Make Me a Freak Show
by Tyler Battaglia
Content Warnings: Implied Queerphobia (external and internalized), Implied Ableism (external and internalized), Manipulative Romantic Partner, Non-consensual Body Modification, Body Horror, Raw Meat Consumption, Spiders, Infidelity, Murder, Cannibalism
When I began to fall in love with Raymond Redd, he promised me, I will only change you for the better, and I believed him. The people we love change us, after all, but we hope it will be for the right reasons: they make us more patient, more loving, more kind. Better versions of ourselves. And Ray had looked past all my flaws to see the good buried deep within me, so I had to believe that he was set to make the best of what remained under all those faults, illuminated by the carnival lights in the darkness.
It did not worry me that he promised to change me. There was so much room for improvement, after all. I had heard that many times before about my body, my heart, my soul.
Every one of our dates were during the night at Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry. It was a carnival in town for a time, perhaps not entirely accurately named. It was Ray’s very own show, his circus of strangeness and excitement. The sparkling lights under the Big Top hypnotized me. He took me around all the games, never touching me but always guiding me, and told me how he knew all the tricks to winning prizes at every booth. He never showed me what the tricks were, but he showed off his secret knowledge by winning me something at a different booth every time we came. I carried giant stuffed animals in my arms nightly—bears and cats and crocodiles that were already worn at the seams but were transitorily joyous. We watched the shows, the daring stunts. From lion tamers to psychics who could accurately guess your deepest secrets, Raymond Redd’s had it all.
He snickered when the psychic guessed at my sins, teasing me in my embarrassment. He chuckled when I gasped in fear at the lion’s maw narrowly missing the tamer’s arm. I did not take offense—this was his vocation. The shock and awe of it was his bread and butter. He knew the tricks behind it all, he knew it was nothing to be amazed by, but it delighted him to deceive his audience with his delights. And besides, most of it was beautiful, was fun, was good. The tents were always overflowing with children’s unbridled laughter. The clanging prize bells were rapturous. The dazzling, colored lights breaking through the dark of night to sparkle off the water below the docks were unparalleled.
One night, Ray took me to the burgeoning freak show that he had nestled all the way in the back. It wasn’t much, a few glass cases, out of the way and without much foot traffic. But I hadn’t expected it, somehow. I hadn’t thought that was the kind of entertainment that Ray curated.
“It unsettles me,” I admitted, standing at a distance from the display once we were alone but for the freaks. There were no living specimens, I was thankful for that, but some of the skeletons looked human. Or near enough to human. “Doesn’t it feel wrong to put these on displays for people’s amusement? Aren’t they laughing at them?”
“Don’t worry,” Ray promised me. He leaned in to whisper a secret, winking as he did so. For the first time at his carnival, he touched me, a hand at the small of my back, brushing his lips against my ear. “None of them are real. I made them all myself. It’s all for fun. I think most of the patrons know that—they just want to suspend their disbelief for a little while.”
It comforted me to know that Ray wasn’t displaying real human remains or true oddities pillaged from someone else’s home. It was all a game. All a show. Just like everything at Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry. And Ray was a good man—that was why he had taken pity on me in the first place. That was why he was giving me a chance.
We fell into tolerable silence for a while. I wanted to leave, but Ray seemed enamored with his own handmade freaks. After a while, he called my attention by pressing his hand against my spine, grinning. “Which one’s your favorite?”
I wanted to say, None of them, but I knew that was the wrong answer. Ray was proud of his miscreations and his falsities. He wanted to know which one I was most impressed by—he always wanted to be impressing people, inspiring their awe and admiration. Reluctantly, I pointed at a fish tank, empty of water but with an unknown oceanic creature suspended in wire. Its eyes bulged, glassy, dead, walleyed, watching us observe it. It had two small, human-like arms. I hoped they were pilfered from a little girl’s lost doll that had been abandoned on the boardwalk. “That one.”
