Parker woke up to a horrible smell. He knew exactly where it was coming from: the younger boy shackled up next to him. Jacob noticed that Parker was aware of the stench, and felt the need to apologize. "I'm sorry, man. I couldn't hold it in any longer. It's not like this psycho gives us many bathroom breaks." Parker tried to make a cringed face, but his lips still hurt too much to move them in that way.

"How long have you been in here?" he asked the kid.

"I honestly don't know. It feels like it's been weeks." Jacob shifted around, trying to not let his now-soiled pants irritate him. "My parents and I came to the show on the twenty-fourth. That was the night they launched me from a cannon and held me captive."

"Last I checked it was the thirtieth. I think now it's the thirty-first." Jacob closed his eyes and tried to cry. A week. I've been here a whole week. "Happy Halloween," Parker said, in a poor attempt to cheer the kid up. Needless to say it didn't work.

Then Parker began to cry. This kid was dying. He was shackled. He was tortured. He was abused. All for seemingly nothing, and all by the sick individual that was Sanguine. "Why are you crying?" Jacob asked. Parker just looked at him and continued to sob, not even caring about the immense pain that came to his quivering lips.

"I feel like I failed you," he managed to blurt out. "I let that fucker live."

As if he was responding to his cue, Sanguine entered the dungeon. "Uh-oh. It smells like little Jake had an accident!" Sanguine started to laugh, but the fumes overpowered him and he stopped to get some fresher air into his lungs. "Jesus, kid, what the hell did you eat?"

"Wish I could tell you, I can't remember the last full meal you gave me."

"Hey, come on. That veal from that restaurant was exquisite, was it not?" Sanguine walked over to Jacob and pinched his cheek. "I'm glad you took care of that duty now as opposed to later. Did you know, Jake, that it's common for someone to soil himself when he dies?" Jacob began to get worried, now that death was being brought into the conversation. "I mean, think of how embarrassing that is. The last action you might ever remember doing in this life… is shitting your pants! But luckily, you already took care of that."

"Why are you going to kill me?" Jacob asked.

"Because… I have a new toy," Sanguine said, sweeping his head to face Parker. And without taking his eyes off the young man, Sanguine revealed a corkscrew from his pocket and thrust it into Jacob's abdomen several times. The boy squealed in horror as the man did it without even bothering to look at him. Blood started to spew from the seven, no, eight holes in his body. The clown then walked over to the other side of the room, found a bucket, and placed it underneath the boy. "Don't want to get the floors too dirty, Jacob." Eerily, Sanguine waved his white-gloved hand at the boy. "Farewell." Jacob clung to life as long as he could, but it was no use. He bled out within seconds.

Parker, meanwhile, was blubbering like a madman as he watched Sanguine kill the poor boy. "You sick fuck! What's the matter with you?"

"What's the matter with me? How about we take a look in the metaphorical mirror, pal? You murdered my good friend Jumpin' Jack. And Barnaby's close companion Diego. And you almost took my own life. I have one question to ask you, Parker: why?"

"You really don't remember, do you?" Parker replied, somewhat offended.

"I've lived to see seventy years, buddy boy. You're going to have to be a little more specific. What don't I remember?" At this point Sanguine felt it was necessary to pull up a chair. The sound of Jacob's blood pouring out of his body and filling the bucket was rather soothing and set the mood quite nicely.

"How many victims have you had over the years?" the farm boy asked.

Sanguine rolled his eyes. "I didn't know there was going to be a math test involved! I'd venture to say around… a hundred, hundred and fifty, maybe."

"Well let's just say… this isn't the first time you've had me chained up in here."

Sanguine was rather stunned as he heard Parker say that. "You're telling me that, that I abused you once before?" Parker just glared at him angrily. "And so that's why you came back. That's why you sought to kill off my clown troupe and the whole circus. But then what I don't get is… why did you let me live? Was that all a trick? You saved me to make it seem like you were the good guy? Was that it?"

"No." Parker sniffled the snot that was starting to drool out of his nostril. "I… I couldn't do it." Sanguine couldn't help but grin.

"So let me get this straight… you devise this entire plan to return to this circus and kill us all as a way to get back at me for torturing you as a child. And just when you get the chance to kill me… just when I'm tossed over the edge of a tightrope and hanged thirty feet up in the air… you realize that you couldn't do it?" Parker couldn't respond. He just started to cry. "You're weak. And you know what? You always were weak."

Parker was surprised to hear that last part. "You remember me?"

