Finder and the Circus of Delights

A perma-exclusive story for paying supporters in the same universe as "One Hour of Vulnerability."

As noted in my update, this one embraces my thing for clowns and circus aesthetics, so it's on the weird side :)

Enjoy!

***

In some ways, the Circus of Delights is just like the circus I was born into.

There are acrobatics, clowning, and “magic,” like in any other show performed live under a brightly colored tent.

Unlike the circus I come from, however, the Circus of Delights is strictly an adults-only affair. Its sequined costumes are designed to be removed in mid-performance in various creative and dramatic ways, and only the tamest acts stop there.

Right now, half a dozen male performers are standing in a circle with their backs together, fully naked except for the discreet clear plastic rings they use to help sustain their erections. A clown skips around them, juggling a set of hand-sized hoops and playing ring toss, using the men as targets for her increasingly impressive trick throws.

I’ve already seen the whole show five times through as part of this stakeout, and I have to admit, I still get a little sweaty watching that clown do her thing. A few drops are tracing their way down between my breasts right now.

The armored bodysuit under my clothes does sacrifice some breathability for its safety advantages, admittedly. But kudos to the clown all the same. She knows her business.

She’s one of the more petite cast members, so the tulle ballet skirt she wears for this act, rainbow striped to match her short-bobbed hair, falls almost to her ankles at rest. But she’s never at rest. She twirls and lunges and flirts the fabric with her hands, effortlessly controlling the brief flashes of leg she shares with the audience.

At first, I wondered if her movements might be timed to distract from some sort of trick to fake her throws, but I’ve made a point of keeping my eye on the hoops a few times and caught nothing.

She turns away from the naked men, toward the audience. She bends over backwards until her short hair almost brushes the floor, and tosses three hoops in a row, landing each one on a different penis.

I’ve never seen her miss.

When the hoops run out, one of the men steps forward, breaking the circle. He removes a handful of hoops from his erection, tosses them into the crowd, and marches right toward the clown.

The other men scatter and flee comically backstage.

The man pursuing the clown woman is also on the petite side, but he has that tightly wound spring look, built entirely from tense, quick muscles.

That’s him. That’s the guy I’m here to catch.

He throws the cute little clown over his shoulder, carries her to a vertical, balloon-covered wheel at one end of the stage, and uses a set of cuffs built into it to secure her wrists and ankles, so she’s spreadeagled off the ground.

She makes a show of struggling among the balloons, playing it just melodramatically enough to reassure the audience that all is actually well.

He unties her tulle skirt, and then her bikini top with the stars on the cups, and throws them to the floor.

The same audience that, a moment ago, was cheering their throats raw for glimpses of her legs, gasps and goes nearly silent at the sight of her completely bare and helpless under the stage lights.

They certainly don’t look away, though.

I can’t judge. I’m looking too.

From the back of the stand that supports the wheel, the male performer grabs a robe for himself, covering everything but his head and arms in purple velvet with gold embroidery.

For the clown, he grabs only a cushioned blindfold, which he slides into place over her eyes before kissing her lips, grabbing the side of the wheel, and setting it spinning with a flourish.

Her small breasts follow the shifting gravity in tight circles.

He backs up an alarming distance, picks up his box of very real throwing knives, and displays them for the crowd.

That’s my cue to get in position.

I know my business, too.

With a pack of cigarettes in hand to advertise my need for a break, I sidle out between the rows, start down the stairs, and then slide between the beams of the bleacher-style stands to get beneath them.

The pops of the balloons on either side of the clown woman’s naked body, and the possibility of sudden death at the slightest error, ensure that no one gives me a second glance once I’m out of their way.

From down here under the stands, I’m able to slip into one of the exit routes from the stage, under a flap of tent fabric, and then outside into the lot full of dressing room trailers.

There’s no one here, because everyone who’s not onstage right now is preparing for a big group entrance on the other side of the tent.

Once the last balloon pops, and the knife thrower makes the clown catch the handle of the last knife in her mouth, he’s going to exit out this way, alone.

I’ve timed this show down to the second, first to pinpoint which of the people working on it is responsible for the string of murders that have followed the Circus of Delights across the country, and then to identify the right opportunity to grab him.

The knife thrower is the only one who could have left at the right time to commit the attacks and returned in time for his next cue.

With a few glances at my watch, I remove my blouse and skirt from over my bodysuit and roll them into the pouch on my hip.

