Clerise had spent most of her young life seeing the shadows that were too long, the floorboards that creaked a little too loud. The things that went bump in the night woke her at every turn, the slightest shadiness in strangers at the mall forcing her to hysterics.

Her poor father threw her at a number of reasonable psychologists and therapists, who tried with clinical nonchalance to diagnose the shadows that had no scientific reasoning, to explain away the whispers that crawled up from beneath her bed with medication idly prescribed.

They didn't silence the howls after the nightmares around the full moon, but she said they did to appease them. Clerise wasn't smart enough to grow mistrustful of doctors until she was eleven or twelve, and by then, she had her own plans of how to silence the noise.

When she was seven, Clerise had begged her daddy for gymnastics lessons, a hobby that became her outlet for...everything.

Under bright lights against blue mats, there was very little scary in the walls of a training gym, as opposed to the strange things she'd see outside, flashes of fear shooting down her spine at the glimpse of rotting flesh-- or worse. The stench of it.

The gyms were not immune to such invasions, but the redhead was often working so hard that the occasional sight of her childhood terrors did not make her falter.

The girl was sixteen and failing freshman year for a second time before she really and truly had enough. Enough of the disappointed looks from her father and counselors, enough of feeling trapped inside the confines of good suburban society. It was as if she was born in the wrong country and the wrong time, as the 1930s in Romania would have been a better fit--

Because Clerise? She was obsessed with the circus.

The dumb clowns, the big red tents and the men in coats all buttoned up that announced the world famous acts one after another. She begged her dad to go every ******** time the circus was in town-- every year, she went over and over again.

She watched the girls, lithe and muscular, do balancing acts along wires, ride on horseback, swallow fire--and her absolute favourite.

The trapeze. With orange eyes bright with wonder and awe, Clerise squealed as they flew across the air, twisting and turning in every which way--

They were free.

It was beautiful.


It grew from her lifelong hobby to a fascination, to scary obsessive levels, and it expanded from the trapeze, to the tightrope, to any sort of acrobatics that could be done in the circus. After a particularly bad argument with her father regarding the terrible face she'd seen the day before on their neighbor-- she left. Clothes in a bag, a fake ID acquired from a friend that knew how to party, and about $500 in cash to her name. Some of it stolen from her dad's girlfriend.

(It was a long time coming. She was an only child, and her father was just...he was so tired. He loved her and she loved him, in her own way-- but a child that never stopped having terrible nightmares every few months, that broke down in shopping stores at random, that couldn't handle anyone new without immediate suspicion-- they were just so tired.)

A day later Clerise turned up on the steps of the circus, glaring down at the Ringmaster from her 5'10" stature, and demanded a job.

She wasn't successful the first night, so she slept in one of the tents, curled up against her duffel bag. She kept pleading: the second night, the third.

On the fifth day, he gave-- but only after watching her interact with the trapeze artists as they warmed up, comfortable and easy and happy.

Breathing in that terrible air that reeked of peanuts and elephant dung, surrounded by the women who were strong enough to be free--

She was happy. Clerise wasn't about to make some starry eyed bullshit proclamations of it being the first time she had felt happy all her life-- but god, it was better than getting cheesecake and a new leotard for your birthday.

So, at sixteen and paid in cash under the table because the Ringmaster did not even remotely trust that fake ID, Clerise Wilson joined the circus.

She quickly learned, on the road, that it was not all that it was cracked up to be. She filled in for sick and tired girls at first, riding on horses with perfect balance, appeasing the children with simple shows, at first. A full year passed before she was considered good enough to actually get up and on the bar, nevermind her years of gymnastics training-- the only real skill she possessed.

Her life blurred over the years. It consisted of traveling from town to town, changing companies a few times as the small ones died out with the passing of time, and, finally, flying through the air.

Her body was lean and hard-- little fat, all muscle. She had farm from a womanly figure, and had bruises underneath her knees and sore joints on most chilly mornings.

It was as though she woke up one day, suddenly twenty ******** four and still in the circus. She was no longer the bright teen star of the show, limber and quick and bright.

No. Clerise was ....worn down. Tired, even, of the only thing she'd ever known and the only life she'd made for herself. Instead of looking at the trapeze bars with glee and wonder and excitement-- it was with boredom and an itching feeling she couldn't quite feel.

So, when confronted at a dull bar in a drab city, Clerise gave the notion pause. He was a scruffy looking man with a shady face and an even shadier story, but...

(All cities were the same, after a while, too many people, technology far beyond her stunted mind, drab gunmetal grey all over the place, but he was different, dressed in white that stood out, trimmed with gold like popcorn butter and...)

She decked the ********. Or, more accurately the redhead tried to. With a look of surprise crossing Clerise's sharp, angular features, the man caught her fist with ease-- his eyes glinting in the dim, giving her an easygoing warning that it was, perhaps, not a good idea.

Unlike his offer. Which, he insisted, was one. A good idea, that is.

Clerise stared at him incredulously...and ordered another ******** Mexican Martini, or two. Or three.

And she thought hard about the fact that she was being offered a life beyond her aimless, wandering vagabond way. It was probably the alcohol and his piss poor attempts at being suave that convinced her to say yes.

In the morning, through the force of her hangover, the explanation for the liftetime of shadows and whispers convinced her that leaving the circus was, in fact, a great idea.