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"My Immortal"

By Terry Echoes

"What is taking you so long?"

I was strapped to the table, the cold, hard surface jabbing into my shoulder blades. Taut, wide straps pinned down my bare green arms and chest, as well as my hips, offering me some modicum of decency. My crest bumped against the top of the slab, and was beginning to itch something terrible. My tail was slipped through a hole in the slab. I tried to still its impertinent wiggling, but whenever I got held down like this, it had a mind of its own. You know how tails are.

The doctor appeared to ignore my question for a few moments longer, then turned around, carrying the second-largest needle that I'd ever seen. I wanted to scream, but instead I asked, "What, are you compensating for something?" Canned laughter plays in my brain whenever I look back, but I couldn't tell if the doc had any reaction with his snout hidden behind his mask.

I have the vague recollection the doc was an older gentleman with yellow-brown scales, and horns above his eyes. That's all I can remember about him. I imagine the needle must've hurt, but it's just that I've been through so much pain since. Funnily enough, I more remember the horrible squirming in my imagination of what that bizarre concoction of jellyfish DNA was doing inside of me, changing me, rewriting who I was. And the cold. The freezing cold that never went away, that felt like an icicle plunging down my chest like a dagger, forcing a rising lump in my throat, and tightening every muscle on my person.

I still feel cold. Even sixty-five million years later, I feel cold.

Shortly after, the meteor hit, and I lay there with my beloved, wishing it would flatten me alongside her. I probably thought, "Why me? Why couldn't she have been compatible?", but today I wouldn't wish this hell on my worst enemy. So the meteor tore down the walls, obliterating every last trace of our once proud and beautiful city. Debris darkened our planet for weeks on end, but oh, how beautifully our world boiled and died away, with glimmering residuals burning through the atmosphere on reentry. Shining jewels amidst a sea of smog. The great, loping dinosaurs from which my people were evolved died away. I should have been among them, choked to death as I was on the dust in the air, having to fend for myself on burrowing animals and the like, and then came an ice age. We never would have survived. We are reptiles, and even if we were of the mesothermic variety, we still require heat. Maybe our technology could have preserved us. Maybe I was just extra-sensitive from whatever the doc had altered me with. There's just no way for me to know now, now is there?

My body came to land some untold miles away, flung about through the lower stratosphere from the impact. I certainly _felt_as though every limb had torn off when I landed, but I blacked out from the pain. I was unconscious. I like to think I was dead, but it doesn't excuse every experience I've endured since then. I woke up, vomiting mud and blood onto the ground. Every turn I gave felt like a saber slicing clean through me. The sensations rode me up and down, like a Ferris wheel, two by two. I felt as if I had something crawling up underneath my spine, through my body, pushing me apart, stretching me, tearing me apart, splitting me open, and I realized it was myself. My very _literal_self.

I shed my old, broken form like an old snake skin and screamed in pain. The gritty air was like sandpaper on a blister. I moved about without sense for some unknown amount of time. It didn't feel like very long, but my concept of time has become shaky at best. Pain washed over me until it lapped itself, and I was incapable of feeling it for a time. Or maybe it had done something to my brain, and I was high on a euphoria of agony. I can remember stumbling around, always on the move for some reason, even when I collapsed. Blurring images of my discarded bones and meat being buried by the debris still haunt my dreams.

Over time, my skin hardened over, and the pain got duller and duller. New scales were growing in around my newborn flesh. I managed to think through the haze of my recovering mind, and realized I should be dead. I must've known not to look, because I didn't even dare touch myself. I didn't test out my new shape, save for my ribs, which I kept fearing would collapse in on me. And then, one day, by what I foolishly thought was a miracle more than the mere passing of time,--the clearing air should have been a clue--I found a source of running water, trickling through a musky glade. I chanced to spy myself and was stricken with terror at the unfamiliar face before me. I thought I saw a ghost, not for anyone I recognized, but because I had never expected to see a new face of my species ever again. Alas, as they say, it was my own.

Gone were my fine green scales. Now I was covered in yellow, almost bony plates. Thick, dense scales now patterned my face and body. I looked upon myself for the first time, noticing now I was nude, and broke down crying from exhaustion. Exhaustion at my entire ordeal. And it had only just begun.

Going mad was an arduous, drawn-out process. Not like my home. Rome was rubble in a day, to mangle a phrase. I had to endure every small twinge of my sanity slipping that much further away, bit by bit, through the sieve of my mind, as day after week after month after year passed. Decades. Centuries. I came to long for a snap to ply this suffering consciousness from me, and there came a point where the end result was the same. I did such warm, red things in the night of my mind, but I digress. I watched the rise of mammals, and sometimes I went berserk, but I always gave up short of genocide. I roamed the changing landscape and plumbed the depths of the ocean, but still I never had the guts to trek into the deep sea rift or to trap myself between slabs of quaking earth. Had this alchemy turned my own will against me, making me fear the abyss?

The closest I came was the ice age. By this time, I had gotten my bearings and headed south, reached the tip of the land mass, then headed north because it wasn't cold enough for my tastes. I know I must have passed where my race had gone extinct, save for myself. Why they wanted me to be their pariah in death, I'll never remember. I headed north, where I have my earliest memory of snow. I was repulsed by the touch of it, but still I kept going. My body slowed to a snail's pace as the cold bit at every nerve, compressed my muscles, until I was frozen through and through. It was the only time I'd lost, and I was glad for it. A momentary reprieve to the streak of the sun as the planet hurtled dizzily through the void that was my soul.

