Lorelei And The Circus Of Doom

Lorelei And The Circus Of Doom – Samantha Crosby

More mentalness and senslessness.

Off you go...

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Charlie was homesick. Homesick when his home had been a caravan pulled by plodding horses, and he had never stayed more than two weeks in one town. He was homesick for a real life, now he had Lorelei by his side.

After the incident with the Demons, and despite his promises, Dementer just left one evening and never came back. Lorelei didn’t cry, but her face was full of confusion and sadness, and The Other One hated to see her unhappy.

Oh, he hadn’t expected much else from The Doc, but it seemed he and Lorelei had been making up for the absences in her life, for the rough years, for everything. And then he just went. The Other One heard her moaning in her sleep, asking for her mother, but Morag was long dead. At least according to Dementer, and Lorelei seemed to believe him. She hadn’t seen her mother for years and years, torn apart by bitter feuding over the man Lorelei had thought of as her father all those years, Anton Locke.


He sighed and swung his tall body out of bed. Beside him, Lorelei slept, her face creased in anguish. A drink. He’d get a drink and maybe The Chef was about and would cook something delicious and distracting. Although it was 3am, The Chef could usually be relied on to cook something.

He was in luck. Stilton and Guinness pate was being prepared, The Chef happily drinking ten times more Guinness than actually made it into the pate.

“Hey Mr Clown. Wannsome o’ this?”

The Chef held out a ladle. The Other One considered the clown remark and then smelled the pate and decided to keep quiet. It was delicious.

“How’sh Loreiliey..Lor…your woman?” slurred The Chef.

The Other One shook his head.

“She’s very down. She took her daddy leaving bad, though she ain’t saying so.”

He sat down and sighed.

“I wanna take her home but she won’t go. Too many memories for her, none of them good.”

The Chef nodded, and then nodded off, slumped in his Stetson against the cooker. He began to snore. Loudly.

The Other One dipped his finger into the cooling pate and licked it off rapturously. It was very good.

“I am GOING! It’s not my turn but I AM GOING!”

Goat Boy’s voice carried down the corridor and then he was storming into the kitchen.
The Other One raised an eyebrow.

“Kids, huh?”

Goat Boy scowled. He was still all man. Since the arrival of his and Valerie’s 3,056 little goats-with-wings children, his goat portions had taken a back seat. The noise they made, the demands for nectar, the constant buzzing of tiny wings, it was all getting him down. It was only in the last few hours that they had been given names, there were so many of them. They were all called Paul.

“She won’t let me near her. She actually sleeps! But she says when they are grown up a bit, we can have some more. Apparently she is feeling let down because we had so few of the little blighters…,” Goat Boy sighed.

“And now she wants me to go back to Faeryland with her so her mother…”

There was a very loud bang and a spark of lightning in the corner. The Chef fell over. His hat stayed on. He stayed asleep.
The Other One grinned broadly.

In the corner now stood a man. Broad, tall and with a beard that reached his waist. The palest skin this side of Valerie. A battered straw boater on his head. A mane of ginger-fired hair.

“Onanism Potter!” declared The Other One, walking over and clasping the man to his equally tall form.
Onanism smiled, and his clown’s bow tie spun gently.

“Hey, brother. Long time no see!”

******


The Other One and the other The Other One sat at the table, clutching mugs of hot brandy and sharing a plate of bruschetta smeared with pate. There was very little left.
The Chef sat with them, eyes half closed, his handsome face slack in his dozy mien. He had started to make them an emergency chicken salad, but had fallen asleep mid toss.

“Ch…The Other One…something bad is happening back home. The circus is folding badly. Pa is struggling. No one comes anymore.”

Onanism sat back in his chair.

“The audience misses you, C. No one does it like you do.”

The Other One grimaced.

“See, I have Lorelei now. An’ she don’t wann…”

The hand on his shoulder was warm and smelled of home.

“I always did want to see your caravan, love,” said Lorelei.

******

The Chef decided to come along. After all, it was his home place too. Lorelei was pale and stony faced but she took the trip back to America as well as she could. Goat Boy was also along for the ride. Valerie would not be joining them as they could not find anyone brave enough to take on kid sitting duties. They decided to go via the Astral. It was quicker. Riskier but quicker. Almost as risky as the dress Lorelei wore for the journey. The Other One had never seen a tighter bit of leather and lace in his life. How it stayed on he could not imagine. Although he knew it wouldn’t remain in place before the night was out...

*****

Standing at the foot of a grey mountain in the dead lands of the Astral, Lorelei was nervous. There was so much in this world, and beyond it, that was after them that she couldn’t but help feel death was around every corner. The Chef was drinking madly and muttering to himself about a brown eyed girl he had met in a El Paso prison.

“Charlie honey, I’m scared. Just about everything in here is set to kill us. And there are bound to be Angels about. And we have no Valerie this time.”

Lorelei spoke quietly in his hear so the rest of them couldn’t hear his real name.

The Other One smiled down at her.

“I have taken...precautions. I’ve got hired help. We need to wait here for him to arrive.”

