I decided to write down the story of my stay with this abomination because, first of all, I cannot speak it. Even if my freedom were restored and my voice with it, I must not tell what I know, and what I know must be told. The casual reader will not understand this; it is a paradox, but read on! Hear my distant voice because most of all, I tell this story in hope that I may end it. I pray I am not too late.

'It began on a bright autumn day after the last summer of my innocence. I was searching the world then, tearing down the curtains I could reach to reveal the secrets behind them. That was my obsession, showing myself that all was not as it appeared, tearing masks off Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the 'perfect' married couples and the always self-assured school principal. I was bent on knowing all as it was, not as it would appear.

'It was with this in mind that I approached the mysterious carnival that came upon our town. Certainly all was not as it seemed from the start. It chugged in on a chilly night in late October and set up in the dead of the night, a spectral spectacle of monstrous rides and even more monstrous freaks. I walked through the carnival with a certain arrogance, looking around, mentally taking notes, finally condescending to buy a few tickets. Not to have any fun of course, I would not fall to the charms of this carnival, any more than I would to the serenades of t he local boys. I stepped up to the Ferris wheel and gave the man there a ticket. Secretly I hoped there would be something enchanting about this Ferris wheel, but there was not. Once again, I was disillusioned.

'I spent that day at the carnival, riding the rides, watching what shows I was allowed in , watching the fools go into the ones I was not, From the distance I watched the band of freaks play as they marched through our streets as if they could possibly belong there. I made my way to the front of the procession where my eyes set upon the carnival master. He was tall and lean and proud, his bearing one of power, even under his road-worn suit. He led the parade with a sort of borrowed confidence, and when he glanced briefly at the people watching, one could see a flash of fire in his otherwise weak, small eyes. They were round, like marbles, and the color of mahogany. He carried his silk tophat effortlessly on his head, and this mock-gentleman held the baton in his gloved hands with a stuttered grace, born of showmanship rather than breeding.

'The rest of the procession passed unremarkably by, and soon I settled back into my cold inquisitiveness, cursing myself for being taken in. There was little left to see as the sun began to set, so I walked idly through the carnival watching people play. Finally, as the night began to chill and the carnies started closing up, I decided to catch one final freak show.'

A soft young hand turned the brittle page of the diary. The lady laughed, just a little nervously. She was surprised at the feelings that the memories still evoked in her. "Not the last freak show at all," she croaked, trying to reassure herself that this was indeed a relic of the past, something well behind her. She rested her tired head on the corner of the couch and read on.

'I handed my ticket to the man outside the tent. He looked at it, looked at me, looked at the short line behind me, then handed the ticket back. "You can't go in there."

This ticket's as good as any," I protested, but the man only shook his head.

"There are things inside of that tent that a young lady like you should never see." The man behind me agreed with the carnie and I threw him a sneer. "Go ride the carousel instead." I glared at them both and was preparing to force my way inside when a face peered out from behind the tent flap.

"Let the lady in," spoke the carnival master in his infinitely smooth tones. As I found myself staring again into his face, I noted that he had removed his hat and unbuttoned the high collar he wore. As he slipped away into the tent, I thought I saw something animate between the flaps of his shirt.

'I stepped inside the pitch darkness of the tent, among the milling bodies of the crowd, I could smell the odor of men, their sweat and smoke and traces of alcohol among the dust and wood smells from within the tent. As the lights went up there came a series of gasps, followed by a nervous laughter at having been so shocked. The audience shuffled about, drinking in the sights of the Elephant Man, the Half-Wo/Man, and the other human oddities who stared back at them. I was only mildly impressed because I could explain or at least believe all I could see, until I got to the end of the line. Standing there as the star attraction of his own show was the carnival boss. With every visible inch of his body, save his neck and face, covered in detailed artistry, he was no less freakish than the others on the platform with him. He might have seemed just as natural as the others, too, except that his tattoos weren' t just painted on. They moved. With each turn of his torso an eye blinked, a mouth opened, a limb reached out and drew blood from another. Expertly he manipulated his monsters, turning this way and flexing that muscles in patterns, and yet somehow the creatures never moved in the same way. They seemed to shift places, to try vainly to find a comfortable uncrowded bit of flesh to rest on.

