Chapter 6: Crime and Punishment

"What in God's name do you want?" I scream out at him.

I've found solitude in a house of mirrors just outside of the entrance to the big top. Even all of the employees have gone to see the show, obviously free of charge, and have left all of the stands alone. Only a couple of the food vendors stay to guard their wares. But the ones with wares that can't be stolen, like the house of mirrors, had their owners vacate the premises.

"You haven't forgotten, have you?" He demands.

He angrily marches around the house of the mirrors, appearing on one mirror and then jumping to another like magic. His arms are held behind his back and his face is red and angry, but his eyes never leave me. I just stand still and watch him move about, gasping for breath and twitching with anger.

"Forgotten what?"

"Forgotten what?! Your mother, you fucking idiot! Don't you remember that she's all alone, about to wed some piece of scum . . . and for you too, I don't know why . . .?"

He throws his arms up into the air and stops his marching, coming straight up to the edge of the looking glass and staring at me, his fingers pressed to the glass.

"I didn't forget."

He turns around and looks to me, frowning hard with his eyebrows furrowed, his eyes red as fire. Marching towards me, he lets loose his arms, which had been held tightly behind his back, and swings them to and fro like maces to a fight. As he nears the looking glass, he raises them up and slams his tightly curled fists against the glass.

I stumble backwards and loudly bump into the wall of mirrors just behind me. He stands at the mirror and gasps for air, snarling angrily and bearing his eyes on me like sights on a tank. His jacket hangs loosely around his frame and he seems to vibrate, truly shake with anger.

"You fucking idiot, you worthless piece of trash, you forget and you damned well know it!" He screams as loud as he can, spraying spittle all over his side of the looking glass. "I didn't forget."

He growls and then pushes his body away from the mirror. Lacing his fingers behind his back, he marches to and fro on the matching hallway on his side of the glass. His eyes dart around as if looking for some answer curled up on the floor and waiting for him to find it. Finally he stops pacing, sighs and closes his eyes.

"We don't know when the wedding is, do we? It could be at the end of the month or it could be this Saturday, for all we know." He is quiet for a long time before he resumes speaking. "We need to get back. But that'll be hard considering you didn't take any of the money you stockpiled in your room! And all you packed was worthless crap."

"I packed only the things I needed!" I fight back. "I packed clothes, books, things to keep my clean."

"It's all garbage, garbage, nothing but garbage!"

He turns towards me again and marches to the glass, but doesn't move any of his body. I keep my body up against the mirror and I quickly avert my eyes. I clench them tightly shut and then bear my teeth, trying to keep from weeping in sadness. The truth is that I did forget, at least for a while.

All I was focusing on was how bad a hand I had been dealt. All I was concerned with was how much hell I was to go through and how I could lessen it. The fact is that I had forgotten entirely about home and probably wouldn't have thought about it until much later. That is if he hadn't reminded me.

"So we'll have to work with what we have." He resumes speaking, calmly this time. "We know our uncles can't help us, they'd just keep us there. And because there's no way to get home without a vehicle, we'd have to find a way to secure a way home from someone else. Someone we can rely on, that is."

I lift my eyes up and watch him, rubbing his goateed chin slightly as he turns away from me. He strolls forward leisurely as he ponders to himself a way out of here for us. But for awhile all I can hear is the quiet tapping of his boots on the wooden floor. Little comes to me and I just simply wait.

Outside I hear the cheering of the crowd as the second act ends or the third one begins. Whatever is going on, it must be thoroughly impressive, for the men and women watching scream and cheer as loud as they can make their voices go. Suddenly I hear his pacing stop.

"That's it."

"What's it?" I ask as I look back to him.

"We've been brought to a powerful man, you dumb fuck. If there's anybody in this hillbilly hell that can help us . . . it's Blackjack."

He turns and strolls back towards me, his pace quickening with each step. He doesn't stop walking until he is right up beside the glass and staring at me with his twitching, angry eyes. I just gasp for breath and look at him, his lips growing into a sadistic smile as he looks to me.

"That man?"

"Yes, that man, you damned twit! He's the most powerful man we've ever seen, besides that fucking pile of garbage you'll soon be calling stepdad! If you can convince him to send you back, he'd probably wave his hands and you'd be back in your room, if not on a bus back east!"

"Why would he do that?"

"Well, if you've got a better plan, let's hear it, please. Oh, the great Jack Walker is going to come up with a plan of his own; how pathetic!"

"Fine, fine, I'll go and talk to him. But I don't know why he'd even consider helping me."

"If I saw you coming, I wouldn't help you either. But let's hope this Blackjack is a much kinder man than we hope."

I grumble, shove my hands down into my pocket and then step away from the mirror. Tilting my head down towards the ground, I keep my eyes from meeting his, and then quickly walk away. All I hear over the thumping of my boots against the venerable, warped wood is the gentle chuckle he makes when he gets his way.

