The Contortionist

Cora¹ returns to the Faire the next evening with her friends. After the Strongman show, where Trent³ becomes openly smitten with the giant performer Ludwig,⁹ Cora¹ encounters Maggie the Soothsayer⁸ outside a small purple tent. The old woman knows both Cora¹'s and Emily¹²'s names without introduction.

Cora¹ accepts a free reading. Inside the incense-choked tent, Maggie⁸ shuffles a worn deck and lays five cards face-up. The Contortionist: a new journey beginning, full of hope but a hard road. The Puppeteer:² manipulators will tempt her with things she wants at terrible cost.

The Clown, painted as a skull-faced figure with a bloody knife: a great loss that must be accepted as transformation. The Ringmaster,⁴ inverted: a tyrant whose rusted shackles must be shattered. The Faire: the cycle ends and begins again. Maggie⁸ dismisses her with an ominous benediction: May your dreams be quiet.

Seeking rational explanations, Cora¹ visits the library and finds a 1934 newspaper article about a previous Faire reopening. The article includes a morbid poem by Mr. Lazarus Harrow that mentions mirrored lanes revealing hidden truths.

When Cora¹ checks her camera, the photos from the previous night show the Faire as it truly is: abandoned ruins, rusted rides, shattered bulbs, yet crowded with oblivious patrons. Then images appear that she never took: a hall of mirrors entrance with a sign reading Come find the truth of your soul!

The photos revert to normal moments later. The Faire is communicating directly through her camera. The poem's line echoes in her mind. She knows she must return and enter that hall, even if it means crossing paths with Simon² again.

Inside the hall of mirrors, the Faire shows Cora¹ photos of Trent³ murdered in increasingly gruesome ways: his skull split open, his eyes gouged out, his entrails spread across the dirt. She begs the empty air to tell her how to stop it.

Three new photos appear: the final mirror labeled See into your soul!, Simon²'s red-and-black tent, and a vintage boxcar painted with a gold zero. Cora¹ steps before the mirror. Her reflection wears a white and black lace bodysuit with striped leggings, stage makeup bright on her face.

The reflection smiles without her, poses, then bends backward at an impossible angle like a contortionist. When it straightens, blood covers the costume, and her reflection's smile is triumphant. Simon²'s living shadow grins from a nearby wall. She flees, dislocating her shoulder against a mirrored wall.

Simon² finds Cora¹ collapsed in the mirror maze and helps relocate her dislocated shoulder with unexpected gentleness, kneeling behind her and following her precise instructions. Then, when she describes the boxcar with the zero, he becomes frantic and drags her toward the staff area.

At boxcar twenty-one, Ringmaster Turk⁴ waits with Aaron⁵ and Jack,⁶ their hostility toward Simon² palpable. Simon² snarls that Cora¹ belongs to him, wrapping her in invisible strings that control her limbs. Ringmaster⁴ swings his bullwhip. The first strike splits Simon²'s face from forehead to chin, exposing bone.

Jack⁶ kicks Simon² while he is on his knees. Simon² laughs through the blood, still claiming ownership. Ringmaster⁴ questions Cora¹ about why she came. She admits the Faire speaks to her through her camera but hides the contortionist vision from her account. Ringmaster⁴ tells her to leave and never return.

That night, in a shared dream, Cora¹ finds Simon² in a sunlit manor frantically painting a woman's portrait using blood from a gash he keeps reopening on his thigh. He is weeping. The woman was Suzanna, someone he loved and lost to the Faire long ago.

Her face fades from his memory over the centuries; only pain brings it back clearly enough to paint. Cora,¹ against her better judgment, helps him to a sofa. He admits the Faire wants her for its own purposes, that becoming his doll would protect her from a worse fate, though he refuses to name it.

Then he cages her against the cushions and kisses her with slow, possessive intensity. The embrace leaves her trembling. He whispers that he wants her in every way she will let him have her, retreating only when she begs him to stop.

Cora¹ wakes knowing she will return to the Faire and accept whatever fate awaits to save her best friend. She calls Trent,³ listening to his cheerful voice as he gushes about Ludwig,⁹ about how the strongman⁹ has something important to tell him tonight.

