CHAPTER THREE
BUNNY
The music warps and blurry faces fade to black, weaving the silk in methodical loops to cocoon my body and prepare for flight.
Each drop, I kind of hope to be my last.
It’s a morbid fantasy I entertain for my sanity. But when I drop, and the silk locks around my body and catches my plunge, the sick obsession I have with leaving just feels like a dream staining my heart.
The audience claps and some bravos slip up to my stage, like they’re congratulating me for not ruining everyone’s night by falling on my head hard enough to end the misery.
Is it selfish that I want that, though?
Most likely.
My chest becomes heavy, flooding my neck with constriction that wrings out the emotions I have to hide.
I hate crying with this on.
Adjusting myself and climbing back up to continue appeasing them, the plastic catches the rivers of my dread, drenching my face in the reminder that I’m still on display like a circus animal.
Beaten and forced to perform.
Once I flow through the languid motions of the last of my routine and the song fades out, the curtains close around me and blanket me in darkness.
Even with whistles and claps and chairs screeching from abrupt movement—I feel alone.
There is no bow or appreciative gesture from me. I’m left to hang in a seated position until the tent clears, so that no one notices the true face behind the mask.
“It’s okay to cry… It doesn’t ruin anything.”
Razor’s gentle voice runs tingles up my back. But being swollen with angst negates the silver lining of performing.
Him watching me.
“No. It does. The noxious morose bleeds onto the audience and makes them feel pain,” I say quietly.
His tall presence looms closer, lingering over my skin like precipitation slipping down a glass. “Isn’t that what you feel? Pain?”
My chin drops. “It doesn’t matter what I feel. I’m not the one paying for a show.”
I sniffle, catching the humiliating drips of being insufferable, and my mask starts lifting over the back of my head.
I don’t wanna wear it anyway. I let him remove it from me by the big bunny ears and encourage the rapid streams to run free with a long blink.
His fingers glide underneath my chin, instituting flickering stars to tickle my stomach, my eyes cracking open to his boots standing between the dark silk wound around me. “Look at me, Bunny.”
Falling under his compulsion of soft masculinity, I pick my head up, looking at the streaks of sweat running through the black and white makeup on his face.
Somehow, the variety of skulls and clowns he insists on wearing beneath his helmet stay mostly intact after his own performance in the Globe. If anything, the smears enhance the faces we’re conditioned to fear.
And he wears them beautifully.
Catching the twinkle in his eyes, everything becomes so silent—I can hear each breath fueling my heart.
His thumb brushes my cheek, and he smiles, the adoration appearing unsettling through the black shadows contouring a clown mouth. “You ready to get out of here?”
I nod, but I’m not sure he’s able to see the despondent motion through the darkness.
Regardless, he’s attempting to unknot me with concentration wrinkling his makeup.
“I got it,” I laugh softly, relaxing my shoulders back to relieve some of the tension in the silk.
He’s never made an effort to stick around back here. He usually pops behind the curtains, tells me I did great, then slips away, and we all eventually meet up to walk home together.
I don’t know what changed. Other than…
Oh, my God.
He’s probably heard me…
Anxiety drips through a catheter in my spine, my mind flashing to each time I propped my leg up on the wall and took my mind off the horror show. I think I kept myself quiet every single time. But I don’t know for sure. I mean, I cover my mouth and the shower hisses loudly.
He could have heard something, though.
Zombified, my feet plant to the floor and I take a step away from the dangling silks.
“Bun?”
His concern snaps my focus up to him. “Hm?”
Everyone’s gone… We could get away with so much right now.
An ache that needs pacified thrums between my thighs. But not knowing if he sees me like that or would even be interested in having benefits behind closed curtains parches my mouth with an insecurity that leaves me feeling small.
Studying me in the shadows, he rears an arm back and throws the curtains open. The light instantly pierces my eyes, and since I’m already feeling ashamed of the robust emotions, my shoulders gravitate closer to my chest, and I drop his intense gaze. “I’m ready to go.”
“What’s goin’ on, little bunny?” he asks, loosely gesturing to me with the ears of my mask.
Please don’t do this to me right now.
I snap a smile on and straighten my spine, giving him a coy shrug and hustling around him adjusting his beanie. “Nothing. I’m okay.”
I so desperately want to ask him why he listens to me shower.
What motive he has behind it. What impulses him to get out of bed and press his ear to the old wood.
