Ladies and Gentlemen, Vaudevillians, cherubs and seraphim from either edge of this eternity, greetings, salutations, and our heartiest welcome. To those of you who have graced us with your companionship before we extend a special greeting. Already I peruse freckled faces I have seen before – eyes shining, nostrils flared like those of wild horses, lips trembling in anticipation.
We will show such sights, such wonderments, that on your deathbeds you will recount and be amazed still.
Wandered we have, travelled through sickness and squalor, merriment and heady milieu, to guppy down round your friendly fires and tell you some things that we know to be true. Wonderful, terrible things we’ve seen, beauty, tragedy, villainy, chivalry, alchemy, lobotomy. All of the evils in this world that should be avoided, and all of those that should be indulged.
But hold! Hold! YOU! YOU have participated before. You witnessed the presentation of Delilah. Delilah was 300lb Doberman bitch, with a hellish temperament, teeth that could dispatch of a pig carcass in minutes, and rabies of such an advanced state that veterinarian and priest alike were afeard to approach her. But Beatrice was not. Her dulcet whispers could lull the beast into a living sleep, and, as though there were an affinity between them, it would suffer to be caressed and mauled about the maw. The audience were stunned into silent astonishment, and thereafter would brawl tooth and bloody claw to witness the act.
Delilah, regardless, was a danger to all, and in kindness ought to have been lain to rest, but she bore a litter of nine pups, each as rabid as she, and in truth there is no such sport as watching them, still blind from birth, snarling and ravaging each other with bloody gums. Eight of the bastards perished, succumbing to the disease they had sucked from their mother’s teat. The bitch, even through the cloud of her madness, was much aggrieved, roared and snarled for her dead babies, and became hellish protective of the last remaining pup, which was named Star. It was this very lifeblood of the birth mother, that daring Beatrice, having sated the savage with melodies secret, sweetly slipped from beneath her vicious claws. Silence blanketed the auditorium. Our heroine’s inaudible murmurings were like shining diamonds in the night, as she ascended the trapeze, with whimpering cargo in her arms, up, up, up into nowhere, it’s mother bright-eyed, but unmoving, beneath them. We beheld Beauty suspended in the night, borne by our own frozen breath. And still the beast didn’t snarl, or pace, or bay for her baby, simply stayed beneath them, entranced but alert, bright eyes fixed unrolling on her precious one. Only when she saw her pup gripped in Beatrice’s one outstretched hand, did her body begin to tremble, and urgent, wild, yelping noises began to form behind her rancid fangs. She watched as her mistress’ fingers unfurled one by one from the whimpering pup’s neck. And only as the baby Star plummeted through the air did the Beastmother finally erupt, roaring like hellfire, slinging ropes of rabid slaver over the nearest men who had retreated far back from where they had stood in wonderment but moments before. Delilah lunged and caught her baby in her jaws, then withdrew to a far corner, the very epithet of fury, daring any man to approach. And if they had, I doubt not but her babe would have feasted on human flesh that night.
But our own Beatrice, now seeming trapped, still suspended high above, had no exit but to descend into the pit of the beast she had so sorely riled. The audience were petrified – surely she would be killed! Even our own crew were unsure of what to do next. But our Beatrice calmly gave the order to be lowered down. Silence once more drowned the auditorium, but this time not in awe, but pure, choking terror. Delilah was invisible, having drawn back far from view, but for the steam of her rancid breath, and her eyes, like embers of hellfire. Upon descending Beatrice started to trill that same strange tune, quietly, quietly, only for Delilah. There was no response from the bitch until Beatrice’s feet touched the ground as she dismounted the trapeze, and a low, terrible growl rolled all around us. The audience were incapable of doing anything but look on, as though they too were under some sinister stupefying spell. Still Beatrice sang and slowly approached the Beast, a tiny birdlike thing, whom Delilah could dispatch with one snap of her jaws. And yet, she didn’t. She dipped back into the darkness, and re-emerged nursing her pup, our little Star, in her mouth. Beatrice came closer, and once more a strange, loving empathy radiated between them. The frozen crowd looked on, agog, as Beatrice took the baby from Delilah’s compliant jaws. That was the night the beast was broken by the bird.
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