Whatever sleepy concoction Bessie was dosed with earlier had been purged from her system, and the gravity of her situation finally made full contact. Her sight became dizzying as too many obstacles hit her at once; the inpenetrable crowd cheering for her punishment, Jerome blocking her exit off the stage, and the sizzingly bright spotlight putting her front and center to the madness. One moment the spike-studded leather jacket was on her, the next it was ripped away and gone. Startled, Bessie looked around wildly to find a punk with streaky black grease raining under his eyes grinning at her in a sarcastic manner, like he deemed her unworthy of wearing it. The jacket had been so big that it practically glided off Bessie when he snatched it.

"Take her to the rope!" announced Jerome, eliciting much fanfare. He let the celebration continue for a few beats before he held up a finger for silence. The noise ebbed a few notches but never disappeared.

"Have a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy bit of fun, but remember..." His hand shot from nowhere as if it had been spring-loaded. He clamped Bessie's jaw so roughly that the pain seared to her bone. He dragged her to himself and she felt the unmistakable, wet trailing of his tongue from up her jawline to the cheekbone. "This one's all mine."

Grimacing as air turned the saliva on her face cold, Bessie pinched her sleeve under her thumb and grinded it against her cheek. Her discomfort incited mocking laughter from the audience. Jaw still throbbing, Jerome unexpectedly pushed her and Bessie shrieked, wind-milling her arms. Her balance was lost and she fell off the podium.

Whether fortunate or unfortunate, Bessie couldn't say, the mob broke her fall as she fell into a web of arms. Instincts ignited, she flailed as their fingers clutched and skittered over her like hundreds of spiders. Caught like a fly in their trap.

"Get off me! Get off!" she said in great distress. She thrashed in convulsions, struggling to break from their unanimous grip, but they were a binding glue. "Jerome!"

Jerome twiddled his fingers in farewell, blowing kisses, his form shrinking as the crowd carried Bessie away.

It was unbelievable to think there could be a time where Bessie would call on his help, but twenty—maybe even thirty—against one were unsurvivable odds. Jerome was as dangerous as they came, but was still just one person.

"Bye-Bye!" Jerome called over the thrum. "Au Revoir! Auf Wiedersehen! Do svidaniya!" He hopped onto a nearby post a la Gene Kelly in Singin' In The Rain, highlighting himself as the cosmopolitan among the sea of brutes, and blew three more kisses in succession.

"Jerome!"

Bessie's thin, raspy screaming was muffled by the multitude. The many hands pinning her limbs down brought back terrible memories of when she was tied to the chair inside that old carousel, and she began to pant from the crushing thoughts of immobility. The unbearable memory, like Jerome, was rising back from the dead.

What was the rope? Was the mob going to hang her, public execution style? A phantom sting burned across Bessie's throat like the hold of an imagined noose. The clock of mortality in her mind ticked down and her muscles burned as she struggled to free herself before the arrival to their destination.

The mob continued to work like a colony of ants in service to their queen, forcing Bessie to her fate.

Arriving to a large, red and white striped, open face tent, stragglers pushed and shoved each other to enter first. The crowd heaved Bessie onto the dirt floor and she was airborne for a second before she landed on her shoulder and rolled. The clowns at Haly's knew how to fall and had taught her long ago how to soften gravity, it was instinctual for her to know how to land and absorb the impact for minimal pain, but still, falling was falling and she did end up with an uncomfortable throb. There was no time to soak it in, though. She scrambled to stand lest they all take advantage of her while she was down.

A skinny, brittle-looking woman with blood-red curls piled high on her head in a fauxhawk snatched Bessie by the wrist with surprising force. Her insect-like fingers squeezed Bessie's cheeks to turn her sight upwards.

An unexpected circus staple was set-up in this tent, one Bessie was all too familiar with: two forty-foot stabilizing poles linked by a solitary, floss-like tightrope.

"C'mon, sweetheart," the woman mocked in a nasally whine, "get up there."

Bessie was thrown forward and stumbled, much to the mob's delight. Spinning fast so as not to give anybody time to ambush her, Bessie stared back at a legionous, leathered, weaponed, barely human wall that left her no escape.

She curled, tightening her shoulders and crossing her arms. Judgmental hunger emanated from the audience that anticipated her suffering. The disguise earlier had failed in concealing an escape, but she wished she still had it. Layers made her feel less vulnerable to their slimy touches. All that was left to clothe her now were the runners and black lycra t-shirt and pants she arrived in.

