Subject: [OTL]: HellsX 40 Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 04:37:04 -0700 (PDT) From: D Benway HellsX [40:45] Richard Grayson Produced by Benway. See notes for disclaimers. _______________________________________________________________________________ It was down in the Carolinas somewhere, back in the Thirties. We were circus folk, going from town to town, summers in the North, winters in the South. We were no strangers to the Nightkind, even then. The circus was a good place to hide. We were human to start with, Ma, Pa, and me. Ma got real sick back in '26. Think it was cancer, but they never said. All we knew was she was going. Pa said he couldn't live without her, so he did a deal. He never said what he did, and I don't think I want to know, but then one day Ma wasn't sick any more. We had to keep her in a cage, though, at first. One night I saw him feeding her. After that, he let her out. One night, I woke up and found her sitting on my bed, staring at me. She ran off, crying, when I asked her what she wanted. Pa found her and brought her back the next week. Ma was different after she's changed. Sometimes I'd catch her looking, like on that night. She never kissed Pa again, not like she had before, and they'd fight instead of doing other things on Saturday night after the show. One day I came back for lunch to find Pa in the cage. After he got better, they explained it all. I said I wanted to be like them, they said wait until I was grown up. No-one in the circus said anything. They had respect for what Ma and Pa did, and after the change they got lots better on the ropes. They didn't show it, not to the rubes. When they'd gone, there'd be a special show. The animal trainer would go wolf, the bearded lady would go cheetah, and Ma and Pa'd really give us a show. They'd do things no human could ever do. Sometimes they'd mess up, and fall all the way down. I screamed the first time I saw that. Then, they'd get up, go back up top again, and do it right. When I was 20, I decided I wanted to change. We were down South somewhere. I never liked the South. Even when it looked like the North, there was always the feeling that something real bad was going to happen. It was some factory town, lots of mills. We were there for a month, we had a week off, so they did it. I took to it, natural. The hunger was hard, but I knew it was coming, and they shared what they took off the elephants with me. They asked me if I'd missed it, meaning girls, and I said yes, but I didn't have the heart to tell them that wasn't what I was interested in. To live like that would have been hard, maybe I was better off without it. We had a guy from up North working the cages, a nigger. They said he smiled at a white woman, but then, they always said that. They came looking for him, and caught Pa feeding in the camel pen. That's what I found out later. I wasn't there, then. I saw the mob heading for the tents. I'd never seen that many people before, all at once. I ran after them, but it wasn't a big circus. When I got there, everything was burning. I couldn't find them, or anyone I knew. There were all these strangers around, carrying torches and knives and guns. Then I saw this boy, the kind I used to like, by the side of the road. He was blond, he was thin, he was tall, he only had this overall on. He was holding one of our posters in one hand, and he was pointing at me with the other. I could see them coming, screaming, down the street. I couldn't move. He was covered in blood, not his, but it was fresh. All I could think of doing was going over and licking it all off him. Then, this car pulls up, a big Packard with this guy my age at the wheel. He screams at me to get in and I do, because there's blood in there, too, all over the back seat. We get away. I can see him in the rear view mirror, staring at me as I feed off the seats. When we're far away, he stops but he doesn't make a run for it. Instead he asks me, what are you? That was how I met Thomas Wayne. He was a doctor, a Northerner on a holiday trip to the sunny South. He was on his way to Mississippi to see some writer, but he'd seen the flames and tried to help. I told him there was lots to do to help, and I helped him do it. I don't know if he saved me from our president then, maybe it was just some other blond kid. The second time he saved me was when he was old. He'd never wanted to change, and he'd never told me why. Maybe it was his wife, maybe it was the kid. I saw him once, sitting in their car, but he didn't see me. They came for him and his wife, took them away and killed them. I was off on a blood run. I told him I didn't need to go, that we had enough, but he lost his head and yelled at me. Then again, it might have been coincidence. From what Bruce said, no-one expected them to come. [Next: Change of Command]