Chapter Eleven

 

 

 

Most people weren’t coming to the red tent for the bugs anymore. They weren’t even coming for the Spider.

If women were fascinated by an extra-limbed porn star in a spider coffin, they were more circumspect about it. The ones who ogled, leered, undressed her the rest of the way with their eyes, took pictures and short videos of her… They were all men. Younger men. Older men still took pictures of her, but they didn’t linger. Mama bears and young women rolled their eyes at younger bucks. They let boys be boys. But there was apparently an age limit when men couldn’t be ‘boys’ without officially creeping.

Elizabeth didn’t see the distinction, but then again, she was the one being creeped on.

No one did much more than memorializing the event for stroke material, though. A few of them tried the pocket trick, but it was a difficult art to master at the best of times, and in the middle of people crowding around to look was rarely the best of times.

It was a marked changed from before, when people were unsure whether she was who they thought she was. Now they clearly knew.

My, my… Wonder who could have possibly tipped them off.

But as long as they stayed legal and didn’t try to undo the padlock or expose themselves, there wasn’t anything Elizabeth could do but look away and hope they were more arachnophobic than they were horny.

When she put on the latex suit for the funhouse, she prayed no one would recognize her that way despite the multiple limbs—maybe she’d just be another haunt in the funhouse.

She should have known she didn’t have that much luck. The Gentleman had to work overtime to convince the groups of men to keep moving, and more than one tried to touch her through her shiny bodysuit. Between being bound to a web and locked in a box, the box was safer, but at least in the funhouse, she got to scream her frustration all she wanted.

 

* * * *

 

As she climbed into the trailer, Kevin blinked at her piercings. “Those are new.”

Though he was thin, the blood-spattered butcher’s apron made him appear more imposing than usual. His arms had become vascular from wielding the chainsaw all day, and he hadn’t cleaned himself up yet, so he was still covered head to toe with blood, except where he’d removed his black rubber gloves.

His victim writhed, leaking out onto the compartment floor. Kevin had managed to get his torso sewn up, but his limbs were still in the sack next to him. They didn’t bother with delicate work when it came to the chainsaw massacre victim. Everything always regenerated, but it quickened the process when the parts of the victim were reunited. And the one who did the dismembering was responsible for re-membering. It was one of the unspoken rules.

“They’re old, actually.” Elizabeth touched the titanium rings over her lip. The healing unguent had done its work, but the area had been sore for a day—if Elizabeth had to guess, probably from the unguent not being able to completely close the holes with the rings in the way. “But you had to know the scars were there to see them.”

“You’re an endless surprise,” Kevin said. “I’ll be finished here soon, but I’m pretty sure you want me to shower.”

“I prefer to bathe in the blood of my enemies, so it’s really about what’s comfortable for you. Pizza’s by the bandages when you get your appetite back.”

Elizabeth settled in at the triage center in the back of the trailer.

At first, she attributed the odd looks some of the boys gave her as a reaction to the piercings. They’d adjusted to her bald head, her lack of clothing and her tattoos, but the rings were new. A little curiosity could be expected.

But only a little. They were just two thin rings over her bottom lip, hardly scandalous in Arcanium. Yet the boys kept staring.

Elizabeth pressed the taped gauze onto the boy’s shoulder in front of her, then looked around at everyone looking back at her. “What?”

Hank jumped out of his third-level pod, landing without a groan of effort. He’d been assigned the werewolf that weekend. His already bearded face had been supplemented with thicker, darker red hair. His teeth were as sharp as hers, but differently shaped, curved and interlocked, less human. His arms were simian and corded with muscle, his nose small, dark and wet. Extra hair aside, it was one of the less painful, more powerful things Bell turned them into.

“Did you know we can hear through the glass in the funhouse? Even when he steals our voices, we can hear what’s going on outside. It’s mostly just more screams from the guests. Laughing. Talking. Bell wants us to know that our suffering is trivial.”

Elizabeth stood up before Hank could loom over her. She glanced back at the bathrooms. The shower was off, but Kevin hadn’t emerged yet. “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“You think I can’t tell the difference between a woman screaming because she’s scared and a woman screaming because she’s coming?” Hank asked.

For a moment, Elizabeth couldn’t breathe, much less speak. “Most men can’t.”

“Ha ha. Well, you were moaning, too. A woman doesn’t moan like that when she’s scared. What happened, Elizabeth? The Gentleman get less gentlemanly with you? I heard he’s got a sweet spot for a damsel in distress.”

He stepped closer to her, close enough to kiss, but she couldn’t back up. She had maybe a foot behind her before she’d hit the wall.

“No, you know what I think it was?”

“I’m on tenterhooks.” She didn’t like the beady way he looked her over. A man only got that confident when he thought there was nothing in his way.

