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TESS

I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to move on from any of it: the DMT, Cyrus’ rage, my kill. But at Feverpoint, violence was a force of nature. And as long as the monsters breathed, the park demanded more.

After what had gone down in the Mini Me ride, the blood was the least shocking thing to me. It painted every surface, every piece of fabric, every inch of their masks and hands.

Mine too.

But what never failed to shock me was how inventive the Freaks were about their methodology. This wasn’t a game to them: it was a duty and an art. And as sick as it was, I couldn’t help but marvel in the splendor of their slaughter.

As Cyrus and Blade worked together to kettle and capture men around Carnival Chaos, Nash tied their writhing bodies to the egg-scrambler. Once five of them had been gathered up, Blade turned on the ride, sending the carts spinning at a blistering speed.

After a moment of admiring their work, the Freaks left them there, letting the sounds of the men screaming and puking and pissing themselves act as a scoring track as the clowns picked off the rest of the stragglers.

It must have been ten minutes of terror before Blade finally cut the power, bringing the spinning to an abrupt halt. Passing from cart to cart, Blade scraped the Twins against one another, humming a twisted nursery rhyme under her breath.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.” Her ax sunk into a length of rope, cutting one of the men free and nearly taking his arm.

“Humpy Dumpty had a great fall.” Another man freed, though this time he did lose a chunk of his arm.

“Nothing makes Splatters as happy as when….” Thunk, thunk. “She gets paid to butcher these terrible men.”

As she cut the ties that bound them, I could see exactly how the ride got its name. With his brain scrambled, each man stumbled off the ride, falling face first in the dirt like a sack of eggs.

Blade watched for a moment from atop the ride, arms crossed triumphantly as they ate shit below her. But once Nash opened the ride’s entry gate, letting them spill back out onto the cobblestone path, the Freaks jumped into action.

Try as they might to escape, the men didn’t stand a chance. While they stumbled around like a bunch of drunk sailors, the Freaks were a machine fine-tuned for carnage. With their chosen weapons, they sliced, diced, and smashed bodies like it was their sole purpose.

Cyrus lodged her machete into one man’s throat before tearing it down through his body, unzipping his torso like a gruesome pencil case. Blade let another get a head start, dangling his freedom in front of him before throwing a handax into the back of his skull.

Men were falling quickly, but one managed to make it farther than the rest. My chest tightened as he wobbled his way to the far fence. He might be limping, but his brain wasn’t nearly as scrambled as the others.

If he made it over there, he might stand a real chance at escaping. But Nash was watching him from the center of the carnage, Trixie high on her shoulder.

Is she just going to let him go?

But an earsplitting yowl quickly answered my question. The moment he grabbed the fence, his body began to convulse. Nash watched on from a distance, shoulders shaking with laughter as he writhed against the chainlink.

Fuck. Is the fence electrified?

It had to be: his trembling was beyond free will, his body contorting into unnatural shapes as he clung to the metal. But Nash just looked at him like a fly caught in an electric trap.

I waited for him to fall off — or for her to rip him off — but with each passing second, his fingers clenched harder around the chainlink, and her amusement only grew.

How many fucking volts is that?

However many a human could survive, if I had to guess. The Freaks wouldn’t let their traps rob them of the run of the final kill. Instead, we stood suspended in a reverent vigil, watching his fingers tighten and tighten until the chainlink finally sliced through them.

“FFFFFFUCK!” The man growled as chunks of his flesh sloughed off, leaving behind a cauterized stump where his fingers used to be.

Only then did he fall, chest heaving and eyes bleeding as he crumpled in the dirt. His body was still twitching: the electric shock had been strong enough to do some serious damage.

But Nash wasn’t one to leave a job unfinished.

Dragging Trixie over the cobblestone, Nash stalked closer, tilting her head as she watched the pathetic mess her little trap had made. Then, with all the indifference of swinging a flyswatter, she hefted Trixie over her head and slammed it into his skull, crushing him like the bug he was.

Holy shit…