The First Elegy (For the Love That Ruined Me) ACT II: Cat got your tongue? (Other Chapters) Staring: Jester (The Freak Circus) x Reader, crossposted on AO3 Genres: Human/Monster Romance , Slow Burn , Character Study , Sexual Tension , Romantic Tension ,Eventual Smut , Monsterfucking , Gothic , Dark Fantasy ,Mind Manipulation , Emotional Manipulation , Religious Imagery & Symbolism , AFAB | Assigned Female at Birth Reader-Insert , Supernatural Elements ,They/Them Pronouns for Reader-Insert Prologue: You and your enigmatic client, The Jester, bonded through an obscure literary book. You both have your own secrets - but this city might have their own mysteries as well. Pages: 2927 words
A short man with a strange look in his eyes keeps on following you with his gaze inside your workplace. This is nothing new - in fact, you are used to fleeting looks now and then. You answer internally with a mix of contained disgust and unease.
You’ve been on edge since yesterday – since your brief encounter with the Jester of the new circus in town. Now you have a name, an elusive nomination that says nothing about him at all besides his profession. However, with how defensive he is, it’s a wonder in itself you even received one.
Your exchange, albeit very brief, was more than you expected. You were also surprised by yourself, most of all: how your lips revealed information you wouldn’t dare to tell anyone (Yet with him, softly coaxed to talk, those secrets leaked without a second thought). Worse – he liked it. Your honest and truthful exchange bonded you two more than your previous polite attempts at small talk.
However, your hopes of knowing further are short lived. He will soon finish that book, and then...well...he probably won’t come to the store anymore. He will simply be a brief obsession of yours, a memorable stranger that crossed your life that you will soon forget all about.
Just a strange occurrence.
(He would muse to himself about how wicked is for you to feel miserable by dodging a bullet, of not being chosen for sacrifice. Humans are so complex, yet terrible predictable. They want what they can’t have.)
The man that insists on looking at you debauchedly finally decided to approach you. You saw him coming from the corner of your eyes while you pretended to keep assorting the books inside their respective categories on the shelves - yes, the foreign literary selection, since someone complained about how unruly the books were.
The man spoke, softly, as if he hadn’t a chance to speak in years:
“Excuse me,”
You turned to the stranger. Will he at least pretend to be professional? Or will he cross the line and make your day miserable?
“You are aware there is... something.... on your back, yes?” The man spoke.
“What? - Where?” You asked, a little panicked with the thought of working all day with something glued to you, like a fool, while instinctively reaching around your body to touch your back.
But you didn’t find anything. You heard a wrapping sound from him.
As you turned back to the man you noticed he was holding a beautiful, single begonia flower.
“Oh, my apologies! It is, indeed, right here!” He said, cheerfully, handing over the flower - wrapped in a tight, plastic cone - to you.
You shook your hands, a denial.
“I’m sorry, I can’t accept gifts while at work.”
The man didn’t yield:
“So, you can accept it after work. Would that be okay, then?”
You sighed.
“No, I’m sorry. I can’t accept it.”
The man smiled softly, almost apologetic.
“Is it alright if I leave it somewhere else in the store, then?” Meeting your hesitant eyes, he explained himself “So someone else can bring home a lovely freshly picked flower? No?”
In truth, his idea seemed harmless - but his insistence wasn’t.
Still, you resigned.
“Well...leave it near the newspapers outside then, under the canopy, alright?”
The man shook his head, tilted his hat in a farewell, and left the store to presumably set the flower outside.
“People continue to go missing-” You heard the hushed whispers say beyond the bookshelf’s walls. The other voice answers: “It’s been some time now, maybe a week.”
You didn’t realize the shelves were this big inside the library. It crossed your mind that perhaps you shrank, as they were towering you so tall they almost closed you in. Looking up you saw a figure – and suddenly you felt like a doll inside a dollhouse.
Your body now had strings attached, as if you were a puppet. Idly, you noticed you didn’t fear them – instead, you felt relief. It was as if you were born with these strings, and you always felt that something was missing from your limbs without them.
You walked the maze made out of bookshelves that resembled your workplace, until you found yourself at a clearing. There was a huge forest beyond, and you looked up at the trees until they gave space to the night adorned with a bright, full moon. It was a scene so strikingly beautiful that made you have the hazy thought that the satellite above resembled a pearl shining underwater.
It was mythical, otherworldly.
You noticed flowers blooming in the middle of the clearing, on a patch of fresh grass - Begonias, you noticed, small and rounded, looking like pink and purple little fairies.
You suddenly felt the string push you further to the middle.
There, you saw a skull, no – dozen. Dozen skulls, skeletons and bones scattered at the central grassless patch. The flowers covered them, the frail roots hugging remains of life.
