Human Nature (484 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: -0.33 on 5 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Casey_Jones (View user info) at 2004-12-05 12:00:14 EST
The crowd stood and listened intently as Stanley Barker, a man of barely thirty took the stage before them on an unseasonably chilly August night. A breeze blew almost as hard as the air from his lungs as he sold them on his attraction, just as he had every other town in the Dust Bowl. The breeze made the torches around the stage dance and flicker.
"Step right up! Enter the Menagerie, if you dare! Only I know what rejects of God's Creation dwell within the tent behind me! For only fifty cents, you may find out for yourself!" Barker exclaimed. The crowd slowly lined up at the entrance to the tent, two quarters in every left hand, ready to pay the tall man in the red tailed coat. When all had paid the requisite fee, Stanley pulled back the curtain, tied it off, and allowed the freaks into his tent.
First stop was Bobby, the Hermaphroditic Half-Man. The crowd gawked and awed as Bobby just sat and let the spectacle of it all do the talking. After all, it would be a bad idea to talk and ruin the effect. Bobby turned one way to show the feminine side, in a white flowing dress and heel, with primped blonde hair. Turning the other way showed the masculine, with a half of a three piece suit, tie, wingtip shoe and all. Bobby's black hair on this side was slicked back and to the side, and a pencil-thin mustache lie on Bobby's lip.
The crowd was sold from then on, thought Barker. Bobby always sold them pretty well as an opener.
Next up was Yvan, the Germanic strongman. A well over six-foot tall burly man, he could've picked up a chair and made it seem like a feat of strength. He was always a good seller to a gullible audience. Like two year olds seeing the ocean for the first time, the rubes thought it was all something magical.
Barker led them from Yvan to Jessica, the bearded woman. Her red flowing hair was complemented nicely by the large growth of facial hair from ear to ear.
"Why doesn't someone just buy her a razor?", one of the crowd questioned under her breath.
"We tried that. The blade dulled halfway through, and then she just looked silly.", replied Barker, thinking quickly. The crowd accepted the explanation with a laugh, and moved on.
From the bearded woman the audience went to Red, the Lobster Man. This is where Barker made his pitching skills perfect.
"Here we have Red, the Lobster Man. God so chose this man to carry the burden of deformed hands, and he has so graciously offered the sight to others as a warning: your children shall suffer the sins you have committed, so do be careful in life.", he sold each and every one of them with that little speech. The entire mob of outsiders was eating out of his hand, and he basked in the glory of it all.
Then came the topper; the one that no one couldn't be sold on. Jo-Jo.
"Our final stop on the Tour of Freaks is none other than our own pride and joy, the dog-faced man, Jo-Jo! Do watch that he doesn't bite you; he's had all his shots, but we just want to make sure for your own safety.", Barker said with a grin. With that word he flew back the final curtain to Jo-Jo's pen, and behind a small fence sat a man with drooping face, almost as a bulldog's, chained to a small post in the back of the pen. On all fours, he emitted snarls and canine sounds like only the real best friend of man could do. He padded around the pen, coming close to the fence and straining the chain to its limits. The crowd backed away from the fence immediately, in shock of the man-beast before them.
"It's horrible!" one customer gasped.
"How is that possible?" another questioned.
"Is he dangerous?" asked yet another.
"To answer all of you", said Barker, "We know, we have no clue as to why God cursed any of us with these burdens, and he's only dangerous if you rub his hair the wrong way." Barker then took out a small piece of steak, and rubbed the back of Jo-Jo's head as he fed it into his mouth. Jo-Jo lapped it up and chewed open-mouthed so that everyone could gawk at his bestial dining habits. "Good job boy. Take a rest.", Barker then said.
"And with that ladies and gentlemen, I have but only one more sight to show you, and that is the Egress. If you'd just follow me through this last tent flap, you shall see a sight unlike any you have ever seen. I promise." With the crowd enthralled by his words, Barker led them through the tent flap—and out the back of the tent to a large mirror, large enough so that everyone could see themselves in shock and horror by what they had just paid fifty cents to see. "Good night ladies and gentlemen. We here with the Tour of Freaks thank you for your patronage, and wish to inform you that we will be here outside of town for three more days, if you would like a repeat showing."
Then Barker left them to ponder themselves in the mirror, seeing the same view that the performers in the tent had witnessed; humanity at its worst.