“I think you let a guest have you. Several, in fact. I also recognize the look on a man’s face when he’s gotten a face-full of a sexy woman. And what do you know? Not too soon after your screams stopped, here come the gobsmacked guys.”

“What a lurid theory. I can’t imagine what would be more likely.” But it was so uncomfortably close to the truth that her gut clenched.

What was worse, the way he looked at her was turning her on. She wanted to kiss him to shut him up, bite him and ride him because the twisted places in her brain somehow thought that would teach him a lesson about assuming what kind of woman she was.

“It’s not like you haven’t done it before,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” She wasn’t going to be coherent much longer, not if the litany in her mind of oh shit oh shit oh shit got any louder.

“A few of us prisoners compared notes. And guess what? So have people who come through the funhouse. Just today, in fact. They knew who you were, came to Arcanium just to see the Spider Woman and figure out if she was really Lucy Lewd.”

There was no way to not cringe at that name.

Hank grinned. “Then it clicked. Kevin’s the one who figured it out. He’s the only one who’s had a look at those tattoos up close and personal. He says you have magical hands. Based on what little I remember, I can believe it.”

“You’re a pig,” Elizabeth said.

“You know what I’m noticing?” Hank picked an invisible piece of lint from the shoulder of her robe. “You haven’t denied it.”

“Because it’s ridiculous.” She laughed, but it was nervous, mirthless. The men who had been staring earlier were much closer now.

“Oh yeah. It’s crazy.” He whistled like a cuckoo clock and wound his finger next to his ear in the classic gesture. “But it’s true, isn’t it? You really did fuck those guys in the funhouse. Or maybe you just put on a show. But I’ll bet that’s not the first time guests got a good look at you—the one fun part of the haunted funhouse. Am I right?”

“Not at all.”

“Did you really fuck a vacuum cleaner? Put one of those extensions inside you and turn it on while you sucked a guy off, like it made you the vacuum?” Hank didn’t give her a chance to back away. He pushed her against the wall while holding the tie to her robe, trying to pull it open. She grasped at the sides of the robe with her secondary hands inside.

She leaned in until her nose nearly brushed his. “Don’t you know you can’t always believe everything you watch in porn?”

His smile was more a grimace now, but not because he was any less amused. “I knew it.”

“What’s going on?” Kevin ran a cheap towel through his hair. He was shirtless but wearing boxer shorts again. He was downright normal by funhouse standards, indistinguishable from a guest.

“Your girlfriend really is Lucy Lewd. That’s what’s happening. If I remember things correctly, Lucy was ready for anything—and I mean anything. Goddamn, she was wet as the Pacific every time they checked.” Hank pulled on the robe tie again, but Elizabeth wasn’t letting it budge. “What was that you said about how she wanted it, how she smelled when she did, even when she was acting coy?”

It was Kevin’s turn to blush. Elizabeth barely got a chance to glare at him before Hank leaned close to breathe her in at her neck, at the opening of her robe.

Tears sprang to her eyes, not from fear but from the betrayal of her own body. She’d never liked him, never liked the way he talked to her or looked at her or just the way he was. But his beard prickled against her chest, and his hands were large and strong, his breath hot, and she knew exactly what scent he was talking about. The low rumble of a growl rippled through his partially transformed throat.

“God, if I could bottle that…” he murmured. Then he opened his mouth and ran his tongue along the hollow above her collarbone.

Elizabeth grabbed his hair to yank him back. Instead, she threaded her fingers through the coarseness and pressed his mouth to her skin, her head falling back against the side of the compartment.

“I knew it,” he repeated, his voice an octave lower. He jerked the sides of her robe down over her shoulders. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. You’ve got a hell of a girl, Kev.”

Hank whipped them both around, which put Elizabeth back in the center of the trailer, suddenly topless—and nearly more, as the robe slipped down to her hips. The men who’d been watching came closer. It was like one of those nightmares where the monsters were still as statues when she was looking, then hurried toward her while she looked the other way. Every single one of them had the same flat light in their eyes, as though they were dead. But not where it counted. Some of them had even taken their cocks out, pulled on them to get them harder.

Elizabeth tried to find one of the few women, but none of them were anywhere to be seen, which meant they’d probably known what Hank was going to do. And instead of warning her, they’d made themselves scarce.

“You really do like that, don’t you?” Kevin said. “It’s not just an act.” He helped pull the rest of her robe off until she stood naked, surrounded by shark-eyed men. This had only happened a few times in her career. And it didn’t matter how many orgasms they’d given her, she’d hated every one.