Ray nodded. I wondered if he knew my heart wasn’t in it. I wondered if he knew I felt like a freak enough just for being the kind of person I was, loving the kind of people I loved, and having the body and the kinds of needs that I had. That I identified with the enclosed creatures, even if none of them had ever been alive.
We went back to his home, after. I had always thought a ringmaster would sleep in a trailer on his own grounds. Instead, Ray had acquired a short-term rental nearby, surprisingly lavish for a temporary accommodation, a too-large house with a too-manicured yard, populated by peculiar, monstrous garden statues and creaturesque water features. I wondered who had a home like that, that they could rent out for a few weeks at a time, but it reminded me that his carnival was only a temporary fixture in town, which was distraction enough. After a time, he would leave. I wondered if he would take me with him.
In his bedroom, we made love, the kind of love that made people think me a freak, and we went to sleep.
⛧
The first rays of dawn woke me up, and I slowly opened my eyes, one by one by one by one. At first, I didn’t notice that it was too many, my head swimming in an ocean of unfamiliar, dizzying sights. I was disoriented, but I couldn’t place why. I blinked, but it was erratic, unrhythmic. The eyes did not blink together, though I could control all of them after a moment’s struggle against the current of disorientation.
I sat up and tried to look around myself. My mind was foggy, at sea. There were too many inputs. Many pieces trying to combine into a panoramic view of Raymond’s bedroom. I could see everything at once. It hadn’t been that way when we had gone to sleep.
“Ray—?” My voice came out hoarse. I needed water. Some of my visions floated, tinged red at the edges.
“Shush, Jonah, it’s okay.” Ray appeared and sat on the bed next to me. I didn’t see him approach even though I could see all. “Take it easy. You’ll need time to adjust.”
I didn’t ask him what I needed to adjust to. I could feel the tears of blood that came out of plethoric tear ducts that hadn’t been mine the night before. “Did you do this?”
Ray only smiled. He patted my knee and said, “Let me get you a glass of water.”
⛧
I should have been angrier. Ray had given me eyes, so many eyes, that I had not asked for. My head hurt all the time with that much visual input. It was difficult to adjust to seeing things I could not see before. And Ray hadn’t even let me stay with him—he had insisted he held many important business meetings that happened in the drawing room of the old house he was renting that I could not be seen for. And I could tell that Ray never wanted to see me for long, in the daylight, anyway. No, no, it wouldn’t do—I must stay in my own cramped apartment, like a tiny aquarium. He would call me for our next date. I couldn’t see anyone in the meantime. They wouldn’t understand.
But how could I be angry when Ray had warned me? He had promised he would change me, and he had. He had promised he would change me only for the better, so he must have.
I bade my time, waiting, covering myself in thick, dark hoodies and long pants to block out the too-much-light, and anything else that would hide the extra eyes for long enough for me to do something as simple as receive a food delivery at my door. Ray was kind enough to arrange for the takeout, anything I thirsted for. I requested only that he not send seafood. My skin was sticky and moist from the humidity of sweat under layers of unnecessary clothing. It would feel like too much to ask Ray to pay for my air conditioning to be repaired, so I guzzled gallons of water instead. Sometimes, I drank straight from the tap for the immediate relief, my head against the cool porcelain and the water running over my face, over my many eyes.
When Ray next called, I leapt for my phone. He asked me to meet him at Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry. He would arrange for my ride. He requested only that I didn’t speak to the driver.
I felt strange waiting for a driver outside my tumble-down tenement, the brick crumbling and the paint peeling, swaddled in thick layers of clothing unsuitable for the weather—night, again, but too warm, warmer than it should have been for a fall evening, soon ready for snow.
I blinked my extra eyes against heavy fabric. It felt claustrophobic, like I had submerged my body into a place where no light shone and that I would drown there. But the two eyes I’d always had led the way, along with one ocular extra that peeked out from the neckline of my hoodie, set in my clavicle where I hoped it looked more like an accessory than an organ. My only saving grace was that the driver was also bound in many layers of clothing. I almost asked her if she was hiding something as well, but Ray had given me strict instructions. She must have had strict instructions too, as she scarcely looked at me, even when picking me up and dropping me off. She recognized me, or who I was, and needed not confirm I was who Ray had sent her for.
