Fangboy

Each of the prisoners held up three or four extremities, all of them burnt.

“It’s very inconvenient to keep a whole vat of oil boiling at all times,” said Mongrel. “It requires a great deal of wood and you have to check on it at least every forty-five minutes. That should indicate the depth of my passion for dunking parts of people into it. And don’t think that it’s just a quick dunk, in and out and you’re done. These dunks linger.”

Nathan wiped away the tear that trickled down his cheek. “Why is there such evil in the world?” he asked. “Everywhere I go, I find nothing but cruelty! Why is this so?”

“I don’t know,” Mongrel admitted. “But personally, I think it’s rather great.”

“Cruelty for all!” Kleft declared.

“Sadness and misery,” said Nathan. “I was born into a world that offers nothing but sadness and misery. Pain and sorrow. Heartbreak and agony.”

“Yes, indeed!” said Mongrel.

Nathan wallowed in self pity for a few seconds, but then decided, no, it wasn’t true. Penny and Mary had been nothing but kind to him. His parents had been somewhat ill-advised in their level of protection, but they’d always loved him. He had friends. Dogs were usually nice. He wasn’t going to let a reprehensible sadist like Mongrel taint his view of life on this planet. There was goodness in the world.

“I don’t care how heartless you are,” Nathan said. “I still love you.”

* * *

The boiling oil hurt even more than he’d expected.

* * *

“Don’t go thinking that your teeth are so special,” Mildred the bearded lady told him. “I could have fangs like that if I wanted, but I don’t.”

“Yeah,” said Gabriel the alligator boy. “If you came at me with them right now, do you know how scared I’d be? Barely.”

“Nobody’s going to pay to see you,” said Gondola and Horatio, simultaneously.

“If you’re to be our savior, then we must have required very little in the way of saving,” said Winston the Tattooed Man, whose tattoo of a star was mostly covered by his shirt sleeve. “Perhaps we were at ninety-six or ninety-seven percent saved already, and your contribution added the extra three or four percent, which I don’t have to tell you is a fairly unimpressive contribution.”

“None of this is my fault,” Nathan insisted. “I don’t want to be here. I’m a captive, just like the rest of you. I’m not getting any special treatment. You saw the way he put my arm in the oil. We should all be friends.”

“Friends?” asked Mildred. “With a freak like you? Surely you can’t be serious!”

“I am serious,” said Nathan. “But that’s beside the point. We should join forces. He doesn’t have enough boiling oil to stop all of us. I mean, he does, but he’d have to splash it all around. He couldn’t dunk everybody.”

“Do you think we haven’t tried to escape?” asked Mildred. “Rarely a week goes by when we don’t try to hatch some sort of scheme. And each time, as we bury one of our own, we agree that we shouldn’t have done it.”

Nathan was flustered. “Well, perhaps you could hatch a better scheme.”

“There’s no way out. The best thing you can do is put on as good of a show as possible. It’s not such a bad life, once you lower your expectations.”

“No,” said Nathan. “It can’t be true. I will escape tonight!”

* * *

The second dunking in the boiling oil hurt less, because many of the nerves in his left arm had been burnt away the first time. It still was not a pleasant experience.

* * *

“We’ve decided to call you The Human Shark,” Professor Mongrel announced, as Nathan struggled to get into his skin-tight costume. “What do you think?”

Nathan shrugged. “It’s better than Fangboy.”

“Fangboy? Why, that’s brilliant! I wish I’d thought of that myself instead of merely claiming credit for it in the future!”

“What if people think he’s a vampire?” asked Kleft.

“All the better! People are in favor of vampires these days. Fangboy it is! Finish putting on your suit.”

Nathan hated his costume. It was brown, with lots of fanged mouths sewn onto the fabric. (Not, it must be noted, actual mouths, but rather artistic representations of mouths. Though if Mongrel had come up with the idea and such a thing were practical, he very well may have tried it.) He straightened the sleeves and stood in front of Mongrel and Kleft, feeling awkward and self-conscious.

“Perfect!” said Mongrel. “It truly brings out the sharpness of your teeth.”

“Can’t I just wear normal clothes?” asked Nathan.

“Not in my Theatre of the Macabre. Perhaps if you sign on with some discount hobo-laden charity theatre you can wear your street clothes, but not here. Now, it is time to practice.” He clapped his hands. “Assistant Kleft! The spider box!”

Kleft picked a small wooden box up off the stage and set it down in front of Nathan.

“Inside this box are a dozen different varieties of spiders,” said Mongrel. “You will be able to tell which ones are venomous by observing whether or not you die after you are bitten.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That was a joke. You’re in the entertainment business now, so levity is important! Nobody wants to pay to see a sour-faced spider-eater. That said, there are venomous ones in there, and it will serve you well to avoid them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember, it’s all about showmanship. You can’t just tilt your head back and shake the contents of the box out into your open mouth. The audience needs to feel as if they were eating a tarantula themselves. As the webby contents of its thorax spew out onto your tongue, each person sitting in those seats needs to feel as if it is their own tongue being coated.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You can get entertainment that isn’t disgusting at the ballet! These people want to see, smell, hear, taste, and touch the macabre! Now open the lid.”

Nathan opened the lid. The box was indeed filled with crawling spiders.

“Pick one up. If you choose a black widow, do it quickly.”

Nathan plucked the largest spider he could find from the box then shut the lid so the others wouldn’t escape. He tossed the spider into the air and caught it between his teeth.

“Amazing!” Mongrel shouted. “Why didn’t you tell us you could do that?”

Nathan wanted to explain that it was something he’d never tried before, and in fact he’d only thought of the trick two seconds earlier, but he had a spider between his teeth.

“So, go on, bite it!”

Nathan offered a silent apology to the arachnid, then bit it in half.

“That was unspeakably entertaining,” said Mongrel. “We have an act!”

* * *

Nathan sat backstage, listening to the sounds of the audience being unimpressed with the Tattooed Man’s story about how he’d originally asked for a crescent moon on his arm, but how the tattoo artist had convinced him to go with a star instead, and about how sometimes when the moon was in the sky he regretted his decision.

“Are you ready?” Mongrel asked. “You’re on next.”

“I suppose.”

“You suppose? What kind of lackadaisical attitude is that? We need enthusiasm. A lot of people have traveled long distances tonight to see Fangboy. Do you know who’s here? Do you?”

“Who?”

“None other than Charles Monchino, star of stage and screen. His filmography includes motion pictures such as Doom’s Day, Lady’s Bug, and Spoke’s Person. Terrible films, all, but financially lucrative.”

Nathan sat up straight. “I’ve never met a movie star.”