“Of course it’s an act. Even porn stars who like sex have to fake about ninety percent of the moaning and groaning and coming every two minutes most of the time.” Elizabeth sidled away from him, but he came at her from behind, and Hank blocked the way in front of her. Kevin rubbed her back, her shoulders, digging his thumbs into the stress knots. He was his own knot at the small of her back, though, as considerably hard as a deprived young man could be.

“Most of the time?” Hank said with a laugh. “You just can’t help yourself, little Christian cult girl, can’t help but not lie. You smell like three girls after the wettest goddamn orgasms they’ve ever had. You’re leaning into your boyfriend’s hands, and you’re looking at me like you want to eat me up, even though you’re scared. You are scared, aren’t you?”

“Life isn’t a porno, Hank, and I wasn’t doing it by choice. Everything you ever saw of me was because I was coerced.”

Kevin’s touch hesitated on her back, but he let out a breath as she grabbed his hip to grind back against his erection.

“Not very much. I mean, come on. You’d hit me with a shovel as soon as look at me—right back at you, by the way—but if I took out my cock and told you to blow, I bet you would. Look at you.”

“You’re not telling him to fuck off.” Kevin sounded confused, but he was hard as hot stone against her ass. There wasn’t much blood going to his brain. “Does that mean yes?”

He palmed her breasts, and she arched to fill his hands, shaking her head but going dizzy. Her cunt ached, the hollowness as sharp as hunger pangs.

Pre-cum smeared over her skin. She had four hands, and each one had somehow found itself with a cock in it.

If she couldn’t stop, why should she try? She clearly wanted it. She couldn’t ask for it with her mouth, but her body asked for it, begged for it, and she couldn’t deny that. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t crave the men’s bodies presented to her, no matter what they looked like, no matter that they were seeping pus, lymph and blood. She got hot from their moans, from the way they couldn’t hold back the bucking of their hips as she wrung their cocks. And there Hank was with his shit-eating grin, his shirt off and his jeans unbuttoned, cock dark red and curving out from a bed of dense ginger hair and werewolf fur.

Elizabeth closed her eyes. She should have lost this need a long time ago. It should have shriveled and died from starvation. Maybe it had. Maybe Dez had taken the shameless joy and unbridled pleasure from the early years and replaced it with something that made a mere mockery of what pleasure should be. He’d made her body explosive and spread the ashes all through her.

He’d created the fantasy, but at its core, that fantasy was necrophilia, nothing but dead inside. She’d vacated the home of flesh. Someone else occupied the shell left behind. Someone else moved her, made her grab at random men’s cocks, made her grind back against Kevin, who breathed harsh and hot down her neck as he met her thrusts—first through his shorts then he pushed them down. Flesh rubbed against flesh—not inside, not yet. Someone else made her salivate as Hank came closer, stroking himself in broad, firm motions, as though examining how she reacted to the sight of it.

Elizabeth shook her head when she realized the reason she wanted so much to submit to every dirty thing he’d likely imagined her doing was because Dez would look at her just like that—with cold calculation, wondering just how much he could get away with. No, knowing just how much he could get away with. Because she was aroused as hell, and even if she wanted to push him out, her body would accept him one way or another.

“This is what you did to Kevin, isn’t it? Said one thing while your body said something else? How typical. Why women can’t just sit back and enjoy sex without agonizing over it, I’ll never understand. You clearly like it. And if what my boys say is true, you enjoyed it quite a bit for years. Everything’s immortal on the Internet. You’ll be getting every hole filled, getting slapped, spit on, facialed, cream-pied, tied up and gangbanged long after you die.”

Hank got up in her face, his brushfire beard crinkling against her chin. She turned away at first, but when he tilted his head as though to kiss her, she couldn’t help but do the same. He chuckled. “See? Despite all the protests, this is what you want, isn’t it? No wonder you went into the business. Never have to work a day in your life, as they say.”

Kissing him was like kissing a demon—though, ironically, that was one of the few things she hadn’t kissed yet.

His mouth was too wet, feverish, and it felt like his beard was smothering her. He bit her lip too hard, caught her tongue between his teeth as though to show that she’d put her tongue in his mouth first.

Hank covered the top of her head with one heavy hand, sliding it possessively over the smooth skin. The other he shoved between her legs to stroke through her folds. Her stomach sank, because when he dragged his fingers forward, they brought evidence of her arousal with them.

His lupine smile was triumphant when he he lifted his probing hand between them and spread his fingers to show how her wetness clung between them, an undeniable gleam in the low light.

“Holy fuck,” one of the men she was masturbating groaned. He jerked in her hand. Cum struck her forearm and her hip.

Kevin kissed her shoulder, squeezed her breasts, made the hard nipples bend in his palm. “God, that’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Elizabeth looked over her shoulder at him, searching his face as though he was a stranger. “What, your kind-of girlfriend jerking off four men and getting kissed by a jerk-off? That’s what you want? That’s your idea of girlfriend material?”

