30. Arlo
CHAPTER THIRTY
ARLO
Iwake up on the floor of the big circus tent.
My back aches from sleeping on the rough ground, but the discomfort is immediately soothed by the sight beside me.
Karma is curled up in a ball like a cat, and Micha has his arm draped over her waist, his hand resting on my lap.
Soren is on my other side, his muscled bicep beneath my head acting as a pillow.
The crack in the entrance flaps reveals it’s still dark outside, and it doesn’t feel like an hour has passed since we fell asleep as a jumbled pile of spent bodies.
Soren had removed Karma from her restraints when she’d passed out after tying Spiral up in the corner with some rope.
He’s asleep on the floor now, wearing only a muzzle, and a stab of guilt penetrates my chest. I know the others liken him to a dog, but he’s still a person.
A mean-spirited person with issues, but a person.
I carefully move Micha’s hand and make my way across the show ring, picking up Spiral’s jumpsuit as I go. When I approach him, his eyes blink awake, as if his body never succumbed to deep slumber.
“What do you want?”
“You said she fixes you,” I say quietly, sitting down in front of him but far away enough that he can’t reach me if he tries to lash out. I place the jumpsuit beside me.
“What are you talking about?” he groans, looking up at the ceiling and rubbing his forehead.
I can hear him clearly behind the muzzle, but the sight of it makes me uncomfortable.
The rope is strapped around his chest and neck, tying him to a pole, and I can see the red marks caused by the rough friction on his skin when he shifts.
“You said Karma fixes you. That she’s better than any alcohol or painkiller. Does that mean you’re in pain?”
He huffs out a frustrated laugh. “You don’t know what pain is, Curly.”
“Yes, I do.” I blow out a breath and look at the trio on the floor in the middle of the tent. “We all do.”
“Oh, yeah?” He winces as he straightens, the rope pulling against his throat.
“You know what it’s like to have a constant pounding in your head that spreads through every inch of your body?
To the point where the only thing that comes close to touching it is a bottle of whisky before bed every night? ”
“That’s why you drink? To get rid of the pain?” I ask. He averts his eyes. “But Karma makes it all go away.”
“Karma’s pussy makes it all go away,” he corrects, like that distinction is important.
“So why do you want to kill her?”
His eyes narrow, and I look away quickly. Soren warned us about his hypnotism.
Spiral laughs again, sharply this time. “Scared of being hypnotised, Curly? Worried what I’ll make you do?”
“Yes,” I answer honestly. “You’re a bad man.”
“And what makes you so perfect? You fuck your brother.”
“Step. And I’m not perfect. Far from it.” I grab the jumpsuit and hold it out for him to take so he has a semblance of privacy. “Why do you have pain in your head?”
“If we knew the answer to that, the pain wouldn’t still be there anymore.”
“We?”
He tilts his head, openly debating whether to tell me more.
“Kreo was working on me before he created Karma. He tested my eyes, my reproductive system. Gave me a second cock. But he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my head. He stopped trying to find out when he turned to Karma.”
“He left you with all that pain. Why do you want to stay around a man that does that?”
Spiral looks confused. Maybe he’s never asked himself that question.
“Because this is the only place for us.”
“Us?”
He waves his hand around the tent. “None of us performers belong anywhere. This circus? It’s all we have. Do you think the civilians of the outside world give a shit about the freaks in here? We all came from someone who couldn’t love us enough to give us a chance. But Kreo did.”
“To profit off you. To humiliate you.”
His shoulders shrug. “At least we’re not alone.”
That strikes my heart. Are Micha and I much different from Spiral? We’ve only ever had each other because we didn’t have someone to love us enough. We kept to ourselves, relied on each other, grew to love each other.
Spiral has something similar with his clowns.
But Karma… she’s never had that with anyone.
“Go on then. Tell me what fucked-up thing made you like this,” he demands.
The idea of telling him what happened makes me curl into myself, but he’s been open with me, so I guess it’s only fair.
“My stepdad beat me. Starved me. Drugged me. He and my mother… They tried to sell me. I was too young, too out of it to realise, but Micha saved me. I watched him stab our parents to death, and I hated him for it. Until I finally realised he saved me.”
Spiral doesn’t say anything for a period, but I know he’s listening. I stop avoiding his eyesight, and he stares intently back, testing how long I’ll last before I pussy out and look away out of fear of his hypnotism. But I don’t. I stare at him until he sighs.
He can’t scare me anymore like he thinks he can.
