Lura woke up to find no one sleeping beside her, as usual. Just one morning, that's all I ask for, she thought to herself as she got out of bed and found some clothes to wear. One morning where I can wake up nestled into the man I love.
She left the room and exited the train when she noticed Parker standing out in the field, looking dazed and confused. "Hey, Parker, right?"
"Oh, hi, um… I'm sorry, I forgot your name."
"Lura. Guess it's a bit hard to remember a girl's name when all you see is her bare chest." She flashed him a smile, assuring him she was okay with what happened last night.
"Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. I just waltzed into the first car I got to and hopped into the boudoir so no one would find me. Again, really sorry, Lura."
"Don't be. Mistakes happen. So uh, I couldn't help but notice you looking like you lost your way out here. Anything I might be able to help you with?"
"Oh, um, I was looking for the animals. Figured I would get an early start and meet that lion tamer guy that Mr. Barnaby was talking about last night."
"The animals are out back, I can walk you there, introduce him to you."
"Yeah, sure, that'd be great!" Lura led him around the other side of the train.
"So, how did you put it last night? 'Escaping the farm,' are you? What is there to escape? I'd kill to live on a nice piece of farmland."
"Yeah, so long as you don't have to do any of the manual labor. That was one of the problems I was having. My stepbrother fell sick and died a few years back, so all the workload's been dumped on me."
"Oh my lord, I'm so sorry, Parker. What was it that killed him?" Lura could tell Parker was getting a bit uneasy talking about his home life. "I'm sorry, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
Parker squeezed the bridge of his nose as he tried to hide back the tears. "No, um, talking about it is good. Putting everything out there and confronting it, it's cathartic, right?"
"If you think so."
"My dad used to abuse us. My brother wasn't ill, that's just the lie I've been used to telling. My father pushed him down a flight of stairs and he banged his head pretty bad. He got a concussion and… and that was it."
"Oh my goodness!" Lura regretted ever asking him. She didn't know it was going to be that cathartic.
"Things got better, for a little while. My dad started to feel bad about what he did, but that all stopped after about a year. Started hitting me again. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore." At this point the tears were streaming down Parker's face. Lura had no choice but to grab him close to her and hug him, comfort him. The young man nestled his head onto her shoulder and started to bawl. "I killed him, Lura! I smashed his head right open! I couldn't take it anymore! That's why I ran away!"
Lura couldn't believe what she was hearing. This poor young boy, what he must have gone through.
"Hey, hey, look at me." She pulled the sobbing kid off of her and held his face in her hands. "Listen to me. Every single one of us had a rocky past. We're all here for a reason. I know Barnaby said that he hand-selected us, but something about him has an eye for sympathy. It's like he knows that each and every one of his performers has had a tough life in the past, and he does so much to make it better for us." She used her thumb to wipe a tear from rolling down his cheek. "You're not alone, Parker. I've had my share of regrets, bad decisions, and horrible situations thrown at my face. We all have. It's what makes us unique. But more importantly, it's what makes us stronger. How many people can walk away from your situation and get a job at a circus the next day? Look at where you are right now. And look, you just made a new friend." She smiled at him, and he smiled back. "Now come on, time for you to make another new friend."
She grabbed his hand and started frolicking over to the animal cages. "Hey, Julius! I got someone for you to meet."
Julius was standing a few cages away, tossing a piece of raw meat at the lions. He dropped the meat bucket, wiped his hands on his pant leg, and jogged over to Lura and the boy she was standing next to.
"Julius, this is Parker Redford. Barnaby hired him last night, he's going to be his new accountant or assistant or something, his official title hasn't been fully worked out yet, I don't think. But he's also had some experience working on a farm and Barnaby said he could help you take care of the animals."
"Ah, great! I sure could use the help," the blonde man said, chuckling. "Julius Spick, I'm the lion tamer here." The men shook hands. Parker admired Julius' strong grip. "Say, why don't you help me out here with breakfast. I'm assuming you've never dealt with any wildlife before, have you, Parker?"
"Can't say I have, Julius."
Julius laughed. "Grab that bale of hay, toss it right into the elephant cage down over there." Parker stared at the massive elephant down the line of animal cages.
"Geez, I've never seen an elephant that close before!"
"Really? Never been to a zoo?" asked Julius.
"Julius used to work at the Bronx Zoo before coming to join us," said Lura as she sat down on a hay bale. "Hey Jules, I was just telling Parker about how we all came from rather dark circumstances. Why don't you tell him your story?"
