To mrutdy for being such a cool, and amazing wattfriend! Keep on writing and being awesome (cause you are) and thanks for reading!
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Only now, in the full presence of Mr.Briscoe did the other children awaken unsteadily from their slumbers. I watched their eyes all flutter open, blissfully unaware for that last moment between sleep and conciousness of whom was amoung us. When each individual finally sensed Mr.Briscoe's presence, they all immediately flung themselves against the walls, into the shadows as not to be in his direct path of sight. We all sat there silently, breathing in the muggy august air. Each child trying to blend in with the darkness of the late night.
Mr.Briscoe pulled out his thick coiling rope again, and snapped it threateningly against the doorframe, making our skins crawl off. He entered into the room again, his thick hard boots clunking loudly against the creaky floorboards.
I could almost smell his foul breath from where I had slathered myself against the corner walls when he addressed us.
"Up you slimy mutts. Get UP!" he shouted at us, snapping the rope again. I could almost hear him growling under his breath. A tense electric current ran through the air.
Mickenna inched forward first, looking down at her feet. She refused to meet Mr.Briscoes menacing stare. Without speaking a word, he ruffly bound her wrists to the rope again, and blindfolded her eyes with a dark cloth. I heard her breathing stagger for a moment, but she did not let out any noise in fear or suprise. She flexed her fingers and twisted her wrists uncomfortably. The ropes must by tied incredibly tight.
Slowly we all came to join her, each of us also being tied to the rope and blindfolded by Mr.Briscoe's strong hard hands. When I stepped forward, I shivered as he took my wrists. I hated to feel his skin touching mine. I felt contaminated, and filthy.
He continued to bind my wrists, and when he dropped them, I could feel the blood pounding through my viens against the ropes. I shut my eyes as he cast the blindfold around them, and tied a tight knot behind my head. He paused unexpectadly, and I felt him move closer towards me. I could feel his ruff fingers slide through my long curls. Suddenly his breath was right on my face. My nose wrinkled in disgust at the smell of stale beer and old fish. I heard him chuckle delicately. His tongue came out and licked the side of my ear. The wet slimy worm moved across my face leaving a sticky trail behind on my skin. I held back my screams in the back of my throat. Not even a whimper escaped my lips. There was nothing I could do to stop the trembling however. Just like a serpant, I knew he could taste my scent, and all my fear locked up inside my chest.
he laughs again, and I can feel the edges of his smile against my cheek.
"My little pet," he coos. "Aren't you just a little satin doll," he purs tugging gently on my curls. "I bet this must be an exciting moment for you girly. You finally get to witness the entire show now, and you don't need to even pay!" he laughs, his hands moving down the side of my neck, running his fingers back and forth over my skin. I just continue to stand and shiver.
"You lucky little girl," he says, and finally moves on. I almost collapse in relief. I both hate and love the blindfold right now. It allows me to believe that the world has completely disappeared, but it also leaves the monsters free to thrash me, while I am blinded.
A few minutes later the rope tugs forward on my wrists, tripping me into a walk. I can't see anything, but follow the tugging of the rope, cautiously allowing myself to be lead onward.
We walk for a very long time. The whole while, I listen to the padding of all of our footsteps beating like rain against the floor. No one speaks, we all hardly dare to breath. We just walk. Walk ahead into the unknown.
We go around lots of twists and turns; I trip up plenty flights of stairs and continuously bump into many doors and walls. I kept wondering just exactly how big this building had to be.
After a long time had passed, we came to a stop in. I heard Mr. Briscoe whispering to some more men. They talked for a few minutes, and then approached us closer. I could hear these people everywhere, removing our bindings, and leading the other children away. When it was my turn, a pair of gruff hands ripped the knot apart and yanked my arms to lead me in another direction. The person had still left the blindfold intact, so I struggled to keep pace with the man. Even without seeing him, I could tell he was tall, and very large; especially large compaired to me.
He lead me up to a metal pole from which he chained my feet and wrists to, and set me down on the ground. I tested the chains, tugging on them gently. There was barely enough slack for me to rest my hands on the ground. I didn't dare try to venture out to see how far I could walk. At the very most I'm guessing I could move a radius of three feet.
All around me, I could hear other children crying out in confusion and fear. They moaned like cattle, calling out to no one and everyone at the same time. I could hear them struggle against their chains. Other children squeeling in protest as the men drag them across the ground. All of this is only what I can hear with my ears, and sense through the pounding vibrations on the dusty ground. There's so much dirt I almost could believe we've been taken somewhere outside, but there is no breeze or gentle rustling of tree leaves. No crunching of car wheels rolling over gravel roads. It smells like somewhere inside, even though I don't believe there is a room large enough to hold all of us children and adults inside it. From the echoing voices, it's easy to presume that wherever we are, we are enclosed in a very large and tall area. Maybe we've all shrunken down to the size of ants, and have been forced to crawl into a bottle.