What surprised me most about my surmounting insanity was the way clarity would return. Memory fails me, but I know I would wake from crying, my throat raspy and my stomach sick. I felt like I'd sweated out the flu and had forgotten all my muscles in the process. I never anticipated that I would break out of this cyclical slump, to lose sight of the rapidly twirling sun and moon I walked to brand new continents as though deluded enough to believe I would find some ease to my crushing loneliness. It was like being reborn, even though I'd had far beyond enough of life. I came to on the western shore of Africa, which was pretty damn far from what was probably Canada today. Everything in my ached. I collapsed to the ground after just a minute (probably), and once more reincarnated myself. I felt like everything was bloated and just split here and there like a bag full of water. I came sliding out, face-down, a sizzling or crackling sound busying my brain for the next few days or so. I found my way to another source of water, but this was a rushing river beneath a waterfall. I climbed my way up to the top of the rapids and seriously considered throwing myself off. Instead, I decided my curiosity would get the better of me, and I wound my way north through the jungle, following the river until I came upon a calm enough stretch that, come the sunlight, I could get a glimpse of myself and bear witness to the horror anew.

This time, I was a blue-scaled lizard, with feathering poking out here and there. I turned and twisted, trying to get a good at as many angles of myself as I could manage. It took me the entire trek to discover this about myself because it took that long for my mind to clear. I remember dropping to my knees and wailing. I made some kind of a loud noise. I must have wanted to scream my heart out. I had no frame of reference. I was starting to forget words. I had forgotten my full name. I had forgotten the face of my love, of the doctor who modified me, and the faces of my friends and family. I had even forgotten my own face. That takes some doing, I imagine. Forgetting yourself over time. Nothing to do. My fault, really. I had lapsed into a depression. I can't imagine I didn't try to build things, when I realized I had the time. It's not easy building by yourself, though. I couldn't exactly move rocks of my own accord.

So one day, when time had slowed down for me once again, I came upon the apes. Ugly, hairy things with wrinkled skin and the like. Maybe I thought I was a god then. I watched them in their daily plight, observing their crude behaviors, and, perhaps fed up with my solitude to the loss of logic, I tried to teach them to use tools, and so forth. They didn't take kindly to me at first. It took months of shadowing their little tribe, but time was a pittance to me overall. Even when I could count the days again, they were a pittance. And before I knew it, there was humanity. Still ugly and naked, but now "advanced" enough to the point where they were hurtling rocks and sticks at one another. I looked on like a proud parent as I thought to myself, Aw, baby_'s first war._Pah. No, it repulsed me. My people had risen above that kind of thinking. At least, that's what I remember. Or maybe it's just that I don't remember any conflict of which to speak.

I kept my distance, then. Humanity had grown into something fierce, something that relished in the warm and the red, in drinking the blood of their enemies and proudly displaying their dead kin like trophies. Sure, they didn't have a word for "civilized", but I still remembered my word for "disgusted". I spit on them. Who was there to stop me feeling anything else?

Then came the cities, and my fascination was carried aloft. Now, I thought, humanity was getting interesting. They dispersed with startling rapidity across the globe. I trekked right alongside them, marveling at how different they were becoming to one another. I saw the rise of the Egyptian civilization, but it was about that era that time was picking up the pace again. I tired of my celebrity status as a symbol of worship, and departed before they could start writing anything too divesting of me. Avoiding them wasn't easy, either. By now, I'm sure you must have heard the legends of dragons, of lake monsters, and of spirit animals. What still boggles my mind is how some of these remain total bullshit, even when a few close encounters certainly must have happened.

At the dawn of the Common Era, as you like to put it, people thought I was some kind of a leper. I bandaged myself, shed my tail to a small stub, and begged for charity. So many uncivilized humans gathered throughout the Roman empire, barely capable of comprehending the world around them, fed distractions in the form of barbarism, and all these savages had a voice. Where my world had once been deaf, now was brimming with constant noise and activity. It was like staring into the dark and turning on a light switch. I was subjected to all those market advertisements, all the cries of, "Monster!", all those nickel-a-dozen prophets wanting to "heal" me. But I can't be healed. To heal me is to condemn me.

Oh, and I had _loads_of fun during your medieval age. Knights clad in armor and flamboyant regalia tried to slay me in my lair. My mind was at the breaking point again, so I considered getting up to some mischief. Perhaps I'd abduct some prince or princess and practice my maniacal laughter. Once, I even let myself be "killed", just to let it happen. Just to feel something. Just to prove something to myself. The ravages of time haven't afforded me any more answers, it seems. When you're invincible, there's really no point. I lay there, bleeding out, the knight escorting his precious heir to the throne from my dank cavern, and my body only regenerated itself once more.

At last, I thought, things were getting interesting.

I remember that well, because for me, that was last week. For you, it's already the late 1700s. I blame this lack of trying on my part for how easily I was captured. A sack reeking of onions was thrown over my head and I was bludgeoned. I awoke in a cart of some sort, with barred windows on opposite sides, further covered with heavy blankets. If whoever my captors were weren't careful, I could be liable to suffocate, but all it seems to do is lower my metabolic rate to a crawl. Some fresh air and I'm right as rain.

