Page 24 of Smoke and Mirrors
She paused, giving me a worried glance as I popped off my legs. “Do you want me to stay?”
“No.” I smacked her playfully with my longer leg. “Go on, girl. Get some of that doggy style love. I know you miss him.”
“Connor,” she groaned, rolling her eyes to the ceiling but I didn’t miss that smile twitching at her lips as she walked down the hall.
I enjoyed the view of her long legs walking away in those tights until she disappeared around the corner, then fitted on my stilts.
“You’re on in ten, Connor,” Nigel, the carnival manager, said in a clipped tone as he walked by in a hurry. He must’ve been especially busy, making sure closing night went off without a hitch.
Even so, that gave me plenty of time to walk around and warm up before showtime. I grabbed the curtain to pull myself up to my full stilted height of twelve feet. Running through my mental checklist, I took a few measured steps. Balance, weight distribution, pressure on my stumps, everything felt good.
I really do owe you, Raz,I thought. Maybe he would consider the debt repaid if I talked him and Mel into making up. I loved that girl, but she wrote off a good guy before anything had a chance to blossom between them. Her instinct was to lash out defensively at the first sign of a guy being shady, and with good reason. But this was the rare exception she was wrong and she just needed to admit that.
I hadn’t seen much of Raz around either in the past week. He made good on his promise to give Mel some space, but when she hadn’t come seeking him out, it sounded like things got ugly during her date with Hunter. She mentioned running into him before heading out to get my pills from him but didn’t want to talk about it further, which told me enough.
Shit. What was that?
A tingle shot up my leg, starting at my right stump and traveled all the way to my groin. I’d been walking back and forth as I was thinking and felt completely normal up until now.
I took another few tentative steps and—fuck!
A zap of pain shot up my other leg. I grabbed one of the stage supports and hissed, grinding my teeth against the pain. I shifted my weight, trying to ease the pressure on my legs which helped a little, but I couldn’t do this for long. In a few minutes, I would be putting tremendous pressure on them.
Panic surged within me. Even if I had another pill, it would take too long to kick in.
The drums kicked up and all the lights onstage concentrated on a single spotlight. Shit, Mel was about to make announcements and then it’d be me. What the ever livingfuckwas I going to do?
My beautiful woman walked out from the opposite end of the stage, waving and smiling at the crowd who roared their greeting at her. Some of them had attended every single show. After being ringmistress for just a week, Mel was already developing a fan base. She just had a natural talent for captivating an audience. Somewhere underneath my pain-frazzled mind, I wondered if that was another expression of her shaman abilities.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!” Her voice rang out through the speakers with warmth, confidence, and clarity. “As our final show for you tonight here at Crying Falls Summer Festival, it’s a bittersweet feeling for all of us.”
She paused to take in their boos and protests. No one wanted this to end.
“I know, I know.” She brought a hand to her chest, commiserating with them. “So let’s make this the most incredible, spectacular, unforgettable night, everyone! What do you say?”
The ensuing cheers and screams drowned out my groans and grunts as I released the stage support. Hundreds of tiny knives stabbed right where my legs fit snugly into the stilts and grew worse with every passing minute. Sweat dripped down my forehead, making my mask stick to my skin. But I had to bear it. I had to get through it. I wouldn’t let Mel or anyone else down.
All I could do was call on my Marine training. The pain, discipline, thirst, and hunger that I lived through years ago strengthened me for this. I just had to get through the act that I could perform in my sleep, and then get out of these stilts as soon as possible.
“Our first act knows his way around the stage,” Mel winked as she began her suggestive introduction about me. “And trust me, ladies, those long wooden legs aren’t compensating for anything else!”
The onstage drummer hit aba-dum-tsson his drum set, and even I laughed along with the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Stilts, the entrancing acrobatic stilt walker!”
Just stepping onto the stage made me bite my cheek against the pain. Thankfully no one could see my face behind the mask but I had no way to keep from screaming while they were silent.
My music started up and I got into my routine, which unfortunately started with variations of balancing on one leg. Nothing looked different as far as I could tell, but a few jumps of one leg to the other had me seeing black dots in the corner of my vision. Fuck, this was not good. I didn’t feel this bad the previous night until the end.
I switched it up, diving my torso to the floor to press myself into a handstand. Mel would notice the change in routine but hopefully not figure out why. The crowd oohed and gasped as I walked on my hands across the stage. My legs felt slightly better without the pressure of the floor but I couldn’t do this forever. Not if we were going to give them a show worthy of closing night.
I dropped my legs behind me to come back up to standing, then immediately jumped into a backflip andgod fucking damn it holy shit!
It hurt so badly I almost missed the landing. The crowd didn’t notice me cover my stumble and burst into applause while I took a small bow to recompose myself.
That had to be the worst pain in my life. It took all my strength just to stay poised for the performance when all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and scream. And the climax of my act involved multiple backflips going across the entire stage. Right then, just reaching the end of my act felt like an insurmountable obstacle.
Bear down and do your job. You are a Marine. Just get through it.
