Baptisms
Everything around Thunk seemed to flicker, and afterward, there was no sky.

He was still standing in the same spot, but the Carnies, the wolf, the women, all were gone. The patrons, milling about in confusion, were gone. The afternoon sky was replaced with an endless black abyss, devoid of stars or clouds. In the distance, there were the sounds of battle, but here it was peaceful and quiet.

He was close. He could feel it.

Todd smiled, and began walking toward the sounds of violence. That's where Todd would be. In the center of it, at the core. Todd would have come here, to the heart of the Carnival itself, and nothing would stand in his way.

And nothing would stop Thunk, either.

He heard a whimper, almost a sob, coming from a rickety trailer. There was no mark on it, no sign. Thunk paused. He was on a mission. How much time did he have? There came a moan, a man's voice. How many choices did he have?

Inside he found a little man in a brown robe, his hair growing in a fringe around a bald spot on the top of his head. His face was lined with age and hardship, and tears had cut runnels in the dust on his face. There was a transparent woman straddling him, her hands sunk into his chest. Even as Thunk watched, the woman grew faintly redder, somewhat more solid-looking. The little monk had a leather-bound book in one hand, and he swung it weakly at her - only to have it pass harmlessly through her head as though she were nothing more than a Shadow.

She saw Thunk, and hissed, her mouth a black void that reminded him of the not-a-sky outside. He stepped into the little trailer, shutting the door behind him. "Let him go." he said.

She hissed again. The little man saw him, and babbled something. It was no language Thunk knew, but it sounded a little like Latin, or German. He sounded afraid. Thunk raised his left arm, and gears turned. Panels slid away, and metal pieces slid into new alignment with machined precision. He felt the fire in his core swell, felt that he was not alone. He was unafraid.

The red phantom woman stood, and raised hands that were twisted talons, each finger of which had tiny mouths that hissed in counterpoint. Thunk could see through her, to the trailer's dingy kitchenette. There were pancakes on the table.

She lunged forward, and with a twist of his wrist he released a series of knives and syringes that plunged solidly into her chest. She gaped in shock and pain, and he clenched his fingers, closing the clamps around her torso like a vise. His left eye clicked as the lens turned, and he could see that she was made entirely of suffering and pain. While she was shaped like a person, this was something that had never been human. He flexed his wrist again, and knives cut, samples were taken in through long needles, analyzed, and obscure toxins were produced in his guts and pumped out through other needles. He watched her energies change colors as they were corrupted, and destabilized. "Accept this gift, and be glad of it. Know Love, and Mercy, for the first time. These are the gifts of Todd. Take them into your heart, and know Peace." The energies he was feeding into her were disrupting her. They broke lines of resonance and connection throughout the red phantom, and she screamed even as she began to unravel.

He released her, and she collapsed to the yellow linoleum, writhing and gasping. Thunk knelt down beside her, and brushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand, while his left reconfigured itself again into something more human-shaped. Steam vented, and hydraulics hissed as he cradled her head in his lap. "It... hurts..." she whispered.

"I know. Todd teaches us that certain things are always true. And one of them is that we hurt the ones we love. I am sorry." The black pits of her eyes cleared, revealing very human looking big brown eyes. They looked afraid. Her hands and feet were already gone, and the rest of her was growing misty, more vapor than solid. She gasped. His left eye clicked again, and he saw her energies settle into a new resonance matrix. A familiar matrix that he had seen in dozens of people. A soul. "I will call you Sheila, after a friend of mine. I'll think of you, now and again. Goodbye, Sheila."

She closed her eyes, and dissolved into a golden mist. Thunk looked up, at where the little monk was now standing against the wall, watching him with eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Your pardon, sirrah, but did you say 'Todd' just now?"

"I did," Thunk replied. "I am his friend. I learned his teachings, and they have given everything meaning."

"You are a disciple?"

"Perhaps. I am Thunk."

"I am Duxtor. Thank you for what you did."

Thunk stood up. His eye clicked and whirred, and the infra-red lens showed him that the pancakes were still hot. "I did not mean to kill her. I showed her another path, and she chose not to continue. It's sad."

"I meant for saving my life. Thank you."

"Oh. Sure. Are... Are you going to eat that?"

"Please. Be my guest. Tell me more of... Todd."


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Eva had gone to Stevens' trailer to rant and to scream and to demand answers.

She had found it empty, and unlocked.

And empty.

The trailer contained a bed, neatly made with hospital corners of razor-keen precision. The sheets and blankets and pillows were all white, and they gleamed under the bare lightbulb above. The bathroom contained a toothbrush, floss, and soap in a small plain dish, all white, and all neatly and precisely arranged. There were four white towels folded on a shelf next to the white shower curtain. The white bathmat was aligned precisely in the center of the shower enclosure. Everything was clean, and sterile, and neat. Except the mirror. There was no mirror.

The kitchen contained all the ordinary staples. Milk, eggs, flour and bread. All white. There were large mason jars containing oats, bran cereal, and sugar. In the cabinet, she found smaller jars containing salt and pepper, cinnamon and honey. The jars were neatly labeled, and she wondered if their sole purpose was to remove offensive color by discarding the original packaging. Everything, every surface, was gleamingly clean and pristine, every item neatly arranged by size and position.

Nowhere did she find anything like a picture, a momento, or a decoration. No souvenirs, no photographs, nothing. She had opened his closet, and actually flinched away from the riot of chaos and color within. Suits and shirts in blazing neon colors, most of them in patterns that made her eyes want to bleed. Even the neatly rolled socks arrayed on a small dresser inside were hard to look at. She closed the closet, suddenly comforted by the spartan and monochrome room.