"Don't screw this up, Jack."

I quickly find my way out of the unattended house of mirrors and quickly begin to search through the outsides of the tent. I follow its edge all the way around until I am as far from the parking lot as I can possibly get. I notice as I inch farther and farther away from the public parking, it begins to feel more and more like when a tourist goes into the bad parts of a city.

No longer do fancy, colorful lights hang from trailers and stands. No more do I see venders offering strange, probably lethal foods and rigged carnival games. I only seem to see private trailers that seem dark and older than the ground they sit on and strange, ugly men and women that work behind the scenes.

I follow a pathway that leads around the tent and look over the trailers to my right. They are all very dark and seemingly cold. Trash is strewn around their bases, crates, barrels and storage lockers fill the void between them. As I near the end of the street, where it bends to the right and leads away from the tent, I see several crates set up like a table.

Sitting on the crates, their bodies turned inwards, are a troupe of three gentlemen. They are all fat and short, with strange paints covering their faces and black, white, purple and pink clothing covering their bodies. They are like clowns, but more depressing and seemingly evil.

Held in their hands are cards and in the very center are bits of gold and silver, pressed into coins. Their sad, black makeup-ringed eyes never leave their gambling game, but I know they sense me coming, I can almost feel it in my gut. As I walk near them, ready to round the corner, I look to the one facing me.

He lifts his eyes to watch me pass for only a second before reverting them back to the hand holds close to his face, but I feel a strange chill rush through my body. I quickly look away and quicken my pace momentarily to hastily increase the distance between me and those strange, sad clowns.

When I turn the corner, I look to the end of the dirt path and slow my pace. Stopping in the center of the street, I look at the gigantic trailer that marks the end of the path I walk upon. It is very large and has been painted almost entirely purple, but a shade close to black. The windows are dark and filled with beads, the door open but with purple-tinted smoke coming from within, rolling like water and spilling onto the ground.

In my heart I get a sudden desire to turn tail and run, but, raising a hand to feel the fearsome beating of the organ in my chest, I swallow hard and begin forward. There is no way that I can go back now, I have to go forward. Shoving my hands back into my pockets, I clench my jaw shut and steam forward.

As I near the trailer, I begin to hear everything go silent. Looking around, I see nobody around, save for the front of a fleeting figure disappearing into the dank darkness of a secluded alleyway. Even the theatrics of the big top tent seem to dim down. In front of me I hear nothing at all and watch the purple haze I had seen turn into a hanging rug slipping from inside down the two wooden steps to the ground.

I stop walking at the edge of the dirt path and then look upwards into the open door. Inside it is dark save for a few flickering fragments of candles and a hanging chandelier that also burns brightly. Looking around, I try to take in as much of this mans' . . . home before I enter.

Immediately inside I see a small living room with a large table, wardrobe and chairs. Beyond that I can see hardly anything, as everything seems to be partitioned off with hanging purple curtains. On the round table in the center of the room is a collection of candles and strange things sitting on silver plates.

"Well, if you're going to come in, Jack, come in."

My body tenses up and I peer into the darkness for an answer. Slowly I begin to hear the slow rapping of hard-bottomed shoes on freshly polished wooden floors. I lift my hands from out of my pockets and place them on the metal doorway and slowly climb the rug-covered stairs into the trailer.

Upon entering the trailer, I let free the doorway and take several steps in. I stay within the light that shines in from outside, the moonlight seems brighter than the candlelight inside. Looking around I see nobody at all. But suddenly I begin to feel something pull at my jacket.

Stumbling forward, I look around for the meaning of all of this and then suddenly I am freed as I near the table at the center of the room. I grab hold of a chair to keep myself from falling over and hitting the floor. I gasp for breath and feel my heart beat in all of my extremities, all the way down to my fingertips.

"Good, most people that come looking for magic usually fall over." The voice continues to say. "That's the thing with all people that want to learn how to use magic . . . they're never very coordinated."

Suddenly Blackjack appears from the darkness in the corner, moving so silently and gracefully it almost appears as if he slid out on rollerblades. He nears the table and then looks to me with his blackened eyes, his needle-like moustache and goatee twisting upwards as he smiles.

This man, tall as a tree and thin as a blade, seems even more intimidated in person than from afar. His face is so clean and well-kept it almost seems like plastic. His mustache is so thin on his face that it appears, truly, like two needles adhered with superglue. His clothes all seem to blend together because of being one shade, save for his undershirt and gloves which are start, contrasting pearl white.

"Well, please, say something Mr. Walker or I may have to send you away empty handed." He says, his eyebrows lifting up and his head cocking to the side. "Magic is what you've come for, am I correct?"