“I never knew my parents,” he mutters. “I lived in an orphanage. No one ever chose me. I had to watch everyone else come and go, but I rarely left my corner of the room. There was no point. No one would come for me.”
“What happened?”
He smirks behind the muzzle. “I burnt the place to the ground.” My lips part in a shocked ‘O’, and he laughs.
“I’m kidding. Why does everyone think I’m so ultra insane?
” When I don’t answer, he replies, “Fair enough. I did think about it, but there was no point. The circus came to town the day I turned eighteen, the day I planned to die. I had it all ready. But Kreo found me.”
“You were going to kill yourself?”
“There was nothing for me apart from pain.”
“Until Kreo?”
“Until Kreo,” he repeats with a sigh. “We were very close before he moved his attention to Karma. Suddenly, nothing else mattered to him.”
“I’m sorry, Spiral. You haven’t had it easy,” I say quietly, reaching my hand to his to offer a semblance of comfort. My palm lands on the back of his, and he stares at it like it’s attacking him. “But you know none of that is Karma’s fault.”
His eyes snap up to look at me. They’re wide, maybe nervous, like what I’ve said has hit him hard. Good. Both of them are victims to Kreo’s control, and it’s about time they see it.
“She’s the reason I’m still in pain,” he whispers. I know it’s what he says to convince himself.
“She’s the reason you stop feeling pain,” I correct.
He snatches his hand away. I let him go.
“It doesn’t matter. Once Kreo realises what Karma’s done, she’ll be in big trouble.”
“If we stay around that long.”
“You can’t leave,” he snaps. “Kreo will kill me for letting Karma and Soren go. Besides, Karma will never agree to it. She belongs here.”
“We’ll convince her otherwise. She belongs with us. You could too. Get away from Kreo.”
He shakes his head, internally and externally fighting against it. “No. No. You can’t. She can’t.”
“She can. She will.” I’m goading him, fighting him when I should walk away, but he needs to realise that we’re not ready to let Karma go, that we’ll never be ready for that.
His eyes open and shut, twitching, and his head shakes.
“No. No. No! She can’t leave. She can’t go.”
Black and white spirals land on my gaze. An unfamiliar tether wraps around my mind.
“Arlo?” Micha calls out, and the spiral eyes fizzle away. The momentary hypnotic hold Spiral had on me dissipates, and I turn around to find Micha looking for me frantically. When he spots me beside Spiral, he darts over, dragging me up and away by my hand. “You stay away from him, you hear me?”
“Stop it,” I snap, pulling my hand away. Micha pauses and stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “Calm down, Micha.”
“He’s wrong in the head,” he whisper-shouts, tapping his temple. “He’ll kill any of us.”
I should agree. I saw the evil in his eyes when he tried to hypnotise me, but I also should have known better than to push him.
“I think he’s misunderstood.”
Micha laughs exasperatedly and drags a hand back through his hair. “I know you’re soft, Arlo, but come on. Even you can see that redemption isn’t a path for that freak.”
“None of us are on a path to redemption. You aren’t. Why should he be? Karma committed more atrocities than him, but you still love her.”
He pulls a face, prepared to argue, before he shuts himself up. He knows I’m right; he loves Karma.
“You convinced me that Karma can’t help herself. But him? He can, Arlo.”
“He’s hurting,” I murmur, sliding my palms over Micha’s chest to wrap around his neck. “He’s already muzzled and tied up. He doesn’t need any more mocking.”
Large hands find my lower back. My older brother drags me in to press my chest against his. “Just be careful. I don’t trust him.”
“I know.” I press a kiss to his lips. “But he’s good for Karma. It’s clear she needs all of us at this point, despite how badly you and Soren want to keep Spiral at arm’s length.”
“I hate when you make sense,” he mumbles as he holds me close. His mouth descends on mine, and he kisses me fiercely.
“Save it for Karma. She needs it,” I chastise when I feel him getting hard against my stomach. “Come on. Let’s head back to bed.”
Micha accepts my hand, but I don’t miss the warning glare he shoots at Spiral as we rejoin Karma and Soren on the floor.
“We need to think about what we’re going to do next,” he sighs as he cuddles me close and tucks my head under his chin.
“I know. We could bring them back to the apartment?”
“It’s not big enough for all of us in the long run. And Karma and Soren would have to hide away in a cramped space for the rest of their lives.”
“True. Maybe we could disappear. And does this ‘us’ include Spiral?”
He blows out a breath. “We’ll talk about it in the morning, Pipsqueak.”