1. Karma
CHAPTER ONE
KARMA
The tearing of skin makes electricity thrum faster through my body as I pull back and rip the flesh from bone.
My triangular teeth easily chew the thick meat as I dive back in for another bite, ravenous growls leaving my throat.
I’ve not swallowed before biting through more chunks of skin, the beautiful noise of this woman’s screams making me too hungry to be patient.
I’m straddling her waist; she kicks her legs, but it’s futile—one has a big chunk missing out of it.
The bells attached to my pink and green pigtails ring rapidly as I shake my head back and forth, effectively tearing the flesh quicker from her bicep, but no one is around to hear either of us.
Blood and saliva coat my face. She keeps screaming, fighting me, hitting me, but she doesn’t realise that makes me want it more. It’s the smell of her fear and the sound of her rapidly beating heart that makes me hungrier.
I chose her from the audience tonight because she has the prettiest earrings. Long and dangly and shiny. They’re covered in blood now, but that’s okay. I can clean them. Or lick it off.
She won’t last very long. I’ve already eaten the inner half of her left thigh, and she’s bleeding out quickly. It’s a shame I have to leave her here when I’m done and waste so much blood and flesh, but I’ll be full after an arm and a leg. I’ll bite off a few fingers as a gift.
When I latch onto her neck and rip out a chunk, she bleeds catastrophically, squirting blood across my forehead. I dive back in and lap up most of what I can. Soon, she stops screaming, stops moving, her heart going silent.
Now that she’s dead, I can take her pretty jewels.
Using the back of my black sleeve, I wipe the dripping blood from my mouth, effectively smearing it across my face.
The dead woman’s eyes are still open wide with fear as I lean forward and fiddle with the clasp of the first earring and then the second.
I think these will go very pretty with a silver necklace I took from a woman a few months ago.
Her fingers are thin and break off easily after I weaken the joints with my pointed teeth, and once my stomach is satiated with flesh and I’ve checked her body for any more jewels, I roll her over the wet stone floor, leaving her behind a large yellow bin in the alleyway.
She’s out of sight, but as soon as the sun rises, the blood currently slick beneath my bare feet will be open for the world to see.
Her long red hair peeks out from around the bin, so I quickly shove it under her head, accidentally slamming it into the wall.
She isn’t enough—one person hasn’t been enough to satiate me for a few weeks. My stomach is full, but my body aches for something more. Still, this is all I’m allowed.
Kreo will be waiting for me to return; I don’t want to be late. He doesn’t like me staying out past curfew, especially when this is the first time the circus has been to this city and I don’t know my way around.
Luckily, this alleyway was the perfect place to strike after I followed her home, and it’s not too far from the field we’re staying on.
I try my hardest to stick to the shadows, my flexible body moving stealthily as I creep through the backstreets of the small city.
The bells in my hair don’t jingle anymore; my sneaking skills are incredible from how many times I’ve done this.
I break through the edge of the city and spot the familiar tip of the show tent on the field across the main road. My home.
Kreo is waiting for me at the entryway, standing and staring. He’s wearing the long white coat that he wears when he’s been tinkering in his tent. Recently, he’s been focusing on cockroaches.
‘Kreo’ means ‘creator’. He creates life from experimenting.
That’s how he created me. He told me that I’m the only person he’s been able to conjure to life.
Everything else has been animals and bugs.
The rest of the circus performers are fucked-up humans he’s picked up over the years, except no matter how fucked-up they are, they all hate me.
But I’m the special one. His showpiece. His centre stage.
“You’re on time,” he says with a smile as I pad across the grass. I hold my hand out, presenting him with his gift. His smile grows, plucking one of her fingers out of my palm, and nods to my other hand. “What did you get for yourself?”
I reveal the glistening jewellery still covered in blood.
“Pretty. Now get inside. I want to check your leg stitches. We have another show in two days, so I want your body prepared.”
We always have problems with my right leg. Kreo can’t get the stitching to stay in place for very long, and it’s not unusual for it to pull apart when I’m performing or hunting.
I walk beside Kreo to his tent attached to the back of the circus. He takes the outside route, avoiding the rest of the performers partying loudly inside the show tent as they do most nights.
We all have our own tents—mine is always placed furthest away from the group—but Kreo’s tent is the biggest because he needs the space for all his inventions and creations.
“Sit on the table,” he instructs as he opens the entrance for me. I follow his command, hopping up onto the metal table and pulling up the leg of my jumpsuit, tight around my body and loose at the wrists and ankles with a diamond-shaped cutout on my stomach.