“Girlfriends are overrated,” Hank said. “Seems like an awful lot of maintenance just to sink into something soft. And let’s face it, Spider Woman. How much time do you want to waste talking about your feelings when all you really want is something hard inside you?”

He brought the juices on his fingers to her mouth, pushed them rudely past her lips to rub her taste over her tongue. “Can’t deny it anymore, can you? That’s right, suck it, suck it like you’re going to suck my cock as soon as Kevin gets what he’s been spilling himself for. God, you wouldn’t believe how annoying it is to hear him do that over and over and over, groaning your name, while you always stand just out of reach in that fucking robe. I think you like it. I think you’ve been coming to us hoping we’d just yank it away so you can finally scratch that goddamn itch.”

She made a noise of protest, but it lost its bite when the next sound was a groan as he pushed his fingers down all the way to the knuckle, trying to get her to gag. She’d thrown up countless times deep-throating in the early days, but she could gag now without retching.

Someone new filled her abandoned hand. Kevin curled his fingers around her secondary thighs and hitched them up, bringing himself flush against her from behind.

Hank pulled his fingers from her mouth and plunged them between her prime legs once again. Kevin turned her head toward him, swooping down to kiss her with sloppy desperation.

Another man came. He grunted in satisfaction as his semen splattered over her in thick jets.

The next erection that found her hand had been partially dissolved by necrosis, but that hadn’t waned the man’s desire. He shouted and thrust his cock through the cum-slick circle of her palm.

Hank’s teeth pressed too hard against her ear. He panted like a dog, stroking himself as he sank his fingers into her. The leaking head of his cock smeared against her stomach.

Her own moans joined with those of the men surrounding her, with the meaty sound of flogging flesh, the wet sounds of Hank and Kevin kissing her, of Hank’s fingers entering her.

This was what she’d been made for. This is what every man wanted—a girl who couldn’t say no, a girl who had been hacked and hardwired into sexual insatiability, a girl they could take any way they wanted, because anything would keep her high. This is what men wanted, and what the women in the compartment preferred, because it meant they didn’t have to do it.

Kevin broke from their kiss, gasping, spilling over her back. She doubted that would be enough for him to quit for the night, for any of them.

Hank laughed as she turned back to him, opening her mouth to let him in as far as he could take her. She canted her hips to the rhythm of his fingers inside her.

But all the things these men were doing to her, none of it was for her.

Kevin wiped her off, kissed her, nuzzled her, rubbed at her thighs and muttered things she didn’t understand into her skin, yet as gentle as he was, he was still sharing her. He didn’t mind how many men came on her as long as he could have his hands on her breasts, on her thighs, their tongues together. As long as he could eventually sink in where Hank had his fingers, where Kevin now brought his own to fill her even more.

They knew she’d melt to anything they did to her, but was a single touch, a single kiss, a cock in her hand, for her benefit alone? Or did they think any pleasure at all was payment enough?

It didn’t matter. Her pleasure didn’t matter to them. They wanted her because she reached out and took them in hand, because her cunt was wet and welcoming, because her tongue stroked them, because her body moved the way they wanted it to. They wanted her because she was a living sex doll, and she was cheap.

She could hate herself all she liked, but her body didn’t care. Tears streamed down her face as she undulated between Kevin and Hank and coaxed cum from the cocks she held.

Her body wanted them. Her body wanted anything. It was a series of conditioned lusts set at hair triggers.

But she didn’t want them. She didn’t want them. She didn’t want this. Any of this. Any of them.

For God’s sake, Lizzie, for once in your life, make a fucking decision!

The words—her own voice, her own mind—resonated within her skull, bolder than anything Dez had ever whispered into her ear to echo in the same chamber.

She broke away from Hank’s domineering kiss, gasping through her quickening arousal. “No.”

“I’ve heard that song, Spider Woman. Your cunt’s singing a different tune, isn’t it? I can feel you clenching.”

“It doesn’t matter what my cunt’s saying, Balls for Brains. I’m saying something different.”

She forced herself to open her hands, all four of them. The guys protested, grunting and groaning from the unexpected lack of stimulation. Between the cum and the bloody pus she realized was on her, her mysophobia reared its ugly head, but she welcomed the mounting disgust, because it made her thoughts so much clearer.

“For God’s sake, Kevin, stop. You’re not doing anything that could possibly be considered mindless at this point. Fuck, stop.” She couldn’t help the way she pushed back against the boys’ combined fingers inside her, but she could try to twist away when they went shallow.

Kevin slipped his wet fingers from her. “But you’re still—”

Hank knocked her arms away, his wolf man muscles more than a match for four sets of hers. He shoved all three of them toward the pods, bringing his body up against hers with his fingers in her all the way to the knuckles. She collided with Kevin against the wall, smashed against him with his fully hard erection sliding through the cum he’d already released. Her head fell back against his shoulder. His moan was near deafening in her ear.