Raymond Redd’s was as beautiful and eclectic and loud as ever, but it only took a few steps onto the boardwalk for Ray to fish me out of the crowd. He led me around the carnival, as if nothing at all had changed and it was any other night. He took me to a strongman game, showed off his ability to step right up! and prove his strength, being handed a gargantuan toy shark which he in turn handed to me, laughing his deep laugh and winking the whole time, like he was in on a secret. I wasn’t sure who he was in on the secret with.
But the lights splayed across the docks were more dizzying than normal, the spotlights filtering through even my thick sweater and sweatpants to my many eyes, and I felt the twin pain and nausea of a migraine forming. Even as I was clutching my stuffed elasmobranch fish, Ray noticed that I was quiet. He was paying attention. He led me without further ado to the burgeoning freak show that he had nestled all the way in the back. I tried not to think about it. It was the quietest, and darkest, place at the carnival. The lights and the music and the laughter were distant, there, unable to pierce the night that deeply.
“Are you okay, Jonah?” Ray asked me once we were alone but for the faux remains in glass enclosures. He placed a hand on my shoulder, the first touch all night, and leaned in with concern drawn on his face. “You’re quiet. Don’t you like your shark?”
“I like my shark,” I whispered. I leaned my face into it. Anything to block out the light. It was darker in this corner of Raymond Redd’s, at least, but it would still take time for the throbbing pressure to fade. “My head just hurts.”
I felt Ray shift beside me. He put his arm around me, then slowly pulled my hood back with his other hand, an awkward half-embrace. He floated into view for the eyes on the back of my neck. He kissed my hair, narrowly avoiding an eye nested in a re-growing buzz cut. “We can stay here as long as you’d like.”
I’d like to not stay at all, I didn’t say, because if I said that he would send me away. And Ray among his glass-caged freaks was better than no Ray at all. I nodded instead. We stood for a long time, me settled in Ray’s arm, duplicitous images of him forming in my many eyes. No carnival-goers interrupted us. Certainly, none of Ray’s collected oddities uttered a sound, frozen in their eternal death-masks. It was Ray who invariably broke the silence.
“Which one’s your favorite?”
The question was familiar. I thought that maybe Ray had asked me before—which of his creatures should he be most proud of? It felt blurry, though; indistinct. I couldn’t remember my previous answer.
I looked around me, reluctant to choose any of them, but not wanting to disappoint Raymond Red in his own freak show. I pointed to one that was slim in stature but hunched over, a young man, wolfish and hairy, face long and teeth sharp, perhaps youthful in his innocence if it weren’t for the way that his jaws could surely rend flesh from muscle from bone from body. “That one.”
Ray nodded. I wondered if he knew my heart wasn’t in it. I wondered if he knew I had felt like a freak enough just for being the kind of person I was. That I identified with the enclosed creatures, even if none of them had ever been alive.
Once I felt better, or at least Ray presumed I did, we left the carnival and went back to his strange estate. The lawn was overgrowing with weeds and dandelions burst forth from the cracks in the walk, defying their odds to flourish. He lay me in his bed and closed my eyes gently with his fingertips one by one by one by one, slow, sensual, sensitive.
We made love like freaks.
⛧
When I woke and tried to yawn, I was seized with a terrible pain in my jaw that quickly radiated across the bottom half of my face, even down to the eyes in my neck. My new teeth sliced my lip and drew blood. I could taste the salty and metallic aftertastes of various bodily fluids still coating my mouth.
“Ray—?” I struggled to get out his name. My mouth didn’t want to work properly, lockjawed, stricken as with rigor mortis.
“Shush, Jonah, it’s okay.” Ray appeared to me. I saw him appear this time. I was becoming accustomed to my eyes. “Take it easy. You’ll need time to adjust.”