Lorelei squeezed his hand, and despite the chill, darkening air of the Astral evening, and the swell of menace from every turn, she trusted The Other One implicitly. He would not let her down.

She walked over to The Chef and kicked him hard with one shoe of death.

“You cookin’? “

“Wassat? Wha…Shit, Lorelei, that HURT!”

Unsteadily he staggered to his feet and began arranging pans. Lorelei wondered how the inside of his coat was bigger than a thousand kitchens. She would never dare ask however.

The Other One suddenly chuckled.

“I think you’re gonna need a bigger pan…”

The hired help loomed on the horizon. As he neared, Lorelei gasped. Goat Boy swelled his chest. The Chef grinned and tipped his hat

“Ladies an’ gents, may I introduce a pal from way back?”

A very muscular man with dark hair and a jaw created by set squares stepped forward.

“My name is John.”

Lorelei extended a quivering hand.

“John what?”

John didn’t smile. Or offer his hand.

“Rambo. John Rambo.”

*****

The trip through the Astral was a breeze. John Rambo shot everything in sight. Nothing got near them. Lorelei managed to not gaze at him too much. Goat Boy and The Chef had long since thrown shame to the wind and were glued to his every move.

When they reached The Circus, it was a dusty flutter of faded, striped big top and empty caravans. The Other One swallowed hard. Onanism went paler than was usual.

“How long’s it been like this?” asked The Other One.

Onanism shook his head.

“Way too long. No one comes around anymo’ .”

“Hey!”

The Other One whirled around, his face breaking into a huge smile.

“Wade!”

A small, scale-covered young man ran towards The Other One and flung himself at him.

“How ARE you, you ol’ alligator?” asked The Other One, shaking Wade’s hand over and over again.

Wade grinned and then looked up into the sky. His face lurched.

“Not good, pal. Not good.”


*****

Wade took them to his caravan. John wouldn’t fit inside the small area so he scowled at the desert and polished his arrows.

Wade poured everyone a tin mug of tea. The Chef poured a shot or four of scotch into his.

“So, Wade. What’s the score?” asked Lorelei. Wade looked shifty and cleared his throat.
Then the door opened and a girl with long brown hair walked into the room. She said something in a voice so low, no one could hear.

“This is Delilah. She’s a psychic,” said Wade.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch what she said,” said Lorelei.

“No one really does,” replied Wade. “We call her She Who Whispers.”

“I heard ya just fine, Delilah darlin’,” said The Chef, who had indeed heard her just fine.

She also had the word “deli” in her name, which he liked. Delilah smiled a lazy smile at him, and all the suns in The Chef’s universe came out to play at once.

“Anyway,” Lorelei went on, “Wade. Spill.”

The tale was not a pretty one. The audiences had kept coming after The Other One left. But every so often, as they left after the show, one or two of them would disappear, never to be seen again. Suspicion pointed its finger at the circus folk, and less and less came. Until there were none at all.

“An’ that’s when we first saw ‘em,” said Wade.

“Them? Them’s big ants, ain’t they?”

Lorelei shot The Chef a withering glance. Delilah shot one right back at her. She had her hand on his shoulder.

“Them.” Wade went on. “Harpies.”

The room was silent.

Finally Lorelei spoke.

“Big blue flying birds with lady faces and talons?”

Wade nodded.

“They is eating this place alive. They come most days now, after sundown. We’s no animals left. We hide in the cages instead of keepin’ the lions there. They always go in the morning.”

“Why don’t you leave?” asked Lorelei.

“We have left. We have left loadsa times. And they just come with us. Least the towns folk don’t come around here no more. We’d be takin’ a plague with us wherever we went.”

Wade looked down.

Delilah idly stroked The Chef’s hair. He tipped back his hat and touched her fingers.
A puff of smoke from his cuff curled delicately around Delilah’s wrist. It was heart shaped.

“What we do is hole up in the hills till nightfall. You folks get yourself in your cages and we’ll come and kill every last harpie,” said Lorelei.

“But… there’s thousands of ‘em,” mumbled Wade.

The Other One cocked his head at John Rambo.

“And we got one of HIM.”

*****


The sun was setting on the Arizona desert basin. The sky scorched into crimson hellfire.

Lorelei, The Other One, The Chef, Goat Boy and John walked five abreast down towards the tattered big top. The circus folk were in their cages, sad parodies of the animals that used to inhabit them.

Lorelei hitched her rifle from her shoulder and pumped it. The Chef swung a machete in each hand. His cuffs were smouldering and his shark teeth gleamed evilly. Goat Boy was back to a man-shaped top half. He was currently a hearty fifteen feet four inches, due to an overdose of The Chef’s special pies. They all kept their eyes on the sky.

When they reached the entrance to the big top, John held up his hand and they all stopped. He turned his head one way and then the other and listened.

“They’re here.”

Lorelei heard the rustling of a hundred dusty, ancient wings. And the harpies arrived.
A cloud of indigo demons, they flew at the small troop, claws primed, ragged teeth dripping slime.

“Inside. Now, “ muttered John, and everyone ran inside.

“Lorelei, you and me, top of the high wire. You. The big sheep. Stand by the cages. Cook boy, you and the clown by the back entrance. Go.”