“But I haven’t even been inside you yet,” Hank whispered in her other ear. “Enough pretending.”

She shoved at the forearm pressed to her abdomen, yanked at his hair, struggled not to come, but he bent down to put his cock in position to replace his fingers. Kevin let out his breath in harsh pants, bucking against her ass.

“Let go of me.” Elizabeth shook her head, even though she salivated at the sound and scent of male desire, ached everywhere she’d ever been filled. “Don’t—”

Hank laughed, his smile furious and predatory, his eyes a brilliant bright blue that couldn’t be confused for dead-glazed in lust.

“Enough pretending,” he’d said. He wasn’t pretending he couldn’t help himself or that he was a slave to his dick, wasn’t pretending to her or to himself. He just wanted to fuck her. That was it.

Between Kevin deciding to wrap his arms around her, pinning all her arms at her sides, and Hank lifting her up so that all her feet were on tiptoe, her cunt angled for his cock, she couldn’t hit either of them where it counted.

Something filled her, but it wasn’t from the men who pressed against her. It imbued her like seven hundred shots of espresso, or the all-encompassing sense of terror she might feel if confronted with all of her phobias at once—like something she’d experienced before, magnified multitudes over, yet somehow contained within her slight frame.

She snapped her hips forward on its hinge, forcing her weight back onto her secondary legs, which gave her leverage to raise her prime legs with her knees against her chest. With her feet, she shoved Hank away by his shoulders.

He flew backward and struck the side of the trailer. The great metal siding resounded like a gong as he fell to his hands and knees. Elizabeth landed back on her primary legs with a thud.

“What—?” Kevin began.

Nothing could get in her way anymore. If she chose to walk through the trailer walls, she’d leave a body-shaped hole in her wake. Kevin’s hold was no match for her. She broke his embrace then landed her elbow just under his right eye. Stunned, he collapsed into an ungainly heap.

Elizabeth didn’t check whether he was still conscious. She strode to where Hank had almost climbed to his feet. She grabbed him by his throat and raised him from the ground without the slightest effort, despite the fact that he outweighed her twice over.

She slammed him once again into the side of the trailer, gazing up at him with her head cocked in disdain, nothing sensual or suggestive about her body against his now. He gasped for breath. She wasn’t choking him, but fear required so much more air than her grip allowed. He scrabbled at her hands, but just as nothing could stop her, neither could anything move her if she didn’t want it to.

When Bell’s voice joined hers, she wasn’t surprised. For once, they were in perfect accord.

“Have you learned nothing?” In the close metal compartment, their combined voices made everyone in her periphery clap their hands to their ears. “Must I make every one of you melt like the Rotting Man? Must I have you whipped every hour of every day without relief? Or should I simply give my demons a feast and resume populating my circus with freaks rather than entrails such as yourselves?”

Despite Hank’s longer arms, he couldn’t seem to reach her. He struck at her shoulders, but his hairy paws didn’t get close to hitting her face.

She gouged lines into his cheek with one of her secondary hands, then flung him into a group of prisoners. They fell together, partially naked or all naked. They scrambled away from each other as soon as they could, as though the exposed flesh of other men contaminated them.

There wasn’t nearly enough fear in their eyes—both Bell and Elizabeth agreed on that. But Elizabeth had to work with what she had, and what she had was a freakish, enticing body covered in their fluids, so she could understand why they hadn’t yet reached a full appreciation for who had taken a place among them.

She turned back to Kevin, lifted him up by his throat as well. His feet dangled near her shins, but his eyes were unfocused—not yet enough presence of mind to kick her.

“You,” she murmured, narrowing her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’m sorry. I thought… I didn’t know what I was thinking. You were just so…”

She bared her filed teeth. “You don’t even know what you’re apologizing for. You’re apologizing to placate me, but you understand no more than the rest. You showed promise, Kevin. You showed contrition. You asked for forgiveness. That makes this all the worse of a betrayal.”

“She wanted it, you sick bastard.” Hank rose up from the fray, wiping the back of his hand across his face to gather the blood from her scratches. “Moaning, groaning, bucking like a fucking whore. She’s had so many dicks in her, it’s a wonder her pussy’s still tight. And speaking of pussy, she was a goddamn waterfall in there. She had four cocks in her hand at a time, quadruple-fisting us like she couldn’t get enough. She was freaking out, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t want it.”