I didn’t ask him this time the question that verged on memory, did you do this?, because I already knew the answer.
He got me a glass of water.
I should have been angrier.
⛧
The next few days were déjà vu. I wore thick layers of heavy clothing and medical masks to hide the teeth, which I had tried to count over and over but to no avail. Ray arranged for the delivery of food to my apartment, anything I hungered for. I requested groceries instead—raw meat from a butcher, in the best case, that I could prepare however I pleased. I did not prepare it. I sank my canines—all of them were canines, no more molars or premolars or incisors—into the hunks of meat, rare. The toothaches were abominable otherwise, pain propagating through their nervous pulp and then onward to every part of me, through the eyes across my body, and into my heart. Only meat satisfied the torment.
Sweat drenched me in the heat. I stalked across the cramped pen of my apartment. I chomped at the bit for my phone to ring.
The call came. A date at Raymond Redd’s one and only Rodeo and Revelry. A driver to collect me. Do not speak to her.
At the carnival, Ray picked me out from the crowd like a skilled hunter. He tugged my mask down and kissed me heartily—a first in public—and grinned at me when my teeth met his before slicing, unintended, into his lips. I tasted the raw sting of both of our bloods, mingling on my tongue. I think it delighted him. It delighted me. I replaced the mask before anyone, even Ray, could see my own wolf-tooth grin.
He took me around the carnival as always, his hidden prize, and showed me all his favorite games. It had begun to bore me, as I had seen all his tricks, but I indulged him. He was changing me for the better, after all—the least I could do was play along with his diversions. I did not smile to show him how impressed I wasn’t at his newest midway attractions because he couldn’t see it under the mask anyway. Pretension was futile.
But his prizes could only do so much to soothe my migraine mind, and his corndogs and cotton candy could not satiate my suffering teeth. We made our way to the growing familiarity of his tucked-away freak show. I tried to determine if there were any new displays. I found I could not remember if each of them had been there before. It all blurred together in those late nights.
We stood there awhile. The sound of laughing children was a distant memory. Not a creature was stirring. Ray held a hand against my neck, covering some of my eyes.
“Which one’s your favorite?” Ray whispered hotly in my ear.
I surveyed the collection, looked at every fish bowled tank at once with my eyes which were now trained to hunt for every detail. A museum of freaks like me stared back. I spied an androgynous, spidering figure. Their many thin and disjointed limbs seemed to reach for freedom’s throat, ready to shatter their prison. “That one.”
Ray nodded, as if this was an excellent choice. One he was proud of. I hoped he was proud of me too for picking out his best work.
We went to his home. His monstrous fountains overflowed, not draining, mosquitoes laying eggs in the pooling water. They would hatch soon.
He took me to bed. We made love like freaks.
⛧
The dozen new limbs were not a surprise when I woke. Ray came to me, whispered my name, and we embraced a dozen times. I held him down a dozen ways and we made love again. He sent me home before day broke.
I should have been angrier.
⛧
Déjà vu again. The sweaters got bulkier to hide the extended girth that resulted from extra appendages. I ate only raw flesh but stored some of it away for later. I felt like it might one day be used to feed young, like maggots birthed from rotted meat.
A call. A date. A ride to Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry. Do not speak to her.
I bundled myself in thick scarves and nested in the backseat of the car. I pulled my mask down enough to let some of my extra eyes watch the passing streetlights out the window of the car, silent until we got to the carnival. The driver parked the car outside the gaping maw of the clown-face that was erected as entrance. Her hands were tight on the wheel. I replaced my mask and reached to open the car door, but the driver shocked me: she spoke.
“He’s leaving soon, you know.” I stared at the back of her head with the eyes that weren’t covered, the ones that I used to trust the most but now functioned as any of them did. I didn’t respond. She filled the silence. Her voice was tired. “He’ll ask you to come with us. You and I and all the others will make the final freak show.”