'As I stared at him and the crowd began to drift away, a voice inside of me whispered, There's a trick to this; there's certainly more than meets the eye. Seeing their audience leaving, the freaks themselves got up to go to their tents and trailers for the night. As the carnival boss reached for his shirt, I gathered my nerve and accosted him from the bottom of the platform.

"Where is it?" I asked.

'A guilty grin flashed on his lips and vanished. "Where is what?"

"I'm not dumb. There's a trick to this, and I want to know what it is. What is it?" I demanded, my courage building. "Is there a projector at the back of the tent, or are there strings you pull them with, like marionettes?"

'He smiled sweetly, and his eye twinkled. "Come up and see." He offered me his hand, small and thing but remarkably strong. I took it, and he hoisted me up next to him easily. "So you want to know how it's done," he teased. As quick as changing a mask, his face became suddenly serious. "How would you like to know it all?" He shifted his weight and stared at me as though he could read my soul in my face. Unable to speak, I nodded. "Then look into my eyes, and I will show you." He trickled his hands onto my face and set them into my cheekbones. "Watch, little girl, very carefully."

'As I was held there, unable to tear away, his glistening eyes became my whole world. Like a tiny theatre they began to show scenes of the many lives that had passed through the carnival. I saw a woman who gossiped, then watched as her words became malicious gibberish nobody could understand. I saw a men so in love with snakes he began to take on their features . . . the stories whizzed by me, too numerous to name, and all alike. Each one was like a work of art gone awry, like roses being scorched and burned black. Then the forms shifted, leaving one central figure. HIM. I began to see how he had masterminded each tragedy, his eyes had shown me, and how the creatures crawling over his skin would howl and shriek with him at each victory. I felt saturated by the evil entity who stood so close I could feel his breath on my face. Overwhelmed by his foulness, I screamed. As I screamed, I could feel his iron hands grip my face, his entrancing eyes forcing mine open to focus on his grim theatre. Those glaring eyes shot a thunderous blast into my skull, and turned away. The visions crashed so loudly in my head that I barely felt him release his grip and let me fall. I screamed and screamed and screamed myself hoarse, only distantly hearing his clear voice reassure someone outside the tent that all was well.'

"Ms. Songbird?" a voice interrupted. She jerked around to see a young, long-haired man poking in the door of her hotel room.

"Who are you? What do you want?" she demanded quietly.

"You are Songbird, aren't you? The talent agent?"

Not now, I'm not. I'm trying to read. Who let you in, anyway?"

The boy leaned his head further in the door. "I'm sorry, Ms. Songbird, but I can't hear you if you're whispering."

I'm not whispering!" she said, which was a lie, for as hard as she strained her voice, she could do little else. "Get out, leave me alone!" The boy ducked out quickly, but even so she could see his disappointment. Her lip turned up ever so slightly, as though it feared a full-blown smile would kill its mistress. Rediscovering the diary, she cleared her throat and secretly wished she had the melodic, resounding voice of her mentor-nemesis.

'Some time after that -- I have no idea how long -- I felt a hard shoe kick my side. My ears still rang, but I could hear his voice, low and menacing, commanding that I get up. I started up weakly, but was knocked down by a stabbing kick to my ribs. As my eyes focused I could see a smile flutter by his face high above me. "Up girl!" he shouted. "Do you want another one like it?'' As I struggled to regain my feet, he feigned a kick in my bruised face. He began a laugh, which ended abruptly, as if even his own laughter injured him. '

She remembered her almost-smile and almost regretted. "We're too alike, you and I," she said to his memory on the paper.

'I don't know how or even if I survived that night or the days that followed. I had been dragged into his trailer where I was to take up a long residence. The place reeked of him; everything there he had touched and made a part of him, even the large, cold mirror that hung unavoidably on one narrow wall. The worst part, I think, was living with the vision I'd seen in his eyes, the loathsome vision of a creature who suckled misery, and whose sustenance was the salt in tears.'