Nobody here was on her side.

"Move it!" snarled someone from the crowd, launching an empty beer can. Bessie flinched and half-turned as the can hollowly clanked her shoulder. The collision didn't hurt, but the malice behind the pitch did.

Whatever this demand meant, though, it wasn't death, and self-preservation was all Bessie had in her mind to accomplish—to delay that dreadful clock of mortality in any capacity, whether it was to obey a bizarre order or not.

Muscles burning from a tightness that only served to slow her walk, she lead herself to the ladder and looked up at the platform above. There was only one other solitary moment in her life where a ladder seemed so dauntingly high that it may as well have been a ladder to the stars: her very first climb.

This demented carnival's tightrope apparatus was no different than Haly's, and yet…somehow it was?

Bessie connected the two events and discovered why when she took a trembling step onto the first rung. It was fear. Fear formed burbling creeks into raging rivers, a barking dog into a hungry lion. A buzz hummed in her ears and acted as cotton; the sound of the crowd was almost muffled as Bessie concentrated harder to not let her clammy palms slip from the metal bars as she ascended. Nothing now but wind at her back, the frothing mob below began to shrink, but they could never get small enough to Bessie's liking. More than anything she wished for this ladder to truly go on indefinitely, to the stars, to never end.

Her hand eventually touched the dreaded peak. The purple platform's width was enough to fit perhaps five people before the space would start feeling too crowded.

"Get on with it already!" roared an angry watcher below.

Bessie grabbed the enclosure railings and hauled herself up the rest of the way. A familiar surrounding brought no comfort as she hoped it would. She felt so desolate and lonely up there. If pressed, however, the company of herself alone was much preferable to any option Jerome's carnival could ever offer. Coaching herself to find solace, she took a deep breath through the nose and looked down at what she had to work with.

And the outlook was ominous.

The rope was an actual fiber rope pulled tight, the twisty braided kind usually found on a ship, which was much harder to traverse because it offered too much slack. These were nothing like the taut cables of modern-day tightropes. Bessie was liable to fall into an unrecoverable wobble. Slackline walking was an actual thing wherein the line was tied with less tension, leading the walker to be able to traipse along with a springy bounce. But neither tightropes nor slacklines were made with this kind of common, glossy-fiber rope.

Bessie lowered on one knee and stroked the rope experimentally, confirming her grim findings. As if the light shining off the fibers hadn't already told her. She needed to remove her shoes. Without walking slippers with the suede, grippable sole, she would need to rely on the skin of her bare feet. Regular shoes would be her death sentence.

A glint of silver caught Bessie's eye and she glanced down in time to spot a thrown crowbar that didn't quite reach her before it fell. Jerome's mob was getting violently impatient and they let their displeasure be known. They hurled taunts and horrid threats that piled and melded into each other until their voices became one big, booming orchestra of resentment for Bessie.

She did not waste time by unlacing her sneakers, she promptly kicked them off and rolled the socks down. Standing rigid, clutching the metal guard rails that enclosed her only path, Bessie took another deep breath through the nose, held it, and stepped forward delicately. Her sole barely sank and formed onto the rope when a massive cheer erupted down below. If it could even be called a cheer. The sound was so unlike the circus breed, there was a definitive difference. This one was unbearably ugly. Deep. Ferocious. They wanted blood.

Bessie released her held breath and tightened her core. Second nature took the wheel. Adopting the standard t-pose, she used her arms as her balancers as she braved the next step. No props to use here, no frilly parasols, no poles. Nothing but a meager arm span to hold her position.

Focus was hard-won as she continued her walk. Three steps. Now four. The rope sank much lower than what she was accustomed to. An inch or two rarely made such significant difference in many aspects of life, but right here, an extra inch made a world of difference. It took all the discipline she'd ever learned to train her thoughts on this one specific thing. Every stringy fiber composing the rope came into sharp clarity as she concentrated hard on it to align her feet perfectly, and drown out the droning mob spread like a black lake beneath.

Jerome knew, still knew, she was a tightrope walker. There was absolutely no doubt. Tightrope walking was sewn into Bessie's soul and what made her known to all who came across her. If Jerome wanted to kill her in this way, why would he choose the one thing in the world that she was highly skilled at, and provide her a safety net no less? What was he hoping to accomplish? Why would he allow her to be in her element?

