Subject: [OTL]: TCP: Visits To The Freak Show (NC-17) Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 21:17:04 +1000 From: Amanda Sichter This story will offend people. However, it isn't what you think it is. It does, though, depict unpleasant, disturbing and adult themes and should not be read by anyone who will be offended by - well, I'll go with non-consensual sexual situations as I don't want to give the whole story away. I would really prefer, however, that people do not read the first seven paragraphs, decide I'm a sicko and send me e-mails saying so. Read all or nothing. There's also the odd swear-word but in the context I figure people aren't going to be all that perturbed. One last warning: this is a bad, naughty story that I am only posting due to my Muse attacking me until I finished the tale. The NC-17 warning is serious. Disclaimer: The underlying Universe belongs to Marvel. TCPs were invented/identified/codified by Kielle. The participants in this story belong to me. Quite frankly, I'd be extremely surprised if anyone ever wanted to borrow them. Anyway - I'm making no money and am not worth suing. So there. In fact, nerny-nerny to the copyright lawyers . Visits To The Freak Show You stalked her carefully. You met on the Internet, in a chat room. For weeks you talked to her along with everyone else, but over time she started to single you out. You were the one that was always sympathetic, always charming and caring, always gentle. By the time you invited her to a private chat room, she more than ready to join you. It went swiftly after that. Long private chats. E-mails back and forth. More intimate details, idle chit-chat, sweet nothings, finally confessions of adoration. The day she says she loves you is the day you organise to meet her. You meet at the circus. She's still somewhat wary, would only meet you in a public place. Before you go you wonder if she won't turn up, but she's there, waiting at the gate for you, wearing her hipster jeans and her Britney t-shirt just like she said she would. She said she was twelve. She looks eight. And you've got a hard-on you can barely conceal. But you aren't going to waste all that time you've spent, not when she's so close and lovely and young and innocent and if you take this slowly and carefully, she won't run away and she won't scream and you can take all that fresh innocence away. So you wait a good half-hour before you take her hand for the first time, looking to all the world around you like father and daughter. You can't help enjoying the naivety of the women who smile at the picture you make. If they could see what was inside your head, they'd tear your balls off with their fingernails, but they don't see it and you can tightly clutch her fingers in your own as she chatters on about the things all around her. She tries to act older, more sophisticated, seeking to impress you, but the illusion is shattered in the Freak Show, when she draws back from the displays, wraps her small hands around your biceps. You slide your arm down her back, hold her warm little body close against you. The man with the yellow fur and the eyes like a cat hisses in your direction and she shrinks again, clutching closer. You wonder whether he's a mutant or if he's some tricked up hairy guy with contact lenses. You used to like the Freak Show - trying to work out what they'd done to make a guy look like a cat or someone look half-woman, half-fish. These days you can't tell whether they're honest-to-god freaks or just ordinary mutants. But the freak is looking at you, at your arm around her, and his lips are drawn back in a snarl, a low, rumbling growl in his throat. Your arm spasms her tighter against you and you quickly hurry her away. You get your first kiss after the roller-coaster ride, her hand on your thigh, agonisingly close to your aching erection. She shrieks and clutches at you and in the hectic excitement afterwards you hold her close enough, kiss her cheek, her temple, for a fleeting second her mouth. By the end of the day her eyes are hopeless with adoration and she doesn't even resist when you suggest going back to a hotel room, for a drink, a swim. You've been so careful to keep your touches gentle and unthreatening but when you are alone in the room that changes. She tries at first, tries so hard to keep up with you, to be the adult she so desperately wants to be. She thinks she loves you and so she opens her lips below yours, tries inexpertly to match you. So little and so innocent and you can't wait to take away that innocence, to see the bruised, bewildered look in her eyes as you teach her exactly what an adult wants, as you make her into a grown-up. She doesn't move as you rub your hard crotch against hers, although her body stiffens as she feels the size of you against her slender thigh. When you slide your hand over her jeans, down into them, however, she slips out of your embrace, quicksilver fast. 'Annie,' you say, gently, pleading, but she backs against the wall, picks up her fluffy backpack, holds it tight against her chest, a defensive position. 'I'm not going to hurt you.' 'I don't know if this is a good idea,' she says, but her eyes plead with you, ask you for reassurance. 'I'll never hurt you,' you say and hold out a hand to her. 'Don't you trust me? Don't you love me?' She bites her lip, adorably, and nods. 'You know I love you,' she says, her voice small. 'Then don't you want to make me happy?' Reasonably, sweetly, nothing threatening. She nods again. 'Then come here. That'll make me happy.' You smile, curl your fingers, beckon her towards you. Slowly she peels herself away from the wall and then rushes into your arms, hugs you tightly for a moment, her hands full of backpack. You kiss her again, harder this time and your hands slide under her top, over non-existent breasts and you feel yourself stiffening again. 'Gonna fuck you, little girl,' you half-whisper, half-moan and she flinches in your arms again. 