"I think we're done strolling down memory lane, don't you agree? Now that you're a full grown boy, I think it's time to… promote you to some more advanced procedures." Sanguine walked over to the boy being drained of blood. "But first… how about a nice soak down?" Without even giving Parker time to respond, the clown dumped the now-filled bucket of blood over his head. Sanguine hollered laughing at the spectacle in front of him. "That was a nice treat. What should we do for phase two?" He disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a power drill. Parker could barely see as Jacob's blood continued to drip over his eyes. "Now, should we use an existing orifice, or should we make our own?" Sanguine asked maniacally, pulling on the trigger several times to rev up the drill bit.

Several hours later, Julius caught up to the train. After managing to obtain and restrain a wolf and a leopard, a moving van was arranged to arrive to pick him up as well as his precious cargo. Before long the van and the train reunited just on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. Julius generously tipped the van driver, completely unaware it was the same man who found Cassandra's body while fishing in the ocean, and helped unload the animal cages.

"Hello, Julius!" greeted Barnaby as he exited the train. "I take it everything went well." Instead of a courteous reply, Julius punched his boss in the face. Charles fell to the ground and instinctively cupped his hands around his nose, which started to bleed. "Have you gone mad?" he exclaimed as he got back to his feet.

"You're sick, Barnaby. Why the fuck would you make me go back there?"

"Because I'm your boss and because you agreed to it. Why, did you have any troubles?"

"Well, I ran into Larry. Killed that son of a bitch and used his body to get the wolf into her cage."

Barnaby angrily glanced down at his now red-stained gloves. "Alright, that's good! I'm sure you've been dying to do that for ages now."

"Barnaby, I've gone on all these years pretending like that part of me didn't exist. As if that part of my life never even happened. And then it all comes flashing in my face and I—I lost control!"

"Alright, alright. It's all over now. The body's gone, correct?"

"Bodies. Ran into Melvin too. And yeah, the animals finished them off by the time we got here. I'll bury the bones later."

"Good. Now help that man put the animals into their cages and go have yourself a bath or something. You deserve some time to de-stress." Julius just nodded his head in response. "Oh, and one more thing." Barnaby quickly smacked the lion tamer on the side of the head. "You owe me dry cleaning for these gloves."

After the animals were unloaded, Julius quickly ran to his room to find Cassandra just as he left her, bathing away in her tub of water. "Hey," he said with a sigh of relief. Seeing her made him forget all of the negative feelings that were harboring up inside of him. He kissed her on the forehead. "Are we ready to go?"

"Are we really leaving?" Cassandra asked, remembering the promise they made before he left to go into the city. "Where are we going to go?"

"For now, a motel, just for a night or two. I haven't had a steady home in years, so we'll have to keep hopping around. But we'll sort that out later." He grabbed all of his suitcases that he had previously packed. "I've got a driver out there waiting for us."

"This is all so surreal," she said calmly. Julius ran out and put the bags in the van, and then, after making sure Barnaby wasn't looking, he snuck Cassandra in as well. Without even saying goodbye, he left, caressing the love of his life in his lap as he ordered the driver to leave the premises.

Victor impatiently tapped his thumb against the steering wheel as he waited for Athena to get back. Her old limbs got restless if she sat for too long, and she made Victor stop the car every twenty minutes. Not only that, but there were countless stops for the restroom and for snacks. Jesus, she's worse than my own mother.

Finally she waltzed back to the car and got in. "Phew, it's getting chillier and chillier."

"Yes, well, it's fall. Actually…" Victor pulled out his phone. "Yep. It's Halloween. I'm supposed to be at the county festival this evening, but at this rate it looks like that won't be happening." He rolled his eyes noticeably.

Athena judged him with a stern look. "Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. It's Martin's favorite time of year as well."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"He likes to prey on the trick-or-treaters. Barnaby usually makes sure to stop the train on Halloween to give his father the night off. And Martin wreaks havoc as Martin usually does."

"So… what's the plan when we get there?" asked Victor, turning up the heat in the car. "We can't get police involved obviously, we have to take him down ourselves."

"Exactly!" Athena agreed triumphantly, while at the same time trying to unscrew her water bottle. "Could you?" Victor broke the seal on the cap with a seamless twist and gave it back to her. "You're a peach." After taking a sip, she continued. "Yes, we're going to have to think of a way to distract Martin, long enough to sneak into his lair and retrieve Jacob."

"And what about Barnaby? Won't he be upset?"