Hastily, she slammed the diary shut. She didn't want to remember anymore what would follow. The endless nights fighting with herself between those confining walls, reading the diary over and over to fight the strange influence he exerted over her. The days she longed to tell the pleasure seekers they were wrong, how wrong! Voiceless, she could not begin to warn them before found her and brushed her away from his customers like a fragile mosquito. And then, there were the endless autumns, watching trees brown and lose their leaves and smell of decay over and over, without so much as a single green leaf or a single apple blossom. She didn't want to remember these, but they surfaced unbidden. Mercifully, some things remained below the surface, too ugly for daylight.

She dared open the diary's cover and read the name penned there long after the first entry was made. 'Giselle Songbird,' it read. That name he had given her, and she would have loathed it as she loathed him except that it represented her first victory. She turned to a page near the back of the book and began reading again.

' . . . sometimes the silence would be so oppressive that I would just have to whistle to break it -- it was about the only sound I could manage. I would start to whistle, just to test the water, and then I would experiment with a tune. Oh, and when he would hear it! How my fanciful little melodies would annoy him, and how his annoyance would provoke me to more merriment! I would start in with -- of all things -- 'Happy Birthday.' That one got his goat. I could just see the acid seeping through his veins. I would whistle on and on, and he would cringe tighter and tighter, until he had to admit it affected him. "Stop that ," he'd growl, and I'd pierce the air with a high note. "Stop that!" he'd boom, and I'd whistle a lullaby. His face darkened -- I could see that even in the rose tint of his mirror. Usually he'd just storm out into the night, but one night he lashed back.'

Songbird pressed her hand down abruptly on the page. The memory was too real; she did not want to relive that part of it. She turned the half unread page and resumed at a happier episode.

'. . . later on, with him out of the room, I would creep up to his dresser and examine the claw-marks he'd left in it in his rage.'

The pages fluttered in her hands as she toyed with them carelessly. Aword here and there jumped out at her dark brown eyes, reminding her of the red rose. That single, deep red, dried rose, the only other relic of the carnival to survive him. It always amazed her how it had survived those times when the storm that bedeviled him caught up to his carnival. The first time she had seen it . . .

'Let me explain my long absence from this journal. The storm of which I've often written had finally caught us. I hid here, but he must have been feeling his age, for he had been on his grand toy, the carousel. I knew this because when I found him he was -- he had not only gotten rid of a few wrinkles and grey hairs, be had become a young boy. I wouldn't have known him but for his clothes. His hands and head were scorched, and his skin was blotched with plague. He looked at me through wide, burning eyes, empty of any expression but pain. I left him there and limped away to survey the damage . . .

'Irealized I could speak, that the spell had been broken . . . '

She scanned the page a little way, past the minute details she had considered so important at the time.

'I found the twisted wreckage of his monster parade and set his shivering body on one of the few level platforms. Such power I imagined as I tore away the ruined animals. Now I would be his master, now he would owe me his life. The engine spit sparks and smoke in my face as I imagined what it would do. Might it not merely age him, but turn real time ahead? If I could make him relieve a childhood disease . . . From where I stood I couldn't see, so perhaps I'll never know.

'It's strange how quickly he seemed to recover. Consternation only seemed to hold him for a few seconds, and then he walked almost as tall as before. I imagined I could change that.

"This is your fault," he began. "You caused this. Little delays you caused to try to destroy me." He shook his head and sneered. "You silent fool."

"If that were true, you'd be a lot younger and I'd be a lot quieter." I hit a nerve, I could tell. I could almost see his hair stand on end. "I own you now," I said as I beat his cane against one of his brass poles. "You owe me your life and your price will be my voice. You will have to listen to me."

'His eyes became slits. "And if I don't?''

"Then I'll tell the world who you are.''

'He smiled, will I never forget it? He smiled! "You'll tell the world who I am, will you? Watch me die? Slowly? Painfully? See me hunted down, maybe, robbed of my dignity by the merciless masses? Would you like that?" He snarled, but he smiled, too. "Would you like to become me, feed off of misery?" He must have seen the despair on my face, for ever so softly, he laughed. "No? You'll keep quiet then? You can keep your precarious humanity then, and remain my little caged songbird for the rest of time." '

Giselle Songbird, talent agent to hundreds of dreamers and their hopeless pipe dreams, closed the crumbling book and laid it aside . She wiped her eye and looked at the curious salty drop, perhaps the last mourner of the human being she once was.