Happy Sunday! Here's the latest chapter.
The audience chattered excitedly as they filed towards the exit, but Miku wouldn't have felt like talking even if she hadn't come here alone. She felt the way she sometimes did after finishing a particularly intense movie or book – like she was waking up from a dream, but not fully out of it yet. She couldn't make out what any of the people around her were saying, and she kept turning back to the empty stage in the center of the ring, half expecting to see the performers again.
Most of all, she remembered the deformed diva's eyes. It seemed like she saw them every time she blinked, bright blue and mournful.
As she exited the tent, she saw that the circus was dark – all of the lanterns strung up on the tents or high on trees had been extinguished. Instead, there was a single path of lanterns at their feet, lighting the path to the trees, where the lanterns had been kept up to light the way out.
No music came out of the tent as she left. All she could hear was the chattering of the patrons as they made their way back into the woods … but, somewhere deep in the back of her skull, the deformed melody of the circus monster lingered.
Miku followed the rest of the crowd along the lit path, but she kept looking past the lanterns, towards the shadowed tents. None of the performers could be seen taking down their tents or getting things ready to move on … But she felt watched, all the same. The feeling was so unfamiliar, she had no idea how she knew what it was, but it was there all the same, crawling beneath her skin.
She looked over to the tattered brown tent, the one that housed the "freaks." She had seen the diva's tent being wheeled out of there before, she was sure of it. Why would they keep her in a place like that? The blue creature – man? – to the left had been terrifying, and the stitched together twins had filled her with unease. But the diva had just seemed delicate and sad. The idea of her cage being situated right in the middle, between those two twisted acts, made Miku's stomach turn.
The tent flap, the one that had been padlocked earlier, was hanging open. A small amount of light was coming from inside.
Miku stopped walking, right in the middle of the path. And although the feeling of being watched was stronger than ever, it didn't come from the patrons who filed around her as if they didn't see her at all. It didn't come from the circus goers who didn't spare her a glance as she stepped off the lighted path, into the shadows.
She didn't even spare a glance over her shoulder to confirm it. She already knew – they were all caught up in their own lives. None of them were watching her as she moved further and further from the path. Her feet seemed to move automatically, further and further from the lantern light. She walked in measured, even steps towards the tattered brown tent with her arms dangling limply at her sides. When she was almost to the tent, she realized that she was walking in time with the memory of the diva's song, still lingering in her head.
She stood at the entrance. Inside, she heard someone crying softly.
She pushed the flap aside, looking around cautiously. There were three cages now, lined up along the far wall. The twins were sleeping, with their heads leaning against each other. Something was huddled far in the corner of its cage on the other end, gnawing on a bone, but Miku didn't look over to try and decipher if it was a creature or a man.
She didn't have eyes for anyone but the diva in her cage in the center, weeping into her flower-covered hands.
There was a small lantern on the dirt in front of her cage, illuminating it. The metal floor was covered in long, pink strands of hair where the newly formed red flowers on her skull had pushed them out. There wasn't a single inch of bare skin left … but she looked up when Miku gasped, and from among that mass of yellow, white and red blooms peered the same tear-filled blue eyes that Miku saw whenever she closed her own.
"No …" The diva's voice was full of horror. "Please …"
Miku walked forward, wrapping her hands around the bars of the cage. "Are you okay? Why are you crying?"
The diva shuddered, turning away from the bars. "You can't … You should go. You have to … Please."
"I … I can't." Miku spoke the words before she even knew they would fall from her lips. She leaned forward, trying to get the diva to face her. Her eyes were the only part of her that still looked human, and Miku wanted to see them. "Please, tell me what's going on." The circus was terrifying and strange, but the diva felt like an old friend. She remembered her mournful song and knew that the other could tell her what it all meant – the music, the fortune teller, the pervasive feeling of being watched.
But the diva gave no such answer. Instead, she looked over her shoulder at Miku with tear-filled eyes. "I am damned …"
"No," Miku said quietly. "I don't know why … But I can't believe that." She wasn't like the other workers at this circus. She clearly wasn't here of her own volition. Only the evil were damned, so if anyone was, it was the one who kept her in this cage against her will. "Please, don't cry … Let me help you. I want to." She never wanted anything more.