Julius wiped his brow. "Alright, guess I could take a break." He plopped down next to Lura with a grunt. "So as Lura said, I was one of the animal caretakers at the Bronx Zoo. Loved it there, it was so great working with all the creatures. My best friend, Simon, and I, we used to host this show with the wolves. It was a big hit. One day Barnaby came to our show and he offered Simon a job to work with the animals in his circus. Simon of course took the job. Barnaby offered him a hell of a salary. And then, it happened." Parker could tell by the change in Julius' inflection that the dark part of the story was approaching. "Simon was leaving to join the circus the next day, and he was doing the lion feeding that night. Long story short, he slipped on one of the rocks and fell right into the lion's den. He was covered in the raw meat and the blood, and the lions, I'm talking like seven or eight of them, just started mauling him." Parker couldn't help but look over his shoulder at the lion Julius just fed. "Shook me up pretty badly, I didn't think I was ever going to be the same again. After a bit of a mourning period I decided to quit the zoo gig, and before long Barnaby got in touch with me, offering me the same position he offered Simon."
"But I thought you said you were never the same again after what happened," Parker interjected.
"I wasn't for a while. But Barnaby kept on pressuring me, and eventually I accepted the offer. Deep down, I still loved animals, still loved working with them. I couldn't let one incident, one that didn't even directly affect me, get in my way."
All three of them were silent for a few moments. Then Parker decided to divert the attention elsewhere. "Lura? What about you? What's your story?"
Julius gave Lura an uncomfortable look. "I've heard this one way too many times." He awkwardly got up and started to walk away. "I'm gonna finish feeding the… thing."
"Uh, should I not know about this or something?" asked Parker, now a unique combination of somewhat off-put yet also further intrigued.
"That depends, how does it make you feel knowing that I used to work in a brothel?" Parker's eyes widened. "Yep, I was a whore. A prostitute. Barnaby was a loyal customer and, well, let's just say he appreciated some of my… flexibility. Offered to pay me to do the same stuff but with clothes on and in front of a lot of strangers."
Silence. Prolonged silence.
"Um, wow. I—"
"And before you ask, sweetheart… no, I will not give you a private show." Lura gracefully got up and wiped her hands on her shirt as if she just didn't drop a major bombshell of her past on the poor young man. "Charles and I are very much in love. And we prefer our relationships monogamous."
"Oh, no, no, I would never, I mean, Lura, that was the last thing I would, I…" Parker couldn't help but laugh at his awkwardness and rub his head in his hands. "In case you couldn't tell, I'm a virgin."
"Shocker," Lura sighed sarcastically. She smiled at him. "You'll find the right girl in time, Parker. Just not me." She turned to walk away, but over her shoulder she said softly, "At least not right now." Revealing a bit of her flexibility, Lura turned her upper half to wink at Parker, then twisted herself forward once more, all without missing a single step.
Lura smiled to herself as she walked back to the train. Talking to Parker made her, for some reason, extremely horny, and she desperately wanted to find Barnaby so he could help take care of the problem. She sneakily stuck her hand down her pants as she headed to her boudoir, but suddenly she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Oh, Jesus, Athena! You scared the crap out of me!"
"Sorry, darling. Didn't mean to cause a fright. But could I have a word with you? It's rather urgent."
Lura didn't like the shift in tone of Athena's voice. She was psychic, like actually psychic. Most circuses have the phonies that just tell people very vague and rehearsed bits of information, but Athena was an authentic. Oh shit, Lura thought. What did she see?
"Meeser Barnaby, there is a man and a woman here to see you," said Diego, the Barnaby Traveling Circus' sword swallower.
Charles finished writing his sentence before getting up and thanking Diego for delivering this information to him. "Uh, Diego, while you're here. How's our little project coming along?"
"I am almost done with the stitches, Meeser Barnaby. She should be ready by nightfall."
"Excellent. Well, I don't want to keep you, that will be all." Diego left, and Barnaby looked in his mirror to straighten his bowtie, even thought it was already perfectly straight.
He walked outside the train and, just as Diego had warned him, a very anxious-looking couple was waiting for him.
"Charles Barnaby, my name is Victor Carson, I'm the town mayor. This is my wife, Ellen." The stranger stuck out his hand to shake Barnaby's, and the ringmaster replied with a very forceful shake.
"Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mayor Carson." Barnaby took Ellen's hand and very suavely caressed it, brought it to his lips, and gave it a firm yet gentle kiss. Ellen couldn't help but blush. "I hope you don't mind my saying this, Miss Carson, but you are absolutely breathtaking."
