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2. There sits the Bearded Lady. Elongated arms and spindly fingers stroking the coarse hair sprouting from her chin. She weeps with a low, humming keen. The dress does little to hide her swollen stomach. Her cage is red with velvet frills and rancid fruit. Engorged boys with wet noses hurl black oranges and puckered apples into the air, watching in anticipation as they arc, descend, and explode at her feet. There are the occasional laughs. There is mostly the sound of smacking lips.

 

SEE THE BEARDED LADY—GROTESQUE DIVA QUEEN.

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3. And in between the Mermaid and the Bearded Lady, there she is.

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My brother calls her the Oriental slut with the sideways slit. It’s easy to become fixated on a monstrosity. There is too much to see, too much to feel. Every time I visit her, the cunt flares and curls and shivers and smells. It knows I’m here.

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‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ my brother says. ‘It’s laughin’ at me.’

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‘The colour is exquisite,’ I say.

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‘Imagine fucking it.’

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‘Imagine kissing it.’

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‘How do you suppose it works?’

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‘It’s a mystery.’

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‘Dare me to fuck it?’

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He shifts under my stare. ‘I was only jokin’,’ he says.

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He gives the cunt a lingering look and walks over to the Mermaid. I stand alone before the Oriental’s cage, breath staining the glass white.

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She is a gold-skinned Venus in silk. White covers her head—a waiting bride, a quivering virgin. Thick black hair spills over her nipples and stomach. The only thing exposed are her thighs and the cunt. A rustling peephole for hard men.

 

I’ve never seen her face, but I anticipate her beauty. Slanted eyes, high cheekbones, Mongol nose, thick lips, and cherry chin. And the purple eye at her center, glistening and pulsating with each shallow breath.

 

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4. THE SIDEWAYS WONDER FROM THE EAST—ONE COIN, ONE STORY.

 

It is a story I know well:

 

I grew from a pebble inside my mother’s heart. By the first month, her heart was ten times in size and I kept growing. I shattered her ribs, cracked her chest, and broke her neck. I was born from a broken shell. My curtain to the world was my mother’s mottled skin.

 

My father was a small man who rescued rabbits. Sometimes he would eat them. I am a God, he would tell me, and you are my miracle. When I was ten, he choked on a rabbit and died face down on his plate. That day I learned that when men died, the head of their manhood reached for the sky.

 

My husband told me it was because it was a Holy thing. Sent by the spirits to create worlds. The cunt was sent to protect them. But mine was sent to destroy. My cunt. My cunt was the devil’s mouth. It taunted him. It made him mad. In the end, it killed him.

 

My cunt leads me to homes and doctors and brothels. It leads me to the kingdom of white men and it destroys their world. I am not. But the cunt is.

 

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5. The cunt is. It is the devil’s mouth. She raises a hand and pulls. White silk slides from her head and pools in her arms. Liquid. I can see her face. It is everything and more.

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‘Will you be my saviour?’ she says. ‘Will you be my God?’

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‘Yes,’ I say.

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‘Promise me.’

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I promise. The cunt leers. I give it one more look and then I walk away.

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6. That night, the Bearded Lady dies giving birth and takes the child with her. The wet-nosed boys whisper that she ate the child out of desperation. They won’t tell me what that desperation was.

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7. When the gates re-open, there is a two-headed whore dancing in the Bearded Lady’s cage. I stand watching her for a few minutes as the boys set up the stalls.

 

The hard men sit on upended crates, drinking strong coffee and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. They eye the boys with mean stares, looking for an excuse to give them a smack. The Siamese Whore dances with death—that is what makes her special, the boys murmur. That and the fact that she can swallow your balls and cock at the same time. They laugh. The men leap to their feet.

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The Whore moves stiffly from side to side, her face done up in gaudy paints and comical colours like a sad clown. On her shoulder, there is the shriveled head of her sister, pale, barely pink with life. There is little skull left and it droops to the side, resting horizontally across the shoulder. The eyes are impossibly stretched across the face and the mouth gapes open. Although it seems to stare, it stares from the depth of death.

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I pull out my gun and aim for the Whore’s head. The glass shatters on impact and she reels back. There is a moment of stillness. She hovers in the rift between life and death as she stares up at the sky. And then she joins her sister and time goes on.

 

The boys fall silent. Coffee spills on the ground.

 

There is something cathartic in spilling blood. To spill enough, you stop feeling sick and there is a sense of rejuvenation. To spill enough, not your own, you become clean.

 

The Mermaid is the last. She thanks me.

 

The Oriental stands pressed against the glass of her cage. The cunt quivers and cries. I can’t see her face. Her breath comes hot and heavy and leaves a large white imprint. I hold up a key and she pushes against the glass harder. I throw it, watch it arc and descend. She catches it in one hand and disappears from view.

 

When we touch, it is everything and more.

 

 

 

8. My brother wants her on a leash.

 

‘She’ll run away otherwise,’ he says.

 

The Oriental grasps my hand.

 

‘She won’t run away,’ I say.

 

‘How do you know?’

 

‘Because I’m her God.’

 

He chokes on wine. ‘The man is mad.’

 

The Oriental eyes the congealed rabbit in the center of the table. She is clothed, wearing an old dress my brother found in his room. It belonged to an old girl of his, he said. She takes to it, like she takes to many other things I expose her to. But all the while the cunt is there. Hungry. Craving. The devil’s mouth. I cut her a portion of the rabbit and she eats with her fingers, ravenous. My brother watches her, wine forgotten.

 

 

 

9. When I open my eyes, I can see him standing in the doorway, staring at the Oriental. She is small in my arms. A burning animal. A rabbit. When I shift, he moves into the shadows and disappears. I lie awake even when morning comes. And I know what I have to do.

 

Jealousy is a cold drone, twisting the skin of my brother. He is grotesque. Freak. Unfamiliar. So I string him up. The Oriental pushes him and he swings. She gives me a smile, a smile only for me, and I hold out my arms. Her body presses against mine and I can feel the heat of the cunt. I can hear it. He stops kicking and I finish the wine.

 

 

 

10. A violent violet gash. A wicked grin. In the depth of the secret spaces there are teeth. It pulsates with each breath and there is so much heat and stench. When it swallows me, there is only hollow darkness. It is wet. There is pain.

 

 

 

11. The room is touched with mildew and rot. The walls are swollen from decay. The mottled skin of death. There is a creature leashed in the corner. The creature is like no other. The cunt is alive.

 

 

 

12. There are maggots writhing in the rabbit carcass at the center of the table. Wine bottles lie empty, bloody dregs seeping out. I can hear the echoes of the Bearded Lady’s keen. The house is melting to the ground and my brother swings from side to side. There is little skull left and he stares from the depth of death. The Oriental is all ribs and wheeze, her skin red from the chafing leash. I can no longer see her face. She is all arms and breasts and legs, mottled black with rot. And always, there is always the cunt. It rears and spits in keening anger. It consumes the rest of her, pulling the skin back and sucking in the fat until all there is is the cunt.

 

GROTESQUE, it says. FREAK. UNFAMILIAR. LOOK. YOUR KINGDOM IS CRUMBLING.

 

It is space. It is largeness. It smells, stinks, writhes, spits, it’s fishy, purple, damned. The Oriental Slut with the Sideways Slit grasps her swollen stomach. The head of my manhood reaches for the sky. I saved her once and now I give her life. I push myself into her. The cunt swallows me whole. In my hands, she ruptures. And I realise what I have become. She is my miracle and I am her god. She is the rabbit and I am destroyed.