(2003) Overtaken Read Online Free Page B

imaginary
ball. Being malleable and eager to please as most audiences are, the crowd
member would mime catching the ball and then would mime throwing it back to the
singed clown with a determined grin on their face.
    Sage
Pasquale, fearing what was about to happen, hissed at me, ‘Kelvin, don’t.’
    ‘What?’
I said. ‘What?’
    ‘Please
don’t fuck with the clown.’
    Loyd
said, ‘He can’t do anything if the clown don’t throw him the ball.’
    ‘He’ll
make him though,’ she wailed, ‘he’ll make him throw him the ball.’
    ‘How
could he possibly do that?’ said Colin, just as the clown “caught my eye and
pulled a big enquiring face.
    I
turned to my friends and shrugged. ‘Oh fuck,’ whispered Sage Pasquale.
    I
turned back to face the ring and the clown threw the imaginary ball in my
direction. I caught it in a showy fashion but rather than pitching it right
back to where the clown expectantly waited, all eager expectation like a puppy,
I instead made a big play of studying the ball from every side while the others
sniggered around me apart from Sage Pasquale who hissed, ‘Just throw it back,
Kelvin, just throw it back.’
    ‘Okey-dokey,’
I said and with a grunt threw the imaginary ball straight through the entrance
and out of the tent. Right after that, even as the audience’s eyes were
following the non ball out of the tent, I noticed two things: firstly through
the rents in his outfit I saw that the clown’s muscles were the hawser-like
sinews of a man who .could pull and twist and punch things; secondly a faint
whimpering drew my gaze to the clown’s face. The man was genuinely upset at the
loss of his ball, staring about him in undeniable confusion. he looked
pleadingly at the audience, then he gazed at where the ball had gone, then he
looked at the ground, then finally he looked at me and as he looked at me I got
some idea of what it was like to stare down the barrel of a loaded
anti-aircraft cannon.
    The
atmosphere in the tent was starting to sink into the sawdust; even the band who
up to that point had been sawing away at some Silesian funeral march clanked to
a ragged halt. There was no knowing what might have happened next but in the
embarrassed, imploding silence the red velvet curtain below the band suddenly
stirred and a girl stepped through.
    ‘Oh,’ I
remember saying out loud, for she was ever so beautiful. I guessed that she was
in her mid twenties with absolute black hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore
a white one-piece body suit which ran from long slender neck to pubic bone, she
had white skin and black eyes the shape of a cat’s, and on her long legs were
white tights and on her feet white ballet shoes. If that didn’t make enough of
an impression, hundreds of glass beads had been sewn to the suit she wore and
the powerful stage lights danced off them so that she sparkled and glinted. For
a second this girl stood taking in the scene as electromagnetic radiation in
the visible spectrum pinged off her, then she called out to the clown in a
foreign language and, hearing her voice, he turned to her, a big soppy smile
spreading over his countenance. The girl had been holding both hands behind her
back; now she brought one arm out and held it aloft, her hand holding the shape
of an imaginary ball. The clown eagerly cupped his hands in front of him and,
seeing this, the woman drew back her arm and pitched the ball in a clear and
powerful arc towards the clown; he leaped high in the air and caught it,
provoking a storm of relieved applause to break out from the audience, mixed
with many an angry and resentful glare in my direction. The clown, now happy
and smiling, capered off tossing his invisible ball, the girl gave an elaborate
bow and skipped back behind the curtain, the band began again with a new tune
which sounded like the Schizophrenia national anthem, the lights dimmed and the
show began.
    Like my
friends I was no stranger to the modern animal-free circus, and