Fangboy (18 page)

“No, you were right the first time. It’s not. We’ve tried dyeing it a multitude of colors and trimming it into the most frightening shapes imaginable—even a
bat
—but nothing works. It causes nary a tremble.”

“I even tried throwing things once,” said Mildred.

“Next we have Gondola and Horatio, the former Siamese twins. They used to be joined at the waist, until they were separated in a not-so-gruesome accident. Now, they look very similar, and yet they are two individuals. Does that frighten you?”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? Look how similar they are! If it weren’t for the mole and the scar, you might almost mistake them for two copies of the same person!”

“I see that, but it’s really more confusing than frightening. They’re just twins.”

“Twins who used to be joined together into a four-legged, four-armed, two-headed, one-shirted monstrosity! How can you not fear them?”

“Well, I suppose if they were attacking me or something, I might be uncomfortable.”

“We don’t want uncomfortable! We want a level of fear that makes you lose control of every bodily function you’ve got, including the ones hidden within your skin! We want our audience to be reduced to blobs of boneless jelly wobbling in the breeze!”

“Twins aren’t going to do that.”

“Blast!” Mongrel sighed. “I’m going to skip most of the other introductions to save time, but feast your eyes upon Gabriel the Alligator Boy!”

Nathan looked at Gabriel, who sat calmly on the floor.

“He doesn’t look like an alligator.”

“Perhaps not, but he acts like one!”

Nathan watched Gabriel for a moment.

“In what way?”

“Alligators spend most of their time lying in the sun. If there was sunlight in this room, Gabriel would be lying in it.”

“Oh.”

“If you stumbled upon an alligator out in the wild doing the exact same thing, you’d be frightened, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Oooohhh, well, listen to the big brave alligator hunter! Admit it, if you encountered an alligator sunning itself in the water not six feet away from you, your mind would be an absolute mess. Admit it!”

“I’ll admit that,” said Nathan. “But him just sitting there pretending to be an alligator sunning itself isn’t particularly terrifying.”

Mongrel let out a deep, long sigh, and then nodded. “I’m not going to lie to you. Professor Mongrel’s Theatre of the Macabre should really be called Professor Mongrel’s Theatre of Disappointed, Angry Customers.”

“Or Professor Kleft’s Parade of the Macabre,” Kleft muttered.

“What was that?”

“I did not speak.”

“Though we try not to publicize this, every bearded lady, ex-Siamese twin, alligator boy, stretchy man, lobotomy recipient, meerkat-tongued woman, and investment banker in this room knows that we offer a feeble theatre-going experience for an audience that desires fear.” He grinned. “But that’s where you come in, Nathan. I would not have to offer ten minutes of verbal buildup to convince customers that you are scary. You are the real thing. And you will save us all!”

Everybody in the room applauded.

Nathan looked around at all of the performers, their faces lit up with a sense of hope, except for those who were staring at him with resentment, which was about half of them. He didn’t know what to do. Could he really devote himself to a life of scaring people? Did spiders taste bad?

“I’m not sure I want to do this,” said Nathan.

“You’d be part of a family,” said Mongrel. “You’d never be alone again. Nobody would ever judge you for the way you look.”

“They’d be judging me all day! That’s the whole point of what you’re asking me to do!”

“Yes, but you need to understand, exploitation is the purest form of acceptance.”

“What?”

“Tell me, Nathan, does a mother love her child?”

“Yes.”

“And does she love her child more if he enables her to profit from his existence?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Of course she does, just as a wife feels the love in her heart for her husband bloom when he brings home a larger paycheck. And if you can save us from complete financial ruin, well, I think you’ll discover that you’ve never been so accepted in your life.”

“Will I get paid?” Nathan asked.

The bearded lady and alligator boy both shook their heads, just a little, not enough to be noticed by Mongrel.

“Naturally. Didn’t Kleft explain this to you?”

“He did, but then he seemed to take it back.”

“No, no, no, you will most definitely be paid for your services. Granted, there will be certain deductions for incurred expenses and service fees, but we would never even dream of not compensating you for your efforts.”

“How much?”

“It will be a fair wage.”

The meerkat-tongued woman and lobotomy patient shook their heads as well.

“I won’t do it for less than ten coins a week.”

“Ten coins? Are you drunk, insane, or both? Even I don’t earn that much, and if I did, I’d feel so guilty that I’d donate most of it to charity. I’ll give you a half-coin every two weeks.”

Nathan shook his head. “Eight coins every week.”

“A half-coin every two weeks, and I won’t smother you in your damn sleep with a crusty pillow.” Mongrel let out a cruel laugh. “Well, that charade of reasonable behavior on my part didn’t last long, did it? I usually do better than that.”

“Tell him about the oil,” said Kleft.

“Below the stage, I keep a vat of oil boiling at all times. When one of my prisoners—there, I said it—does not do as he or she is told, an extremity goes into the vat. Prisoners, hold up your affected extremities.”

Each of the prisoners held up three or four extremities, all of them burnt.

“It’s very inconvenient to keep a whole vat of oil boiling at all times,” said Mongrel. “It requires a great deal of wood and you have to check on it at least every forty-five minutes. That should indicate the depth of my passion for dunking parts of people into it. And don’t think that it’s just a quick dunk, in and out and you’re done. These dunks
linger
.”

Nathan wiped away the tear that trickled down his cheek. “Why is there such evil in the world?” he asked. “Everywhere I go, I find nothing but cruelty! Why is this so?”

“I don’t know,” Mongrel admitted. “But personally, I think it’s rather great.”

“Cruelty for all!” Kleft declared.