Very quickly, more children are bound to the pole with me. None of us speak, but through sense of touc, it is safe to assume that this was not a time to try to talk with one another. Here, we were all on our own.
Somewhere in the distance, I hear the lights shut off, and the world becomes even blacker behind the musky blindfold. Only now do I realize how much it smells like a mixture of chemicals, the iron smell of old blood, sweat, and booze. My nose wrinkles in disgust at the recognition of all these unfavorable scents.
Thankfully at the blindfold chose this moment to loosen it's grip from my face and slide down off my chin. I don't dare move at all, in fear that somebody might see and retie the wretched thing back on.
I look around, taking in my new surroundings. I was right and wrong. We weren't outside, we were inside. But we were enclosed inside a great large black tent. Not the kind I would see families use to go camping with, or like what the boys outside the slums would do and prop up an old worn out blanket with a couple sticks; this was a giant tent, like a circus tent, except not the bright orange and blue stripes that might automatically come to mind. Throughout the inside of the tent, the children were all bound to the long metal poles sticking up out of the ground to support the tent. They were all still blindfolded, around a dozen children crammed together to each pole. They all knocked their heads together unseeingly, and tugged at the shackles on their writsts and feet half-heartedly. No one could even find hope any longer to dream of escape. Dreams and hope were the first things abandonned here at the circus.
Looking around, I realized that there were no doors or windows. No stadiums for crowds to sit in, no bleachers with venders trying to convince parents to buy their children some kettlecorn and cotton candy. It was like the circus had died, and we were being held inside the beast's empty shell.
From the far corner, Mr.Briscoe came walking out into the middle of the stadium, dressed in his usual white and black suit, and a big black tophat. As he walked closer to the center of the ring, I noticed his red coiled whip, tucked up under his arm. Mr.Briscoe came to a halt, and faced and empty wall.
"Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to The Dark Woods Circus! It is an honor here to have you tonight, as we present to you some of the most montrous incubus found to have wondered free to there own devices, and have been contained and brought before you tonight, to show you all the little nasty's that haunt in the night," Mr. Briscoe says mischeviously, adressing an unseen audience. I lean forward in curiosity, wondering how this was going to unfold.
"We've captured all those little hellions that go bump in the night. Pray that you may never have the misfortune to see these brutes walk free. We hope you enjoy our show," he says and I can hear the sinister smile play through his little speech, and dance across the corners of his lips ominously. A knot begins to grow inside my stomuch, as I sense a feeling of forboding.
That's when the unseen audience suddenly breaks into applause. I whip me head around, forgetting to worry about being seen any longer, in attempt to find the unseen spectators.
The wall! I think, trying to crane my head to look closer. There were dozens of holes in the wall, barely large enough to peak through. These were the holes in the walls where they all came from the outside to watch the gathered freakshow. I didn't know why they had devised that system; maybe to prevent us from trying to escape or attack the audience? Or maybe this was Mr.Briscoe's way of ensuring the circus never get's found out. It would be hard to find evidence if the only way people could see anything was by peaking through a hole in the canvas.
The audience continues to roar with anticipation and excitment, until Mr.Briscoe silences the crowd.
"Silence good people! All will be reviled to you in good time! I'm so pleased to hear you eagerness for out show."
The knot in my stomuch expands. I for one, am not ready at all to see what Mr.Briscoe has planned for tonight.
Mr. Briscoe calls out the names of some men and barks an order at them curtly. They bring out a large table, while another drags a girl over and rests her on top of the table. I can hear her begging for mercy, her body shaking while she blubbers and begins to wail. Mr. Briscoe silences her with a sharp crack of the whip, which strikes hard against her face. The girl howels and the crowd cheers.
Mr. Briscoe pulls out a ragged old saw. He holds it high above the girl's body for the crowd to see, before dramatically bringing it down upon her arm, and begins to saw through the bone. The crowd roars again while the girl's shrieks pierce through my skin and crawl up my spine and settle inside my head. Mr. Briscoe cuts off both her arms and switches them to the opposite hand, and sews them back on quickly. It doesn't matter either way, because the arms are useless to her now.
Mr.Briscoe uses a metal spoon to pry her eyes from the poor girl's sockets. I can almost hear the sickening pop and squish of the eyeballs, and watch Mr.Briscoe toss them towards the audience wall. He slowly moves up her legs, peeling the skin back slowly, and cutting out shards of her muscle and bone. Her blood creates a pool around the table. It drips onto the floor and creates a river.