"Well, we'll just have to wait and see. Onward, Victor, we can't be too far off their trail now!"

If we keep stopping to stretch our legs we'll never fucking get to them, he thought to himself as he pulled back onto the highway.

Julius was able to snag the last vacant room at a nearby motel. Wrapping a blanket around Cassandra's tail, he carried her into the room as if he was carrying his bride over the threshold, and then brought in their luggage, tipping the van driver generously, with an added bonus to keep this a secret from Barnaby.

"Should we order room service? I'm starving." Julius eagerly sat down on the bed and flipped through the static channels on the TV.

"Julius?" she asked demurely.

"Yes, my love?"

Cassandra was a bit taken aback by that pet name. "I—I want to go home."

"I know you do, sweetheart. We'll find a home for ourselves eventually." Julius continued to change stations until he found a news channel that wasn't busted. There was breaking news of some animals being taken from the Bronx Zoo by an unknown felon. He immediately turned the television off.

The mermaid, meanwhile, stared at him, waiting for him to look at her. She was getting frustrated that he wasn't catching on. "I don't think you get it, Julius. I want to go back to my old home. I miss my family, and my friends. I didn't sign up for the circus."

"But… but we're out of the circus, babe. It's just you and me!" He grabbed her hands in his like he did countless times before, only this time she sensed they felt a bit rougher than they used to. "We found each other by fate. See, I feel like you died in that plane crash for a reason." Cassandra couldn't believe that he just uttered those words. "It brought you to me. And now we're in love."

She didn't want to look away from him. For the first time since they became acquainted, Cassandra felt afraid of him. The look he gave her was more… feral, yes, that's the word. "Julius, I think I just need to calm down." He grinned to show her he understood. "Would you mind running me a bath?"

"Of course." He got up and went into the dingy bathroom, and moments later she heard the water running out of the faucet. "It's not pristine, but at least you get a full-sized tub for once!" he shouted. Cassandra smiled, but immediately relaxed her face and returned to her look of concern.

Once the tub was filled to the brim he transported her into it and naturally went to help her unclasp her seashell bra. She quickly swatted his hands away, insisting, "I'll do it, thanks." Julius let her do it, but instead of walking out of the bathroom like she expected, he just stood there, gazing at her. "Do you need anything else?"

"Are you okay, Cassandra? You seem out of it all of a sudden." Cassandra stopped to think. Maybe I am just out of it. Maybe this is all in my head? He's just trying to help, just trying to be a good guy.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

He sighed a big sigh of relief. "Good." And with that he started to remove his clothes. Cassandra couldn't help but stare. She wasn't sure how she should be staring, though. She would think it would be in an erotic way, but all she could think of how uncomfortable this was. Julius stripped all the way down to reveal a growing erection. He looked at her for her sign of approval… a nod, a wink, or anything to let him know that she acknowledged his arousal and that she was aroused too. But she did none of that. Julius thought she just needed a bit of a warm-up, so he carefully hopped into the tub with her, pressing his nude body on top of hers. The water overflowed onto the bathroom floor to compensate for the added mass in the tub.

And then she felt it. It. It was prodding. Looking for something down there amongst her scales. An entrance.

"What are you doing?" she exclaimed, startling the man.

"Um… what do you think I'm doing, Cassandra?"

"I'm not going to have sex with you! I'm not even sure how to have sex with you!"

"Shh, it's okay, baby. We'll make it work."

"Fuck that! Get off of me!" Cassandra started to slap his legs with her tail and tried to free herself from his weight on top of her. Finally she managed to pull herself up from the edge of the tub and clumsily slide out, her fins following her like a slimy snake. Cassandra then waddled towards the door.

"Cassandra, where are you going?" Julius got out of the tub and carefully stepped out to retrieve her.

Miraculously she opened the door and managed to pull herself into the bedroom with just her two arms. Then she started to scream. "Help me! Someone help me! He's attacking me! He's trying to rape me!" Surely someone in the neighboring rooms was bound to hear her and come to her rescue.

"What the fuck are you doing?" the lion tamer yelled, exiting the bathroom to calm her down.

"Someone please help me!" she continued to scream, not even listening to him.

Without even thinking about what he was doing, Julius grabbed the lamp from the bedside table and smashed it against the back of her head. "SHUT UP!" he cried, doing what he thought was the only way to keep her quiet and save his ass. He hauled her off of the floor to hopefully smack the crazy out of her, but when he did he realized she was limp. "No…" he whispered. Frantically he threw her onto the bed and checked her pulse. There wasn't one. "No. No! NO!" Julius sat there, naked, crying over Cassandra's body for a good hour or so, thinking about what he had done.

