first met.”

“I know you think the burn
defines you, but it does not. There is more to be learned, I’m
thinking. You express yourself elegantly sometimes, you know,
better than most of the people around here. Where did you learn
about Janus, the Roman god?”

“Oh, uh, after I got burned and
the Ramseys adopted me, well, I didn’t like trying to be with other
kids so much. Too painful. Most of them ran away or taunted me. So
I stayed inside by myself and watched movies and read books,
everything I could get my hands on. I loved all the stories about
the ancient Greek and Roman gods and heroes. I read a lot of those
and fantasy and well, other stuff,” I ended lamely.

“I did too,” he said softly.
“Maybe we aren’t as dissimilar as it might appear.”

Suddenly I had the bad feeling
that he was just flattering me for some nefarious reason of his
own. “What do you want, Kithara? What are you doing here, in this
circus?”

He shrugged. “I thought it was
obvious what I’m doing. Trying to survive.”

“I know you hate it. Do you
have a plan for getting out of here?”

“Do you?”

“Damn it!” I slammed a hand
down on the table. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I presume you
have, um, people, others you can go back to.”

He took a sip of wine. “How do
you know this isn’t just part of the master plan?”

“Was getting zapped by a cattle
prod part of the plan? Because if so, you’re a lot kinkier than I
thought.”

He smiled and I felt my mouth
relax into an answering smile, which I quickly suppressed.

“You have no idea what kinky
is,” he said. He raised his cup towards me.

“Are you going to talk to me or
just say vague and irritating things while you sit there all
beautiful and mysterious?” I growled.

“Okay, Jareth, what do you want
to know?”

“Everything. Tell me how you
got here. Tell me about the Wraeththu.”

“You want
my
story,
then? I thought you’d already made up your mind to hate me. Why
would explanations make any difference?”

“I want to understand,” I said.
I didn’t tell him that I didn’t hate him anymore, couldn’t hate
him.

He leaned forward, his eyes
glittering. “Understanding is a sword that cuts both ways. How far
are you willing to go to understand? To be pushed out of your
comfort zone into a wider reality?”

“What?”

“Because you might not be the
same again, once you know some truths.”

“I’ll take the risk,” I
said.

“At some point, I’ll remind you
that you said that,” he replied. “More wine?”

“You’re just trying to get me
drunk so you can take advantage of me,” I said.

He chuckled. “As tempted as I
am to, as you say, take advantage of you, I can’t. You would not
survive the experience.”

Despite the danger he
presented, I was absurdly pleased. “Then, is the story true that
Sligo tells when he introduces your act?”

“It is.”

“How does he know about
it?”

He sighed and got up. “Are you
done? I’ll take your plate.” He dumped the plates in the trash,
picked up the bottle of wine and his cup and moved to the mattress
that served as a bed, which, along with the table and two chairs,
constituted the only furniture in the place. He patted the pillow
beside him. “Persistence should be rewarded. Come sit and I’ll tell
you.”

I kicked off my tennis shoes,
picked up the pillow, put it behind my back, and leaned up against
the wall, keeping my good side facing him and sweeping my hair
forward to cover my burn. He was seated about a foot away, lolling
back against a pillow. I felt a heightened awareness of where his
body was in relation to mine. We were actually on a bed together.
It was more intoxicating than the wine.

“So where to start?” Kithara
mused. “Let’s see. Well, my birth name before I was incepted was
Ian. Like you, I grew up in the suburbs of Carmine City. I was an
only child, much indulged, and I think somewhat spoiled as a
result. I was interested in all kinds of things: literature,
science, music, and dance. My mother sent me to ballet classes.
Ballet is unusual for a boy, but I was good at it, and didn’t much
care what other kids thought. Besides,” here he rubbed a finger
along my thigh, “I think I fancied boys, even then, and I loved
those male dancers in their sheer white tights.”

At this, my heart conducted a
little somersault in my chest.

“When I was sixteen, my parents
got divorced,” Kithara continued, “and my mother moved into an
apartment in the city. I fell in with a rough crowd, rode a
motorcycle, and danced naked in a club, causing my mother no end of
grief.” Here, he chewed on his lip. Did I detect regret in his
voice? He sighed. “You talk about being a monster. I think I was,
before I became Wraeththu. Do you have any cigarettes?”

“No, I don’t smoke, um,
tobacco.”

“Shit.” He took another swig of
the wine and continued. “I heard things about a band of strange
mutants that lived in a no-man’s land in the inner city. Beings
that attacked boys and somehow infected them so that they became
mutants too. Some people dismissed it as urban myth. I didn’t.
Instead, it fascinated and horrified me. By then, I was writing for
my high school blog, one of the few responsible things I did back
then, and I thought it would be just so hot, you know, to actually
track down someone who had seen one of these creatures. It became
an obsession. I ventured further and further into their territory,
and through talking to people, streetwalkers, bums, cops, I was
slowly putting together a strange and contradictory story. Some
said they were like vampires, attacking people at night and sucking
their blood; others thought they were just another gang trying to
scare people. I found an eye-witness who said they were beautiful
to look at, but deadly to touch. Soon, I was to find out for
myself.