Corruption
Kim Fielding
Chapter One
The crowd was restless tonight. Men reeked of sweat and liquor as they shifted on the creaking wooden seats. Rough voices whispered, and sometimes one of the men called out. Demanding words, angry words. Tenrael knew that by dawn he’d be bruised and bleeding. His back to the audience, he tried to stand straight despite his fears, tried to keep his breathing steady. But he couldn’t stop the slight tremor of his wings. A black feather drifted down and landed near his foot. His owner would collect it later and sell it to someone for a dollar or two.
The air inside the tent was sultry, and sweat trickled down his bare skin, making him want to twitch. He would have liked to wipe the stinging saltiness from his eyes. But Davenport preferred to begin the show with Tenrael bound, his wrists shackled overhead and his ankles tethered to the stage. Even his neck was kept in place, a tight chain fastening his collar to a metal support. The chains weren’t necessary—Tenrael couldn’t flee—but they gave him a mystique of danger, which excited dark fantasies in the marks’ heads.
Davenport began his usual patter, punctuating his words with occasional slaps of his cane against Tenrael’s body. The blows were calculated to make impressive noises more than to hurt, although the stings made Tenrael flinch.
Tenrael didn’t listen to Davenport’s words; he could easily have recited them himself. He stared at the wall of the tent, imagining figures in the stains on the dirty canvas. One splatter of mud resembled a soaring bird, another looked like the moon rising over faraway mountains, and a third was the crest of an enormous wave.
“That ain’t no demon!” yelled a familiar voice from the crowd, interrupting Davenport midsentence. “Them wings are fake.” As intended, the rest of the audience rumbled agreement.
Davenport whacked Tenrael’s ass; then he poked his cane tip into the narrow space on Tenrael’s back, between his wings. “I assure you, this is the genuine article. But perhaps you’d like to come closer and see for yourself, my good sir.”
As the crowd cheered and clapped its encouragement, the caller—in fact, Davenport’s employee, Ford—stomped forward. Tenrael fought not to tremble as Ford clomped onto the small stage. The man wouldn’t do him much damage now, not while he was playing the part of a mark. His favorite time for torment was very late at night, when Tenrael was already raw from whatever the marks had done to him. Ford was an artist. He knew that in those cold, dark hours it would take only a few well-placed touches with a blade to set Tenrael screaming and begging. Sometimes not even that—sometimes it took only a few well-chosen words.
But now, Ford simply followed Davenport’s urgings to test Tenrael’s authenticity. He prodded the wings and yanked a feather free, laughing as he held it up for the crowd to see. “Damn! That really was attached!” Then he walked slowly around to face Tenrael’s front. The audience hadn’t seen that side of him yet, and Ford pretended it was his first glimpse too. His eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and he pretended to stagger back. “Holy shit! Them eyes! Ain’t nothin’ human about them!”
Of course, the audience clamored loudly, wanting to see for themselves. Davenport worked the creaky pedal to turn the little platform on which Tenrael was bound. The platform moved slowly. Tenrael didn’t close his eyes—that would only earn him punishment—but he kept his head bowed as deeply as he dared, his gaze unfocused. He didn’t need to see the men who gasped at him, at the small red horns that protruded from his black hair, his orange eyes, his hairless torso devoid of navel. He knew they wore battered brimmed hats, sweat-stained shirts, patched and threadbare jeans and overalls, old boots that needed resoling. He knew their faces had reddened with excitement as they realized the creature they’d paid fifty cents to see truly was a demon. He knew some of them eyed his flaccid cock and hairless balls, hanging so vulnerably between his legs, just as they’d no doubt been staring at his ass before Davenport turned him.
Ford hurried off the stage and resumed his spot in the audience, while Davenport stroked his cane and beamed. “So you see?” he crowed. “I present to you tonight the genuine article, plucked from the depths of hell itself!”
That was a lie. Tenrael had lived atop sheer cliffs, not in any depths, and he’d flown night skies, bringing nightmares and troubling thoughts to sleeping humans. So long ago. And it wasn’t Davenport who’d captured him; the bastard’s grandparents hadn’t even been born yet. Another man had laid a clever trap; then he’d ensnared Tenrael with spells and incantations and the mark he’d branded onto the soles of Tenrael’s feet. Eventually that man had grown bored and sold him, and later his second master lost him in a card game. And so it went. Tenrael didn’t know how many years Davenport had owned him. It didn’t matter.