By then, I was a pink-scaled being, with short spikes jutting from my forehead and my nose, and ridges running down my back and tail. I was craving onions, even if I had no need for food other than to stave off the recurring gurgling of my gut. I slumped helplessly to the front wall of the wagon, or at least, the side of the direction we were moving in. I scratched at the wooden floor with my nails, pondering who had it out for me. I'd been living in the woods with a gillie suit of my own making, in an elaborate burrow I had dug out myself from some critter's old den.

I looked about the wagon and discovered some semblance of food had been procured for me: A sack of raw potatoes and a barrel full of ale. I felt repulsed by the alcohol. I never had a taste for the stuff, and I suspect that to be because I poisoned myself to death several times on various drugs and hallucinogenic fungi. The experiences were unpleasant enough to stick with me. Why was it, being immortal as I was, that everything felt like such an effort? I managed to devour a whole raw potato, before using the others to hurl at the opposite wall of the wagon. The only other amenity afforded to me was a set of contemporary clothing. It was made from cheap, thin textiles, with suspenders and a dapper flat cap. Demeaning as it was, I adorned myself this minor layer of warmth. I had wide, brown slacks that felt like they were made of burlap. There was no hole in back for my tail, so I clawed one out for myself. My shirt was some plain, white thing with a vertical pattern running over it. I left the loafers to the side.

Then the wagon stopped, and I was left alone in the dark. I heard the sounds of departing footsteps, then I heard something slam. Although I'd avoided thinking about myself for years on end, since it never led me down a pretty road, for whatever reason, being a captive made me reflect anew. Problem was, I'd already been down these roads. I didn't like myself. Being around for 65 million years will put you in such a rut. I didn't feel like doing anything, and I didn't feel like fighting anymore. What the hell had become of me? Maybe I'd taken things for granted for the past several thousand millennia, but I can't imagine my people would have chosen me to survive our apocalypse if I was a moping layabout. I lamented the fact that at the end of the day, I am what I feel. I felt dead inside, a thought which brought me no relief.

Perhaps it was boredom, then, that led me to clawing my way out of the wagon. Boredom, I discovered, as my constant companion, was a fantastic motivator for doing stupid things. I think of it as my mind's way of telling itself it needs intellectual nourishment in the form of curiosity. It's like hunger or thirst, boredom. I clawed at the wood around the hinges to the door on the right, and lo and behold, after several hours of digging in to that splintering wood, the door slammed to the ground with a clatter.

I appeared to be in a large, brick warehouse of sorts, but what I did see was no ease to my ego. The wagon was part of a caravan of sorts, mostly carrying animals trapped in stuffy little cages. This was certainly a bigger operation than the bear-baiting of the past. An elephant was jammed into a small cage, but sympathy had abandoned me long ago. I read the lettering on the wagon: "Pinkerton Traveling Circus". Did they expect me to juggle?

My ego was stroked when the warehouse lights snapped on. Something like an old flame kindled in my distant memory when I turned at the sound of a door slam. Two men approached. One was very fat, wearing a tall hat and waistcoat over a shimmery gold vest. He had a handlebar mustache and puffed on a foul-smelling cigar. The other man was a tall, muscled fellow, clean-shaven, wearing a flat cap, and with his sleeves rolled up. He was dressed somewhat like I was, actually, but I had a feeling _he_wasn't here just for show.

I tightened a sardonic smile onto my face and practiced my best English with the fat man. Languages weren't too hard when you had centuries to learn them. "Ringmaster Pinkerton, I presume?"

Pinkerton patted his rotund barrel of a belly and held his cigar in his free hand. He had a booming voice, but raspy, likely from poisoning himself on tobacco. He couldn't just pop out with a new set of lungs like I could. "Lo, spake Grendel! And I thought you only spoke French!"

"In my sleep, mayhaps," I assumed.

Pinkerton boldly stepped closer, cigar back between his lips, hands folded above his expansive waistline. He strutted around me, regarding me with sly fascination, but at the same time, ever the businessman. "Well, 'matines' may hardly be ringing, lad, but I simply could not wait to get a look at you! My boys were so certain they caught an honest-to-goodness monster, I must say my curiosity was piqued!"

"Should I be flattered, being a curiosity?" I asked. "Or perhaps by being clubbed across the scalp?"

Pinkerton tutted, and his mood grew morose. "Alas, I had no stake in your capture. Unlike the navy, I do not find rendering my prospective hires unconscious to be a fruitful endeavor. Nay, these were uncouth gentlemen who thought you would fetch them a pretty penny or a shiny shilling. They have been dispatched with."

"Am I supposed to believe that story?"

Pinkerton responded with a tight-lipped laugh, then stared at me with lowered eyes. "You shall come to learn, as I have, that a fellow such as yourself can do quite well in the profession I offer to you."

I rolled my baby blue eyes. "And what profession is that?"

I needn't have asked. Pinkerton certainly didn't elaborate; he just chuckled knowingly into his cigar and departed with his goon in tow, and I was to learn of my position in a little under two months' time. As I've implied, this is peanuts to me. Usually. Pinkerton's Traveling Circus was traveling across the Atlantic, traversing waves with its cargo of standoffish performers and stinking animals. Pinkerton had four carnation-painted equines in the hold, and so it was that pink horses galloped across the sea, as our ostentatious ringmaster might have termed it.