'Mark...,' she pleads. 'No... I don't think I want to do this.' 'Yes, you do,' you say and one hand is working on the button of her jeans, the other hovering just on her throat, nearly threatening, warning her. 'Just do what I say and I promise I won't hurt you.' 'No,' she says, 'you won't hurt me.' Her voice is hard and her hands move from behind you. There is a click and a hard metal circle presses against your brow, denting the flesh between your eyebrows. Astonished you look at her, realise she is pressing a gun against your forehead. Then her other arm come out from behind you and a silver badge is flashed beneath your nose. 'Mark Cleary,' she says. 'You are under arrest for attempting to solicit a person you believe to be a minor for the purpose of sexual intercourse.' Fear, paralysing painful fear through your whole body, no desire now, and it is all you can do to keep from soiling yourself. 'Who are you?' you manage to croak. 'Detective Second Grade Annie Knowles,' she responds and slides backwards off you, aiming the gun steadily at you. She slides a tape recorder out of the backpack, checks it quickly, nods in satisfaction. 'We've been after you for a while - found out about the little games you play. You like fucking little girls, Mark - at least five, so far. All I can say is they're going to love you in prison when you cop your fifteen-to-twenty. See how much you like being someone else's bitch.' You can't assimilate that, the threat of prison, of brutality too far away. 'But,' you say, 'you can't be a cop. You're twelve.' She smiles like a knife. 'You got your own private freak show, Mark,' she says, brittle, bright voice. 'I'm twenty-seven. You like fucking little girls. Tell me, how do you feel about fucking mutants?' Her gun never wavers as she smiles again, and that hard, bright-edged smile in the face of a girl scares you more than you have ever been scared before in your whole life. Closing your eyes you begin to weep. * * * * * 'Heard you picked up another one,' said Detective Sharna Williams. 'Yeah,' replied Annie. 'Mark Cleary. He's down in the holding cells. He confessed his teeny-tiny heart out.' 'Good.' Sharna's smile was feral. 'About time we put that fucker away.' She had interviewed some of the girls who had been brave enough to report their vicious rapes. Her expression softened as she looked down at Annie. 'How are you?' she asked. 'How did it go?' Annie shrugged, sipped her coffee. 'Didn't get his hands past my jeans. I'm okay.' She smiled up at Sharna, too brightly. 'Besides, it's the only way I get to meet men.' Sharna clapped her shoulder. 'You did great,' she said. 'You got him off the street. And you're the only detective I know that got the law changed just for them.' 'The joys of eternal youth,' said Annie, wryly. 'Lucky I got this job. Otherwise I'd've ended up in the freak show with all the others.' She had stopped growing at eight, stopped aging at twelve. 'You saying this place ain't a freak show?' Sharna feigned surprise. 'The boys will be pleased to hear.' 'I bet,' responded Annie, then sobered. 'I just get tired sometimes, Sharna. Tired of being a decoy for perverts.' She sighed, looked down at her outfit. 'Tired of wearing Britney t-shirts. Tired of going home alone.' 'Hey,' said Sharna softly. 'You'll find someone. There's someone out there for everyone. 'Yeah, I guess,' replied Annie and didn't add what she thought. ~And if he isn't fourteen then I'm going to have to arrest him.~ She smiled up at Sharna. 'Let me get changed and get some ID. I feel like getting drunk.' 'You're on,' said Sharna. In the locker-room Annie stared at herself in the mirror, at the face, the body, that hadn't changed in fifteen years. For an instant she saw the eyes of the man in the Freak Show, cat eyes that saw the monster who had stood beside her for what he was. For just a moment, one searing moment, she wanted to swap mutations with him, swap places with him, swap lives. 'I want to grow up,' she whispered into the mirror. 'I want to grow up and run away and join the circus.' Fairy godmother didn't appear, just like she hadn't in the last fifteen years. Too-old eyes over too-young mouth, smiling at herself in rueful amusement. 'Guess not,' she said and stripped off her Britney t-shirt. Annie held it in her hands for a moment, debated setting fire to it in protest at something, someone, some malign Fate that she was sure was laughing at her. Then she sighed and hung it neatly in her locker, ready for the next time. The End So there you have it. Don't know where it came from or why, but once I had the idea it would not go away until I had written it. I guess I just got intrigued by the idea of the flip-side of a mutation that gave you eternal youth. There are a million other psychological themes curled inside this story as well, but I guess I'll leave it up to the reader to try and find them. The stylistic similarities to Remember, When Falling are not intentional. However, I tried to write the first half of the story in both first and third person and neither of them would work, so this is what ended up coming out. The comment about Annie's law change relates to the fact that, under current laws in at least some states in the US, it is not a crime to solicit a person for sex even if you believe they are a minor, specifically seek them out because they are a minor, and then it turns out they aren't actually a minor. This is causing difficulties with policeman attempting to track down paedophiles through Net chat-rooms - although they can prove that the person sought to meet with a minor for the purposes of sexual intercourse, because the policeman at the other end of the modem wasn't a minor no crime has been committed. I can only hope this law is changed. Amanda wolf@ozdocs.net.au Worried you can't get published? The worst lines in published works - a series. "They were oil and water, but together they dressed the salad of life."