Sanguine walked down the hall after safely securing the doorway to his dungeon. When he made it to Barnaby's office, he prepared to knock, only to have the door already opened by Lura from the other side. "Oh, hi, Marty." She closed the door behind her. "Barnaby's in there if you need to see him."

"I do, thanks, doll. But first, how are you?"

"I'm… okay, why?"

"The other night at the restaurant, you told me that you and Barnaby were going through a bit of a rough patch… and then you turned down his marriage proposal. What's the latest news with you two? Is my boy treating you fairly?" Lura looked at the man and was about to burst into tears. She was fractions of a second away from telling him everything, about how Barnaby stole her baby, about how he covered up his death and how little baby David is somewhere out there, about how Barnaby locked her away in the funhouse mirror closet for days once she confronted him about it, and about how he got sexually involved with Parker just to foil her revenge plan. But she couldn't. As much as she loved the man standing in front of her, and as much as she felt comfortable enough to tell Sanguine anything, she simply couldn't.

"Oh he's, uh, he's treating me very well, Marty." After pausing for a few seconds she continued. "As a matter of fact, I accepted his proposal."

"Wow! That's a complete turn-around, isn't it? Congratulations, darling." He gave her a great hug and gently rubbed her back. "You know I always saw you as my daughter anyway. At least now it'll be nice to actually call you my daughter!"

"Thanks, Marty." Before the tears started to noticeably well into her eyes, she said, "I have to get going. Have you seen Parker by any chance?"

"No! Not at all, sorry, kid." Lura shrugged and walked away. Sanguine rolled his eyes one the coast was clear and he entered his son's office. "So… I hear congratulations are in order?"

"She told you?" Barnaby asked, with a tone of amusement in his voice. "Don't buy it. She's only buttering up to me to get the truth out of me."

"About what?" The ringmaster widened his eyes, and Sanguine knew exactly what he was talking about just from that one signal. "Oh. Gotcha. So, hey, um… remember how you thought that Ruuxa chick was the Birdman?"

"Yes, that's because she is. Was. I took care of that bitch."

"Yeah, well, you were wrong."

"What do you mean? It all made sense. The gas mask and the crown made out of feathers, it… wait, you know who it is?"

"Your sweet farm boy." Barnaby's jaw dropped. "I got him tied up in the dungeon as we speak. Guess what his motive was?" Barnaby just shook his head, not willing to play a guessing game. "He was one of my previous victims." It took Barnaby a minute, but it finally all clicked, just as Sanguine hoped it would.

"Holy shit," Barnaby exhaled, at a complete loss for words. "Holy shit!" he said, louder this time. "That means…" Barnaby didn't even need to finish that sentence. Sanguine just nodded his head in a regretful agreement.

Ruuxa strolled across the beach, letting the loose sand fill the gaps between her toes. She breathed in the salty sea air, carefully, of course. Barnaby's little bout of rage a few nights ago resulted in her nose cartilage completely shattering. The only thing holding it together was the skin wrapped around it. She used her knowledge of nature to create a soothing remedy, and most of the pain died down. However the damage was not undone. Ruuxa almost felt ashamed showing her face in public, but on a cool Halloween evening, there were hardly any people on the beach, just a group of rowdy teenagers who clearly had better things to do than to go trick-or-treating.

She looked out into the ocean and watched the waves roll in. "Any minute now," she said to herself. Her senses tingled the minute Cassandra died, and they brought her to this exact location. Suddenly a bulge in the ocean appeared, as if something large was headed towards the shore. The bulge quickly turned into a depression, and then a wave formed. Ruuxa stood her ground and braced herself as she watched the wave crash on the shore. The water receded, leaving behind a massive skirt of sand. Only it wasn't all entirely sand. It was ash.

Before her eyes the wet clumps of sand started to pull towards one another, as if a gravitational force caused them to accrete, as if an imaginary child was building a sandcastle. Some of the teens on the beach started to take notice of what was happening and took out their phones to take pictures and videos. The sand and ash and clay and whatever particles were there were building themselves up to almost six feet, and then the details started to form. Ruuxa smiled as the spitting image of Ellen Carson emerged. The ashes combined to make an exact life-sized representation of their former body.

"Hello," the sand creature said.

"Hello," Ruuxa replied. "I've been expecting you."