I hadn't been on a boat in...well, as long as I could remember. I was loaded into the cargo hold where the smell of damp wood and salty air offended my nostrils. Some deck hands complained of the tedious wait. Then we set off, and half an hour into the trip, a wave of nausea hit me. I hate throwing up. I wonder if it was that thought that eased my wary guts. The cold feeling across my forehead and nape dissipated, and even the smell of salt was like a gentle spice. To my dismay, the stink of animals overpowered it.

I didn't want to be down there anymore, a board's depth from sinking, gagging on the stench of hay and droppings. Let them scream when they saw me, I thought, and I mounted the stairs to the middle deck. I'm not up on my nautical terms.

First thing I did was bump into some navvy who gave me the most degrading look he could dredge up from the bowels of his soul. A shadow of a memory struck me, and I asked him, "Pardon me, where do you keep your pirate treasure?" Just my luck, he didn't answer.

I went to sit on a crate at the far end of the deck, passing by hammocks and some refuse of the Pinkerton circus. I felt awkward having nothing to do as I sat, not needing to eat or drink or so forth. The feeling passed quickly as I soon felt a series of knocks beneath my posterior.

I stood up with a shot and pried open the lid of the crate. Inside was a scrawny human woman, all twisted and mangled like a soft pretzel. Maybe it was trite of me to ask, but I assure you it was all instinct when I said, "What in the hell are you doing in there?" Somehow I just knew she was alive.

The woman grunted and pulled herself out of the box with what appeared to be great difficulty, then unfolded herself. She was wearing much the same grubs I was given--suspender-ed trousers and a plain white shirt. "I sleep in there, guv. Name's Colleen Mayflower, and I'm a contortionist." She held out her left hand to shake, then bent her double-jointed fingers backwards.

I reluctantly gave her my right hand to shake. A kind of shudder passed through me first. This evidently wasn't enough, so she asked me my name in her bubbly cockney accent. Trouble was, I didn't have one to give. I told her as much.

"Aw. That's no good." She sat on the crate and stuck her legs out straight, then bent her torso forward, hands grabbing at her feet as though she was stretching. "You should pick one out for yourself!"

"Is that what you did?" I admit I couldn't take my eyes off of her. It was so bizarre, speaking to a human who wasn't repulsed by me. The ringmaster had disguised his quite well, particularly as he had something to gain.

She bent over her other leg and frowned. "No. Mayflower was the name of the orphanage where I grewed up. Got the name Colleen from me parents." She dipped back and sprang into a handstand on the crate as easily as you might sit down. Her short bob cut of dark blonde hair fell from her reddening face. "Is that tail real?"

I tried giving my stiff tail a twitch, but this one wasn't the most muscular I'd had. "Feels real to me."

"Never seen that before. We used to have a boy with a monkey's tail. Have you met the others?" She nodded in some direction past me. "There's Doug now."

Doug Winfether, as he introduced himself, wasn't so much a mobile man as he was a mobile home. He was by far and away the fattest human I had ever seen. He looked like he could have swallowed Pinkerton whole. An idle worry for the horses down below crossed my mind. The man was wearing a dapper tweed coat and tweed trousers which were pulled up as far on his belly as they could reach, with scuffed and dirty black shoes. He had on a very tiny bowler hat that you could fit a couple mice under, or maybe a chicken leg. He had ruddy hair that I couldn't decide whether it was red or brown, and it trailed the edges of his face into a beard with no mustache. Every time he waddled, the wood beneath him creaked, and he sat down on the floor, his small legs sticking out front of him.

"My, don't you look unusual," Doug said of me. "I, sir, am a gustator. I eat anything. Don't worry--you're not on the menu." His cheeks turned rosy and dimpled when he smiled. His hands kept rubbing circles over the sides of his stomach as though he was soothing away some pain. His voice on the whole wasn't too dissimilar from Pinkerton's, yet noticeably lacking in condescension.

I squinted. "Sorry, what is _happening_right now?"

"We're the Pinkerton Circus freak show, of course." Colleen hopped from her hands on the crate to her feet on the floor. She pressed her fists into her hips. "You, me, Doug, Amadeus and Pip, and Fango the Wolf-Boy, but she's really a girl. There used to be three more."

"Is that tail real?" Doug asked.

"That's what I asked him." Colleen pointed at my tail. "Go on, give it a little wiggle. Crowds'll go wild for that!"

"So you're telling me I'm under the esteemed indentured servitude to Mr. Pinkerton to waggle my tail on demand?" I asked.

"Eh?"

Doug let out a snort of laughter. "Hardly, my friend. Hardly 'indentured'. We are well-accommodated for our talents."

"Please don't take this the wrong way," I said, "but I can't imagine what those might be."

Colleen shouted and flagged down three more of her compatriots from across the deck. Along came two of the shortest human beings I had ever seen, and on a leash before them was the hairiest human being I had ever seen. At least, I would've guessed he or she was human. I have enough trouble recognizing human faces at the best of times, but after squinting, I was able to determine that these were not children and their pet dog, but rather two little people and a young woman with excessive body hair. I tried to think back to the last time I'd seen a little person--probably in the dark ages--but nothing concrete came up.

The two little people introduced themselves as Amadeus and Pip Montreaux, and then introduced Fango the Wolf-Boy. Colleen leaned in to whisper to me--I noticed her pull back when she got a good look at my fin-like pinnae where human ears would have been--and told me Fango's real name was Greta, but that she had thrown herself into her fictional role. I wanted to ask why, but thought better of it.

"We're performers, us," said Colleen, crossing her arms. "People come from miles around to gape at our eccentricities! We just give the people what they want, they go off and enjoy the rest of the circus, earning our esteemed employer money, which trickles back down to us."

