V (boyxboy short stories)

VVith The Juggle.

     Davin bowed upon hearing coins hit the bottom of his hat, keeping his eyes on the four leather balls he was juggling. There was a crowd gathered around him, watching his performance with claps and cheers.

     It was year 1930, and so people were easily amused, especially children. They were watching Davin with their mouths open, eyes attempting to catch up with the movements of the balls.  Meanwhile, the women wore gentle grins and joyful laughter on their rouged lips, and men were rubbing their moustaches inquisitively.

     Davin would know, he's been a street performer since fourteen, that being nine years ago. His family was poor, like most families on those times, and he always felt bad whenever his mother spared a piece of bread for him, and his father a pair of gloves on those cold winters.

     So, one day, he kindly kissed them goodbye and left.

     The streets were full of homeless, so it didn't take long to befriend others and join their shelter- an old, sorry little house in which more or less than a dozen people lived. They came and went, so the number always changed.

     "They're coming!" Davin heard, and looked to the left to see one of his housemates approach.

     He was a newspaper boy, always shouting news around the streets, so whenever he heard a rumor or anything remotely interesting, he tended to shout it everywhere just out of habit.

     "Lyell, don't do this to me again. If you want to sell newspaper, find your own customers." Davin complained, never having stopped the juggling.

     On more than one occasion, the man would pierce through the crowd he'd work on forming to sell his papers. It wasn't necessarily bad, since they all shared the money gained anyway, but it was rude nonetheless.

     "No, it's not on the papers, I heard them! The bells of The Cloaks!"

     Instantly, the women gasped, gripping their children, while men hurried to lead them away. Davin stopped juggling with a sigh, watching the people go.

     The Cloaks.

     A well known disease haunted those times, Leprosy, through which one's skin and flesh would simply fall off without the victim feeling a thing. They would just wake up each morning, check what part of their body went missing, and move on with their day.

     It is contagious, and the people suffering of it would live in special institutions, away from the healthy. Whenever they moved from one place to the other, they would travel in mobs, covered in black cloaks, ringing bells so that everyone 200 meters away would hear and keep out of the virus's touch.

     "Again? Just last month they passed..." Davin murmured, picking up his hat and stuffing the coins in his ripped, knee length pants. Then, he threw the hat on Lyell's head and they walked away, Davin juggling the balls as he went.

     "Yes, the Leprosy House is packed. It seems that last month, they passed through an area in which the bell technique wasn't known of, and an entire village got sick." Lyell yelled, and Davin stopped the juggle to slam a hand on his mouth.

     "Lyell, will you quit shouting?" he laughed.

     They reached a row of long stone stairs and started walking up the alleyway, their house being somewhere up and on the side.

     "Sorry, but it's so chilling!" Lyell grinned. "Hearing those bells, it's so mysterious it makes me shudder." he shrugged shakily. "No one ever sees them, it's like they're those inhuman entities..."