"Oh my, quite the charmer, Mr. Barnaby." Ellen almost didn't want to retract her hand from Barnaby's hold. When was the last time Victor ever held my hand? she asked herself, realizing she couldn't quite recall. He's a pig compared to this gentleman.
"I only found out after last night's show that you two were in attendance. My sincerest apologies, I would have made sure to give you a very proper introduction."
"Thank you, but we're not royalty. We just wanted to spend some time with our son, we figured the circus would be an excellent way to treat him," Victor said, cautiously putting his arm around Ellen.
"And how did your son enjoy the show?"
"We don't know," Victor replied.
"Jacob is missing," interjected Ellen. "He was used in your clowns' cannonball stunt last night, which frankly I didn't very much care for, and he never returned to us. That head clown, what was his name, something weird, something you wouldn't quite expect a clown to be named…"
"Ah, are you referring to Sanguine?" asked Barnaby, hesitant to slip out his name.
"Yes! That's it. He told us they were cleaning up and he should be out shortly. Victor got an important call after that and we had to leave, we just assumed Jacob would find his way home. But he never did."
"Did you speak with Jacob, Mr. Barnaby? Do you have any idea if he did in fact leave your circus and come home? I know it's a bit ridiculous but you know how these kids get, always planning on running away to join the carnies." Victor gave a slight chuckle.
Barnaby glared at him angrily. "We are not carnies, Mr. Carson. That phrase is outdated and is not applicable to our troupe of very talented performers. I would very much appreciate if you would refrain from using such harsh language." He noticed that Victor and Ellen were extremely taken aback by his stern outburst, but it needed to be said. Barnaby quickly regained his composure and resumed. "I did not speak or interact with Jacob last night, and I unfortunately have no idea of his whereabouts. He is certainly not amongst our company at the moment, I can assure you of that."
"A bit negligent, don't you think?" asked Victor, suddenly accusatory. "You involve a member of the audience in one of your potentially-life-threatening stunts, and you, the owner and proprietor of this fine entertainment establishment, aren't even sure if he made it out alive in the end?" Barnaby just stared the man down, knowing very well that he was right. "You might be looking at a very serious lawsuit, Mr. Barnaby. We're going to give it a day. If we still get no new information on Jacob's whereabouts, we'll be back, and we'll insist on talking to your friend Sanguine."
Victor turned around forcefully and began to walk away. Then he noticed his wife was still standing there. "Let's go, Ellen!" Ellen gave a half-smile-half-frown to Barnaby before following her husband. "Jesus, Ellen, I try to make an impactful exit and you just linger like that?!" Barnaby wanted to chuckle at the couple's feud, but realized there was a bigger problem on his hands that he needed to face.
"There you are, I've been looking everywhere for you!" Barnaby fretfully wandered up to his lead clown, who was hunched over dealing with something in a bag outside the lion's cage. Sanguine didn't respond at first, so Barnaby sent a whack to the elder man's back.
"Ouch! Geez, Charles, do you have to be so rough with me? I'll be 70 years old in a couple of days. Which reminds me, can we discuss what we're gonna do for my birthday this year?"
"Sanguine, we may have a crisis on our hands," Barnaby said, rubbing his temples to soothe the headache that was just starting to emerge.
"I was thinking, you know, nothing big, just you and I, some of the boys from the clown posse, Lura of course—she's practically my daughter-in-law after all, say when are you gonna pop the question already? I mean I know I'm an old fart but I know sex noises when I hear them, and boy, you've been making her scream like a banshee every night for years!"
"Focus, old man!"
Sanguine stopped his yammering. He could tell his son was seriously ticked. "Alright, boy, calm down. What's the problem?"
"I've just been in an altercation with Victor Carson, the mayor of this town that has so graciously let us perform here this week. And he demands to know the whereabouts of his son." Sanguine gave him a perplexed look. He wasn't connecting the dots. "Jacob. The boy you used in your stunt last night, and I'm assuming your most recent… souvenir."
"Oh! Little Jake and I have become very close over the last couple of hours. Let's see, I shackled him up in the dungeon—and he's much bigger than the kids I usually take, so he's probably a bit uncomfortable in those small chains—and what else, um, oh, I whipped him a few times, collected his blood, and now I'm looking forward to touching up the walls in my room with it."