Davenport blathered smoothly onward, spinning tales the marks swallowed eagerly. How the demon had been vicious and terrible, deflowering virgins, ruining men, eating babies for dinner. The more violent Davenport’s stories became, the more frenzied the marks grew, roaring their approval every time the cane struck Tenrael.
Finally, Davenport boomed, “Thank you for your attention this evening! For only fifty cents, you now have a story to tell your grandchildren. But perhaps a few of you wish there was some way to exact vengeance on this creature for the great wrongs it has committed.” He dropped his voice very low, forcing the marks to grow silent and strain to hear him. “We can make private arrangements for such a thing—at the cost of fifteen dollars.”
The marks grumbled loudly at that. Fifteen dollars was a week’s wages. On cue, Ford stood, a sheath of grubby bills clutched in one hand. “I’ve got ten!”
While the marks waited anxiously, Davenport appeared to consider. Finally, he nodded slightly. “Well, since you have been an excellent audience... a discount, just this once. Ten dollars.”
It was still a lot of money. Most of the men filed out of the tent, chattering to each other in excitement. They would find cheaper entertainment, which would also profit Davenport and the carnival. Perhaps a sandwich from the booth next door for ten cents, and watery beer or a shot of bad liquor for two bits. Or they could pay another fifty cents for entrance to the largest tent, where more items from Davenport’s collection were on display: the tattooed lady, the lobster boy, the two-headed snake. If they had two dollars, they could dance with a painted woman to the sounds of a scratchy phonograph, and for three dollars more she’d take them into a small curtained enclosure, drop to her knees, and suck their dicks.
But six or seven men remained in the tent with Tenrael, their eyes flashing. Ford wasn’t with them, but they didn’t notice. They eagerly handed their money to Davenport, who took it with a small bow and slid it into his pocket. “Just give me a few moments, gentlemen,” he cooed.
They milled around, watching as Davenport released Tenrael’s chains. He collapsed to the floor when his arms were freed—he’d been bound in place many hours—and the marks grunted with surprise and scrambled back. But then Davenport attached a leash to Tenrael’s collar and tugged hard. “Come!” he commanded.
The brands and spells were stronger than any chains, robbing Tenrael of the ability to refuse his master. He staggered to his feet and followed Davenport through the flap at the back of the tent, into a smaller space that reeked of blood and sweat and semen. Davenport didn’t even have to order him then. He just pointed with his cane, and Tenrael meekly bent over the metal framework that awaited him. Davenport shackled him in place, keeping Tenrael’s arms bound downward, his legs stretched wide, his ass raised high. Tenrael hung his head so he wouldn’t have to look at the objects on the nearby shelf—objects the marks would soon be using on him and in him.
In a parody of tenderness, Davenport stroked Tenrael’s lower back. “Give a good show tonight, boy. Scream nice and loud so I don’t have to bring Ford in to liven things up.” He laughed and slapped Tenrael’s ass.
Tenrael screamed very loud that night. Ford came in anyway.
Early the next morning, Tenrael lay curled tightly in his cage, pretending the metal bars gave him refuge. His eyes still closed, he heard the roustabouts chattering lazily as they struck the tents and packed everything away. He grunted in pain when some of the men lifted his cage, carried it across the hard-trodden dirt, and shoved it roughly into the back of a truck. He was glad for the false sense of privacy as they covered the cage, despite the odor of the mildewed canvas.
Soon afterward, the truck motor roared to life, and Tenrael felt the familiar bumps and jostles, each one bringing new agony to his broken body.
It wasn’t the pain that bothered him most. It would pass; he would heal. It wasn’t the constant humiliation, the total loss of dignity, the unwanted invasions of his body... those tortures were familiar now too. He was as accustomed to shame and degradation as he was to his shackles and cage. What hurt most were the memories of flying, fierce and proud and free. And the knowledge that his future contained only endless towns full of rubes eager to hand over their money to Davenport.
In the musty darkness of his cage, with the sounds of the engine, creaking springs, and rolling tires as camouflage, Tenrael wept.