I have enough of a reputation (that is to say, the Finder has enough of a reputation) that some criminals will surrender as soon as they see me fully suited up. The knife thrower doesn’t strike me as the type to make things that easy for me, but it’s worth a shot.

I’m about to pull my mask over my head, when someone enters the trailer lot from an exit behind me.

This isn’t part of the schedule I’ve mapped out.

By the time I hear their footsteps, I’m already in full view of them. Running will only confirm for them that I shouldn’t be here, and in minutes, everyone will know.

I freeze where I am, searching for how best to salvage this.

“Hey, stage hand!” the person calls to me.

Ah. Dressed all in black, that’s exactly what I look like at this moment. Good.

“Stage hand!” she shouts again. “Sorry, I don’t know your name. Come here!”

I let my mask retract back into its storage position and tap the stealth mode button on my suit, to make the Finder emblem on my chest – a light beam refracting through a convex lens – disappear into the surrounding black.

“Me?” I ask, turning around with a cigarette sticking out of the pack and halfway to my mouth, as if I’ve been too preoccupied with my vice to notice her until right now.

She glances irritably around the deserted trailer. “Yes, you.”

She’s an acrobat, with a glittery blue leotard, a naturally arched back, and a surgically precise bun. Right now, she looks like she can’t decide whether to cry or break something.

“Bree’s period came early,” she explains, which doesn’t really clarify anything for me right now.

“Oh, damn,” I say the safest thing. “Does she need someth—”

“Not unless you’ve got a magic leak-proof cup that takes up zero space!” the blue acrobat snaps at me.

I stare blankly, because playing dumb almost always works once someone has already decided that’s what you are.

No need for suspicion here, just talk me through it, from the beginning.

She rolls her eyes, sighs dramatically, and speaks slower.

“Bree can’t go on, and Maria can’t get back here in time. Which means it’s big break time for someone waiting on the sidelines. So, can you ride a fuckcycle?”

I stifle a chuckle, because I know the exact prop she’s talking about, but I’m surprised to hear someone from the Circus of Delights refer to it so bluntly. The ringmaster uses flowery, sensual words for everything, like “Portal to the Clouds” for the bouncy net under the highwire and trapeses.

The acrobat’s getting impatient, and there’s still no sign of the knife thrower.

I’m starting to think he’s varied his routine, and having the acrobat pissed off at me isn’t going to make it any easier to set myself up for another extraction attempt.

Getting in on the show, however, might open up some opportunities I wasn’t anticipating. Maybe even unquestioned, unlimited access to the backstage areas.

“Yes, I can,” I answer, with the confidence of a showbiz hopeful who’s been waiting for this moment all her life.

The acrobat arches one eyebrow, hands on her hips. “I mean really ride it, not just screw around with it.”

“I know,” I assure her.

“You’re not just telling me what I want to hear?”

“Fuckcycle me up,” I say. “I won’t let you down.”

#

No, I’ve never ridden a fuckcycle before.

I do happen to be pretty good with a regular unicycle, however, and the fuckcycle is just one of those with a vibrating seat and a mechanized dildo on top.

All pleasant, familiar things.

I have all the building blocks I need to put this act together. Keeping my promise to the acrobat will be a simple matter of adaptability and mental discipline.

I can do this.

The blue-costumed acrobat takes me to her trailer and hurries me through hair and wardrobe, putting me in a tight leotard to match her own. She agrees to lend me a glittery blue carnival mask from her stash as well, lamenting the lack of time to glam up my makeup.

It’s bad enough that she’s seen me. The last thing I need is for the thousand people in the audience all to get a good look at my face, not long before the knife thrower disappears.

I set my bodysuit to brick mode before stashing it away, so that no one will be able to activate the emblem or open the pouch to reach my civilian clothes and ID without destroying them with a blowtorch.

The big group act ends, and the knife thrower exits with the rest this time. He was probably covering someone else’s part because of the Bree shakeup.

He passes within a few feet of me as I’m exiting the trailer, and I briefly imagine myself putting him in an armlock right here and dragging him off, but without my suit and with so many witnesses, now isn’t the time.

At least his extra duties in Bree’s absence should prevent him from sneaking away for any murdering this evening.

Following the acrobat’s lead, I pick up my fuckcycle and enter the tent.

We walk into the ring, side by side, holding a ribbon between us, and raise the cycles high in our crowd-facing hands.