He goes and removes her ears with another sharp knife and sews them onto the top of her head. I watch the blood pour down from the dark gaping holes on the side of her head. The girl has died by now from loosing so much blood. In a way I almost envy her for escaping.
Mr. Briscoe has the men remove the body, and bows for the audience, accpeting their showering applause. Why would no one stop him from doing this to us?
Mr. Briscoe moves on to another toy. He has two boys brought up who also have ram horns like Arny. He places them inside a large metal cage and tosses them both maces.
"You have been given your weapons! You are to fight till one of you dies!" he proclaims dramatically, much to the ooing and awwing of the audience. "You will either win...or die!" he yells and has the fight commence.
It is difficult to watch theses two fight. They both go in immediately for the kill, and soon blood spills across the floor. The maces are pounded into each other's limbs and skulls, each time they both get up again, no matter how fatal the delivered blow appeared to have been.
When one boy finally falls to the ground, the other takes no mercy and immediatly beats his opponents head until it cracks open like a rotten egg. The crowd roars and cheers, and the boy is led away again, back to his chains.
Mr. Briscoe goes dements another girl, by sewing strings and stitches into her skin, making her into a human puppet and making her dance across the ring. I watched them weave the needle in and out through her lips, and through holes in the palms in her hands and the rest of her limbs. It was sickening to watch them make her dance, and leave behind a faint crimson trail. They even stuck another cable through the top of her head, which sticks out like a feakish antennae.
Another boy is brought up. His fingers are loped off, and Mr.Briscoe has pins stuck in all over his naked body. His screams were almost unbearable for me to stomach. He seemed to glimmer under the pale spotlight. The pins in his eyes dripped with the misxture of tears and blood.
Mr. Briscoe brings forward Chip and a mixture of other boys who also behave like hounds. He has them all chase a cat around the arena and fight each other over the cat's carcass. I hold my breath as they take some of the dog boys and sew dog tails and ears into their flesh. Each one howels like a hellion and whines from the pain. Mr. Briscoe tosses each dog boy a human arm to chew on and has them collected into a cage. I see Chip chewing onto a girl's arm mindlessly, his new dog ears dropping down the sides of his face.
Two twin girls are sewn together at the arms, and I watch Briscoe stitch their lips into smiles. He switches their remaining hands and has their tongues slit. The twin girls cry together as they trip over their feet as they are lead away again.
Three children are brought up and are each handed a bottle. Mr. Briscoe anounces that one bottle has been poisoned and given to one of them. They all are forced to drink, and moments later, the boy on the left falls to the ground. He is dead before his body even hits the floor. When one of the other children puke, Mr. Briscoe has them clean it up using the dead boy.
More children are brought to the center of the ring, and I watch there blood spill over the ground. Mr.Briscoe's suit has long been stained red as the hours dredge on. The crowd has only grown even more wild, roaring like animals as child after child is brought forward.
Mr.Briscoe calls for another girl to be brought forward. My heart nearly collapses upon itself in despair when I see Mickenna being dragged to Mr.Briscoe's feet. She glowers at him in hatred and we both await to see what he would do to her.
Mr. Briscoe has a large ox sized man come out from the shadows. We wait for a moment, as the moment of tension hangs in the air I can feel my breath thicken and catch inside my throat. Without warning the man strikes at Mickenna like a cobra, attacking her with his big meaty fist across her face. The large ox man continues to beat her down. Using only his big fists to strike her. I watch each blow, holding back the vomit creeping up my throat. Mickenna doesn't make a sound. She allows the man to beat her until her skin is deep red and blue. His fist connects with her face repeatedly, and also strikes against her chest, and necj, and collar bone. I sit there waiting, afraid for Mickenna, willing somebody to step in and stop the man from beating her to death. Only the opposite happens, when Mr.Briscoe comes up from behind and strikes her across the back with his crimson whip. The air escapes from behind Mickenna's tight lips in shock, but still she let's them have no screams. Together the men beat her until she finally gives in and collapses to the ground unconsious.
I watch them drag Mickenna away again, and Mr.Briscoe calls more children forward again, and the show continues on. The wind has been knocked out of me, leaving me breathless and confused that the show can continue when Mickenna and all those other children have been mutilated so badly! When will the crowd be satisfied and leave us be?
More children come up. I don't watch any longer. Watching only hurts. Though pain is slowly becoming a constant companion of mine, I do not wish to throw myself into it's eager hands so willingly.
The hours pass by long and slowly. Briscoe makes sure the crowd has time to enjoy every child's scream. The dark night inside the tent is chilled, almost so that I can see my breath. It is not just shivers from cold I feel repeatedly running up my spine.
