Chapter 5: The Master and Margarita

"I can't believe I can still remember half of the stuff we went through, huh, brother?" David says as he pours through a cigar box he produced from beneath his bed and chuckles. "Look here, at this picture! It's us in Vegas! That was the night we met Dixie."

"And she stole our wallets." Daniel morosely adds.

"No, she stole your wallet."

"Either way, she was a thief."

"Oh, pee-shaw, Danny Boy, that was thirty years ago. Do you ever let anything go?"

Daniel grumbles and rings his hands around the black steering wheel of the pickup truck. David just clucks his tongue and continues to shuffle through the box, handing me picture after picture once he's done eyeing them. I hold them in my lap, looking over them as well, but am mostly just thankful to ride in the cab this time around.

Many of the pictures are of them doing some amazing things. There are ones performing shot that Annie Oakley performed years ago and the famous shot made by James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff! But they are always smiling and having a good time.

Only in the pictures where the famous Blackjack is seen are the two men never smiling. Instead their eyes are turned away, or towards the camera, and their face seems stupid and blank. The only smiles made are by Blackjack's ominously dark wiry lips and those on the faces of nameless spectators crowding around.

"That man looks like a pedophile." I comment, looking intensely into his eyes.

"I would usually say for you to watch your language . . . but, I think you may be right." Daniel replies. "Not too many people knew Blackjack. He was always secretive, hidden away in a big ornate trailer he drove around."

"God, I still remember that hunk o' shit." David adds, chuckling. "I remember the night those kids egged it and spray painted 'freak' onto the side in big black letters."

"But do you also remember the next day we had three new animals for the show?" Daniel quickly adds.

I look up from the photo and to the man driving the pickup truck. His eyes are intensely focused forward, but his face is tensed up like a spring on a loaded mouse trap. Slightly confused, I check David's face and see him eyeing his brother with slits for eyes, his mouth having fallen gently open. Daniel sighs through his nostrils and then clears his throat.

"Anyways, the only time anyone ever saw him was during his performances and, on a few special occasions, outside doing parlor tricks for the people that were attracted to his little show."

"So he was a recluse, what does that mean?" I ask.

"I don't know, son . . . I--I really don't know." Daniel thoughtfully concludes.

Lifting my head up away from the piles of photographs compiled in my lap, I watch as Daniel guides the pickup truck off of the road and onto a dirt pathway leading through a large gateway made of old iron. Watching the iron gate pass overhead, I look to what is standing beyond.

Trailer upon trailer cover the flat, never-ending ground for what feels like miles around. They are all strangely colored, none matching another, and all as bright as the sun. Several are neon green with white and black swirls, while another has large steel pieces of art sticking from its top and seems to have been colored by throwing buckets of paint over it repeatedly.

There is even one that is shaped like a large clown's head, with reddened eyes and an opened mouth and protruding tongue forming a canopy where a counter sits to face the public. But a lot of the more impressive trailers disappear beyond crowds of people that seem to have spawned from the ground itself.

Despite being in the middle of nowhere, the people here seem to be from suburbs and huge urban areas. Many are dressed in tight jeans and hoodies that are torn in several places. Others have bleach-blonde hair and sport strange fashions only the city could think up. In all, there are few families, and I see no child that appears to be under fourteen. Maybe there's a reason for that.

But at the very center of the city that has sprung from the earth is a huge red and white tent, the same as any child could remember going to for animals and jugglers. But there is something strange about this tent. Its red isn't bright and the white seems to be tarnished and yellowed. Worst of all, the flag hanging from the very summit of the three ring circus tent is black and green.

A chill runs down my spine and I quickly notice it. There is something unsettling about this place, but what it is isn't exactly clear to me. Daniel and David obviously don't take any notice and guide the pickup truck down the dirt path until they can find a line of vehicles that has an open spot.

David leans forward and smiles and while he does so, he drops the cigar box into my lap. I jump from the surprise and look down to it. Lifting my free hand up, I hold the box in place as Daniel parks the car. He finds a spot not too far from the main tent and not too far from the road leading out of here.

As the truck rumbles forward, my eyes lift towards the rearview mirror. My eyes meet and suddenly I begin to get a bad feeling. The two eyes in the mirror narrow and the face pulls back. I see him there, sitting, waiting for me, crossing his legs and smiling. I lick my lips and keep quiet.

"You can't ignore me."

I look downwards and fiddle with the pictures and box in my lap. But I can still feel him, feel his eyes upon me. He won't go away; I can't make him go away. I just continue to avert my eyes, hoping he'll leave me alone. But I can feel him staring, feel his eyes upon me. I bite my tongue and wait.

