Sparks and Cinders // Hamin, Nicha
There are many words for fear, words that Yu Hamin with his meager knowledge didn’t know and would never learn. But, regardless of dictionary definitions, he knows fear. Under the tent’s high top he’s felt it. In the shadowed recesses he’s tasted its grotesque depths. He knows what it’s like to stand alone and terrified, he knows what it’s like to sample death like a food critique—little bits here and there slowly eating away at him. He is a killer after all, a carnivore and a creature scared and fighting just to survive. But it’s all just a game in the end.
It’s easier that way, easier thinking that each move is simply a roll of the dice, that each mistake is simply a bad hand of cards, and that each meal of human flesh is just energy for his next big performance.
It’s how he makes it through. It is how he carries on…Though it is never easy to play a game with the taste of blood on your tongue.
The world was pitch black, the air filled with chattering breath as patrons shifted, shuttering like the wind buffeting the tent above. Waiting. Ready.
With grace a lone figure crossed the darkened ring, traveling like a wisp of smoke with bare feet padding over the cold sand in the tense darkness that shrouded him like a coat. In the eyes of the audience there was blindness, physical and mental, cold and oppressive, but in the eyes of their performer a painful knowledge rested.
A spark jumped to life in the limber man’s palm, a single flicker of light that lit the space like a firework before it spread to the fluttering flame of a candle in his hand. In the darkness all that could be seen was a face above the gentle candle glow, the sharp, painted jaw and the cold, piercing eyes that flickered with the flare as if alight themselves.
Without breath he breathed, exhaling fuel over the candle as the tent exploded with rapturous life. Fire leapt from his lips like liquid magma, expanding the flame, dripping from it and out into a spray of shocking intensity that swept away the skeptical faces like a great wind. Fear so very alive in the hearts of his audience…so very alive in all.
As the flames began to grow around him, he could feel the beginnings of adrenaline lap at the tips of his fingers, surging like trembling waves through his veins as all sense of the world was swallowed whole besides the light blazing around him, burning into those serious eyes. The heat blew stronger, cracking the makeup on his face, collecting at the base of his throat, suffocating, oppressive, but through it all he surged forward. His lithe body slid through the burning air, waves of bitter cold and consuming heat flowing over his skin as he grabbed a burning staff and whipped it around, painting the sky like Picasso splotching canvas under the tent’s high top.
He was power, the souls of the weaker spurring him on. He was a vessel, pale, sweating skin carrying strength only because of the ones fallen and devoured before him.
He hated himself, he hated that the fuel inside him was the death of others, that his very life only lived on because of the ringmaster’s game.
Do well or be eaten by the rest, be the best or be nothing.
It made him sick, it made him want to keel over, to melt into the sand burning under his feet, to give up everything and disintegrate into the ash flying upwards as he twisted and the flames writhed in agony like the pain he felt inside.
He could feel all eyes on him, the audience staring at nothing but a shell of a boy as pure energy was poured from him like blood, his makeup a mask hiding the true, scared child within.
If he messed up, all was over. One mistake spelled the end in clean letters and a swift demise.
He had to live on, he had to fight.
In a wave of light Hamin turned, spinning and juggling flaming batons high into the air as if the small staves had sprouted wings to fly away. His muscles strained, his breath catching as he tried to control it. He was already tired, limbs aching but never slowing. He could not slow. With a twist his black cloak was gone, the fire eating away at it too until nothing but his marked skin and dark pants rested between him and the fire arching across flesh, sand and sky.
He could almost feel the ringmaster’s eyes upon him… the only eyes that mattered.
Faster than it had begun it ended, the lit batons caught one after the other by skilled hands before being held out in front of the heavily breathing creature and extinguished by finger and palm as he slide them across the lapping flames, dousing the tent in darkness.
…Before everything erupted.
Cheers ricocheted around the tent, claps and hollers attacking the sliver of a man as his legs finally gave out beneath him under the protective shroud of darkness, his arms shaking. He was completely exhausted, extinguished like the fire. All energy was expended, his body wavering as both sickness and dizziness swirled within him.
His fingers clawed into the sand, the soot gritty on his palms as he shoved himself upwards violently, stumbling out of the ring just before lights burst to life again.
His body fumbled, stumbling through the crowds of waiting children; those ready to show their worth, the orphaned rubbish stolen away with no home but here. They were the kids forced into living, their lips as stained with human blood as his own…and once again, he had to remind himself that any one of them could be the next meal, including himself. It made it hard to trust anyone.
Eventually the shuttering figure made it to a seat, his skin stained with sweat, ash and white paint that made rivers over clammy flesh. He managed to grab his coat as he walked; a black, thread-barren thing but something thick enough to staunch the attacking cold now nipping at his exposed chest as he sat. So tired, but still so very shaken.
Burnt fingers clawed at his face, rubbing at the makeup, his armor, his other self, trying to rid himself of the beast who ate children to survive—who had the strength to fight on, to perform.
He sickened himself, and he only felt better after his worn hands came away from those sickly cheeks clean, the makeup gone.
But had his performance been enough?
In the circus the ringmaster was god— a vengeful deity who looked over his creation, measuring it up performance by performance, and then striking down all who were tired and mistake-ridden. The weak were killed and fed to the strong so that the strong could become stronger. It was a circle of violence, a machine fueled by horror and death, and the output? One stunning show, at the low, low cost of murder.
Hamin could hear the crowds even now, their gasps and shouts of joy as the next act danced the dance of death like he had before them. It was then that he looked up, burning eyes staring out into the sea of ghosts, children now pale and scared as they waited for their chance at the dice, the high collar of his coat brushing cheek.
It was freezing, the cold bitter on his tongue like mint and ice as he stepped into the sparse comfort of the open tent ahead.
It had been hours since show time, hours spent wandering like a phantom over rough terrain, an empty shell still numb from the fears and uncertainty every performance brought in like a proud cat plopping a dead mouse at its master’s feet.
Even in the warm tent there was no escaping it, the worries thick even after years of the same. Every show possibly the last. He could be dead by tomorrow. Hamin shuttered, whether it was from the thought or the cold he knew not.
As he drew deeper into the tent, the biting cold only gave way into stifling smell; unwashed children like rats scattered across the dirt floor, some babying gushing cuts while others pulled away to the sides and rested like corpses in hunger and distress. It hardly fazed him anymore.
The wiry boy carefully maneuvered through the space, tugging his coat closer as catlike eyes peered into the darkness. His inky hair was vibrant against the splotchy whiteness of skin, his makeup never fully wiped away without soap and proper water to clean it, just like the memories that never fully left him no matter how hard he tried to forget.
Eventually Hamin made it to the rear of the tent, away from the thick crowds of children and near the edge where it was colder but quieter, a blessed relief from the despair he felt radiate from the others.
Once he reached that familiar spot he slid to the ground; legs tired, burnt and bruised to the point that he wondered how they supported him still.
Like the rest of this world he was broken, a monster created and refined who was more scared of his own mind than the flames he faced daily. For what kind of creature could live on after what he’s seen—after what he’s done? He already knows he isn’t healthy, and no self-searching could help him there. It was laughable almost, how dead he knew his insides must be, like he was a zombie or vampire, living off of others…but never truly living.
As he shifted on the ground his eyes traced the top of the tent high above, watching the vengeful wind beat against the elaborate cloth as if trying to break in, oblivious to the hell inside, his own personal hell.
And to think, it was to be his birthday today.