You picked one of the Begonias in your hand, one single violet flower. Brighter than the rest, a more saturated tone of purple, clinging to death and life, wrapped over a bone.
The flowers hid in decay, concealed under the skeleton of a rib larger than any human’s torso. The skulls had pointy teeth, sharp and dangerous. You idly wondered what kind of animal died in here.
Who would clear the forest to a clearing only to make a beast’s grave?
–who would mind giving a beast a proper burial?
Everything turned purple in a second, as if seeing the world with stained glasses. The flower in your hand turned black, rotted and fell horribly in a single second. It lays withed on the ground. You heard a beast’s grown, dangerous and low. You looked at your front to notice the skeletons were moving and rising from their grave, an unholy sound making you freeze to your own bone.
You run, as if something was following you, determined to bury you just like it was.
You ran and ran – until you could see a simple tent – a circus tent, between the trees.
You always had nightmares – vivid dreams and night terrors that made you wheeze and loose on your rest for most of your life. When you were little, your grandmother made you see many doctors – for illness of flesh and mind. She traveled with you to the city where they resided, and most of them wouldn’t pass a chance to study your case,
It got ever more curious as you aged.
Your dreams blurred reality and illusion, memories seemed to mingle and mix with the imaginary.
You hadn’t had a clue of what could be happening to you for the longest time – doctors couldn’t, despite being treated in cities with advanced science and technology – find the root of your strangeness.
Until a time where, in your teens, you went to a street fair with the few friends you could manage to maintain. You set your eyes upon a small burgundy tent set up at a crossroads, slightly away from the buzz of the festivities, and you were certain you had seen it in your dreams before.
A few candles made shadows move as you approached the fortune teller inside the dark-red tent. The walls were draped in wet velvet cloth and scraps of dark cotton. The sun moon touched woman had an all-knowing smile, and the two of you didn’t spoke while you joined her.
The woman told you something unimaginable – something you wouldn’t believe coming from someone else’s mouth.
The woman told you something so ancient, so illogical –
It was the first time you heard that what has been afflicting you could be a curse.
“What we call ‘Humans’, is but an illusion – the logical, rational man and their scientific conquest. Humans have always lived accompanied by beings beyond one’s imagination – just as you can’t separate us from nature, you can’t separate us from the realms we bathed in for all of our history.
What troubles you travels between realms-
It is a gift but also a curse. Double-edged as love is to hate, light is to darkness.
You were given the tools to travel through both. To understand the unfathomable. To see grace in monstrosity, and to spot the rot woven into beauty.”
The nightmares were getting intense. It was the second night you had surreal dreams; a type you fall victim to periodically. You used to think they were omens of some kind but have long given up on finding meaning to them. This night you remember your encounter with the fortune teller, and that in itself was odd – despite being an encounter that you still feel deep in your bones, it was quite unusual for you to dream of real events or memories.
Speaking of strangeness...
It was difficult not to think of Jester. There was something in him – almost made of the same materials of your dreams, like he stepped outside of it and strolled around, and you wanted him back inside, closer.
He belonged closer.
You don’t even know the man - You chastise yourself internally. But you were only human – and curiosity was a despicable trait of your kind.
It’s been a while since his last visit, and it was starting to make you anxious. You closed the store at midday to take a break of the dreaded paperwork, aiming to the coffee store to get a little liquid boost of motivation while your head kept turning gears for the man –
You only stopped thinking when one of the customers at the coffee store looked too familiar. Circus hat, full clothing, black, a sprinkle of color. Only it was not purple, as you expected – surprisingly, it was green.
He was obviously a Circus worker.
The clown went from table to table, insistently bothering people to take one of his flyers – the same one you were given a while ago. While you settled yourself on the back tables, curiosity took the best of you while you kept looking at him – and dreadfully, the clown noticed. You turned your eyes away, but it was too late. He approached you, standing directly at the side of your small table.
“Greeting my dear! I saw you looking...quite boldly at me. Could you, perhaps, be interested in the Circus?”
A lot passed through your head- your gears about the whole Jester situation weren’t done running yet, and you haven’t arrived at a verdict on an outcome how to deal with him –
Should you let it go? - Get a grip,
Or should you keep daydreaming like a hormonal adolescent with an unhealthy limerent crush? - As you were doing already.
Time was ticking and you needed to reply to the stranger without looking at him with panic and confusion in your eyes for too long.
(Harlequin tasted your conflict without a word said – not knowing the nature of it, of course; but he found such pretty eyes in such deep internal struggle, especially under his gaze, to be a particular amusing sight.
What could possibly make accepting a flyer such a difficult decision?
He didn’t know. But he would pry if given the chance, oh, he will pry.
Curiosity is not uniquely a human’s trait, after all.)
“Cat got your tongue?” His mask twisted to show a lopsided grin, clearly amused.