My uncles pull the truck gently around the corner and slide it into the parking spot they've picked out. David watches happily out of the windows, his eyes flickering like that of a large child's. Daniel, always the polar opposite of his obviously younger brother, sullenly looks around and no doubt wonders about the place and groans.

"I'm telling you, Danny-Boy, this place is nothing but memories." David happily says as the truck jerks to a stop. "Maybe we'll even find Dixie still here."

"So what, David," Daniel asks as he pulls the hand brake and kills the engine, "so you can screw her again?"

"I'm just saying is all," David shrugs.

"You are a sick pervert, David. And sometimes I am not proud to be your brother."

I focus my eyes downwards on the photographs and feel a cold chill rush up my body once more. But this time it seems to numb me, making me wonder how long it'll be until he goes away, until he relents on his sadistic assault. But all the while, things seem to continue to spin around me.

Daniel and David both open up the doors at the same time and climb out, making the truck shift about on its suspension system. Their boots slam against the gravely ground that seems to cover the entire state and soon they scrunch around behind them. Then everything seems to go silent.

Suddenly a hand grabs my shoulder and my entire body tenses up. Without thinking about it, I launch a lot of the old photographs into the air and watch motionlessly as they float gently down inside the truck like falling snow. David laughs hysterically and then takes his hand away from me.

"I suppose you should clean up your mess." David says and slams shut the door.

I look at him and watch him begin to walk towards the front of the truck, his mouth hanging open and his pathetic laughter ringing about the area like a painful sound. I swallow hard as my wits begin to return to me. Turning towards my other uncle I see him standing in the door as if nothing happened, his face unemotional and his eyes hidden as always behind his glasses.

"I must concur with my idiotic brother." Daniel says. "Don't forget to lock the door before leaving the truck. We're going to go for the big top. Meet us at the front line, we'll wait for you."

"Yeah . . . sure, cool, all right, I'll . . . ugh . . . meet you there."

Daniel hums and nods his head before gently closing the door. As he slowly walks away and the light above begins to slowly dim, I calm myself down, take several cleansing breaths and let my head roll back in the seat. I don't want them to see me like that. It's bad enough I'm stuck with them for a month . . . I don't want to end up being in solitary confinement for that month.

The silence of the truck slowly becomes peaceful and I know that I have escaped him for a little while. He always knows how to follow me, no matter how far away I go. I try to escape him, but he's like a wizard or a creepy ghost that continues to haunt me still. I'm just glad I was able to force him away.

Opening my eyes, I lower my head and look to the cigar box. Feeling it with my hand, something I hadn't done simply because of fear for his arrival. It feels strangely heavy for a tin full of photographs. Shuffling it around I hear something scrape against the bottom.

I furrow my eyebrows and then reach into the pile with my other hand. Digging through the old waxy pictures, my fingers quickly find something hard down below. Grabbing a cylindrical shape, I pull it outwards and hold it up to the blue of the evening sky.

My jaw drops open when I see the form of a pistol. Flipping it around, I bring it up to my face and see that it is very old and very ornate. Its blued surface has been cut numerous times with swinging, looping rose stems and thorns which wrap the barrel and revolving chamber.

On the revolving barrel, each indentation between the shells is a letter. Revolving it, I find that it spells out, slowly, Daniel's first name. Its white pearl handle has been set in with a painting of a frontier valley filled with high grass and marked with a Conestoga wagon, with high rock formations in the background and topped with a blue, cloud-studded sky. On the bottom of the handle is written 'Henderson Brothers'.

Turning the hammer towards me, I run my fingers around the barrel and find it loaded, fully, with .357 Magnum rounds. I hold it up again and amaze myself, almost feeling energy from it flowing into me. I can almost feel the sun of the days my uncles used this. But at the same time I begin to feel cold, dark and black, something in the background, like an underlying noise.

Suddenly I pull the pistol into my body and look out of the windows, wondering if anybody has seen me. Then, looking downwards, I cannot help myself but shove it into my jacket and into one of the open pockets, where it nestles itself against my shirt and stays still.

Bending over, I gather up all of the photographs I have launched about the cab of the truck, and shove them down into the cigar box. Making sure they cover up the entire bottom of the box, wondering how long it would take for my uncles to discover my misdeed, I close the lid and then hide it away in the glove box.

I turn and open the driver's side door. Dropping onto the ground, I push down the lock and shut the door behind me. I zipper up my jacket a bit as a breeze rolls along the prairie, but don't close it fully. Sinking my hands into the stomach pockets, I turn and tromp towards the huge tent.

