Free Vigilantes of Love by John Everson

neck.
    “You wanna talk about it?” she said finally. He didn’t stir.
    “Yeah, didn’t think so,” she whispered.
    They both lay there, faces to the canvas ceiling, each knowing the other was awake, as somewhere a clock ticked through the hour, click-stop, click-stop, click-stop, click-stop, click… 
    When Reind woke up, Erin was already gone. Part of him was relieved, but another was frightened. What did she know? What would she say, when he finally came clean? He shook away the visions of her screaming and beating at his chest with clenched fists. He dressed quickly, and went out to meet the crowds. He had a show to do.
    He passed his mother, Yvette, The Three-Breasted Woman outside of the Freak Show tent. Her arms were crossed over the objects of her attraction, and she shook her head at him and tsked.
    “Behave,” was all she said – though that was a volume for her – and vanished behind the flap of canvas.
    Great , Reind thought. Did everyone already know?
    The first step was harder than usual.
    The second, almost impossible.
    He couldn’t focus. He kept hearing Erin ask in the darkness, “You wanna talk about it?”
    She knew.
    She knew , damnit. Maybe his mother did too! Shit, maybe the whole goddamned circus knew. But how? It hadn’t been that long. And they’d been careful…  Or was he just being paranoid?
    He could feel a change in texture to the rope beneath his foot at step three, but didn’t look down.
    When you were on the wire, you didn’t turn back and you didn’t look down. But then he felt it again. His foot seemed to slide, just a bit.
    Reind didn’t move his head, but his eyes slid down, staring at the event horizon of the long rope below him. He saw the cause of the disturbance. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with his infidelity when climbing the ladder and starting out across the rope by rote, he couldn’t have missed it.
    Someone had wound strands of golden tinsel every few inches, all down the length of rope.
    Cute , he thought, and refocused his gaze. Irritating, but not dangerous. He was already past step five and the rest of the way was just a walk in the park, really. He and Rafe, the tentmaster, would be having a long talk when he got down, for this little stunt. You don’t mess with a guy’s tightrope to ‘pretty it up’ without telling him!
    Down on the main floor, the ringmaster was just winding up, getting into his act.
    “Shh, ladies and gentlemen, be very quiet now,” the man in the red-and-white-striped suit intoned, holding a finger to his lips. “He is coming up to the most dangerous part. A walk of intense peril. The most dangerous fifteen feet ever attempted by man…  Look as he steps out over the ground fifty feet below… without a net!”
    Reind hardly smiled at those familiar words. Old hat. He’d heard them too many times. He stepped, slipped a little again on tinsel, stepped again and stepped
    “Shit,” he hissed. Something bit into his foot. He hurriedly stepped again and almost fell.
    The rope felt as if it had disappeared and he was treading on a razor. The thin fabric covering the soles of his feet barely shielded them from the rope, allowing him to feel the texture of the strands beneath him. And right now, all he was feeling was pain and a growing heat down the center of his feet.
    His arms struck out and waved for balance as his walk slowed, and the crowd took in its breath with a perceptible gasp. The whole world seemed to creak to a slow motion crawl.
    He stepped again, and this time, cried out.
    And again. The pain was growing, but Reind could not go back. He could not stop. On the wire, there was only going forward, or going down.
    Reind looked down, afraid of losing his focus completely, but unable to stop himself from seeing what had been done to his rope.
    His rope had been taken away.
    Across the fifteen-foot gap above where the nets were withdrawn – the ‘dangerous’ part of his walk – a single, heavy steel wire