"I--ugh--I . . . I don't . . . I don't want magic--I mean, I do, but."

"Please, sir, spit it out."

"I don't want to learn magic."

Blackjack's lips shut and he stands as straight as a board, his eyes looking over me as if I have just lied to him. But his eyes soon soften as he must accept that I am telling him the truth. Lifting a gloved hand to his face, he twists the end of his mustache and judges me.

"Well, if you don't want to learn magic, what do you want? Do you want me to tell you tomorrow's lottery number, or maybe the results of tonight's horse race, or maybe who your true love will be? Or is something even stupider and more selfish than that?"

"No, I don't want any of those." I say after a long pause.

Blackjack looks at me, almost pale white, astonished by what I've just said. As the color returns to his face, he gently smiles, his eyes narrowing as he looks over my face. I let my lips loosen and I feel like I compact down into myself. I stumble backwards a step as I look to this man.

"Then what, pray tell, do you want?"

I look down to the floor and try to compile my thoughts. I thought about what I was going to say, but, I lost all of that on the way here. More precisely, I lost all of it as I stepped up to the trailer this man resides in. I lick my lips, clear my throat and then swallow hard.

"I need you to help me get home."

"Get home?" He asks me, obviously amused by my request. "My boy, don't you know how to use a bus?"

"I don't have money."

"Oh, you don't have money. So you thought you'd come see the Wizard to see if he has a pair of Ruby Slippers lying around for you to go back to Kansas, have you?"

Blackjack puts his gloved fingers up onto the back of the chair he stands in front of and runs them over the wood, tapping each finger onto it one by one. It almost sounds like rain coming down on glass as he moves his fingers about. I watch them tap and then look up at their owner.

"You're a strange little man, do you know that Jack?'

"Well, I don't know what you mean by weird. Have you tied any damsels to any railroad tracks lately?" I say the last part without even thinking and suddenly wish I hadn't.

Looking to Blackjack, I watch his lips stretch into a smile and he tilts his head forward, letting his black top hat brighten in the candlelight. I just try to keep myself calm, wondering what he could possibly be thinking. Suddenly he stops smiling and turns way, strolling around the table, his hands working away in the air.

"Well, I am a very busy man, you must understand this truly. I have so many other things going on and my time is short and already stretched to the point of breaking already." He suddenly stops to my right, his back to me and looks towards a wardrobe up against a wall in front of him. "But . . . I could find the time to fulfill such a petty and _strange_request as yours."

"Please, do so. I need to get home quickly and I fear there is no other way to do it than through you." I say.

Blackjack is silent for a time and I see his mustache, which pokes out to the side of his face just gently, twist upwards as he smiles. His hands lower to his side and suddenly he produces a pen, an old fashioned fountain kind with a plume of feather at the end, in one and a long scroll in the other.

Turning around, he quickly walks back to the table and slams the piece of paper down onto the table. I quickly turn my eyes towards it and see its print is tiny and seemingly grows tinier as it goes down. At the very bottom is a dotted line beside Blackjack's real name signed in pen.

"This little contract says that I will fulfill my end of transporting you home in return for some menial tasks. It's nothing more than quid pro quo, I assure you, and is required by anybody who wants anything from me. I've learned over the years that such a thing is required, as I hope you can understand, Mr. Walker."

"I--ugh--"

Blackjack leans forward and leans me forward by pushing down on my back. As I lean closer and closer to the parchment, I begin to try to read what is written at the top. I begin and read as quickly as I can, but, soon it strangely becomes very difficult. My head begins to hurt and my eyes begin to water.

"Just sign on the dotted line, Mr. Walker, and we'll have our deal underway quickly." Blackjack coos.

He shoves towards me the silvery pen with the purple plume. I continue to try to read the lines, but, I can't make heads or tails of anything. So, shaking my head gently, I blink repeatedly and just accept it. I lift a hand from the back of the chair and then reach towards the pen.

Suddenly Blackjack pricks me on the thumb with the end of the pen and snatches up some blood. He swings the pen around and then drops several blips of blood onto the browning, aged paper. As the blood splashes down, it suddenly begins to stretch out into my signature, as if by magic.

I watch everything happen silently, my mind wondering exactly what is going on, but my eyes unable to provide a solid answer. The blood streams across the paper, swooping and stretching until it finally settles and becomes exactly as melted waxed hardened from age.

"There, now everything is complete."

I lift my hand up in front of my eyes and watch the blood on my thumb coagulate and then slowly draw back into my skin before it seals over, appearing as if it had never been broken in the first place. I gasp for a bit of air in surprise as I begin to feel a bit of pain in my hand.

I grunt and clench my jaw as a throbbing pain engulfs my hand and then my arm, slowly working its way through my body as if it were a slowly spreading poison. I draw my arm into my jacket and press it to my stomach as the pain intensifies. Looking upwards, I search for an answer from Blackjack, who has tilted his head forward as if expecting something from me, the black abysses he calls eyes examining me thoroughly.