"Alright everyone! Great show! Let's have dinner and call it a night!", Barker said as he loosened his collar and unbuttoned his dress shirt. He unchained Jo-Jo, and led the Dog-Faced Man to a part of the tent he hadn't shown the audience before: the dressing room. The two life-long friends walked back into the room, where Jessica was looking for her spirit gum remover.
"Has anyone seen my remover? It's a simple bottle with a screw cap", she asked.
"Oh, sorry", said Red. "I borrowed it to get off my claws. I just ran out myself. My hand was starting to cramp up there for awhile."
"Well my face is itchier than if a swarm of mosquitoes had gotten to it. This beard has got to come off", Jessica responded. The beard had been bothering her more and more with every performance.
"Would you mind rubbing my shoulder for me? I think I pulled something," Yvan asked her. "That weight really hurts."
"Sure dear. Just put your feet up and I'll be right with you", Jessica said as she pulled off her glued-down beard to begin scratching her irritated skin. "Hey Stanley, I think I'm having an allergic reaction to the hair on this beard."
"That can't be. It's horse hair," Barker said. "Are you allergic to animals?"
"Well I always had a problem with my Aunt Dora's cat."
"Wish you would've told me Jess. I could've had a synthetic one made for you," Barker said as he looked over the beard and then Jessica's reddened face. "I'll go into the next town over in the morning and try to find a suitable replacement."
Jessica smiled. "Thanks Stan."
Stan smiled back to Jessica, then walked over to where Bobby was already half out of her costume. He came up behind her, put his arms around her, kissed her on the neck, and said "Great show tonight. There's always a reason I put you up front, you know."
She slipped off the suit half of the costume and reached for a full dress as she turned to face him. "Because I can play a good she-male?" she responded with a smile. He reached around her again and this time kissed her on the lips. "That too," he said to her.
After dinner, the troupe relaxed by a small stove with a comforting log fire inside. Jo-Jo played violin and Red played a squeezebox while Yvan and Jessica and Bobby and Stanley danced slowly and closely. They almost didn't realize that a young man had snuck into their hideaway and seen them out of costume.
"You know, we'd have a lot less trouble doing this if you wouldn't keep insisting on leading," Barker whispered to Bobby.
"Aaaah!" screamed Jessica in shock of the sudden sight of the lad. Surprised, the boy fled out the same flap he had come in through, and had almost made it to the "Egress" that Barker had referred to earlier before Barker himself caught him by the back of the shirt and pulled him back in.
"Why did you sneak in here?" Barker inquired of the boy.
"I... I just wanted to see if you could use another person for your show", the boy answered, still frightened.
"Well before we even talk business, I'll need to know your name."
"Peter. Peter Barnard, sir. My friends call me Petey."
"Petey Barnard? You see, that's too much of a mouthful for a freak to go by. What's say we shorten that last name to just Barnum? That's of course, if you can actually do anything that'll interest me," Barker said, trying to dissuade the boy from interest.
"Barnum'll suit me just fine, sir. Though I must tell you, I'm nothing fantastic. Nothing like your Tour of Freaks in there."
"Well I'll tell you, I could always use an assistant. But you'd better have a good reason for wanting to join up with us. We're kind of picky, if couldn't already tell from the show", Barker replied, amused.
The boy took a moment to ponder a response. Then a flash came over his face as he realized he could blackmail his way in; he had seen the troupe without their costumes.
"I'll expose every one of you for a fraud, and you'll be run out of town!," Petey threatened.
Barker replied, "Go ahead. Though I have to warn you, we're not frauds. We're performers. You paid to see a performance of sorts; whatever you took from it is beyond my control. We never said we were all actual freaks; you just assumed such."
Petey was taken slightly aback by Stanley calling his bluff.
"And besides," he continued "not all of us use make up to entertain. Come on. I'll show you what I mean."
With that, he led the boy back into the hideaway of the tent, and introduced him to the rest of the menagerie.
"Everyone, I'd like you to meet our new show assistant, Petey Barnum. Petey, I'm sure you recognize most of the people here as you paid to earlier: Yvan, the strongman; Jessica the no-longer bearded woman, who is Yvan's wife; Bobby, the quite all-female Hermaphrodite and also my steady. Red is the one on the squeezebox, and you can see his claws are not an issue at the moment. Then comes everyone's favorite: Jo-Jo. He's the only real one out of all of us here at Tour of Freaks, but we don't let anyone else know that."