He slips on his big goggles and examines the stitching keeping my thigh together.
“It seems intact. Well done, Karma.”
My legs swing back and forth as I look around the tent.
The animals are quiet tonight, but there’s the chitter of a few birds with frog legs in the corner of the room.
I wiggle my fingers in a wave, but they go silent under my attention.
Most of Kreo’s creations do that around me, like the performers. Most, not all.
As if under the command of my thoughts, Snake creeps beneath the tent wall on his little chicken legs, his bulging eyes looking warily at his creator as he scurries past Kreo across the floor.
I reach down and let him hop into my hand, his rat body light and his chicken legs scratchy.
He has four, but the first two are shorter, like little arms, and the eyes that Kreo chose are far too big for Snake’s body. I don’t know what animal they’re from.
“Hello, Project One,” Kreo says cheerily, and Snake immediately runs up my arm to nestle against my shoulder. He does not like that name. He remembers all the pain that he felt when Kreo attached his new limbs together. Snake was his first creation that survived.
I’ve told Kreo that he likes the name ‘Snake’, but he usually waves me off and says that’s silly because he’s not a snake and he can’t talk.
No, he’s a rat, but his tongue is from a snake like mine. Long and forked. That’s why we get on, why he’s my only friend.
Kreo sits on a chair with wheels and slides over to his desk, muttering something to himself before saying, “Do me a favour, Karma, and fetch me a jar of eel skin from the trailer?”
I don’t know what he needs eel skin for when he’s working on a cockroach, but I don’t question him.
I hop off the table and walk through the back of the tent. There are four trailers we use for travelling, two of which store the circus, a third I’m walking towards that’s used for storing Kreo’s inventive needs, and a padlocked fourth that no one—besides Kreo—is allowed inside.
I’m curious to know what it holds that the rest of us aren’t allowed to see, but that would be disobeying my creator.
Alas, something about it makes me stare every time I walk past, and Snake stands to attention, tapping my shoulder with his leg until I look at him.
He nudges his head in the direction of the off-limits trailer.
“No,” I whisper and quickly step inside of another before he can run off and go looking.
Snake is as curious as I am, but Kreo doesn’t order the other creations around like he does me because he doesn’t think they can understand coherent words like I can.
It was when he saw me communicating with Snake that he realised his first creation was more advanced than he originally thought.
I flip the switch, the buzzing overhead light illuminating a bright glow across the small trailer.
Everywhere you look you find something staring back at you.
Jars with all sorts line the shelves across the sides of the trailer, and tables cluttered with boxes and instruments block you from walking in a straight line. The jars of skins are at the back.
Snake keeps his head nestled against my neck so he doesn’t have to see the dead rats hanging in the corner. I don’t understand why it upsets him—everything dies eventually.
I scan the see-through pots of skin for the small label that says ‘eel’, snatching it from the top shelf as soon as I spot it to make my way outside. Only then does Snake open his eyes, but he keeps jerking his little head to the forbidden trailer ahead of us.
“Stop,” I order. It wouldn’t matter if I wanted to—there’s a big padlock on the door.
Snake doesn’t give up as I descend the single step to land on the grass. He crawls down my body and stops in front of me, pressing his head against my ankle to try and push me. Does he not realise that he weighs less than a finger?
As I step around him, a clang from inside the forbidden trailer snags my attention, and Snake freezes. I stare at the padlock. Is someone in there? If it’s locked, then it’s not Kreo, and that means someone’s in there when they shouldn’t be.
Snake scurries up my leg as I sneak over to the back end of the trailer. There are no windows, but when I look closer at the bottom, I notice a tiny ridge in the metal. A small opening that I could poke an eye through.
I place the jar onto the floor, fall onto my knees, and crawl forward, the dewy grass dampening my jumpsuit as I creep closer to the crack in the metal. Snake moves to sit on top of my head, waiting for me to get close enough.
The hole is smaller than my eye, and when I press as far as I can go, I’m met with darkness.
That is, until my glowing eyes adjust to the sudden change, and I can see the shadowed edges of objects forming.
It’s too dark to make anything out, but opposite me, I see something move briskly in the darkness.
Another bang. It sounds like metal.
I move away, knowing that this is wrong, and pick the jar back up, running to Kreo’s tent. I can’t tell him what I was doing.
But what was that?
“Ah, perfect girl, thank you!” Kreo says with a big smile as I step inside and hand him the jar. “Now get some rest. You too, Project One.”
Snake immediately jumps from my head to run out of the tent, and Kreo is already back to focusing on the needle and thread in his hand as he sews up the cockroach’s stomach.