You noticed this clown was more upbeat – well, specially while compared to the other clown you knew.
Jester was quite saturnine for well...a Jester.
“Sorry, I just...didn’t know the circus had other clowns. I was just taken aback for a moment.”
“Oh! So, you haven’t met the entire cast yet, have you? We can fix that – come to the show this very night! I’m sure you will remember all of our names by the end of it” The greenish clown merrily proclaimed as he handed you one of the flyers “Make sure not to miss my tent ... “
As you made a move to take the flyer, he took it out of your reach; instead, he moved his head closer, leaning down slightly to speak closer to your face “Unless...something is keeping you from going, hm?”
Your eyes grew wide as you looked back at him.
Why on earth are these clowns so perceptive?!
“Thought so -” The greenish imp hummed, making up conclusions from your gaze alone.
“Maybe you can help me decide, then,” You were increasingly pissed with the fact you seemed almost transparent nowadays – words falling out of your mouth against your will, eyes betraying you. You may at least use this inconvenience to search a little bit more for some information that would calm your nerves. “What exactly do you guys do at the Circus? I overhead it is not of a regular kind.”
“Oh, dear one. Some things can’t be conveyed in mere words – “He chuckles. “Is that why you’re...hesitant? Did you let someone’s frightened story about the carnival get to you?”
“No,” you brushed him off. “that’s not it. I’m only curious to know what I could be getting into, is all. I would have to ask for an hour or two off work to go, so I’m just making sure the visit is worth the hassle.”
“That could almost hurt my feelings!” The clown theatrically motioned to his own chest with open palms, as if you just hurt his little heart...“- If, I didn’t know how worthy of a visit, we are! If you’re really set on denying humble me, the Harlequin, the pleasure to have you as a guest, then at least take the paper – you never know when you’ll get bored of your wariness.”
You didn’t really want to offend the clown – but their tickets were expensive, the Circus itself was a tiny trip away from your work and the hours they functioned were usually the hours you dedicated your shift to archiving. Besides, you wondered how damaging to your self-control it would be, to give in to your base impulses and satiate your burning curiosity that easily.
It would be like lighting fire on straw bales.
“It’s fine. I already got a flyer. Thank you, anyway.”
The clown tilted his head to the side and retracted the paper back to the pile he was holding.
“Oh, and where did you got it from, if you don’t mind me asking?”
You definitely mind him asking.
“They’re everywhere -” the clown makes a small frown. “No offense. They’re just everywhere...so I don’t remember where I got mine from. But I still have it. You should save yours to another give to another potential client.”
(It was quite difficult talking to you. Harlequin, silver tongued Harlequin – usually so eloquent, joining clues to deliver whoever he was speaking to the most honeyed words he could muster, making sure their prey got caught – this very Harlequin didn’t know what to do with you.
Every time you spoke, at random times that said nothing about what you were hiding, your heart raced like a drum. He could tell you were lying as to where you got your flyer from, by analyzing vitals impossible for a mere human to notice. Maybe you didn’t notice it yourself.
The most astonishing part, for him, was how your body and mind conflicted violently.
A mere invitation to the circus, and your tongue escaped your pretty lips to nervously jut while your heart nearly jumped - before your eyes turned hard to convey a hash and, most uncalled for, he would say, denial.
This sad little human didn’t notice they were under a monster’s gaze. And that same clueless little human didn’t understand how literate they are when it comes to reading your kind.
Specially you – you were practically an open book. It astonished him.
Strong emotions are still strong, – to a Moster that just understand the heart racing, the body temperature changing and any fluid that comes out of your body, violent hate and violent hunger reads all the same.
Harlequin wanted to pry – oh how we wanted to pry. But he has a feeling that even if he could enter your mind right now or hold you down and force it out of you – he would see nothing but an uncertain little thing in war with itself.
What a pity – you don’t know what you want.)
“Do you realize you’re sweating?” The green imp says, and you instinctively reach your forehead in embarrassment, noticing that yes, you have a fine cover, almost imperceptible, of moisture above your brows. You look at him with a mix of embarrassment and despise. Was it because you dismissed him so harshly that he felt the need to humiliate you?
“You know – a heart beats faster when lying. The body temperature rises, and the throat runs dry.”
At the mention of your throat, you gulp.
“I won’t pry it out of you, my dear Guest, but someday,”
“- Someday, someone will come to claim your will as theirs. There are many ever so monstrous that would be delighted to feast in such turmoil.”
The clown bowed slightly, a malicious grin etched in his white mask.
“Expect a ticket soon – dear one. I’m sure you’ll come out of our show knowing exactly what your heart truly desires.”
And yes, there are nights. Nights you spend swiftly archiving every piece of paper you can convey while thinking what it would be to have a different type of fun or distraction – everything but sleeping. Would it be that bad to go?
After all, art can be cathartic.