"You're not really freaks? Any of you besides the dog-faced man? You're all normal?" Petey asked, puzzled and slightly shocked.
"Kid, normal's just what you're used to," replied Red. "To us, you're the freak. We feel like we're gettin' paid to see you every night. We're normally more shocked by the customers than they are of us."
"But you lie to people," Petey countered.
"We give them what they pay for: a good shock and the comforting feeling of 'At least that isn't me up there", Jessica chimed in. "It's the only thing that can make people feel better about themselves usually."
Barker looked at Petey, and could see the boy didn't quite understand. He turned him around, sat him down at the vanity table where Red had taken off his claws. Reaching around Petey, Barker picked up the prosthetic pieces and held them up.
"Look," he said. "We're not doing anything wrong here. We put on a show, sell the audience, and everyone winds up happy in the end. They go home shocked, we leave town a few day s later and a few dollars richer. The choice at this point is yours: you can join up with us and learn the way of the sideshow freak, or you can go home, rat us out, and nobody's happy. So what'll it be?"
Petey sat and considered the prospect of working for a roving band of fake freaks, and slowly came to like the idea. His home was nothing worth staying with, what with his father being drunk all the time and his mother being absent most of his life. He looked up to Barker, and said "When do I start?"
"Excellent. I've been on the lookout for a new assistant since St. Louis," Barker replied. "You start immediately. When we have shows, I'll sell the audience on the outside, and you take their money and sell 'em on the inside. All you have to do is play up the players, and we're set. Everything copasetic?"
"....Sure, I guess. But what's the story with all of you here? How'd you all end up doing this and not actually be freaks yourselves?" asked Petey.
Barker took the boy back to where the other players had been sitting, and told Petey to sit. He took a seat himself, and began to explain the inner workings of the Tour of Freaks. He told the boy of how he had come to acquire the freakshow from a close relative, who in retirement decided that Barker himself would make a good showman for the Tour. This same close relative let Barker in on the secret, as he had done with Petey just a moment ago. This in turn set up Petey to inherit the freakshow when Barker retired.
"Until I retire," Barker said "You will be my apprentice and I'll teach you how to sell an audience."
"Okay," Petey said. "But how did you all come together?"
"Well I'll start with the first one in the freakshow. When I first got the Tour, it only had one member: Jo-Jo. That was ten years ago, and we've been friends ever since. I can't think of a single day in the last decade of my life that Jo-Jo wasn't in, and when he finally retires from the life, it'll be a sad, sad day."
"What about Yvan? And Jessica? And Red? And Bobby?"
"Well Yvan I picked up while in New York with Jo-Jo. He was a professional wrestler, and a great showman at that. He went by the name of... what was it again, Yvan? The Teutonic Thrasher?"
"The Teutonic Titan," Yvan answered. "I am proud of my heritage, and would appreciate it if you would show respect for it."
"Don't mind him. He couldn't actually lift his own boots without pulling something," Barker said.
"Jessica I met while in New Jersey. She was a nurse in this small hospital in a shore town. I remember looking at her in just the right light and thinking, 'With a beard, she'd make me some real money.' I proposed the idea to her, and after about two weeks, she finally caved in. Since then she's made about twice her usual earnings at the hospital. Isn't that right Jess?"
"You still owe me money from the second year I was with you," Jessica responded, annoyed.
"Jessica, you know money's tight nowadays; the crash has been hardest on our kind, the cash business. I can barely make even with our take lately....We'll finish this later. I have to finish my story."
"Sure. You could always make time for Bobby once she came in the picture, but before then it was all about me. Well why not anymore??" Jessica stormed off, in a huff.
"Yvan, could you please?" Barker asked nicely of the strongman.
"What was that all about?", Bobby asked accusingly.
"What was what all about?" Barker asked, stalling for time.
"Before I came in the picture, it was all about her? You never told me you had anything with her!"
"I.. uh.,.... Didn't think that it was important to our relationship," Barker said as he stumbled both backward and over his own words. "Besides, I'm with you now. I'd never leave you for her. Can you imagine how awkward that'd make this tent?", he tried to defend himself.
Bobby just scoffed out of shock and stormed off out of the tent. Barker sat down, feeling drained from the experience, and Petey sat quietly acting as if he hadn't noticed what had happened.