"But that's not talent," I pointed out. "Do people really pay to gawk at you? Do you really get paid just to exist?"

"Existing can be hard work when you're us. You can't expect us to be able to hold a steady job in a mill or factory. People don't like the thought of us cooking their food. Mr. Pinkerton kindly provides us with a welcoming environment and a living wage."

"As long as you stay below-decks."

"Hah! We can make our own entertainment right here, and get some good practice in while we're at it. Isn't that right, fam?" Colleen's question was met with a rousing cheer. She turned to me again. "Natural-born talents. That's us." She had the sort of exuberance one might expect to break into song at any moment, which is precisely what she did. She rotated her arm all the way back and gave her box a good thump. "C'mon, you lot! Let's give our newest family member a warm welcome!"

Before I could politely decline, the whole of the Pinkerton Circus Side Show, sans me, transitioned to animated song and dance. Doug slapped his barrel belly while providing low bass accompaniment with his voice. Amadeus and Pip threw arms behind each other's shoulders while playing the same accordion with their free arms. Fango did something or other with her mouth, so that her growls mimicked other instruments with adept clarity. Colleen bounced around our pretend campfire and led in song.

Me mam made jam for breakfast,

And jam for lunch and tea!

Jam for supper and pudding,

I said, "That's enough for me!"

But jam came out my ears!

Jam came out my nose!

A great jam monster rose before me!

I'd had too much, I suppose!

Well, the wibble wobbly wambled,

Its mouth stretched to distend,

"Sometimes you get the jam," it said,

"Or else it gets you in the end!"

Their nonsensical song continued until, for all intents and purposes, it sounded like a steady stream of unintelligible syllables, but they attacked the music with such ridiculous fervor that I felt dizzied by the absurdity of it all. When at last it did mercifully end (and what a feat it is to make me feel the span of time), they excused themselves to sporadic regions of the below-decks to practice their routines in earnest.

It was getting to be too much for me to bear. I didn't bother to excuse myself, thinking it would only encourage them. I sauntered back down into the hold and the offensive miasma of the pink horses, sat down with my arms crossed around my knees, and sulked. I had spanned tens of millions of years, and now I had to feel the interminable void of waiting. It's an unpleasant feeling, to not be in the moment, to fling yourself into future plans, and feel the shuddering of your heart while your body remains still. I felt my organs pressing up within me, making me feel sick and grotesque. My mind lapsed into the memory of fever dreams, the kind where your brain fixates and zooms and you can't stop it turning, always careening onto its fixed path, and you may well be clawing at your sheets if you happen to sleep in a bed, frantically trying to brush the dream off and escape the torment of your nightmares. For me, my would-be peers and coworkers spun around as if on a manic-go-round, with me in the center, tilting and listing and unable to stop staring into their faces, their mammalian skin, all the fiber and tissue and spittle and pus digging into my mind, infecting my lungs and throat.

I remember crying out; how it sounded, but not how it felt. Lost in my subconscious, some further part of my being wrested me free from infinite distress. I felt the cold rocking of the ship after a moment, my scales glistening with perspiration, and something told me that it was night. I supposed even the sun needed rest now and again.

My senses still had not fully rooted in me as I arose, and I crept up one deck after another until I reached the outside. The smell of salt air was pungent to me out here, but the night air felt refreshing to my scales. It freed me from my ruminations, giving my mind a dawning clarity. I had found my sea legs, and decided to perambulate along the deck for a while until I felt wholly awake.

The wood felt rough and wet beneath my bare feet. It didn't feel like a solid, real object was carrying me aloft the waves. The deck was quiet at night, though I did notice a few deck hands keeping watch. They paid me no heed, however, and I made sure not to touch the rigging as I circumnavigated the open space available to me. I stepped over lingered ropes and berthed barrels and crates which felt important and guarded to me. I had no recollection of seeing a boat of such size and engineering, and I gave up scratching at the hazy gradation of long-lost memory. I counted my steps, one to ten, one to ten, over and over, and visualized walking halfway of the route I had in mind. Halfway, halfway,? ? until halfway was only a step to cross.

I stopped and gripped the rail and stared out over the moonlit sea at the bald horizon. Myriad stars patterned the sky above, and a word etched into my consciousness seemingly from nowhere: Heavens.

I breathed in the ocean and was transported. I recalled the times I had tried to cross the ocean floor, but the pressure became too great the deeper I went, and every sluggish step became slower and slower until even for my immortal self, I could bear the pace no longer. Hugging coastlines had been easier to manage, although the occasional curious sea creature testing me by biting me guided my decision to stick to land from then on, if I could help it. How was it, I wondered, that we could have evolved from so inhospitable a habitat as the ocean?

I realized this philosophical pacing was only going to wear a hole in my mind. I had to think about what to do in the here and now. I didn't want to work for some man who fancied me a novelty, who knew nothing beyond that of my biology, and who sought to keep me as a means to line his pockets. I decided to take my chances swimming in the ocean, though I admit it wasn't a very clear thought of mine. I should have considered how those waves would roll me around to their own whim, keeping me trapped amongst its current, as lord and master over me as perhaps this ringmaster considered himself. I peered over the side of the ship and skirted my way toward some rigging. Down below, I could just about make out the edge of a small boat. Perhaps it was a lifeboat, or the means of rowing to shore when no dock was available. I suspected I could climb down and proffer it to my own end.