The rope slack was much too uncomfortable. Bessie was very liable to enter a swinging wobble that she couldn't get out of if she did not pre-plan every footfall. And even pre-planning was no guarantee.

I can do this, she repeated in her mind. She coached herself that over and over again through the fog of discomfort. She hardly believed those words, but repeating the phrase incessantly could have an invigorating effect, so she hoped. If this was all Jerome planned to keep her busy with, then she could find it in herself to discover a way to reconcile with this unfamiliar rope-walking style, learn its intricacies, mold herself to the distinct characteristics.

She had to.

Dead-center created the worst dip of all. Bessie's weight caused the rope to sink a good two inches. She felt a tremble but wasn't sure whether it came from the rope's instability or herself. Leveraging her voracious need for caution while at the same time fighting the urge to slow down lest she lose the momentum necessary to not enter the dreaded wobble, Bessie, by some miracle, managed to leave the dip behind, the opposite platform growing.

Celebration was not on her mind, though. The platform was only a transitory resting point, unable to be savoured before the journey would repeat. The crowd wouldn't allow her rest.

Still, when the platform came within arm's reach, Bessie grabbed the guard rails gratefully and scuttled onto its blessedly wide, flat surface, stealing a moment to catch her breath.

The crowd's shouts were so difficult to categorize. Were they elated? Angry? Both? Nevertheless, projectiles started flying as Bessie dawdled too long on the platform.

"More! More!" they demanded.

It was only a matter of time before one of those objects targeting Bessie managed to hit their mark. Turning around, she gathered courage for a second lap but froze and gawked at what she saw on the other end. While her back had been turned on the starting platform, three members of Jerome's mob climbed up. They waved mockingly to her, gnashing their teeth.

The platform beneath Bessie's feet rattled. Looking behind and down, she spotted two more climbing up, making their way to her. Bessie's heart pounded rapidly, spilling so much adrenaline as to make her feel sick. Almost forgetting to heed her discipline for a split-second, Bessie readied herself, held her arms out, and took three dainty steps out onto the rope again.

If the mini-mobs on either side wasn't enough, Bessie came to the terrible realization that she was wearing a black lycra shirt and leggings. Slippery materials. If she fell from the rope, there was a fleeting chance she could grab onto it at the last second and hang on, if timed correctly. That small chance, however, got dimmer the more she considered how slippery her clothes were.

The middle was coming up again. The taunting and goading coming from both platforms now, front and back to Bessie, became overwhelming by sheer distraction. Those horrible goons kept speaking over each other, only some words breaking through, and anything audible was just as unsavoury as the people they came from.

What would happen if Bessie decided to sit down right in the middle? Perch herself in an unreachable position. Would anybody else present have the skill to walk across to reach her?

A dreadful thought occurred, however, that it only took one person with a gun down below and she would basically be a sitting duck. If knives and crowbars were in arsenal, who was to say that somebody down there didn't have something that provided a greater, deadlier punch?

Bessie passed the middle, cheating another miracle, and the horrible sight ahead came much too close, even from fifteen feet away.

"Aww, look at her!" chided a young woman with pink hair, wrinkling her nose to emphasize the insult. "Scared, sweetie? Is that it?"

Bessie's distress must have been written all over her face, apparent in her limbs and telegraphed in her every move. Ignoring was not an option anymore, she had to strain through it, even if she was walking straight into open jaws.

The distance barely closed before six viperous hands grabbed fistfuls of her clothes and dragged her to them before they spun her, already rushing her to go again. Bessie stalled for just one dangerous second and a great push slapped her between the shoulder blades. The force was too great and Bessie whimpered, managing to catch the guard rails before falling through the platform's opening. Three distinct, uproarious laughs resonated behind her.

Bessie stepped out, desperate to put distance between them. Nestling the rope in the cove between her first and second toes, she returned, forced to relive her ordeal.

Concentration was getting so much harder to grasp, like water through hands. The water was going to eventually drain, leaving nothing mentally to hang onto but fear.

Bessie had made only four more increasingly clumsy steps before that exact unthinkable scenario came to call.