"Bobby and I met in Chicago, around five years ago," Barker said, still reeling. "She was a stripper. Liked to come out in full men's suits and take them off, a layer at a time. Thing was, you could barely tell she was a woman underneath that suit 'til it came off. Naturally I saw potential," he explained to a slightly less bewildered Petey.
"I explained she'd make more money with me, and she wanted to come along almost immediately," he continued. "About two years ago, we figured out we were attracted to each other, and started dating. We've been together ever since."
"Then why don't you go after her, if she's leaving like that?," Petey asked him.
"She'll come back after she has a shouting match with Jess. They've had an unspoken rivalry for years anyway. This'll just get it out in the open and hopefully over with. Besides, there's no way I'm getting in the middle of that. I'll leave it to Yvan."
"So what do I do now?", Petey asked, enthusiastically.
"You can go to bed, Petey. Since the introductions are through, and it's late, we all should probably head off. I'll start your education in the morning. No tests, I promise", Barker joked.
When morning came, Barker sent the boy to the town to buy a couple of chickens for dinner, as he was probably going to be best-received of the group. The farmer's market only had live ones, so Barker had the boy put them in a box behind the tent for later. The he started with the instruction.
"Now, when you enter the stage, always do it in a grand way," Barker explained to the boy. "You never just want to walk on stage and expect an audience to pay attention. You have to command their attention, or you'll lose it," he said.
That night was Petey's first show. Bobby opened, as usual, and Jo-Jo closed. The crowd was taking it all in rather well, and Petey was feeling confident of his learning what Barker had told him to do.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the near-end of our tour for tonight. The final sight I have to show you is the Egress," Petey said with a sly grin. He pulled back the curtain till everyone was outside, flapped it shut, and left them to ponder their own horrified faces at the mirror at the back of the tent. With a job well done, he watched until the last of the customers had gone. A few disgruntled murmurs escaped the crowd, but in general all were pretty satisfied.
"We're clear!", he shouted to the troupe. "Mr. Barker, how'd I do for my first time? Was I too much?"
"Kid, first of all: you're a natural," Barker replied. "Second of all: you're never too much for an audience. And third, call me Stan. Everyone else does."
"Okay... Stan...", the boy replied with a proud smile.
The performers all went into the dressing room to get out of their costumes once more, and Petey followed to get back into comfortable clothes, as Barker's clothes were a little tight on him. "A little tight is okay," Barker had told him. "It makes you look bigger. If they were loose, you'd look small; and no one pays attention to a small spectacle."
After everyone had gotten undressed and re-dressed, they sat by the stove to warm up and relax before dinner.
"I've heard of a heat wave... but a cold wave I've never heard of," said Yvan, as he rubbed his hands closer to the heat of the stove.
"Hey freaks! We want our money back!" a voice shouted from outside the tent.
"Yeah! That Egress was a rip-off!" said another.
The troupe all looked around at each other, and realized they were vulnerable; none of them were still in costume. Barker stood, and walked toward the front of the tent.
"I'll handle this," he said as he left. "There's always one or two like this in every town."
"I'll come and help," Jo-Jo said. "A freak always gets a normal to back down."
As they exited the tent together, the two young men who had called them out turned to face them. "Hey freaks! Give us a refund! We didn't pay to look in a mirror!"
"The sign above the entrance clearly says 'No refunds for any reason'. I'm standing by that," Barker replied to the disgruntled man.
"Fine," the second man snapped back. "Then just give us all your money!".
And on that he pulled a large knife and ran toward Barker. Jo-Jo tried to stop him, and caught the blade between his ribs. Shock ran across his face, then drained, as Jo-Jo dropped to the ground in front of his horrified best friend. The two disgruntled men fled in fear for the deed that had just been committed. Barker screamed in shock and fear for Jo-Jo's life as his friend lay dying in his arms.
The commotion outside, along with the scream, caused the tent to empty and the troupe to gather around Barker and try to get Jo-Jo inside where they could try to tend to his wounds.
Jessica's nursing skills could not do enough to save him, unfortunately, and the only hospital was too far away to reach in time. Jo-Jo died later that night, with Barker holding his hand through it all. With Yvan's help, Stanley buried his best friend's body outside the tent, some twenty five yards behind it. In a small and short ceremony, they laid the dog-faced man's body to rest under an oak tree, and said their final good-byes. Barker stayed behind for a private moment.