I had one leg over the railing when Colleen stopped me.

"I know what you're thinking," she said with a weary smile. She held onto the mast rigging with one idle hand.

I pulled my foot back in and tried to mimic her smile. "Begging your pardon, but no, you don't." I felt a little silly saying this, truth be told. I couldn't very well expect anyone to understand what I think.

"You're feeling used. Vulnerable. Like you've been magnified and made a fool of," she said. "You don't know us any better than we know you."

I said nothing. I had a feeling she had a speech prepared. Walking out then would have left a bitter pang at the back of my neck, so I listened.

"Truth is, we've been there, where you are now. Leg over a railing, ready to take a dive. Hanging on to the side of a bridge. Holding a lit candle in our hands, or a tying a rope into a loop. It's not wrong to not know everything. You're not wrong if your parents don't love you, or if strangers find you repulsive, or if you don't have all the resources others were given. What would be wrong would be if you didn't try anything new."

It pains me to make this confession, but her words shocked me. Maybe it was the clarity of the open skies bestowed upon me through a twinkle of fate, but here was a mortal, a human, speaking words of wisdom to my immortal soul, and I found I could not deny her. But still, what did she want? What could she possibly imagine about me?

I was pensive for a long breadth of surf, so she spoke again. "I'm here to listen, if you like. Or if you like to listen, I can do the talking."

Weariness came over my eyes. I sat down on the deck, and she followed suit. "Go ahead," I told her.

"What can I tell you about meself? I told you I'm double-jointed. Told you I'm a contortionist. Told you I'm an orphan, of sorts. My father left me mam when I was three. Mam told me he never could settle down, for a job or a family. Then she hit the bottle hard and couldn't take care of me.

"The orphanage wasn't bad. Lots of other kids to play with. But my special talents allowed me to bend the rules. I bent them so hard they broke. Did it mainly for the thrill of it, but I got caught running, and got traced back to the orphanage. Then I stole again, and ended up in trouble with the law.

"And that's what Mr. Pinkerton did before he ran the circus. He was a lawyer, and that's how he met me. That's probably how he met most of us, as a matter of fact. He's a man with connections. Roots. And he gave us roots to grow."

A question occurred to me. "You said there were three more of you. Did they get seasick, or could they not be uprooted?"

Colleen's mouth turned grave. "There was a fire in the building we were staying in. We had a giant, seven-foot-eight, he was. Name was Nigel, but he went by 'The Ice Giant of Madagascar', on account of he was so pale."

Part of me wanted to interrupt her right then. Her eyes were watering, and I could guess what came next. She recounted to me how Nigel had saved them all in their escape by holding a collapsed ceiling up. Unfortunately, he and the "Siamese" twins didn't make it. I don't know why the sight of her bothered me so much. I had no ties for which to feel guilty. Not until now.

The sea was choppy as we headed into port somewhere in the foundling United States. Surf rang hollow in my ears below-decks, and it was a bright morning the day we docked. Before I knew it, the davvies and longshoreman were tromping about the deck, untying the stevedore knotting, and unloading cargo. There was such a bustle of activity that before I'd scarcely come to terms with our voyage ending, half the dunnage was bare. The rest of the circus performers and workers had departed, leaving just us, the side show, huddling impatiently in the corner, getting the occasional stink-eye from the workers.

I peered out one of the portholes to gauge the weather. Clear and blue. "How are we meant to disembark? Carried out in a crate?" I asked.

Doug chortled. "There'd hardly be enough deckhands to shift me alone."

"We just walk out," said Pip. "Dockyards are too busy to cause trouble. At least not by daylight."

I had to wonder if there was some inexplicable truth to her statement, or whether she was just saying that. Perhaps there was an element of truth to her words, because we did disembark without incident, though I admit that seeing Pinkerton's goon from the warehouse again was at least a small comfort. I did have to wonder if he was the one who beat me over the head in the first place, but it's easy not to dwell on the past when you've had more than your fill of it.

Pinkerton had rented out an arena for his circus to use. It was a white stone building with tall, narrow Gothic windows and false buttresses. Pinkerton himself billed the show as "The newest acts you've never seen, performing for your divertisement in the New World!" I was glad to see we were not the main act. The real stars of the show were the pink horses, which stole plenty of spotlight time. They ran about in circles with acrobats standing atop them bareback, clinging on to their tethers for dear life. There was something familiar in the way the acrobats would smile, even though they were one sweaty palm away from imminent death at best. Colleen proved herself quite an acrobat as well, taking to a trapeze with elbows and knees.? ? Doug was painted up a bit like a clown, with a flowerpot for a hat, and after Amadeus and Pip wheeled around him on a tiny tricycle, with Amadeus standing on Pip's shoulders, Doug ate the tricycle. As I would come to learn, this whole ostentatious ceremony was a teaser for what Pinkerton had planned, but even so, the public roared with applause.

I had been allowed to watch from the wings, though I opted to disguise myself for the venture. The clowns and acrobats had an array of clothing, but what suited me was a glittery, hooded robe taken off for dramatic effect. Turned inside out, the glittery side could be hidden, and I was free to lurk in the shadows like some manner of opera ghost. The thrill, the excitement...it touched me in a way I hadn't foreseen. The music was all noise to me, but seeing those great beasts thunder past with a human being on their backs, not as a mere fancy but as a very real feat, I felt swept up in the moment.

