Cirque Du Freak // Daughters of Fate

Chapter 2

Seventeen years later....

The owner of the theatre could be heard from a mile of way. He was a loud man and round at the belly. What was left of his hair was a ring around his head, the top was completely bald. He stood at the crew entrance, holding the door with one hand while talking to a strange man. The owner was also sloppy, wearing a stained white tank top for men and a pair of pants. His name is Al.

Al runs the theater and keeps it properly working, or at least good enough to pass an inspection. He only runs it at night and only hires talented people. This is a local spot for future music artists to be found, starting small time at his theater and then moving onto the big time stuff at the city. Any artist that wants to play here has to agree to his terms though. Al makes sure that over half the cash to the people who entered to see the singers goes to him. The other half is split up among the singers themselves by how popular they were the night of the performance. Al determines this.

The man at the back door where the performers come in has been trying to persuade Al to loan him his theater for three nights. Al doesn't like when he doesn't get a steady stream of money in. He likes his drinks. Everyone of us know that he sits in the back room after all the entry money has been collected and attends to them. Strangely enough, he's friendlier when he's drunk than when he's sober. The strange man has picked a bad time to talk to him, seeing as the show is only a couple of hours from starting.

"I'm not takin' this. I've got a good group of talented performers that bring in more than what you're offerin' in a night." comes Al's voice from the door.

The performers, which include my friend Savannah and me, can see the moonlight on the wood of the back stage, but we can't see the mystery man at the door. Al's shadow falls like a round lump in the center of the light, but the figure in front of him must be pretty tall. His shadow is even taller than the owner's.

We work on preparing the instruments. Some of the guys who don't go onto later in the night are working on the lights. Half way through, during the break, we'll switch spots. Controling the lights is surprisingly harder than making sure the instruments are in fine tune. Others work behind stage, setting the curtains up just right so the audiance can't see those who have yet to go on. Al's voice can still be heard yapping at the other man.

"That price will only pay for a night in a half." pause."You try keeping a piece of crud like this up and runnin' a whole year! I bet even you are hard pressed with this economy!"

Out of our entire crew, there are only a five girls. My friend Savannah can play the piano, another girl plays electric guitar, a third works up in the light rooms, and yet a fourth is a singer. I'm also a singer, but I know how to play a few notes on a guitar and can hold a beat with the drums. There aren't very many of us, so we swap jobs throughout the entire night. We try to stay as organized as possible though. We set up a sheet of who's playing with who for the next event, and working out times to do group pratices. It's a lot of hassel, but it's worth it in the long run.

Tons of people from my school come to hear our music and love it. A couple of our singers write original pieces that we have to memorize, but a lot of our songs are taken from popular rock or pop songs today. There is no such thing as country music at our theater. Even though we're celebraties at the theater, as soon as we step outside we're nobodies again. It's like a switch someone pulls on us. People who were cheering for you while you were on stage last night are calling you names and teasing you in the morning. It's unfair, but it's life.

My friend Savannah and I are used to this kind of treatment. We've been rejects since the start of our lives. Our own parents abandoned us at an orphanage when we were babies. Savannah had been there for a year already when I was left at the doorstep during a pouring rain. Miss Parmenia, the woman who runs our orphanage, hadn't even got a good look at my mother's face. She had been cloaked and had dropped the basket I was in at the door and then left. It was a good thing that the old woman had seen her from the window, or I would have died from amonia, sitting out in the rain in that shabby basket.