"What's going on, I thought we had a deal?"

"We did have a deal, dear boy, but, as per the agreement you so quickly agreed to, you owe me your body. Didn't you read the agreement, son? I'm going to return you home, I assure you of that, but you owe me something in return."

He smirks, his mustache twisting upwards as if he willed it to. Then he turns and begins to stroll slowly back away from me, his hands clenched behind his lower back, and towards the hanging purple curtain. As he nears it, the curtains slowly part and he disappears into the darkness beyond them.

I stumble forward, wishing for more of an answer than that, but fall onto the ground as the pain shoots down into my legs. As I crash to the ground my head clonks off of the wood, forcing me to curl up as my body screams with ever increasing anguish. My hands grab out at the floor in front of me, becoming something my eyes can fixate on.

My hands seem to be extremely weak and they shake uncontrollably. Lifting them from the ground, I turn the palms towards me and watch them shake about. My fear climbs higher and a voice cries out at me as to what I've done, no doubt him. But I just shake my head and force him away.

Suddenly my skin begins to darken and begins to become slowly hairier. A few audible cracks alert me to the spikes that jut from the end of my fingers. I grunt as the sensation hits my mind like a freight train. I don't understand what's going on, what has that man done to me? What have I sold away?

The growing of this hair, a tingling sensation on the top of my skin, spreads slowly upwards away from the hands and towards the body. It's a sensation I have never felt before, likened only to the same pins-and-needles feeling people get when a limb has fallen asleep. I can feel that sensation everywhere, slowly on the arms and then sprouting on my legs and body too.

In my chest my heart pounds louder and louder, from a small snare drum to the monotonous fire of anti-aircraft gun at Flying Fortresses above. My lungs draw and force air through my mouth, burning as if working harder will dampen the pain I am beginning to feel throughout my body.

The first in a series of painful changes I feel on my feet. It is a throbbing pain overall, but is riddled with acute spikes, and feels to me as if my feet had been tied to trucks going in opposite directions, stretching and pulling at the bones. I slam my boots against the ground as I begin to feel them slipping off, as if to lessen the pain, but it does nothing.

My toes feel as if they are being butchered part, pulled by angry demons, in a way that is hard to explain in my current state. It is a terrible burning sensation, ripping, tearing, stretching and moving. I constantly hear cracking and tearing noises that turn my stomach and make me wish for death or unconsciousness, whichever will come quickest.

But there is no reprieve in store for me, only new and unaccustomed pains. Behind me I suddenly feel a painful strike on my spine. As if somebody had just thrust a saber into my pelvis, something begins to pull outwards. With a burning, cracking sensation, I feel something begin to grow, swishing about and tearing at my clothes.

All the while the same pins-and-needles sensation spreads onto my chest and begins down to my legs, joining in the center of my body. My shirt audibly rips as something pushes through it behind me. Then something slams against the ground, sending terrible waves of pain onto my mind.

I yell out in pure agony, unable to keep quiet and keep hidden my feelings of anguish, I thrash about on the ground before holding myself again and biting down onto my lips. In fear, with tears beginning to streak down my face, I pray to whatever deity will answer me, crying out for mercy mentally.

But whatever this is, whatever that man did to me, it refuses to obey my requests and continues with whatever punishment has been beset upon me. I chomp down onto my lip harder as something tingles in my head. Then a slow terrible ache begins to sound on my head and on my face, my entire face.

It feels as if my ears have suddenly been harpooned by Ishmael who has begun to reel in his coveted catch. My ears pull towards the top of my skull, the skin strangely moving with it, the bone cracking and my hearing surprisingly unaffected. I roll back my head and announce the torment I am forced to endure to the world, but no one answers.

I wrap harder my arms around my body as my eyelids clench shut, squeezing so hard I can almost see blood on my corneas. But my torment isn't over, far from it. Something squeezes at my nose and my chin and begins to pull outwards; likened to nothing I can even think of. Nothing can be likened to what I feel.

My jaws open and I yell again, tears rushing into my mouth and dropping salty on a moving, changing tongue. Writhing about on the floor, I shake around, hoping to put out the fire that has engulfed me. A snapping sound hits my ears from my face and suddenly I lay flat on the ground, on my back.

My mind spins and becomes utterly confused. The pain and anguish begins to go down, but, I begin to lose my touch with the world. The sounds around me become tinny and plastic and then cease entirely. I smell and taste nothing; I begin to become numbed to the painful death I am enduring. My mind spirals and then crashes into a black oily pool. My body disappears from my perception and I quietly gasp my last breaths. The last thing that runs through my mind is pure, utter confusion.