Colleen offered to help with my act. I had become one half of "The Phantasmic Duo from the Dawn of Time". She and Fango agreed that my working with the Wolf-Boy would be tantamount to success. I supposed I could see the merit in that thought. We were both the most bestial of the whole side show. Fango yapped and barked, spinning round in circles on the dust to display her enthusiasm for the idea, but as Pinkerton travailed us southward across the country, she broke character to introduce me to the work. She was rather animated in her speech, and she spoke with such flexibility and ease that I almost thought her hair was a costume of some kind. I was surprised to learn her parents cared for her deeply, that her father had encouraged her to be so outgoing, but that they still bore misgivings about her joining the circus. She wanted me to act as a "lion" tamer for her. She would prowl around a big, circular cage as I defended myself with--of all things--a whip and a chair. Doug forewent eating chairs upon hearing this idea, though he said he had a craving for a chaise lounge. That was his bit--he would eat an expensive (read as: overpriced) couch bit by bit. Not all in one sitting, though he could surely have finished one in a few days' time. It seemed that, apart from trapeze and taming acts, we were a literal side show--something for pedestrians to gawp at as they passed through the fairgrounds.

We'd take an empty plot of land, a dusty field or some-such, and we would transform it into a spectacle of colorful tents and jugglers on stilts and illusionists. The tour was a big mess of horses and elephants and pigeons and rabbits and I did not envy the locals Pinkerton would sometimes hire to "give back to the local economy" as he put it. I slept in a hammock, and I remember spending my nights staring up at the tent ceiling, wondering how in damnation my life had managed to metamorphose in such a positive way. On one night in particular, somewhere roundabout the border between Tennessee and South Carolina, I even felt fear again. It came as a cold sting of surprise as I was staring at the ceiling, and I noticed a face, accompanied by a pair of hands, was watching me from a gap between the wall and roof. I sat up with a start as the face vanished, leaving me to wonder how long it had been watching me. There was a clamor of thuds and hushed yelling outside, and the patter of shoes on dirt receding fast. My initial guess was that some ne'er-do-wells had reckoned to steal some free looks at me and the rest of us as we slept.

If only that had been all they'd want to steal.

The next morning, we discovered a message had been painted onto the dirt outside our tent. By the time I awoke, the message read: "GIT hOeM BrIT Free". Pinkerton's right-hand goon was already shoveling the dirt to cover up the "KS". Pinkerton himself was enjoying a fine morning cigar, kissing it with rapidity as he puffed. He seemed, to me, agitated. For some reason, the so-called "FreeKS" didn't, myself included. I recall feeling my guard go up, but I deferred to the group. Perhaps it was just nice to have the option for a change.

I generalize, of course. Amadeus got rather red-faced, puffing out breath similar to Mr. Pinkerton. Pip patted his shoulder, calming him down. They said some things, but I was a bit distracted by Mr. Pinkerton.

"Now, there's no need to be alarmed," he said, extending his arms. He looked toward Fango and myself. "My esteemed performers need not fear the slings and arrows of ignorami."

So there wasn't much to do but carry on with business. We rehearsed as the circus was set up for the day, then performed our routines at noon, 3:00, and 6:00. The benefit of a traveling circus, as I saw it, was that you could replay more or less the same routine for an audience that hadn't seen it yet. The first time I stepped into the ring, I was met with shrieks and nervous, high-pitched cackles of laughter. My body boiled with embarrassment, seared with vulnerability that I hadn't had exposure to all the thousands of millennia I spent starving, drowning, suffocating, hunted. It was more than the sensation of being hunted. I could accept a predator wanting me for food. This audience followed some more abstract predatory hunger. But don my top hat and coat tails, and bear the practice to abstain from any accidental injury to my costar, and I could rule their world. I was their carrot and their stick. They craved the abomination that I was, how it gave them that rush of adrenaline they only get from defying their beliefs. They could turn their backs on mother nature, and horrify themselves at little to no extra effort on my part. I honestly hadn't expected them to applaud for us at the end of our routine, but they were captivated, or maybe secure in their delusions that they didn't truly believe I upset their reality. The applause was really for the Pinkerton Circus, I knew, because they would never in their right minds root for me, but I was able to feed off of it anyhow.

That burning sensation would return that evening. Shame would rise like a blaze from within, combusting into a kind of emotional terror. And physical terror. Fear always seems to hit hardest following comfort and joy. Colleen, Fango, and I had stayed up, patting ourselves on the back for another day done, and I blushed to their complements regarding my growth as a performer. I had long forgotten my life before I was made immortal, but there was some deeper sense of my being that I was now losing, to make that loss less of a yoke on my back. So it was that we dozed off, having forgotten of the warning that morning painted onto the Earth.

I remember flailing about, grasping at something unseen in my forgotten dreams. I was locked in a fitful sleep, being smothered and suffocated and unable to move, as one succumbs to in the rigors of nightmares. I awoke to a blinding flurry of color, wondering what had happened to my vision, wondering what in Hell that crackling noise was. My hammock broke beneath me and I fell to the ground with a thud that knocked the wind out of me. It was then I realized the tent had collapsed. Though it was known to billow in the wind, once it was no longer propped up, its deceptive weight could truly be felt. I felt the intense heat of flames, and woke right then to the mortal peril I was in.