"I thought we had an agreement. You can keep up your little fetish—"
"Hey!" Sanguine barked. "How many times do I need to say this before you engrain it into your goddamn memory, Charles? It's not a fetish! I find no sexual pleasure in tormenting little snot-nose kids, it's just a hobby! Besides, you think I could even get it up at this age? I don't think I've had an orgasm in… how old are you?"
"While I'd love to sit here and reminisce about the night of my conception, I'd much rather return to the business at hand. Normally when you take a child from our audience, you… ensure that no one will come knocking on our doorstep, especially the child's parents! Now of all the times this could have happened, you had to fuck up when it's the mayor's son?!"
"Do you want to know why it wasn't taken care of, Charles? Take a look behind me." Barnaby looked over Sanguine's shoulder and saw what he was fiddling around with before he started speaking to him. It was a burlap sack filled with body parts.
"Is that… Jacob Carson?"
"Nope. It's Jack. Jumpin' Jack."
Barnaby's face dropped. "You killed him?"
"Oh, no, not I. He was left as a present for me to find. Someone murdered him. Who? I don't know. But I have a pretty good feeling Jumpin' Jack won't be his first victim. You and I have created a lot of enemies over our time together, Charles. I figured it was about time one of them started looking for revenge." Barnaby was stunned. His circus was under attack. "I've alerted the rest of the clowns, they all know that they need to be cautious, and I told them that if they see any suspicious activity to report it to you or me."
"Should we inform the authorities?"
"Charles, think about what you just said! Get the police involved in something like this? They'll be searching our whole train, and you know what they'll find." Sanguine bent down to pick up the sack of parts. "Do you think they allow fathers and sons to share a prison cell? It could finally give us that time to really bond."
"Alright, your sarcasm is noted. No police, just… be careful. Now what does Jack's death have to do with the Carsons?"
"I put Jack on duty to take care of the parents. Guess someone took care of him before he got the chance to. Now are you going to keep yapping, or are you going to help me? I'm too old for this shit." Barnaby helped Sanguine lug the sack closer to the cage, and the two began hauling limb after limb inside, just in time for the lion's lunch.
Barnaby's mind was reeling. Not only was the mayor hot on his trail, but now they were also dealing with some kind of murderer. His heart started racing as he approached his office, and he had the good idea to scream into a pillow once he got there.
But he couldn't.
When he opened the door, Lura was sitting in his chair, and she effortlessly spun herself to face him.
"Actually, sex might help calm me down," he said to her with a grin on his face.
"You will not lay a finger on me." She said it so coldly and so frighteningly that he felt the need to take a step back.
"What's gotten into you?"
"I spoke with Athena today. She had something pretty important to tell me."
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
"My baby is alive."
Those words cut through Barnaby like a knife. Lura could see the color leave his face. "What did you just say?"
"You heard me. She said she could sense his presence, like she picked him up on her radar or something." Lura stood up and slowly started stepping towards Barnaby. It was then that he noticed the letter opener she wielded in her right hand. "Isn't it amazing? Because I thought he died. You assured me of that. So who's lying, Charles? The one who can sense my little boy's heart beating miles away? Or you, the man who spent his lifetime and more lying to everyone who ever got close to him?"
"Lura, please, I don't have time for this. And I don't know where your baby is." Barnaby began to rub his temples again. "There's so much going on right now, you probably wouldn't even believe it if I told you."
"I don't give a fuck about your problems. What I care about is finding my son." Like a gazelle she leapt towards him and pinned him against the door, placing the letter opener at his throat. "Where is he?"
"Lura, you're unhinged. You're acting like a madwoman. Put that down and let's calmly talk about this." He could tell she was on the verge of tears.
"No, I know you're lying! Tell me where he is!" Her crying gave Barnaby the perfect opportunity to shove her off of him. She landed on the floor with a thud.
"What is the matter with you?!" he shouted, knowing that everyone on the train probably heard him.
"You're sick! You've been hiding him from me all these years! Tell me where he is! Where's my baby? Where is he?"
"Enough!" Barnaby picked up the inconsolable woman that he loved and hauled her over his shoulder. She started to kick and scream and worm her way out of his grasp, but it was of no use. She was putting too much energy into crying to physically win. "There's too much on my plate right now, Lura. The last thing I need is to deal with this mess." He carried her down a few cars to where they kept all the funhouse mirrors in a room about the size of a large closet. He opened the door and threw her inside. Her body crashed against a few of the mirrors, and they shattered behind her. "I can't do this right now, Lura. Just please know that I love you." And before she could clear her eyes and ask him what he was talking about, he closed the door and locked it.