Lorelei was too pumped up for action to be annoyed that John had taken over. They needed him, and she realised that.

The first harpie threw herself through the big top entrance and battle commenced.



*****

Lorelei hung one handed from the high wire, and tried to aim her rifle. The wire was cutting deep into her palm, blood oozing down her straining arm.

The Other One was pinned back against the cage, surrounded by a gaggle of harpies.

“Wendell! Help him!!”

Direct use of a man’s name was the only way to inspire assistance right now. The Chef whirled around and chopped the heads off two screeching harpies that were descending on him. His coat tails flying, smoke billowing from all orifices, he desperately fought and raged and bit his way to The Other One.

Charlie was semi buried now under a flaying pile of harpies, who were tearing at his flesh with razor sharp claws. Blood flew through the air in shocks of ruby bullets. He was losing the battle.

The Chef shouted and dropped a machete as a harpie flew by, tangled herself in his long, greying hair and went for his throat. He felt rather than heard the thwoosh of an arrow past his ear, an arrow that failed to shift his Stetson but which went clean through the harpie and pinned her to the ground. The Chef looked up. Hanging upside down from the highest ledge of the high wire was John, his large black bow cocked and already primed with another arrow.

“Get back. Over there!” John shouted, gesturing with his eyes.

The Chef backed away, retrieving his fallen machete and swinging the sharp duo around in wild circles. By the time he reached the velvet curtained entrance to back stage, twenty or thirty more harpies lay dead, and The Other One was able to crawl to his hands and knees. Blood dripped from him in rivers, and he was falling back down again, despite the lack of harpie presence.

And then Lorelei was flying. She could no longer hold onto the high wire. Her hand was too badly cut, her shoulder depleted of strength. She was falling. The Chef closed his eyes and started running to where he guessed she would fall. If he could catch her, maybe he could save her?

And then she was thrown backwards and pinned to the wooden column supporting the highwire. A slender but infinitely strong black arrow had been shot clean through her dress, through the leather between her thighs, turning her upside down as she twisted, but keeping her safe there. John Rambo fed another arrow into his bow. The Chef caught his eye and rushed to climb the high wire to get Lorelei down. John was climbing down but all the while shooting harpie after harpie, over his head, sideways, every which way. And his shooting was never loose.

The Chef reached Lorelei and cut the leather of the skirt of her dress as he held onto her. She clasped her arms and legs around him and the dress fell to the floor below. The Chef never wanted that moment to end, but it did.

Lorelei, in her underwear, slipped a narrow, tight blade from beneath the clasp of one lace suspender.

“Let’s get ‘em,” she muttered darkly and the two of them descended.

John had managed to slay the majority of the harpies within the big top. Dark blue body after dark blue body sputtered out of being, lying in wizened, papery heaps. Lorelei wondered where he was getting all his arrows from but decided it was best not to think too hard about that.

The Chef was finishing off the remaining harpies, pondering on whether they were edible or not.

Lorelei ran towards The Other One, who was now hunched almost lifeless, pressed against the bars of the empty lion’s cage. She slid to her knees beside him and turned him over, resting his head in her lap. Her breath stopped. SO much blood, his face so pale, his eyes closed. He was dying. Lorelei threw back her head and screamed.
“DADDY!”

*****

It was silent in the big top. The harpies were all dead, John going around tearing out their throats with his bare hands, just in case.

Lorelei was silently clutching The Other One’s body to her chest.

The Chef, who had let the circus folk out of their cages, was clutching Delilah’s hand and quietly sobbing.

Dementer had not come. And The Other One had died. Quietly and in Lorelei’s arms, but died all the same.

Goat Boy gently placed a hand on Lorelei’s shoulder but she brushed him off.

“Why the fuck could it not be you? Anyone of you? Or me? Why Charlie? Why the fuck Charlie?”

Her voice was torn and raw. Goat Boy again placed his hand on her shoulder and this time she collapsed into his arms.

“Oh I loved him. So much.”

“I know, honey, I know.”

The Chef let go of Delilah’s hand and knelt beside Lorelei, putting his arm around her and Goat Boy.

“It’s ok darlin’. We’ll look after you.”

He could not see for his tears.

John Rambo looked at the trio of broken people and shouldered his bow and arrows.

“So long. You know where to find me.”

And he walked away, out of the big top and away across the desert track.

*****.

They buried The Other One in a quiet spot not far from where the big top had been. Onanism had burned it to the ground. A simple black wooden cross, with a bow tie and plastic flower on the top was all that marked the spot.

Lorelei stood by herself in front of the grave whilst the others hung back.

“What now?”asked Goat Boy.

“Back to Scotland and then who knows…” replied the Chef. “Whatever happens, we stick together.”

Delilah said something.

“Yeah darlin’, of course you are comin’ too. I ain’t never letting you go.”

Delilah smiled at him and said something else. The Chef grinned and tipped his Stetson.

“What she say?” asked Goat Boy.

The Chef looked at him, then at Lorelei in the distance.

“She don’t know it yet, won’t for some time, but she is gonna have herself a baby clown.”