Incarnate (127 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryLabels: ubermadness
Rating: 1.33 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Orgasmatron (View user info) at 2006-09-25 17:38:37 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Pedro Perez, the Boy With Flipper Hands. Dominatria, Mistress of Whips. Sammy and Tammy the Parasitic Twins. Pan the Goat Man.
The marks have all walked past these people - if you can call them that - by the time they get to my little tent. They've all witnessed the wondrous and the impossible, seen the abnormal and the bizarre. Their faces, however, are always the same. Bored. Unimpressed.
Everyone wants to be amazed these days, but no one will let themselves be taken in. No one wants to be the fool who thought it was all real. No one wants to believe anymore.
And for that, I can't blame them.
This modern age, this internet world, has taken all of the world's ghosts and turned them all into white sheets. It has carbon dated God and drained Loch Ness. We don't look to the sky anymore for UFOs or full moons. Those legends were destroyed long ago. Instead, in the absence of myth we create our own monsters, and turn history on its ear.
These people, these marks, can't even be trust we landed on the moon. They can't say if their latest tragedy was overseen by terrorists or their own government. How can they be expected to buy a man who can shatter glass with his mind to be the real deal?
That's Alberto Folson - or "The Great Mindini" - by the way. I got to set up shop next to his stage a few years ago outside Albany. He's bullshit. Uses high-pitch frequencies to blow the mirrors, windows and cups. He told me as much one night over four bottles of cheap merlot.
Once upon a time performers used to be proud of their secrets. Now it seems everyone's in a rush to tell you how it's done. Now they're all so fucking proud of their ingenuity. They're fools, the lot of 'em. Simpletons born into deformities.
I shouldn't be so harsh. The genuine anatomical wonders deserve all the money they make. God built them that way, after all. I'm talking about the ones with deformities of the soul. Men and women with slow hands and weak hearts who would gladly take the last dollar out of your hand. Betting on the bally and the barker to get you in the door. Hell, not even IN the door so long as you paid first. Slipped on a step and split your head? Tough luck, customer. Too repulsed to continue down the hallway? You bought a ticket, rube, get out.
Stepanie Slim the Stone Headed Woman. Holt Widegan and His Size 52 Boots. Fantastico LaCoste, the Electric Dude. Jimothy Jones the He-Woman.
You show me a performer and I will show you a crook. An amateur with prosthetic breasts and plucked eyebrows. A hack destroying aluminum with her skull and calling it steel.
Huxley "Steel Skin" Ambrose? Uses magnets to warp the blades he attempts to stab himself with.
Martin Lingo, the Human Rosetta Stone? Everyone in the audience that shouts something is a plant. Everyone.
The Minnesota Marksman? The guy with no eyes who does the shooting gallery bit up north? Been able to see since birth. Those eyepatches only go one way, you know.
Over the years I've seen them all. I've shaken more lobsterized hands than you can imagine, and shared seats with more bearded women than I care to admit. As much as I loathe them all, I understand that they're necessary for my well being.
Without them, no one would ever come by and see what's in my tent. My real magic act. The one genuine bit of wonder to be found in these carnivals of lies.
Without the sideshow and its disappointed customers, no one would pay for a chance to see The Devil Incarnate.
Yes, yes, the name is a bit underwhelming. Do keep in mind that I'm dealing with people who have just paid to walk through The Hall of Pickled Babies. I have called it many other things many other times before, but this one just seemed to stick around. Like a hollow cough in the dead of winter. Like lipstick on a glass of wine.
Given the nature of the performance I can only work with another engagement once. One week tops, though I have been known to only stay as long as a day. And once, just once, I was forced to pack up and leave mere minutes after letting some customers in Omaha into my tent.
One time only deals. My well-being, if not my conscience, demands that this be so. It's easier to be miles away in another town before the authorities come around asking questions. Easier to pay cash to the bag man in order to set up shop next to his show. Offer him a bit of my take from the blow. No names. No trail. No history. No history. Nothing but conjecture and speculation.
And, of course, the bodies.