I pass by row after row of cars, many of them quite expensive. I spot Mercedes, BMWs, and brand new Corvettes yet at the same time see beat up pickup trucks, older model Oldsmobile Cieras, and even vans and cars from ages past. I just glance over them, guessing their owners, before I look away and continue onwards.

Looking forward, I drop my eyes to the ground as I step over mounts of matted elephant grass. My ears, on the other hand, listen intently to what is going on up ahead. I hear normal carnie sounds, like creepy music, dinging bells, blowing whistles and the pitching of terrible, rigged games, to the sounds of people milling about. I hear children crying, men yelling out at each other upon playing a game, and losing, women talking into cell phones and older kids taunting each other.

Lifting my head up, I look forward and watch the approaching madness. I step out of the rows of cars and begin to cross a graded area of dirt and gravel. A long dirt road stretches all the way to the front entrance of the huge tent. It is filled with all types of people, dressed in so many colors that it's impossible to tell how many. It is also lined with strange booths and venders.

I enter into the mass of people, but hug my arms into me as some of them get way too close to me. A kid in a strange t-shirt with Mickey Mouse ears on pushes by me with his mother close behind. A couple of drunken men almost clothesline me, but I duck under their swaying arms and to safety. Finally some skater kids, dressed in tight, black clothes and long black hair, push by me and rush ahead. One turns around and looks to me as his friends run ahead.

"Hey, freak, watch where you're going." He mocks.

"Fuck off you inbred piece of wangster shit! Go back to mommy's SUV so you can go back to the cul-de-sac you were spawned on!"

The kid looks at me with a shocked look on his face, as if he'd never been talked to that way before. Quickly looking away, he turns and runs to catch up with his friends, who are yelling at him and waving their hands. I stop walking and look down at my jacket, wondering why I just said that. But quickly I shrug it off and step to the side of the road.

This place, it's almost like a demented version of a suburban mall. There are so many cliques, so many groups of people that it's nauseating to all of the senses, including taste. I hate being around so many people. There are just way too many thoughts, too many words, too many thoughtless actions. I try to avoid places like these at all times.

But I continue forward anyways, hoping to be out of this mess as quickly as I can. But there is a long way between here and the tent and there is too much to take in between here and there to ignore it all. The venders that line this row, all in big metal trailers like atom bombs already exploded, because of strange, spiky, contorted displays and decorations.

But even worse are the things inside them. I pass by a hamburger stand and see the salesmen a tall and lanky gothic kid, wearing skimpy clothes and dyed green liberty spikes for hair. The next stand is a fat black man with short hair and a beard, who seems relatively normal until I see the earlobes hanging down to his stomach.

I shy away from them and pass the next stand, a pitch and toss place run by a woman whose makeup appears to have been applied wrong, slightly higher than it should. Her lips hang open and her clothes are all old and torn, like she was from a screwed up version of the fifties.

But as I pass each vender, one more screwed up than the last, I begin to notice something. None of them look to me as I pass by. Their eyes look blankly away, up towards the sky, as if nobody was even there, or they themselves weren't there. Their pupils were dark and bland, like they were dead. And the people there seemed not to even notice, as if everything was seen through a fog. I wonder what all the other people see here. Is it all normal to them? Or is it just me that's caught in a time forgotten?

I shake my head and then press forward, hoping to get out of this misery quickly. Shoving my hands into my pocket, I keep my eyes low and rush forward. People push past me and some eye me up as I walk, but for the most part I avoid myself a whole lot of frustration and pain.

"Over here."

I lift my head up and stop on a dime. Looking around, I see a hand go up and immediately I am able to see the normally-dressed men I call my uncles, standing near the front of the line leading into the huge tent. I sigh audibly as I feel my heart slink back into my chest and then begin forward.

David looks over Daniel's shoulder as I approach, looking towards the man selling and subsequently tearing tickets to those entering the big top. He smiles slightly, obviously excited about the whole ordeal, but constraining his actions. He's most likely doing that because of his brother.

In all honesty, I feel as if Daniel is the big, older brother of the two. He's calm, concise and has the intuition of an elderly man but cynical and angry. David, on the other hand, seems like he's short-sighted, impatient but fun-loving and a jokester. I never really considered that until now.

"Took you long enough, son," Daniel says to me, slightly irritated.

"Oh, Danny, let the poor boy alone. Besides, your truck would've been all screwy in a couple o' days, anyways. I mean, after shop day, it's basically trash anyways." David fights back without even turning in my direction.