We were in. I called out to my costars, scrambling on all fours while I tried to push up on the burning fabric. My arms were scalded by the touch, but a fury ran over me that I sometimes got when the throes of death were upon me. The frustration of inability strangled me, and it was pure rage that brought me to stand, to damn the fire, and find my friends.

I found Fango first. She was in an utter panic, to the point of being not much better than a wild animal, frightened and confused at what was happening. I had stumbled upon a hairy arm with my foot, and I crouched down to pull her to her knees. She stared at me with these wild eyes, and I was afraid I'd have to slap some sense into her. I screamed her name, and that appeared to get through to her. "Where's Colleen!?" I asked. "Where are the others?"

She merely shook her head, whimpering unintelligibly.

"Come on, to your feet!" I pulled on her hard, and she leapt to her feet, though still crouching. My other arm pushed the tent high as I fumbled about for the edge. The tent seemed so much larger than I remembered it, and with all the pushing and pulling I had to do, I found even heading in a straight line to be an arduous task. Every heart beat, I thought, they were dead, burning alive, and it was too late to help them. There was nothing I could do but trudge forward and fling Fango out into the open, if I could find it. A few steps later, and we breached the edge of the tent fabric, and I just about threw Fango out into the open. Gray and black smoke wafted everywhere, so I wasn't even certain we had made it, but the weight of the tent was gone.

For now. I turned back around without saying a word, but I could hear Fango shrieking behind me, "What are you doing!?"

I yelled back at her to get to safety, just before I disappeared under the tent once more. I probably should have bothered to look, or tried to pull the fabric away, but the top was a smoggy garden of flames--even I couldn't bear to touch it. I also didn't want to disorientate anyone remaining underneath. I didn't exactly have the luxury of foresight--not with so much adrenaline pumping through my veins.

I found Colleen next, or rather, she found me, as I was leapt upon with a flurry of limbs all cramped together. She cried, "It's you! It's you!"

I hugged her tight to my body, trembling with fear and listening to her heave for air that wasn't going to come. So many thoughts flashed through my mind, like how weird it was to feel the touch of a human being against me, and whether I should bother trying to speak to her. "Calm down! Have you seen anyone else?"

"No. No one," she said, sputtering out her words as she hyperventilated. She began to choke, to cough, and I realized I was getting lose amidst the mass of fabric. At last I found the edge once more, and was relieved to find Doug was already outside. Fango was crouched several yards away on the ground, just as frantic as I had left her. Colleen coughed again, a deep, chest-hewn rasp as I handed her off to Doug.

"Has anyone else made it out?" I asked.

"No. I don't think so," said Doug.

I noticed some of the circus workers had formed a chain, passing along buckets of water to hurl on the tent in desperation. I worried that would only weigh it down further, but I clambered back inside once more.

It was pure luck that I stumbled upon Pip. I just about tripped over her prone form. Her eyes were half open and glassy, and I was scared she was already dead. No, I was furious at the prospect. Amadeus emerged just a few feet from her, coughing and sputtering. He managed to say, "Help me," and I was not about to deny him. I grabbed Pip first in one arm, then Amadeus in the other. I wasn't able to hold the tent up over my head, and I felt as if my brain was baking. I was stumbled through, and began to emit those same deep, hoarse coughs that Colleen had. I tried to breathe, and found my lungs wouldn't accept anything. My body went stiff, and I fell onto my knees, very nearly dropping both Amadeus and Pip.

"No," I growled. "Not like this!"

I surged with anger and managed to step onto one foot. No more wandering around, I told myself. Just head in a direction until you're free. I strained with every step, wanting to explode with smoke. My eyes were in tremendous pain and I couldn't walk without shuddering something terrible. I lost the use of my right leg, and dropped back down onto one knee. Fine. I'd drag myself out.

And then, they were free. Doug was holding up the edge of the tent using his jacket to cover his hands, but I could see him coughing as well. I released Amadeus, who grabbed Pip under her arms and pulled her free.

_Good,_I thought. _That was everyone. Now let me die in peace._I fell to the ground, still underneath the tent flap.

I suppose someone dragged me out. I remember coming to with the flames died down and the world masked in thick, black smoke. I was dimly aware of Amadeus bringing Pip to, and the others staring at me with frightened expressions. My body was no longer my own to command. I flopped upward like a dying fish, heaving in a deep, toxic breath. I must've been blackened to a crisp. I writhed in agony, screaming, choking, crying. The words from that morning etched into my regenerating mind, and I knew there was not much time left. Not for this old corpse. I felt like I was dying over and over again, making a big fuss over what had happened so many times before, but at last I gave one last throw of myself, and landed on my back. I was still for a long moment, then began to shudder and writhe myself free of my blackened husk, violently born anew into the world, tearing at the air, at the ground, and wrenching myself free. I coughed up gobs of sputum and smoke, and stared at my coworkers. "Help me."

They looked at me in terror anew, never having witnessed the like before. I was a stranger to them, but this time they reviled at my appearance, at the spectacle of my rebirth, and I knew something was very, very wrong. Not with me, but about me.

Those angry words in the dirt. The face peeking in on me. The clear sabotage to our tent. All that progress I'd made, yet humanity still remained in fear of me. In fear of the unknown. And for all their fear of death and pain, they still followed the road of ignorance, of hate and violence. It was the hypocrisy of it all that turned them against me. Maybe I had asked for this, some day, millions of years ago, but not now. I had become something different, and in all that time, humanity had remained the same: Cowards and spiteful. Why couldn't they evolve?

What is taking you so long?