I want to put my hands over my head to sheild myself from having to listen to so much suffering and pain. All around me, the other children, still blindfolded, lay unmoving, like dolls put to rest on their toyshelf, awaiting their turn to be picked up and played with.
I sqeeze my eyes shut and swallow the low moans that keep trying to scamper up the back of my throat. I breathe in raggedly through my nose, and exhale slowly, the cool air whirling the breath away into the night.
"Look-y here! Did someone's blindfold fall off?" A stumpy man leers coming up to me and leaning down to remove my bindings from the pole. At first I think that it is finally time to leave, but then I see Mr.Briscoe standing at the center of the ring, staring at me in a way that instantly sends the alarms off inside my head.
"No. No!" I shake my head furiously, trying to fight back as the man and a friend of his drag me forward closer and closer to Briscoe. My fingernails scrape across the dusty floor in an attempt to drag myself back to the metal pole again; to be safely imprisoned in the chains, were no one would see or hurt me.
I am forced to give in, and begin to wail as they drag me and ruffly place me at Briscoe's feet. I don't dare look up at his evil smirk. A man behind him holds a bucket full of money. The unseen audience roars again in a wave of fresh excitment. I can feel my heart struggling to escape my chest and fly away.
Briscoe rests his fingerstips against my cheeks. The pads are ruff and gritty. The dark red blood of his recent victems lies under his fingernails. I can't cringe away because of the way the men hold my chains. Mr. Briscoe leans down and looks me square in the eye. His black beady eyes are full of a deadly humor that spill out onto the jeering grin across his face. His thin lips are pulled back over his straight white teeth, that glitter dangerously under the spotlight fixiated on us.
"Our little china doll," he announces loudly for the crowd to hear as he strokes my black curls possesivly. "Is she not delicious enough to eat?" he asks smuggly and the crowd cries in agreement. The force of his gaze boring into mine nearly crushes me into the ground. I tremble in fear while facing this monster of a man.
He calls a man forward out of the shadows. Briscoe announces to the crowd again while the man smiles at me in the most dreadful way, exposing two missing teeth and a gold ring around his nose. This man stands just as tall as Briscoe but is a good ten to fifteen years older and is already beginning to loose his hair.
"Mr.Thomas here had won our little auction tonight for a chance to entertain all of us with a little show with our little pet here," he says taking my head in his fist carelessly. "Let us see how good a little girl she really is," he says manevolently, his eyes daring me to try to escape. I gulp down the vomit threatening to come up again.
The man Mr.Thomas comes in closer and Mr.Briscoe steps back. The man takes my wrist and before I knew it, I was drowning in a pool of darkness and scary stories little children should never here whispers of.
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Why would no one help me! Not one person would do anything to save me. I was entirely alone. I had no one. There was no one who cared enough to try to stop this from happening. The lifeless dolls remained silent and obediant, awaiting their time on their shelf. I cried and wailed, begging someone, anybody, to hear my pleas and come to my rescue.
I called in vain. The name of humanity began to loose some of it's meaning to me. My faith began to slip ever so slightly at the moment of weakness. That dark moment, where I lay entirely helpless to the monsters overpowering me.
"NOOOO!!!" I scream finally, feeling something snap inside my head. I struggled and kicked against them all, fighting against the bare skin pinning me to the ground.
I found my footing and began to run. I could have run forever if I were to have been given a path, or a secret door that would lead me as far away from here as possible.
But I was not the only one who had speed.
A pair of familiar ruff hands pulled me back and trapped me inside their arms. A cloth came to my face and a sweet sickly smell began to rock me into a sleep. The last thing I heard before being pulled under was his menacing voice whispering in my ear.
"You have been a very bad girl Trisnae. What are we going to do with the bad little children like you?"
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Well that was a lot. Sorry I haven't posted anything these last couple days. Hope the length of the chapter makes up for it...
Hope you liked it as well! My stomach actually began to hurt sometimes while writing this so I'd have to take a break for a while to make sure I wasn't going to get sick.
Sigh. This is pretty depressing huh?
Please comment and vote because it means a lot to me! Thank you so much!!!
Pleae critique any major errors you see in spelling, grammar, or just general wording of the chapter. I'm too tired to edit right now...
Speaking of editing, I've started going back and editing through some of my earlier chapters (staring at the beginning...duh) in case you want to take a look to see what I have added/changed. It won't be anything too major but it should tidy things up a little bit more
Don't know if I've already asked this or not but who's perspective do you enjoy reading more? Alive or Demon Trisnae!
BYE! -TheNinjaWriter :)