You would think I'd run out of places to go after a while. And you'd be right to think that. We all feel like we've shrunk the world down into little byte-sized units. We are connected. We cross the miles faster than any other generation. We all marvel at how the truth of technology has closed the open hand of the world into a tight fist. We have forgotten the old gods, and we have forgotten how vast of an expanse the world really is.
There is much of America to be travelled, and always a single-o or ten-in-one to be seen somewhere. Ever a county fair to be found. Didn't yours just happen a week or so ago? Think about it. Thousands upon thousands of miles of people waiting to be entertained by the lowest common denominator. Cheap date stuff. Cotton candy and funnel cakes. Low art at low prices.
Something to make the rich feel better about themselves and to make the poor forget themselves. A father meeting up with his mistresses while his children ride a Ferris Wheel. A child peeing himself becuase his mother won't walk him to the restroom. Giant whale people waddling with fistfuls of chocolate with big, stupid smiles on their faces. Bored volunteers at sponsor tents, sneaking shots of whiskey during a firework show. Teenagers smoking up and fucking behind the House of Mirrors. This is America. These are the people that come to me for wonder and amazement.
These are the people I have to sell my show to. I actually have to convince them to give me money. These...these people who have thrown their dollars away to see Glynda the Living Mermaid and Mortimer the Half-Man. These bored, unimpressed faces that stroll from out the line of rigged-up tents and boxcars, sweaty and cramped from not standing up straight (always hunching over to get a closer look at the lie), rolling their eyes and laughing at the performers.
It doesn't matter that they've just seen a woman bite off her own hand. They know it's all an act. It doesn't matter if they see the blood splatter her face and fall to the floor in thick currents. They only push their children closer to the front to see, pointing to the little tubes in her cuffs that spout the red fluid everywhere.
A careful eye, if forced to look, can find the truth in anything.
My sell has to be quick and efficient. I'm not part of the show so I receive no assistance from the blind opening, no ding shouted out once everyone's paid and is inside seeing the show. Everyone who walks past sees my dark, leather tent with the two torches in front (lit, real torches, not those tiki deals that the upper class is so fond of), and then they see me. I don't stand for them. Most of them walk away. The curious ones linger for a moment, typically adolescents and the younger crowd. I don't allow children to participate. That's always been a rule. What happens to them after the show is none of my concern, but I won't actively allow anyone younger than 15 to step inside my tent.
I don't work the crowd, I sell to the individual. Ask him or her if they'd ever seen real evil before. Not comic book evil, or genocide, or anything done by the villain in the latest Tom Cruise movie. Real evil. Wickedness older than the written word. Something elemental and ageless.
I promise them the devil incarnate, for a price. Most don't pay. Some do. Doesn't matter if just one pays. It's all the same to me. One's all it takes.
On a good night, I'll have at least fourty warm bodies make their way into my tent. I do not accompany them. I don't want anyone thinking I'm rigging some sort of trick inside. The experience is theirs and theirs alone. Couples cannot enter together, and not just because I don't want some college kid getting a handjob inside my tent. Mother cannot accompany son, daughter cannot hold daddy's hand while she looks. Everyone enters alone, and comes out alone.
We have lost our ability to appreciate the individual experience. Everything is shared as soon as it occurs. Book reviews are available before the book itself is on the shelf. We are told what to think before we have a chance to think for ourselves. I hope to change this one customer at a time.
When they walk inside, past the twin flaps of leather with "The Devil Incarnate" stitched into them in big script lettering and a smiling red demon's forked tail curling up to create the "I," they step up and into a simple cell surrounded by the hanging walls of the tent. A deep mahogany floor extends from front to back, accented by an old Persian rug of purple and gold. In each corner, atop wooden tables, perch stone gargoyles holding torches. The room contains no electric lighting,
just flame. In the center of the room sits a box the size of a small house safe. All of its sides are smooth, and black as pitch with faint swirls of ochre just beneath the polished surfaces. In the candlelight it looks almost alive, the flicker of shadows causing streaks of yellow and red to dance among the black.