He stood silently for a few minutes, still coming to terms with what had happened. He broke the silence with only one whispered sentence: "I'm sorry....Dad."
The next day's show was cancelled to allow some time for the performers, and namely the frontman, to heal. As sundown fell the troupe grew hungry, so Barker told Petey to go and kill a chicken to prepare for dinner. Petey eagerly agreed, willing to do anything to help his employer.
Barker sat quietly with the other performers for a few minutes, and then he realized something. Petey had forgotten to take the hatchet to cut off the chicken's heads before they're prepared.
"If he lets them loose without the hatchet handy, we'll never be fed," Barker thought. So he took the hatchet in his right hand and went out back toward where the chickens were kept. As he rounded the corner of the tent, he saw something that shocked and surprised him; a real feat for a sideshow worker.
Rather than use a hatchet to kill the chicken, Petey simply and deftly closed his mouth around it's head, and bit it off, spitting it out onto the ground.
"How do you do that?," Barker said, slightly startling the boy.
"Do... what, sir?" Petey replied.
"That thing with the chicken—how do you do that?"
"Oh, that's easy. I've been doin' that for years."
"Well....good job, then. Be sure to bring that chicken in to Jess and Bobby when you're done out here."
"Sure Stan."
Barker left the young man to finish his job and went back into the tent to sit down once more with the performers before dinner. The meal was uneventful, though Barker himself was still very stressed. Bobby noticed this, and pulled him aside after dinner.
"Are you sure you're going to be okay? I'm really worried about you, Stan," She asked him.
"I'll be fine. I'm just stressed because I lost my best attraction and my best friend in the same night."
She sat him down at her mirror, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
"Don't worry too much about it, honey. I'm sure you'll find someone for a new attraction."
"I don't doubt I will, Bobby. It's just that he was our show-stopper; the one that got everyone believing. Unless by some fluke I find another true freak before tomorrow's show, I don't know how we'll make it."
Bobby kissed him on the cheek, and hugged him close to her to show her support.
The next evening came, and a crowd had already gathered out front of the tent, ready for the show. Stan paced in circles backstage, trying to come up with something that would suffice until they could find a suitable replacement for Jo-Jo. His nerves too shaky at the moment, Stan sent out Petey to sell the audience on the stage before the performers did inside. Stan would lead them through, as he always did.
What'll I do, what'll I do, he thought. Then, as Petey finished up his pitch, it dawned on Barker what to do. As soon as Petey directed everyone to the entrance to the tent, Barker tapped him on the shoulder and made his plan known.
Petey enthusiastically agreed, and jumped down the entrance to collect fees. He led the group of townspeople into the tent, and introduced them to the Tour of Freaks. They passed Bobby, Yvan, Jessica, and Red, respectively. As the tour reached its end, and Jo-Jo's old booth came upon them, Petey stopped. He jumped over the fence that used to hold Jo-Jo back from the customers, and followed his boss's orders.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the final piece of information we leave you with is this: that even the most normal-looking of us humans is a freak in their own way; whether it be addiction, vanity or, in my own case", and as he said that, he reached behind him to where Barker had placed the chicken on a pedestal shortly before.
With a fell swoop, he grabbed the chicken, displayed it for everyone to see as alive and real, and bit its head off.
With the crowd wowed beyond belief, the Tour of Freaks not only found its newest member, but its newest son: Petey, the Geek.
User Reviews
Submitted by Casey_Jones (user info) at 2004-12-05 15:06:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
If he's referring to grammatical errors, I am rather sure there are few. I submitted this very story to an English class I'm currently taking, and the professor, who is a doctor in the field, gave me an A. Personally, I see no grammatical problem with the phrase "The crowd stood intently and listened as Stanley Barker", and neither did Microsoft Word or my professor.
Submitted by tinactin (user info) at 2004-12-05 14:57:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I think he's referring to your grammatical errors.
Submitted by Casey_Jones (user info) at 2004-12-05 14:55:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Alright asshole... just becauser you're an illiterate prick who doesn't want to read a short story, does not give the entitlement to automatically -2 this. Try actually reading it. You might just like it. If not, then -2 it. But do not just put it down off the bat because it's long you lazy fuck.
Submitted by FatTony (user info) at 2004-12-05 14:44:00 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
I got as far as "The crowd stood and listened intently as Stanley Barker".
Submitted by DanielH (user info) at 2004-12-05 12:31:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
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