She suggests dinner, trying to steal one more evening, but Trent³ is already committed to the Faire. As they banter about her supposed attraction to Simon,² she almost tells him the truth but cannot find words. When she hangs up, she weeps at her kitchen table.

She feeds her fish for what may be the last time, puts on family jewelry, and shoulders her camera. The drive to the Faire feels like a funeral procession. At the gate, Aaron⁵ silently lets her through the service entrance, his expression telling her he understands what she has come to do.

Simon²'s performance tent is dark and empty when Cora¹ enters. He appears behind her, delighted. When she demands to know what he plans, he reveals his children: a dozen life-sized marionettes lining the stage, each one a preserved human whose seity he consumed slowly over decades.

Some are porcelain, some wood, some fabric. One missing an arm still speaks, its painted face immobile. Simon² pulls a sheet from a chair to reveal a new doll with Cora¹'s face replicated in painted mirror eyes, her dark hair cascading over its shoulders.

He explains he will drink her seity slowly, sip by sip, over centuries. When she bolts for the exit, his invisible strings stop her cold. He bends her body backward into a painful arch and leans in to seal the deal with a kiss, murmuring that he has decided not to give her a choice after all.

Ringmaster Turk⁴ enters the tent just as Simon²'s lips touch Cora¹ 's. The interruption breaks Simon²'s concentration; his strings release her. Turk announces that Mr. Harrow has decreed Cora¹ will fill the vacant Contortionist role, the zero slot that Simon² created when he turned the previous Contortionist, Hernandez, into one of his dolls thirty-eight years ago.

Simon² howls that he will consume her just as he did Hernandez. But Turk has a weapon Simon² never anticipated: he can force a Sponsorship. Reaching into Simon²'s chest, Turk pulls free a portion of his seity and thrusts it into Cora.¹

The pain is blinding: Cora¹'s body remakes itself into something immortal. Simon² screams as part of himself is torn away. When Cora¹ collapses, unconscious, Turk tells Simon² she is now his responsibility. Harm her, and he maims himself. Then he leaves her with the madman.

Cora¹ wakes on the grass outside. Aaron⁵ and Jack⁶ explain she is Family now, the new Contortionist. Disbelieving, she staggers through the carnival and encounters Trent³ leaving Ludwig⁹'s tent. She rushes to him, desperate to escape together.

He shoves her away, his face twisted in confusion and fear. He does not know her. Cora Glass¹ no longer exists in the outside world: her mother would not recognize her, her apartment is no longer hers, every trace of her life has been erased from memory and record.

At the exit gate, Cora¹ slams into an invisible barrier that other patrons walk through without obstacle. She throws herself against it for hours until her nose bleeds and her body gives out. The crowd parts around her hysterical form. Then the rain begins.

Cora¹ sits in the downpour, too exhausted to move, when the rain suddenly stops falling on her. Simon² stands over her with an umbrella, his expression uncharacteristically subdued. He drapes a towel over her head, calls her pathetic for sobbing at the gate, and tells her to heel.

When she tries to flee, his strings gently guide her back under the umbrella. They walk through the darkened, rain-slicked carnival to the staff area where the boxcar with the gold zero now looks freshly painted, the weeds cleared away as if it has been waiting for decades.

Simon² gestures at the stairs and tells her she is the Contortionist now, that things will look better in the morning. Then he walks away into the rain, whistling. Inside, Cora¹ finds a cozy apartment with clothes in the closet and a large bed. She locks every door and window, then surrenders to exhaustion.

Cora¹ wakes to sunlight streaming through the boxcar windows and realizes she feels nothing: no ache in her shoulders, no grinding in her hips, no tender joints. She stretches experimentally, waiting for the familiar stab of pain that never comes. Her body is whole, healed and stronger than she can remember.

Before she can process this miracle, two women burst through her door: Amanda the Aerialist¹⁰ and Donna the Flyer,¹¹ bearing breakfast and eager explanations. They tell her about the Family's twenty-two roles and the Sponsorship that bound her to Simon.²

Amanda cheerfully offers to break Cora¹'s neck to prove she is immortal now. Cora¹ bolts from the boxcar and collides with Simon² outside, who freezes her with strings, then releases her with a shrug, telling her to go ahead and try to escape. She runs, still refusing to accept the cage.