She noticed that there were no mirrors anywhere here. No surfaces that would offer a reflection, even. Maybe Stevens couldn't bear the sight of his own clothes, either? How absurd. There was also no television or computer, no books or radio, not even so much as a skin mag under the bed. It was while she was checking there that Stevens had returned.

They had talked. She was overwhelmed by the revelations she'd had earlier that day. Ania, a vampire. Her boss, some kind of Faustian devil. Celestine was a God, and Kong was, Stevens informed her, actually an ape. He and Simba, Monty and Khan, and others, were beasts made to walk and talk like men by Johnson, the lion-tamer. Stevens had seemed a beacon of sanity in a world gone mad to her, and he seemed to have felt the same about her. Explaining the mess that was the Carnival of Souls to her had seemed to help him gather himself. The longer they talked, the more she had relaxed, and the more he had revealed. He was a man of order, of deliberation and procedure. The Carnival was slowly killing him, he had told her. He'd done something wrong, somewhere. He wasn't sure what, or when. But he knew he was being punished. He had been shackled to this madhouse, and had been remade somehow into something that could not survive here. Like a fish being walked to school on a leash, he was suffocating.

He'd wept. So she'd kissed him.

He'd almost fallen, he was so shocked. She had told him to relax, and that he'd suffered enough. It was time for him to enjoy something. Anything. And then she'd kissed him again.

He'd insisted on throwing his orange-and-lime suit into the closet, but didn't seem to mind the way her red skirt had looked on his white carpet.

Making love to him had been an education. He played her like a fine instrument, coaxing notes and sighs and screams out of her like he was writing a song just for her. At some point, though, she'd noticed the look of concentration on his face. He was utterly intent on his task, and determined to perform it flawlessly. It struck her as a challenge. She reversed the tables, and set about breaking his concentration. She'd used her mouth, her fingers, even her hair, and while she got appreciative noises from him, still he had that look of calculation. It was infuriating. Finally, she'd slapped him. Hard.

He looked up at her in shock, and she squeezed him with her inner muscles, and finally, he gasped. He began to move again, and she caressed his cheek, running her hand down his neck, and then raked her nails down his chest, scratching cruelly over one nipple. He'd shuddered and moaned, and she smiled. From there, she had run the show, doling out pleasure and pain at her whim, leaving him helpless to do anything but enjoy the ride. Stevens couldn't predict, or control, or plan. He could only receive. He surrendered his control with such relief and joy and abandon that it made her want to cry. He dropped all his guards, or at least allowed her to tear them down forcefully, and she connected with him more deeply and personally than she'd even dreamed possible.

When she finally let him finish, he filled her with a white-hot radiance that was unlike anything. It filled her whole body with light, and lit her from within. Literally, her skin shone with a milky radiance that filled the room and made her eyes hurt. The warmth that filled her was like the heat from a fireplace after a day in the snow, and it made her whole body sizzle and tingle. She flung out one hand, seizing a handful of the blankets, and was unsurprised to see them smolder and smoke in her grasp.

"I was Ringmaster, once," he whispered. "But I couldn't control the show. I couldn't let it..."

"You couldn't let it control you."

He wept, and shook his head. "I couldn't just let it... change me. Remake me. And so it destroyed me."

She raised her arm, spreading her fingers wide and watching the shadows shift as her radiance dimmed. "You changed me."

And so he explained, about the power Celestine imbued him with at each stop, and the duties he was to fulfill. He explained how to send the soothing impulse, the "everything is fine" effect, and how the power could be used for other purposes. He explained how in his surrender she had taken it from him, and he flatly refused her offer to give it back. As pillow talk went, it was something new for her.

And then, now, Celestine's voice filled the room. Open the gates," he said. "Get the people out."

They both leaped out of bed, and Stevens began scrambling to get dressed. Eva pulled on her clothes, and as each item fell into place it shifted, and changed. Her skirt became black leather pants, her shoes knee-high boots. Her blouse became a red jacket, and she pulled a top hat out of thin air. Stevens, still in white boxers and tee shirt, gaped at her.

"You're right. This place is a madhouse. It needs some order. Somebody's got to run this show, and it's about time there was a Ringmaster again."

"But you can't," he stammered. "I couldn't control it..."

"I controlled you. We'll see." With a flick of a wrist, she summoned a riding crop, and thwacked it against her palm thoughtfully, eyeing his boxers. He shuffled back against the door. She shook her head, focusing again on the task at hand instead of thoughts best saved for later. "I've got work to do. Step aside." He did, his face pale.

Something tore the door off the hinges. It leaned into the trailer, multifaceted eyes leering above a huge vertical slit of a mouth, bristling with fangs. Several tongues lolled out, dropping spit that sizzled when it hit the floor and sporting black, serrated barbs. Four gigantic hands gripped the door frame, and heaved, warping the metal and tearing until the opening was large enough for its gigantic, misshapen bulk.

"God damn it!" Stevens shouted, stomping his foot like an old woman. "This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about! Things like that," he pointed at the abomination easing into the small space, "do not belong in a well-ordered Carnival!"

Shocking as it was, there was still the fire burning in her breast, still the sense of duty that comforted her. Eva nodded. "Agreed." She lashed out with the riding crop, slashing the beast right between the eyes. Where she cut, a sudden gout of cool, lavender-scented air burst forth, and the thing was propelled out of the trailer. She followed it out, already ignoring it, and stalked off into the carnival. She was emitting the pulse now, sending waves of "Show's over, time to go." as she went. Stevens peeked out, and watched the monster zipping around in circles in the air, until finally a deflated, empty husk settled to the sawdust. It began to melt.

Hmmm, he thought. She might be good at this...

Then he decided he should probably go find some pants.