Free Noir by Jacqueline Garlick Page B

my best not to cringe, worried as I shake it that his hand may snap loose.
    He wears only a loincloth, which has my eyes darting for something else to focus on. My cheeks flush red. His entire body looks as though the skin has baked in the sun for a thousand years. I can’t help but think it must be painful to wear. He is missing a nose, and parts of his lips are broken off, as if from age or weather. He is like a corpse that’s been pickled and dried and kept for centuries, but he can’t be as old as his skin appears. I think about him being carted around and put up for show, and my heart bleeds for his pain.
    He shakes my hand and his eyes shine, so youthful behind their yellowed lenses. “Pleased to meet you.” He smiles, and I’m surprised to see he has teeth. Not many, but more than the ringmaster. “You have a kind heart,” he says, and his eyes roll as if he’s channeling that information from another world. He launches into a momentary dream state still in possession of my hand, and my heart flutters uneasily in my chest.
    “Oh, come now.” I chuckle nervously, not knowing what to make of his strange actions. “How can you say that, you don’t even know me?”
    “I don’t have to.” He awakens, and shifts his gaze back to me. “I can tell everything about a person by just looking in their eyes.” He stares.
    I pull my hand back, a little unnerved, fighting hard to disguise the discomfort that’s swallowed me. “You can, can you?”
    “Yes, and from what I see”—he smiles, his weathered lips splitting—“you’re our destiny.” His words come out low and slow.
    A niggling feeling creeps down my neck, a spider of sorts, spun of his words. I move on to the next cage.
    Crouched in the corner is a decrepit stump of a man. I stoop, trying to better align my face with what I think to be his. I’ve never seen such a troubled creature before.
    He stretches his eyes up to the tops of his lids, struggling to peer out from beneath a frightening mountain of tumour. One eye is so awkwardly placed on his head, it appears to be an ear—and his ear, offset and sliding down the side of his head, does not align with the other. His other eye can barely be seen for another massive growth.
    His arms are of different lengths. One is but a stub with a hand, his fingers gnarled into a permanent hook. He looks like something out of the monster comics—the kind the masters forbade us to read in school for fear we’d all have nightmares.
    “M’ name is Reeke,” he says very slowly. I notice an abundance of teeth in his mouth, staggered and jumbled, more than a double set in the lower jaw alone. Foam forms when he talks, and drool drips from his lips. He’s quick to steer the excess away with his knuckles, flushing.
    He offers his hand to shake, then just as quickly draws it back, realizing his mistake. He wipes it clean on his clothing and tries again.
    “Pleased to meet you, Reeke,” I say, patting him on what I believe to be his shoulder. My heart aches for this urchin of a man. How could I have ever believed myself unfortunate when there are people who face conditions such as this in the world? How narrow-minded of me to think myself so cruelly afflicted.
    I turn to the next. The Snakeman, obviously—I recognize him from C.L.’s poster, named for the grotesque and painful-looking condition of his spine. Contorted from stem to stern into an almost perfect S, he shuffles toward me, rocking side to side.
    “Sadar,” he says, offering me his hand. He has the most beautiful, smooth, brown-coloured skin with matching eyes, and snow-white hair. I take his hand and he grips mine shockingly firmly, shaking it with such enthusiasm my shoulder feels temporarily dislocated. His chains jingle against the bars and he talks over them. “Though some call me the Snakeman . Either way, it’s me.” He grins.
    “Sadar? That’s a fascinating name,” I say. “What does it mean?”
    “In my country, it means