A tremor started in her feet, setting off a chain reaction. She crouched low to try and offset it, as trained to do, but her body's weight shifted too much to one side. Her feet jerked steeply to the right, and suddenly nothing was beneath her. Bessie yelped and felt the unmistakeable feeling of plummeting, but somehow in the rush of reflex she managed to hook one leg over the rope. Left to dangle upside down, her neck felt terribly exposed as her hair succumbed to gravity. Looking in the direction that her body felt was up, the net underneath stayed where it was, not coming any closer.

Marveling over that one stroke of luck, her hands flailed for the rope above almost blindly. The second her fingers touched something tangible, she snapped her fingers on it like a mousetrap. The familiar feeling of rope came secondary, but once it registered, a rush of relief coursed that she had indeed caught herself. She clutched the line so dearly that the bones of her knuckles threatened to rip from her skin.

A jeer grew from the audience below. Watchers booed her relentlessly. A rhythm developed to their disapproval. They began to chant.

"Fall! Fall! Fall! Fall!"

Bessie hoisted and flipped herself back onto the rope until she sat on it. Gingerly, she aligned her feet back on, rising with her knees to not upset her equilibrium and continued.

The boos were generous.

Bessie exhaled, recalibrating her control and made defiant step after step, resuming her walk. She made it to the platform and just as before, she was unkindly turned and physically coerced to resume the cycle. Endlessly if need be.

Again. Go again.

Bessie walked careful steps, one foot in front of the other, already losing count long ago.

A sharp whistle trilled. Bessie looked up to find three mob members smiling and twiddling their fingers at her. The pink-haired woman was kneeling on the platform, hands teasing the rope. Bessie felt the blood drain from her face as she stared in horror. By instinct she shook her head no, but that only fueled the woman's desire to proceed. Clutching the rope, she started pulling, wiggling, and disrupting it with glee. A physics wave reached Bessie and she folded at the waist to restore balance when the rope nearly threw her off.

"Stop! Please!" she called.

"Fall! Fall! Fall!"

Bessie was struggling.

"FALL! FALL! FALL!"

Bessie's arms wind-milled. A moment later, she could not catch the rope again and she succumbed to gravity.

Her eyes bulged in that split second of dread. Her outstretched fingers were not long enough and there was nothing she could do to stop the rope growing thinner. Her legs bicycle-kicked in an automatic cycle, trying to gain a foothold that wasn't there before she crashed back to earth.

The net caught her and she sprung with it.

Bessie had never in her life fallen from such a height, and the shock of the experience scared her something fierce. Everything she fought for in her life to prevent such a thing went distant.

The knowledge was always there that the net would save her, but that precious solitude up in the air was lost. The net was high enough where those swarming creatures below needed to reach up to touch her, but reach and touch they could.

They poked, prodded, and tickled Bessie, cackling joyously at making her skitter like a water droplet in a pan. Bessie shot her pelvis into the air to give them as little surface area as possible. Flipping onto her hands and knees, she clambered madly for the platform.

More of them were waiting for her there.

Her fingertips barely grazed the edge before dozens of hands reached down. They pulled her in as if she were as light as an empty grocery bag, just to push and make her climb the ladder and do it all over again. Before she made a single rung up, though, one young man reached, clamped her upper arm, and yanked her toward him. Bessie clenched her teeth and grunted from the burn of his grip. A throb wailed in her arm from it nearly popping from its socket.

"HAHAHA!" The young man cackled right in her face as if he were flattering Jerome by doing an impression of him. The acrid smell of his stale sweat stung Bessie's nose.

She clawed at his fingers like a trapped animal to get him off. "Let go!" she cried desperately, pulling.

He did as told and Bessie reeled and hit the ladder. Laughter rang.

Bessie was shoved again towards the rungs and she hastily climbed. The ladder was the only safe haven. She wondered if she could just stay in the middle section, safe from their reach below and above, but their weapons could easily turn into projectiles.

How much longer could this charade go on? Was she meant to keep going until she dropped dead?

A/N: Bruh, are you serious? I took over a year and a half to update this?! I thought I was still pretty on track, maybe taking half a year at most. Looking at the last update floored me! Good Lord, I'm a mess…
If any of you are still with me, you are angels and your patience is exemplary!
Or if you've just forgotten and moved on, I deserve that, I know, I understand.

Also, there are probably a few mistakes hiding in here, I was so desperate to get this chapter out finally. I'll do an edit sweep at a later time and spruce up some little oopsies. Hopefully what I have now is up to par and presentable.