Elizabeth and Bell slowly turned around to face him, still holding Kevin by his throat. “I gave you every chance. Both of you.” She shook Kevin like a puppy. “I should have sent you to the Ringmaster when first she touched you. But as long as she agreed to go along with what she didn’t want, as long as she didn’t make her thoughts known, I allowed her to suffer your self-absorption and excuses. She’d found reasons to need the most pitiful of my possessions, so I let her stay to struggle with her impulses, with your fumbling control, if she was willing to accept it. Then you have the gall to apologize to her now in the same way. ‘I’m so sorry,’” she mocked. “‘I’m so sorry you’re too tempting for me to resist.’ You’re worse than that hairy foreskin of a dog, because you still think you’re nice, that everything you’ve done is okay, that you didn’t have a choice.”

“Please.” Kevin’s throat narrowed until his voice was a death rattle. “Please.”

She threw Kevin into Hank. Both of them tumbled back down onto the pile of men.

“I have the right to present everyone who touched her to the clowns. You’re young enough that they might still appreciate your flesh.” She cocked her head, drawing her gaze down Kevin’s thin, lanky body. “You wished yourself into the circus to save your skins, but in the wish, you promised to serve Arcanium. Your suffering was the one thing I required of you, but barely a year passes, and you’ve already failed. Your lives are forfeit.”

Some of the boys under Kevin and Hank protested, color draining from their faces.

She stretched out her prime hands. Kevin and Hank were lifted to their feet in mid-air, their toes dragging on the floor. Whites surrounded Kevin’s irises. His lips were the color of gravestones. Hank, in contrast, flushed under his dark fur, bared his teeth, and fought against whatever magic held him like a hanging puppet. Bell peeled Hank’s mind open for her to read his intentions, his schemes and desires, each more maggot-ridden and plague-black than the last. His erection hadn’t flagged. Fury kept him hard, kept him feeling powerful, even with Bell inside her.

But she beckoned to Kevin first. He floated forward, trying to twist away from the nothing carrying him. “No. No, please.”

“Suffering was your mercy. There’s none left to beg for.”

Bell hadn’t taken her will, which was why when she hesitated, he didn’t proceed. Instead, he dipped her into the pool of Kevin’s mind, the way he had with Hank.

Kevin was a boy in a young man’s body, a slave to instant self-gratification. Despite the long year of austerity, he still believed comforts should come to him whenever he wanted them, that Bell’s denial was a temporary setback to the norm. He meant well, which was worse than Hank’s malice, because he would never believe himself capable of exactly what he’d done.

He’d just lost control. He just found her so mind-blowingly sexy. He’d just been teased and strung along by an indecisive woman who couldn’t comprehend what she did to a man. Everything happened to him. Although he’d proven himself capable of self-reflection, Kevin was still active in his own passivity, a series of excuses absolving him and leaving him confused as hell every time he was punished.

He whimpered. “I thought she wanted it.”

Elizabeth struck his cheekbone, not with her elbow this time but with a clenched fist. It hurt like hell, and she wouldn’t be surprised if she’d cracked something in her hand.

“You really didn’t learn anything.” Just her voice this time, just her grabbing him by the shoulders and hair and flinging him into the side of the trailer. She was so angry she couldn’t see clearly. “It’s the same reason you’re in this fucking mess, asshole! I understand you being confused. I really do. Until I said out loud, in clear English, that I needed you to stop and that I didn’t want it. What about that was unclear?”

“You were still grinding and moaning and pussy-clenching,” Hank snarled, crawling and trying to stand at the same time. “And that goddamn demon wants to punish us because you don’t even know what you want?”

Elizabeth grabbed his hair and shoved her knee into his mouth. Again, it hurt a lot more than expected, because his teeth sank into her skin and left a partial bite mark. But she broke a few teeth, too. Phlegmy blood dripped from his mouth in bubbles and strings. He shouted, covered his mouth with his hands, calling her all sorts of things in his mushed-up mouth.

Elizabeth yanked him to his knees. “It’s called biology. I can’t help that. If a person tickles me, I laugh, but just because I laugh doesn’t mean I like it. I told you to stop, multiple times, and you chose to ignore me. But that doesn’t matter, because he reads your mind, dickcheese. If I’d said stop from the very beginning, you wouldn’t have listened, because you already figured out it’s pure biology with me. Add in a pornographic past, and you thought I didn’t have a choice. You could enjoy a willing body, and who cared if the woman wasn’t? You’re sick.”

He lunged at her, jagged teeth bared and muscular arms flailing. He bowled her over, buckling all four of her legs. His dense body slammed on top of her, stealing her breath, but she jerked up—either by instinct or with a nudge from Bell—and closed her teeth around Hank’s nose. Her filed teeth were perfectly angled to minimize skin resistance. When he yanked back in pain, he inadvertently contributed to the rending of flesh that left her with a nose in her mouth and a font of blood spilling from his face.

“You fucking bitch!”

