Page 88 of Out for Blood
Beside him, another man stands behind a mounted camera focused entirely on what is happening for the livestream.
Every note scrapes down my spine while ghastly laughter occasionally filters through the speakers between songs while a prerecorded audience applause plays, the tune will most likely ingrain itself into my mind for the rest of my life.
The copper tang of blood overpowers my sense of smell next as we take in the sight before us.
The back room looks like someone tried to recreate a circus from memory after losing their fucking mind.
Faded red-and-white striped fabric hangs across the ceiling in humongous drooping sheets covering the walls, smudged with dirt and shredded in places purposefully for this livestream. Rusted carnival lights are strung haphazardly above, blinking in frenzied spurts of red, gold, and sickly blue while exposed wires snake along the walls and ceiling, like veins. The entire room throbs beneath the shifting lights, throwing misshapen shadows cast over everything inside.
The concrete floor has been painted like a circus ring, the design was made to look worn with muddy footprints, blotches of grease paint, and tarnished marks cover nearly every inch of it. Half crushed popcorn litters the corners of the room alongside ripped ticket stubs, empty liquor bottles, and discarded clown props.
Hideous clown masks sit on shelves on the left side of the room along with portraits of demented clowns.
Gigantic clown faces have been painted in random places along the curtains, not cartoonish but petrifying.
Their smiles stretch unnaturally wide with razorlike teeth beneath peeling paint while water damage causes their faces to sag like melting flesh. Some have glowing bulb lights outlining their mouths and eyes, several spasming hard enough to strobe the room intermittently. One clown mural has cracked directly through one eye, making it look split open.
Old circus signs are bolted crookedly along the walls.
WELCOME TO THE FUNHOUSE.
APPLAUSE.
STEP RIGHT UP.
The paint on the letters is chipped and faded. Camera tripods stand in different corners surrounded by cords, batteries, monitors, and lighting rings aimed toward the center stage area but none of them are on.
At the centerpiece of the room is a swing.
Heavy steel chains descend from the ceiling, bolted into bare beams overhead. The wooden seat has been painted some kind of metallic color, but with the exposed spikes protruding across the entire thing you can’t tell the exact color. Strips of carnival ribbon have been tied around the chains.
My mind is still trying to process the scene before me. Directly above it, my eyes follow the large spotlight that burns down onto the girl dressed as a jester, isolating her beneath the light while the rest of the room drowns in gloom and flashing carnival colors.
The jester outfit she wears looks like a cruel joke. She looks barely eighteen.
The dress clings to her, torn in places and made of satin once meant to look bright and playful divided into clashing sections of rich burgundy, black, and faded gold, but now the colors look dirty under the circus lights. Diamond patterns run down the sleeves, corset, and ruffles, ending in deformed shapes with several blemishes from makeup, grime, and old blood.
Tiny silver bells are sewn into nearly every edge of the costume: the collar, the points of the jagged bottom, and the curled tips of the hat slumped crookedly on her head.
Bells are also on her cuffs, where her wrists are fastened with leather to the chains of the swing.
Every small movement makes them chime eerily.
The sound follows her jittering body constantly, turning her fear into part of the performance.
The collar around her neck is oversized and theatrical-tiers of stiff ruffled fabric fanning outward. Glitter has been dustedacross parts of the costume under the lights but mixed with perspiration and tears it only makes her look more fragile and broken.
White greasepaint has been plastered messily across her face, but not around her mouth and beneath her swollen eyes rimmed red from crying. Black diamonds are painted beneath both eyes while nearly black, red lipstick has been dragged outside the natural lines of her mouth, an exaggerated smile etched onto her face, her body quivering from the torment.
Discolored bruises litter the entirety of her legs while blood dribbles down them.
The bells chime again as the swing shifts, the sound delicate and awful in the middle of the room.
Then I see it. The light glints off the metal as she sways back and forth. In her vaginal opening is some sort of device made of metal, expanding her in a way that looks unbearable. The part that is sticking out of her is shaped like a heart.
What the fuck is that? I choke back the sickness pushing its way up.
She’s nibbling on her bottom lip trying not to make a noise.