“Sadness and misery,” said Nathan. “I was born into a world that offers nothing but sadness and misery. Pain and sorrow. Heartbreak and agony.”

“Yes, indeed!” said Mongrel.

Nathan wallowed in self pity for a few seconds, but then decided, no, it wasn’t true. Penny and Mary had been nothing but kind to him. His parents had been somewhat ill-advised in their level of protection, but they’d always loved him. He had friends. Dogs were usually nice. He wasn’t going to let a reprehensible sadist like Mongrel taint his view of life on this planet. There was goodness in the world.

“I don’t care how heartless you are,” Nathan said. “I still love you.”

* * *

The boiling oil hurt even more than he’d expected.

* * *

“Don’t go thinking that your teeth are so special,” Mildred the bearded lady told him. “I could have fangs like that if I wanted, but I don’t.”

“Yeah,” said Gabriel the alligator boy. “If you came at me with them right now, do you know how scared I’d be? Barely.”

“Nobody’s going to pay to see you,” said Gondola and Horatio, simultaneously.

“If you’re to be our savior, then we must have required very little in the way of saving,” said Winston the Tattooed Man, whose tattoo of a star was mostly covered by his shirt sleeve. “Perhaps we were at ninety-six or ninety-seven percent saved already, and your contribution added the extra three or four percent, which I don’t have to tell you is a fairly unimpressive contribution.”

“None of this is my fault,” Nathan insisted. “I don’t want to be here. I’m a captive, just like the rest of you. I’m not getting any special treatment. You saw the way he put my arm in the oil. We should all be friends.”

“Friends?” asked Mildred. “With a freak like you? Surely you can’t be serious!”

“I am serious,” said Nathan. “But that’s beside the point. We should join forces. He doesn’t have enough boiling oil to stop all of us. I mean, he
does
, but he’d have to splash it all around. He couldn’t dunk everybody.”

“Do you think we haven’t tried to escape?” asked Mildred. “Rarely a week goes by when we don’t try to hatch some sort of scheme. And each time, as we bury one of our own, we agree that we shouldn’t have done it.”

Nathan was flustered. “Well, perhaps you could hatch a
better
scheme.”

“There’s no way out. The best thing you can do is put on as good of a show as possible. It’s not such a bad life, once you lower your expectations.”

“No,” said Nathan. “It can’t be true. I will escape tonight!”

* * *

The second dunking in the boiling oil hurt less, because many of the nerves in his left arm had been burnt away the first time. It still was not a pleasant experience.

* * *

“We’ve decided to call you The Human Shark,” Professor Mongrel announced, as Nathan struggled to get into his skin-tight costume. “What do you think?”

Nathan shrugged. “It’s better than Fangboy.”

“Fangboy? Why, that’s brilliant! I wish I’d thought of that myself instead of merely claiming credit for it in the future!”

“What if people think he’s a vampire?” asked Kleft.

“All the better! People are in favor of vampires these days. Fangboy it is! Finish putting on your suit.”

Nathan hated his costume. It was brown, with lots of fanged mouths sewn onto the fabric. (Not, it must be noted, actual mouths, but rather artistic representations of mouths. Though if Mongrel had come up with the idea and such a thing were practical, he very well may have tried it.) He straightened the sleeves and stood in front of Mongrel and Kleft, feeling awkward and self-conscious.

“Perfect!” said Mongrel. “It truly brings out the sharpness of your teeth.”

“Can’t I just wear normal clothes?” asked Nathan.

“Not in
my
Theatre of the Macabre. Perhaps if you sign on with some discount hobo-laden charity theatre you can wear your street clothes, but not here. Now, it is time to practice.” He clapped his hands. “Assistant Kleft! The spider box!”

Kleft picked a small wooden box up off the stage and set it down in front of Nathan.

“Inside this box are a dozen different varieties of spiders,” said Mongrel. “You will be able to tell which ones are venomous by observing whether or not you die after you are bitten.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That was a joke. You’re in the entertainment business now, so levity is important! Nobody wants to pay to see a sour-faced spider-eater. That said, there
are
venomous ones in there, and it will serve you well to avoid them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember, it’s all about showmanship. You can’t just tilt your head back and shake the contents of the box out into your open mouth. The audience needs to feel as if they were eating a tarantula themselves. As the webby contents of its thorax spew out onto your tongue, each person sitting in those seats needs to feel as if it is their own tongue being coated.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You can get entertainment that isn’t disgusting at the ballet! These people want to see, smell, hear, taste, and touch the macabre! Now open the lid.”

Nathan opened the lid. The box was indeed filled with crawling spiders.

“Pick one up. If you choose a black widow, do it quickly.”

Nathan plucked the largest spider he could find from the box then shut the lid so the others wouldn’t escape. He tossed the spider into the air and caught it between his teeth.

“Amazing!” Mongrel shouted. “Why didn’t you tell us you could do that?”

Nathan wanted to explain that it was something he’d never tried before, and in fact he’d only thought of the trick two seconds earlier, but he had a spider between his teeth.

“So, go on, bite it!”

Nathan offered a silent apology to the arachnid, then bit it in half.

“That was unspeakably entertaining,” said Mongrel. “We have an act!”

* * *

Nathan sat backstage, listening to the sounds of the audience being unimpressed with the Tattooed Man’s story about how he’d originally asked for a crescent moon on his arm, but how the tattoo artist had convinced him to go with a star instead, and about how sometimes when the moon was in the sky he regretted his decision.

“Are you ready?” Mongrel asked. “You’re on next.”

“I suppose.”