The diva's eyes flickered for a moment … And then her hands moved up, closing over Miku's own, still wrapped around the bars. Beneath the silk of the petals, Miku could feel warmth. "It's too late." She leaned her forehead against the bars, as if trying to get as close to Miku as possible. "Forgive me … But I'm glad that I got to see your face."
Then the diva's hands released Miku's. She slumped forward, her forehead slowly sliding down the bars until she landed in a heap. Completely still, she looked more like a lifeless mass of flowers than a woman covered in them.
"No … No, no, no!" Miku reached her hands through the bars as far as they could go, wanting to grab the woman and shake her. Instead, she pushed the diva over and she fell to her side, lying prone against the floor of the cage. Miku could no longer see her eyes – they were closed.
"Please … No." Miku managed to grab the woman's hand and pull it through the bars, clasping it in both of her own. There was no movement from the diva … And there was no warmth beneath the petals anymore.
The deformed diva was dead. And although Miku didn't even know her name, she felt as though she had lost her very closest friend.
"No …" Miku leaned her head against the bars, sobbing. To her right, the blue thing huddled in the corner of its cage uttered a harsh noise that might have been a bark or a shout. To Miku's ears, it just sounded like an echo of her own sobs.
To her other side, she could hear the girl half of the stitched together duo giggling quietly. She didn't look up at either of them. She was transfixed by the corpse of the diva. Who was this woman? Miku had just seen this woman die before her eyes, and she couldn't even mourn her properly because she didn't know her. She could only long for those blue eyes to open once more. She tried to focus on where her eyes had been, not on the flowers that covered her skin. The newly formed red blooms, situated among the pale white and yellow, looked too much like open wounds.
Miku trembled, hands wrapped around the cold fingers like she could will warmth to come back into them. She remained like that, staring, until the voice sounded directly behind her.
"Well, well. What have we here, little flower?"
Miku spun around, already half scrambling to her feet as she registered the ringmaster – Meiko – standing at the tent's entrance. Standing beside her was Mayu, the sword-thrower in the Lolita dress.
Her red lips were curved up in a mocking smile as she looked down at Miku. "Oh, no, I like you where you are. Stay down." Her voice echoed strangely, seeming to reverberate in the inside of Miku's skull as much as it did in the air. All of the strength flowed out of her legs and she landed hard on the ground, her back against the bars of the diva's cage. Satisfied, Meiko walked forward, leaving Mayu to watch from the tent's entrance. No one, not even the blue creature, made a sound as the ringmaster spoke.
"Please …" With Miku like this, Meiko towered over her. The magnitude that had been captivating and alluring from a distance became terrifying up close. Her wide skirts brushed against the floor, obscuring her steps, and she seemed to glide across the hard packed earth rather than walk.
And when the woman laughed, the voice that had been so beautiful sounded merely wicked. "My, my. Aren't you the pretty one?"
Miku shook her head wildly. She wanted to run away, but her legs felt numb and painful, like they had been soaking in a bucket full of ice. She couldn't will them to move no matter how hard she tried.
"Please," she whispered, "Please don't hurt me." She felt sick to her stomach, already afraid that there was no point in begging.
Meiko laughed, throwing her head back. "Oh, dear. Don't you see? I already have."
She bent down, pressing a finger to Miku's chin to force her to make eye contact. This close, Miku could see that her eyes, which looked brown at first, had a glint of red in the center of the irises.
"Enough now," Meiko said. "It's too late for you. 'Even if the sun was to vanish and every star was to fall from the sky.'" Her voice was strident and mocking. She fixed Miku with a bright, amused gaze. "Now, sleep."
Her voice echoed again and again in Miku's mind, blotting out everything else. As the world swam away from her, the last thing she thought of was grabbing for the diva's hand through the bars, searching for comfort from something that no longer held any warmth.
Things are starting to get very dramatic! I'm really excited for things to pick up. I already have a lot of chapter 6 and much of chapter 7 written! All that's left is editing. I'm doing my best to stay dedicated to updating this once a week, just like I promised.
Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed so far! I am glad to see people interested in this story. Please, tell me what you think of the latest chapter.
I look forward to hearing from you, and I'll see you all next week!
- Jillian Maria