I slink up to the two and then roll my eyes, turning them away from the two bickering brothers. I watch the line in front of us slink forward and forward until we near the man taking the tickets. He is a large ape-looking man in a strange suit, seemingly two or three sizes too tight.

His eyes, tiny compared to his skull, bore down on us, but he doesn't move a muscle at all. Daniel and David look up at him as if they've seen him before and, for all I know, they have. The ape then closes his hands and groans, low and slow.

"Thu-ree," The man drones.

"Yup," Dave replies

"En-side, nohw," The ape says in return.

He pops three tickets from a little metal canister hanging around his waste, tears them in half and gives them to us. Daniel takes them with a hand, shoves them into his pocket and we shuffle inside. I watch the ape hover over me and he watches me pass by, groaning and growling beneath his breath. I narrow my eyes and then turn away.

The three of us pas through a dark corridor and then emerge out into a huge lighted area. At the walls of the tent, in every direction save for a few where there are doorways to the outside, stand five-story bleachers made of wood. Rope and streamers hang from the ceiling of the seemingly menacing darkness of the ceiling, where light streams from can lights.

People are still shuffling in from two of four other doorways, heading up into the stands. I eye them up as we enter, but follow my uncles to the left and up a short flight of wooden stairs to our seats. They choose out a couple halfway up, so that we can get easily out if need be, as well as see everything.

As we sit down, I lean back and close my eyes. Daniel is silent as marble while David sits back, hums to himself and waits. For the longest time I hear the dull roar of the collective voices of probably thousands of people. They come in quickly, but it feels like forever that I am waiting.

Behind me I hear footsteps of those moving in, and then I hear them in front of me and to both sides. People sit down on creaky seats and talk, talk, talk. Then after awhile I hear them begin to settle down but do not think much of it. Finally, they silence completely and I see the light dim behind my eyelids.

Opening my eyes up, I suddenly find myself in complete and utter blackness, although I can still sense the presence of others around me. Sitting forward and pulling my legs into the seat, I stare forward as my eyes begin to adjust. But I can't make heads or tails of anything and hear little next to nothing.

Suddenly a light booms to life in the center of the room, shining down from a huge, hanging platform at the peak of the tent. It swings around the room until it centers upon a little red and white platform in the center of the dirt-floor arena. It flickers off for a second and when it appears, Blackjack is standing on top of it.

Immediately the crowd begins to cheer and clap for the man who materialized out of nowhere. But I do not clap, nor do I cheer. I simply look over the man who has put all of this together, the man they say is truly magic and can do anything with his hands. Daniel is still but David claps. Daniel's eyes, as I can see out of my peripheral, are wide open and his jaw hangs slack.

Slowly I examine this man and begin to feel a chill rush down my spine, just like it has several times here before. He is a tall man, probably six foot two, and he is as thin as a board. His arms and legs would appear as nothing if it weren't for the black suit he is wearing.

His entire body is covered with a very old-looking purely black suit and black tie. His feet, splayed apart like that of a standing easel, are covered with black wingtip shoes and his head is topped with a black top-hat. Only his shirt is white beneath a black vest and black jacket. To me he feels like a man who would tie a damsel to train tracks.

He raises his head up and then lifts his hands into the air and almost immediately his audience becomes silent, deathly silent. Throwing his right arm to the side, flames shoot from out of tips of his white-glove covered hand. Pulling his arm it, he swings his body around and throws his arms up and summons from nowhere a flock of eagles which scream and take flight into darkness, where they seemingly disappear.

Jumping from the platform, he does a flip into the air and then with his arms pulls up the ground to catch him as he falls. Making a slide, he grinds along the hardened rock and lands flat on the ground. Turning around on heel, he throws up his arm and lifts the barrel into the air and from beneath it begin to pour men and women, jugglers, fire-breathers, acrobats, show-fighters, animal-tamers, motorcyclists and an assortment of other people.

The crowd bursts into cheer and applause, many rising to their feet to show their enthusiasm. I cock my head to the side and let my head go limp. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I know well enough that I can't explain any of it. The barrel rises into the air until finally it disappears into nothing.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Blackjack's voice booms through the room.

He swings around on heel, his coat-tails swinging about, still holding his white-gloved hands in the air as his performers materialize from the ground, and stares out into the audience. The men and women watching this performer suddenly silence and seat themselves as if commanded.