I looked out the window again and saw something for the first time, something I might have seen earlier had I allowed my many eyes to roam freely, look at anyone but Ray: the carnies, bustling about the boardwalk, miring among the midway, all clothed in too many layers for the heat, covered head to toe, misshapen under their coverings, bodies bulging obscenely. Like the driver. Like me.
I looked back to her. I evaluated my options. I asked, “Are you his lover, too?”
The driver hesitated. “I was.” Then she jutted her chin to the carnies who moved like phantoms. “As were they. And,” she added, her eyes drifting to the furthest reaches of the carnival, where the near-abandoned freak show that never saw any foot traffic sat, “they were, too. Once. Before he moved on.”
I nodded, then got out of the car. I had nothing else to say to her.
I should have been angrier.
⛧
Raymond took a longer time to find me than normal on the pier. Too long. My spidering limbs ached at their joints under my clothing, ready to escape. I wondered if he had somehow known that the driver broke her promise.
I watched him the whole night as he won me prize after prize at game after game. I felt as if he was trying to appease me, show me how he would treat me right if I just went with him. Buttering me up for his ultimate proposal. I contemplated if I might say yes. I also contemplated if I might lay eggs inside the polyester stuffing of yet another oversized fabric animal for later hatching.
I grew tired of his distractions. I interrupted him. “Can we go to the freak show?”
Raymond’s face showed surprise that I initiated the request, but he consented. Maybe he was pleased I wanted to see the proud corner of his carnival that he was growing, exhibition by exhibition. I suspected that he wanted to one day replace all of Raymond Redd’s Rodeo and Revelry with his collection.
We went to the far corner of the carnival, into the mostly abandoned freak show. Distantly, I heard the tearing of flesh and goring of meat. I had learned the wet sounds and smells well. I saw, briefly, a man in a jean jacket appear under the tent, then disappear again just as quickly, sight unseen. My extra eyes saw the details though. The grim, grizzled face, beard sticky with sweat, sleeves caked with blood. The emblazoned, proud, poorly designed logo of a taxidermy business on the denim. I wondered where the driver went.
I did not speak. I lowered my hood and removed my mask as I waited for Raymond to make the first move.
“I’m leaving soon,” he said. “And I wanted to ask—”
“Do you love me?” I interrupted.
His hesitations spoke volumes. “I’m proud of you.”
I understood now. “Would there be more?”
I saw with my many knowing eyes that he wanted to ask me for clarification. I predicted it: more lovers, or more freaks? Perhaps it didn’t matter, because he answered without asking me what I meant. “Yes.”
I wondered if I could be happy with that. Being one of many lovers he was changing for the better. Raymond always seeking out flawed people to make beautiful. Me, one of his many sideshow attractions, eventually becoming entombed in his gallery. Raymond always adding more freaks to his freak show.
Without a word, I shed my remaining layers, striping down to my newly beautiful, naked form. My extra limbs spidered out, stretched out, tasted air. My teeth ached with desire. My eyes swirled, captured more, untold details. Every aborted aberration in their place, all staring back at me, anticipating my every move. Welcoming me or warning me.
I opened my arms, my arms, my arms, my arms to Raymond. He looked relieved. He stepped into my legged embrace. We kissed and I felt his wet, slimy tongue on my knife-sharp teeth.
I wondered what kind of freaks he could make. Of me, of us, of himself. I wondered if a man who could make no more false promises would draw a crowd. I wondered what he tasted like.
His slick appendage that spun sweet somethings and made a living out of lying moved against my teeth.
I sank my teeth down and tore. I felt his lingual papillae sliding down my throat, soft, moist tissue squelching against my esophagus, as I swallowed his screams like blood. He struggled against my dozen limbs, but I held fast.
I wondered what kind of freaks I could make.
Tyler Battaglia (he/iel/any) is a queer and disabled author of horror, dark fantasy, and other speculative fiction, who is especially interested in subjects that interrogate the connections between faith, monsters, love, queerness, and disability. You can find Tyler on social media at online at https://www.tylerbattaglia.com, where you can also find a full list of publications to date.