Atop the box, two circles of curved glass. Spy holes. There is no pedestal or podium, so they must kneel down after approaching the box. Kneel and bend over top of it to look inside. Some touch it, others do their best to avoid contact. I have heard people claim the box to be as cold as ice. Others say it felt like the surface slowly grew warm as the time passed. It has always felt like a box to me, which is to say it felt like matter, but then I have never looked inside it myself.
They peer into the box and wait. Sometimes it's only a matter of seconds, sometimes a minute or two passes in silence. Then a white light fills the inside of the box, revealing its content. And for many of the marks, for the majority of the people it's always the same.
A mirror.
When their eyes adjust and the stars have faded from their sight they peer into the black box and see nothing but a
reflection of themselves. Most storm out of the tent, grumbling about being gypped. A few confront me, ask me if I think I'm some sort of prophet. The high school and college age crowd will walk out and rave about the twisted beast they saw inside. I never refute their claims...publicity never hurts. Some don't get it.
The human spirit. The greatest devil of them all.
Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
It would be easier if it all ended here. If you, like the patrons of whatever event I've set up shop at, believed it was all just one big bit of dressed up social commentary. This is not the case.
There is another sort of light in the box. I do not control when it comes on, nor do I know what it reveals. All I know it happens once a night, and that the box decides when it happens.
To determine who has seen what's inside is easy. Most come out with slack, pale faces. Some return with headaches. I once saw a woman walk out with blood between her legs. Her period had started. All are completely out of sorts and exhausted, and typically need to be escorted away from the area. I blame the heat, and say they overwhelmed themselves out of fear.
I know the truth. And in a few days, so will the rest of the town. For though no one else notices the faint traces of yellow and red in their eyes, I do. I see what the box has done.
I keep a collection of clippings from local papers. Headlines that show up on page three or four. Not big news, but something. Though I'll leave town after a show's closed up and moved on, I'll stay close enough to see what's come of my act. Once I get my story it's back to the wheel and back to the road.
I have four binders full to the point of bursting, and have just recently started my fifth. Among the newsprint gray and loose trails the glue sticks have left behind, the words call out to me:
"Five dead in tragic suicide pact"
"Local businessman's shooting spree kills 14 in downtown Wichita"
"Mother aborts fetus, drowns children in the Charles River"
"Massacre at Willow Valley Nursing Home"
"Evidence of animal torture, rape at college campus"
"Woman takes chainsaw to lover, self"
"Dismembered bodies found, latest victim still alive"
A careful eye, if forced to look, can find the truth in anything. I don't know what the box unlocks in them, or what exactly it does, but I know it does something to them. In them. With them. It does something, and that something is real. That is all I need to know. I do not care to ever find out for myself.
These carnival showmen, these sideshow sallies can all keep their palmed coins and mirrorplay. They know nothing of spectacle, of astonishment, of wonder. I'm going to bring it back to this country one stop at a time. One person at a time. I'm going to make everyone believe again.
I could always seek a larger stage, I suppose. But then people would notice. Too much attention, and then I'll have the internet talking about me. Science and religion investigating the "phenomena" and offering their explanations. Psychiatrists on talk shows arguing about hypnosis and psychotropic drugs. Government agencies secretly speculating on its offensive capabilities. Discounting the box and proving it's a hoax. Just another Loch Ness Monster. A trick.
Because, really, all magic is just trickery isn't it?
Isn't it?
User Reviews
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2007-06-05 10:10:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-06-04 18:52:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Like you'd ever drink four bottles of cheap merlot.
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It's true. Merlot sucks unwashed mule.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-06-04 22:57:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-06-04 22:34:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2007-06-04 22:15:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-06-04 18:52:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Like you'd ever drink four bottles of cheap merlot.
Submitted by ilikesteak (user info) at 2007-06-04 18:41:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Auto Spam's opponent -2
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2007-06-04 18:25:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
they're finally up!
Submitted by Spam (user info) at 2007-06-04 18:02:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Auto my opponent +2