Nightmare Carnival by Danvers Dennis

Author:Danvers, Dennis [Danvers, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Published: 2014-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

SWAN SONG AND THEN SOME

by Dennis Danvers

Alexandra’s explaining her act to me. “It’s only when I know I’m going to die that I can sing that song, hear the changes, hit the notes, and hold them. I can’t explain it. Maybe there are certain emotions only set free at the time of death, some silenced anguish finally given voice. I don’t know. It just wells up inside me. Whatever it is, it’s not a trick, Orlando. I die. I can’t sing the song otherwise.”

Basically, she sings a few songs well enough for a beautiful woman in a seedy carnival, swinging back and forth on a line like a hypnotist’s watch, then she’s hoisted to the top of our tiny big top that sat mostly empty until Alexandra came along. Her final song begins as she ascends, the most incredible a cappella performance you’ve ever heard, sung in what may or may not be a language, like an aria from another planet, intricate and moving—you can’t help becoming lost in it even though you’ve been told she is going to drop to her death at the song’s end—when she hits a crystalline sustained note of such heartbreaking beauty the crowd gasps. I’ve never heard it fail. Every soul in that tent is riveted to her voice as sure as Jesus was nailed to the cross. She holds the note still as she plummets, until it’s cut short in full voice by the sound of her body smacking onto tarmac, sometimes concrete, sometimes earth. We take whatever parking lot we can. We can’t afford to be choosy. Just when everyone who hasn’t heard what happens next has jammed every 911 switchboard for miles around, she springs, well, staggers to her feet and finishes the note, not quite as crystalline, not quite as beautiful, then bows and lurches to her trailer where nobody better come near for a couple of hours or so. She emerges looking as she looks now, so beautiful you want to believe anything she says, but in my case, wanting to know the trick.

Singing isn’t something I’m interested in learning—though I’ll gladly listen—but resurrection, that’s another matter. Alexandra dies but comes back to life. I appear to be alive but died inside years ago. Alexandra woke me from my slumber, one of those deep slumbers you think you’ll never wake from, because what’s the point? She found me working on a clogged cotton candy machine and asked if I was Orlando, because that’s who she’d been told to talk to for a job, though technically that would be Sam, the owner, who’s always too high to trust his own judgment and defers to mine. When she asked, I wanted to say I’m whoever you want me to be, but I only managed, “You got him.” Been true ever since.

Alexandra probably thought my reaction meant I was just another guy who wanted to fuck her, which I suppose I was, am. Men dream about women like Alexandra. Who wouldn’t want

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