Caged

“Come in, come in! Welcome all! Take your seats, for our lovely show will begin shortly!” Luca, the man standing awkwardly on stage, shouted into the microphone that was set up close to the side of the stage. He fixed his oversized top hat, lifted up the collar of his light grey trench coat, and walked off stage, his buckled combat boots thumping hard.

Behind the large purple velvet curtain that separated the horrifying backstage and the innocent audience, two burly men held short ropes tied to a young girl, who was only around fifteen. Upon her thin, narrow face, there was a look of slight fear. Once another young girl trotted over, with a pile of clothing in her thin arms, the first girl hid the fear behind a composed mask of nothingness.

“Hello, Ellinor. I brought your costume, just as Luca had ordered. Are you okay? Are you nervous?” the girl gibbered, her blue eyes questioning.

“I’m fine, Claire. And thank you for bringing the, err, costume.” Ellinor smiled, exposing a set of perfectly white, sharpened teeth. She took the clothing from Claire’s hands, for the rope was tied around poor Ellinor’s neck, and patted them. “It’ll be a good show tonight, I hope.”

“Yeah, I really hope. It’s your last, isn’t it? Then they’re cutting out the whole act, I hope. I don’t want to see another soul go through that.” With that, Claire skipped off.

“Oriane! Get the Lady dressed,” one of the men holding Ellinor shouted over to a woman, in her middle twenties.

She dropped what she was holding and raced over, taking both the ropes from the men’s hands. Smiling, she shooed them off and once they were gone, dropped the ropes and took Ellinor’s hand.

“Let’s get ready.”

Once she was dressed in her costume, black boy shorts, a white tank top with a black vest over it, fishnet tights with red and white stockings pulled over them, Oriane pulled Ellinor’s black hair back into a complicated braided bun and curled the rest of the hair that fell out, or was left out.

“Ah, I hate this part. You’ll be underwater, so why must I do your hair so wonderfully?” Oriane sighed, picked up the ropes, and led Ellinor out to where Luca was standing, by the curtain’s edge.

“Here is my favorite girl!” Luca smiled widely, opening his arms. “We must hurry and get out. They are ready.”

The ropes fell off her neck and she was pulled over to a large tank, full of water. The top was off and the ladder was calling her.

She, unwillingly, shuffled over and climbed up the ladder, nearly slipping from her stockings. Ellinor took a glance at Oriane, Luca, and the curtain before sucking in a large gulp, then pushing herself down into the freezing cold water, just as the curtain opened quickly. The top to her tank slid over it and clicked air-tight closed.

In the cold water, Ellinor twisted and turned, spinning round and round, just as she had been instructed to.

As she was going, she began getting flashbacks from when she was learning stilt walking and fire eating in third, and re-learning in eighth, grade. She remembered the pain of her broken hip from falling from her eight foot stilts {she had wondered why they made her go up so high} and her throat burning for days after she first started.

Then, it phased into her first day of high school, her first dance there, the softness of Isaac’s lips had been on hers. It revolved around when she was pulled from one of her last days as a junior and trained for these acts.

The memories began going faster and faster, starting from her childhood and up until the moment.

She realized that she was losing the air in her lungs quicker than she thought. Her head started pounding, her heart aching.

Ellinor thrashed against the plexi-glass walls, trying to alert her keepers.

Her breath slipped from her thin lips and in that nanosecond, cups upon cups of water rushed into her lungs.

Slowly, she sifted to the bottom of the tank, her grey eyes closing as she stared in disappointment at the silent crowd.

The curtain was drawn and everything was black.

Author's Note

How is it? Review it please, bitte.

Reviews

[Ronn Michael Salinas]

hey... that's not so nice : oh have you watched this video of this guy with the chainsaw and the limb separation trick gone wrong?