She sat up with the help of her extra arms and spat the rest of his nose to the side. Now she was covered in sweat, cum, mucus, pus and blood. Her hands were starting to shake.

Bell swiftly tightened his control. The knowledge that bodily fluids were no danger to her sank bone-deep with certainty she couldn’t give herself alone. In the absence of the Creature’s feed, she appreciated having a calmer head. It left so much more room for the anger. The fact that the anger had built up over the course of seventeen years didn’t mean that Hank didn’t righteously deserve the bulk of it, and Bell seemed to agree, with a dulcet hint of amusement in her mind like a wind chime.

“Come on, Hank. Keep trying. I could bite you for days. Just be glad Bell didn’t make me venomous.”

“I knew you were one of his.” Hysteria and tears edged his accusation. Elizabeth could get used to that sound. “I said it from the beginning.”

Elizabeth managed to get to her knees, panting. She’d wipe her mouth, but she knew where her hands had been, and her forearms weren’t much better. She spat out more of Hank’s blood. “Joke’s on you. I wasn’t. But you know something? I’ve been afraid of the demons and monsters this whole time, and they’re the ones who listen when I tell them to stop. They’re the ones who protect me—even Bell, even though he stuck me in this dung heap. You guys are reminded every day of your mistakes. They slice through your skin, tear off your limbs, eat at your flesh. But you made the same mistakes again. On purpose. Deliberately. You’re sick. You’re disgusting.”

She slammed her heel into the mess of Hank’s face when he tried to attack her again.

“Come on!” she screamed at him, but also to the rest of the men around her, daring them to try to fight back.

With what looked like his last strength, Hank howled and raised his arms to smash her with his fists. Bell stretched out her hand and pulled at the air. The ‘wolf man’ ripped from Hank’s body like cellophane, leaving him without any of the advantages the transformation had given him. As he fell, he still had what Elizabeth had given him, though, thick threads of blood caught in his beard.

She reached for the first thing she could find, which was a thick piece of vine trimmed from Blondie that evening, still oozing sap. It would do.

Bell withdrew, giving her the floor.

Elizabeth had little awareness of what she was doing and little memory of what had just happened once she’d finished. She dropped the vine, most of which had been stained red and dotted with bits of flesh, then fell to her knees in abrupt exhaustion.

“The Ringmaster would be so proud,” Bell said in their double-voice, pleased.

Hank’s face was nearly unrecognizable, and his arms and chest weren’t much better—swollen, red and purple, bloody, rubbery. He was doubled over in fetal position, clutching his cock and balls, his genitals taking precedence over the rest of him, so she could only imagine what she’d done to him there.

Some of the other boys had welts on them as well, either because they’d been too close to Hank or they’d tried to stop her. The rest had rushed to the trailer door, but it wouldn’t open, no matter how they pounded upon the metal.

Elizabeth nudged Hank’s hands away with her foot. He coughed and tried to protest, but Bell forced them to his sides. Men seemed so deflated when flaccid, and Hank proved no exception. They were even more diminished when flayed.

“Killing you would be too easy an escape from Arcanium,” Bell mused, their voice a purr. “And the haunted funhouse clearly isn’t enough for you. I kept the lot of you separate from my people because they didn’t want you mingling with them, not the other way around. But such separation has made you believe you’re beyond my reach, and I can’t let that stand.”

Kevin cowered against the side of the compartment where she’d left him, staring up at her the way she assumed people looked at gods—with terror and awe. “What are you going to do?”

Briefly ignoring Kevin, Elizabeth ran her tongue along her sharp teeth. The taste of blood there didn’t offend her, and Bell had taken any fear of it she might have had. “How often have you used that prick of yours as a weapon, Hank? No need to respond. I already know the answer. I think it’s time we take that weapon away.”

“No. No, no. No.”

Gross though blubbering was on a grown man, she wouldn’t have had him any other way. “I think it’s time for the Man Doll to join Oddity Row.”

“No, no, please, no!”

Elizabeth would have preferred it if his dick and balls had dropped off like ripe peaches, but it was still satisfying to watch them sink into his torso, development in reverse. Then everything smoothed over—hairless, holeless, sexless. The same phenomenon spread to the rest of his body as well as he shrank down to nearly a third of his size, too small for his torn jeans. Only his head stayed the same, wailing in agony, although she didn’t think any of the changes hurt. The teeth Elizabeth had knocked out and the nose she’d bitten off regrew, but Bell left the bruises, welts and blood otherwise untouched.

“You’ll find your pretty wardrobe in your oddity tent,” she said. “You’ll travel with the Rotting Man or the Cyclops, whichever you prefer. As soon as you emerge from this trailer tomorrow, you’ll no longer be allowed back in. And you’re to report to the Ringmaster after every evening performance for punishment, since you’ll no longer have the funhouse to give you the pain you owe.”