"I bring to you the greatest carnival, nay, circus, not even circus; I bring to you the greatest--performance--on earth!" He projects his voice through the entire tent as if without any electronics. "I have gathered from the farthest corners of the earth the most talented men you will have ever seen! I bring you common jugglers, fire-breathers and acrobats, sure, as any circus would provide you! But I also bring you something different . . . something so special that no other circus or even show on earth could provide for you!"

He drops his arms and suddenly his performers rush out of sight, and everything is silent as if they had never existed in the first place, that they were instead simply an illusion. His white-gloved hands sit at ninety-degree angles to his body, but are still as metal. His face, thin, gaunt, pointy and seemingly young, smiles into the audience.

Then he steps forward and lifts a hand into the air, letting only two fingers and the thumb stick out. The click-clack of his wingtips seem to resonate through the silence of the room, despite there being a dirt floor. Lifting his hand higher, a light materializes from a corner of the room and begins to slowly lift towards the ceiling.

"I bring you monsters." He says calmly. "I bring you creatures of folk stories and fairy tales! I bring you golems; I bring to you giants, trolls, goblins, Minotaur . . . and werewolves."

Suddenly he throws his arms back up into the air and rolls back his head, his top hat sticking to his skull as if with glue. The light swooshes to the ceiling and suddenly shows a trapeze rope that has suddenly appeared, hoisted and held by four wooden posts that make it a huge square in the sky.

At one of the corners stands a gray figure with a long, silvery tail covered only with a red rest and white short-shorts. People begin to gasp and point at the figure all the way up there, it must be ten stories or higher. The figure raises its human-like arms into the sky and then rocks its head back like Blackjack.

"Do not fear her, my precious people, she_shant hurt you!" Blackjack yells. "In fact, she is the most _precious of the performers here at the show. I retire to my quarters now, my people, but I leave you in the most capable hands to ever work this show . . . or should I saw--claws. I present to you . . . Quicksilver!"

Suddenly he is gone is a poof of gray smoke and everybody looks towards the sky. The creature, whatever she is, suddenly steps forward and drops from the rope. Some people yell out as she plummets towards the earth. But only seconds later, she magically produces a white rope and whips it forward.

It wraps around the tightrope opposite of the one she just perilously leapt from and snaps closed. The creature, the girl, grabs the rope with both hands and swings forward. As she an almost perfect semicircle in the air, she drops something behind her that lights up with wonderful blues and reds and spells her name out.

The words then explode into a huge light show from which she barely escapes. But upon swinging back up onto the rope, she immediately drops from the rope again, swinging through the center of the inferno and breaking the word in two. She tosses into the air several devices which explode into another colorful light pattern which presents a sparkling rainbow with colors that I believe I haven't been before.

Relaxing back into the seat, I take in the entire opening act, watching this swift, graceful and intelligent creature bounce about the room. She does everything almost mechanically, as if having done this her entire life, which may be true. The only thing that really bothers ms is: what is she.

She can't be a werewolf; she's way too small, too thin, and too fragile to be a werewolf. Besides, her ears are too pointy, her long tail too bushy and her frame too small and constricted to have the mauling, menacing figure of the monster. She almost appears more like a fox, a silver fox.

The opening act is amazing. She uses some sort of exploding powder to create huge scenes and bright pictures. Some of them even seem to move about. These include horses and cowboys on the range, a landing of a bunch of Hueys landing on a Vietnam battlefield, a fireworks display, a pending storm, and, finally and most impressively, a scene of two red Chinese dragons violently chasing each other around the room.

In all honesty, what she makes seems kind of random, like snapshots of a hundred movies strewn together. But I don't mind and the rest of the audience doesn't seem to mind. It just in my mind solidifies the fact that this man, this Blackjack, may truly be magic, unless she is just an acrobat in a very, very detailed costume and what she just did were just lights.

Suddenly, as the act comes to an end, a tickling begins to bother me from the back of my head. I lean my head forward and cover my eyes up, but the tickling continues. A whisper enters my ears and I feel him coming to me again, this time without a looking glass. Leaning forward, I turn towards my uncles and smile.

"I'll be back," I say, "I gotta--ugh--hit up the bathroom."

"Well, what do you want, permission?" Daniel says and shrugs.

I just ignore that, climb to my feet and begin to run down the stairs after slipping between the knees and the back of the row of seats in front of us. Clambering down the wooden stairway, I watch as Quicksilver finishes her act and at the bottom I stop and watch her lower herself to the ground and bow.

I think I have an idea, I know I have an idea, I just need to get out of here. He won't leave me alone, not until he's satisfied, and never is he satisfied. Rushing out of the tent, I head for the nearest place where I know damned well I can be alone, well, as alone as he'll let me be.