“Excuse me. What’s the plan for us? Why do you have us caged up in here?” Yue asked looking the woman in the eyes.
“Are you guys from a circus?” Drew asked. The woman gave him a condescending look at the word circus.
“We’re a type of circus you could say. A carnival macabre is how we’ve been introduced. An ancient clan of the Roma travelling the world to entertain royalty. Or, at least that’s what we used to pretend to be. Now we’re three trucks full of freaks in a world full of freaks. We honestly haven’t decided what to do with you three yet. We’re saving that to puzzle out later.” Questions answered as much as she was willing to answer them the woman started to shut the door again.
“Hey! You could just pretend we’d just pulled over. You have our stuff already. Just let us go.” LeBron sounded more than a little desperate. Not that there was any reason whatsoever not to sound desperate in a situation like this.
“Silly boy. If you’d just pulled over and let us take you stuff, we’d have slit your throats and left you in the ditch. The only reason you’re still alive is that you tried to run us down then shoot us. You were pretty much in a coma and yet you still tried to unfold a knife to attack us. You may not be the brightest or strongest, but you’ve got heart. Heart is all that matters.” The woman finished talking with a flourish. With one hand over her heart she let her smile disappear as she sealed them back in their crate.
“I didn’t realize how weird an apocalypse could get.” Yue joked while she split up the food and passed it out.
The sausages turned out to be a god send for LeBron. Something was definitely wrong with his jaw. He couldn’t really tell which part of his jaw hurt the most because everything hurt. Yue opened the can for him so he could pick them out. He was able to kind of mush the sausages around in his mouth until he could swallow them. The pills were just regular Tylenol tablets. Yue assumed the people who’d captured them had kept all the good stuff for themselves. She beat the tablets with her shoe until they were in small enough pieces for LeBron to swallow along with his water.
They were taken one at a time to use the bathroom. The bathroom turning out to be a hole cut in the bottom of the trailer with a toilet seat mounted above it. There was a solid steel plate mounted on sliders to allow for sealing off the small hole when not in use. The smell was about what you’d expect. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the cat piss smell of the crate they were spending all of their time in. The interior of the trailer was lit with the red lights. There were all kinds of supplies shoved pretty much everywhere.
There was a good dozen people keeping a watchful eye on them as they did their business. Between the pain in his face and dozen people staring at him it took LeBron a good five minutes to get a stream going. His escort thought it was hilarious which didn’t help him at all. Looking around he saw piercings and crazy hairstyles. One guy lounging nearby on top of a stack of crates looked like he was three hundred pounds of solid muscle. His massive biceps covered in the amateur tattoos LeBron associated with outlaws. This guy must’ve spent all of his time behind bars on the weight pile in between shooting up roids.
They got another pee break a few hours later. Other than that, they spent their time sitting in the recently emptied giant litterbox staring at each other. They’d tried to come up with a plan but there really wasn’t a great way to get out of the situation they were in. They didn’t have much to go on beyond the cryptic answers the gypsy looking black woman had given them. Based on the extremely eclectic mix of people they saw on their trips outside the box to pee the circus macabre title definitely fit.
LeBron had his head in Yue’s lap. She was stroking his hair while he tried to sleep when they felt the truck come to a jolting stop. LeBron tried to sit up, but Yue shushed him and got him to lie still. Drew was watching LeBron with fire in his eyes. He wished he could kick the door off this crate and walk through the trailer with guns blazing. He’d love to cause some serious pain to the circus clown who’d done that to LeBron. He could understand chasing them down to steal their supplies. Once they’d hit the tree though the freaks could’ve taken everything they wanted and just left them there. What the hell was up with putting them in this stupid box?
The crate door opened an hour later. They’d been alerted by the sound of the lock being jangled around on the other side. All of them assumed it was just another bathroom break. It turned out they were partially right. Instead of being hauled out one at a time to piss in the hole all three of them were ushered out at the same time. They were given drinks and offered the chance to use the hole which they each did. Once they were ready, they were marched to the back of the trailer where the doors were. There were three people standing there waiting for them. The black woman with the bandana, the massively muscled felon and a dark-haired man with greasy hair who was wearing a top hat. The rest of the people from the trailer were gathering behind them now.
“You’re the three morons who wouldn’t pull over. You don’t look related. How do you