“Chemical castration is supposed to be more effective at rehabilitating sex predators. Physical castration just makes them angrier, more violent when they do get a chance to attack.” Elizabeth couldn’t help admiring Bell’s handiwork, though.

“He hasn’t yet earned rehabilitation. Mental castration would spare him the effects of the sex demons, and I wouldn’t give him an advantage that even I cannot have. He’ll learn, Lizzie. They all do, eventually.”

She couldn’t find it in herself to protest too much. Her own sense of revenge had no trouble at all with physical castration. If Bell had asked, she would have helped.

Elizabeth slowly raised her gaze to where Kevin gaped, plastered against the wall. “The others didn’t press themselves upon her after she told everyone to stop. Their punishments will continue as before, with Hank’s example before them, although they now have freedom to wander through the rest of the circus. But you, dear boy, crossed the line well beyond the realm of excuse.”

“I’m sorry.” Fear rendered Kevin’s plea into a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth crouched before him. “Do you even know what you’re sorry for?”

“I’m sorry you… I’m sorry I…” A childish expression of petulance crossed his face before bewilderment replaced it, as though his own reaction surprised him. “I’m…”

She stroked through his messy hair. “At least you know you’re supposed to be sorry for something. It’s a shame you’re still not sure for what, despite the fact that I’ve said it plainly. If you’re so set on your belief that you’re a slave to animal urges, then an animal you’ll become. Not like the elephants or the lion and tiger…although I do like cats.”

“What are you—?” He stopped, shuddered, eyes widening as though he’d been goosed, then twitched sharply once, twice.

Then the shudder wasn’t from him, but over his skin in a wave, shifting the pale skin to something thicker with a texture Elizabeth couldn’t immediately place—crepe-y, wrinkly soft, gathered at the joints and crevices of his body. His fingers shortened, tightened together, though they still had mobility and dexterity. The nails thinned, lengthened into something approaching claws, which Bell quickly clipped.

The transformation dipped under the waistband of his shorts, shrinking the bulge until it was impossible to see the shape of it through the fabric. His athletic leanness thinned even more, the pockets of softness more pronounced. The shape of his face changed as well, cheekbones defined and the chin more pointed. Eyes grew wider above a flattened, darkened nose. His hair fell out onto his shoulders and the ground around him, and his upper lip split into a cleft. The last alterations were whiskers, which pierced through his skin. He winced as though they were needles.

Elizabeth turned his head back and forth, inspecting him while he trembled. He tried to rise and run from the transformation, but weakness in his limbs trapped him where he sat.

His ears were pointed, his scalp gathered in wrinkles at the base of his skull. Gray discolorations covered portions of his body like birthmarks. But as much of a Sphynx cat as he appeared, he remained unmistakably human in the underlying architecture.

“I would have given you a tail, but I thought that would be a bit much. If you’d like one, however, I’d be more than willing to oblige. If you’re lucky, pussy cat, one of mine will take you for a pet. Of course, you can’t quite be like John is to Valorie.” Elizabeth nodded in the direction of his boxers. “I left you unfixed, and human, more or less. But you won’t manage much penetration with what I’ve left you. It’ll take more than helpless rutting to get what you want. You’ll need to make sure the woman wants what you have to offer, and you’ll have to offer so much more than just this.”

She covered his split lip with a finger before he could yowl whatever ill-advised, indignant, impulsive protest threatened to spill from him. “Remember the example of your friend over there. You’re fortunate I left you with anything at all.”

Kevin recoiled, shock dissolving into horror as the changes to his body finally registered. Elizabeth patted his cheek, crinkling the whiskers, then stood.

“You’ll also have a tent on Oddity Row. I’ll expect you there by tomorrow’s opening, and in the ring with Hank after the performance for the Ringmaster to deal with. Does anyone else here have an opinion about how to use this body, or must she retrieve the vine?”

There were new glints in the shadows from people who hadn’t tried to save her. They’d stayed in the darkness, where they’d been told to stay ever since Bell brought them into Arcanium. Perhaps he was right, that keeping them separate had done neither Bell nor his prisoners any favors.

“Time to leave, my lovely Spider. There’s no place for you here anymore.”

She didn’t want to be here anymore anyway.

The men scattered from the compartment door as she approached it. When she grabbed the handle, it opened easily. Elizabeth jumped onto the ground, shoved the door closed again to lock the prisoners in for the night.

The ensuing quiet and dead crackle of grass beneath her bare feet jolted her back into her mind, where the last thirty minutes had been branded in her memory, except for that fuzzy stretch with the vine. The strange euphoria that had imbued her along with Bell’s presence left as he did.

“It was a pleasure.”