But even just the consideration of confronting him blotches my chest in hives visible above the sweetheart neckline of my glitzy one piece.
Making it to my dressing room, I thrash my arm back and close the curtains, frantically clawing at the back zipper that’s beginning to feel like it’s tightening.
A whimper rattles my throat, forcing my arms as far back as they can go and clawing at the flapping plastic I can’t get a grip on.
I’m suffocating. My ribs are bowing in and preventing my lungs from taking in a fulfilling breath and this… this… “This outfit!”
Twisting and fighting through the flames boiling up my arms, a tender touch grazes my desperate fingers—and the plastic teeth release me.
I suck in nauseating amount of oxygen, hooking my hands into the sequins and ripping the firm material halfway down my chest. “Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me… But I would love to know why you’re bein’ strange with me,” Razor says, his usual controlled tone disturbed with worry.
“I’m not,” I squeak, swallowing roughly and yanking my top from the vanity.
Being on the cusp of ripping my skin off because it’s constricting me is not an appropriate time to battle around words and explain things. I can barely get my top on without stumbling over my own feet.
“I’ll just, uh… I’ll wait for you out there.”
The defeat in his voice torches me with guilt, and the screams from the rollercoaster next to my tent are echoing like they’re manifested from my mind.
I quickly get dressed in my clothes from earlier and hang my performance outfit up, then rush my face to the mirror and start rubbing at the red patches of angst rising up my neck.
Mentally, I wish to be normal, so that I could find flattery in Razor’s interest. But physically, my body is a glutton for disaster. It thrives to make me sick and tie my tongue.
It loves to see me suffer.
Finger combing my curled ends with one hand, I use the other to pat away the veins from my tears and head for the curtains.
Is he waiting on the other side? Or closer to the entrance? Or did he realize what a freak show I am and leave?
Prying the red velvet open, my eyes fling up his height, settling on the black and white clown face waiting for me, and juvenile giddiness sifts up my chest.
His attention starts to slip down to my outfit change, but he swiftly cuts back up to my eyes, cracking a slow grin that shows his front teeth. “Why did your eyes light up when you saw me waiting for you? Did you think I’d leave you?”
“Oh, what? No. No way,” I shrug irreverently, and scoot around him.
His cologne stretches through the air. It’s fresh and sweet, with a light spice that spreads through my lungs and spins my head like helium.
I promise I’ve never felt like this toward him. Or let him have this effect on me. It’s all hitting me today after what Ora said and it’s trying to trick me into being okay with the chains tying me to this place.
I catch myself looking back at him following me, and the prowl in his eyes while keeping a few feet between us twists every fiber in my body, luring my mind back to those salacious thoughts that free me.
“Bunny, Bunny, Bunny! How are you, honey?” Gwen sings, her southern drawl lassoing my focus away from the sinful entanglement I’m beginning to be wound in.
The colorful lights from games strobe off her hair that’s as ivory as her skin, which gets smashed right to my face as she hooks her arms around my shoulders and slams our bodies together.
“Mm-mm-mm! Tutti Frutti, you make me juicy!” she shimmies, her nails scraping down my spine.
An awkward laugh flames my face, giving her a tense hug back.
“Babe,” Duse sighs, weaseling her hand between us and shooting her eyes to mine. “Sorry, Bun. Found her sipping on tequila. You know how she gets with that stuff.”
“It’s okay,” I giggle, slipping away from Gwen’s relaxing noose. “We should probably get her home before Carl sees.”
“Yeah,” Duse huffs, her brown lip gloss glistening with her wary scan as she pulls Gwen close to her. “I haven’t seen him since this afternoon. Which is odd. He’s always watching us.”
Now that I think of it… I haven’t seen him either.
He usually makes his presence known mid performance to try and mess me up. But he’s not here right now. I don’t have a lingering sting of him. So, I force him out of my head and set my eyes straight.
Duse is drastically taller than Gwen. It’s candy on the soul to see her cage her arms around her, as her protector. And even though she’s frustrated about her slipping liquor, the adoration in her eyes when she looks at her and pulls her along sparks hope that this isn’t the end of the line for me.
They found love in an arsenic place.
I follow behind them, tucking my hands in my back pockets and looking around at the smiles that come here for enjoyment and selfies.
“Juicy,” Razor taunts, casting a devilish smirk down at me from my side.