“Let’s give a warm welcome to the Rapture Riders!” the ringmaster invites the audience into a bright round of applause.

I think “Fuckcyclists” sounds just fine, but what do I know?

“Ladies, can you give us a preview of the kind of rapture you’ll be riding through today?” he prompts us, on script.

In unison, the blue acrobat and I run the cycles through their various settings while displaying them for the crowd.

Setting one: Lights on the side glow green and the whole thing vibrates powerfully.

Setting two: Multicolored lights swirl in an endless pattern, the vibration pulses, and the dildo draws circles in the air in a stirring motion.

Setting three: Red lights flash in time with the dildo thrusting itself frantically up and down.

“Makes you weak in the knees just looking at it, doesn’t it?” the ringmaster asks.

Voices shout in agreement, the majority of them women.

“We’ve got a hell of an obstacle course prepared for our lovely Rapture Riders today,” says the ringmaster, sweeping an arm across the two parallel courses of ramps, dips, balance beams, and jumps that have been set up in the ring. “They’re going to need legs of steel to make it to the end on their trusty mounts without touching the ground. But you know something? I’ve learned never to bet against these two. Seriously, they’ll kick you with those steel legs of theirs. Kidding. They really are that good, though.”

The crowd whoops and whistles in anticipation as the blue acrobat and I prepare ourselves at the start of the course, applying lubrication from the tubes stored conveniently under the fuckcycles’ seats. There’s an extra cheer when we undo the snaps to remove the crotches from our leotards.

For an unsettling moment, I’m not sure how I’m going to get on this thing, with the dildo in the way of my usual mounting motion. Thankfully, the top half of it is flexible enough that I can bend it toward me and slide most of it into me in advance.

Then I get my weight on the first pedal, and then the second, and we’re on our way, still holding that ribbon between us to synchronize our progress down the course.

In unison, we reach down to switch the cycles on at setting one.

The green glow illuminates the course under me, and the vibration… is somewhat more effective than I was estimating while holding it in my hand.

One of the things that makes riding a unicycle different from riding a bike is that you really need to keep contact with the seat while you’re in motion, in order to stay in control. You plant yourself on it, and then you lean forward, with a straight back. Right when you’re about to topple over, you pedal as if your legs are trying to catch up with your head, but they’re always a fraction of a second behind.

That’s the method for riding forward on a flat surface.

So, on this first straightaway, while we’re getting up to speed, I have no alternative but to keep my clit pressed down and forward into the buzzing cushion, with my vagina stretched full of smooth, contoured silicone. Within seconds, I have a strong urge to rock my hips from side to side, just a little bit, to add some friction and bring this sensation to a fast conclusion.

But my balance can’t afford that slight motion, let alone the tremors of an orgasm itself. And even if I could get a quick one out of the way, I doubt the hypersensitivity that comes afterward would be any easier or more comfortable to ride through.

I’m in exactly the state I’m supposed to be in, to pull this off.

I force myself to focus on riding exactly as I would on a regular unicycle, no matter what errors my body begs me to commit.

The first obstacle is a pair of model windmills, with their sails cutting across our paths.

The blue acrobat reaches them slightly before me, and has to wait.

I catch up, evening out the ribbon, and we take a moment to line up our movements, first with each other, and then with the blades.

To stay upright in the meantime, we’re idling, pedaling back and forth by half a wheel rotation. Our cycles sway like pendulums under our stationary torsos, with our pelvises as the fulcrum.

The forward movements intensify the vibrations on my clit, and the backward ones press the dildo against my G region, making me harder and more sensitive for the next forward swing.

At the very first viable opportunity, the acrobat and I swap a nod and launch ourselves forward together, both clearing the sails.

The acrobat gives me a pretty little smile on the other side and seems to relax as we pedal forward, trusting more in my skill.

After the windmills, our parallel paths take a curved zigzag across the stage area, sloping steadily upward, until they’ve gained about twelve feet of altitude, enough to put us through some drops.

They start small.

I look to the acrobat, fully ready to conquer the little six-inch dip in front of us, and see her reaching down to her cycle’s switch.

Right, this is the spot for the next change.

I reach down to match her, and we switch to setting two.

The lights take on their rainbow disco pattern, and the dildo tip begins spinning its circles inside me.

Both the acrobat and I take a moment to adjust, to compensate for the little pushes against our balance, to accept the heavenly but demanding drumming on our nerves, the impossibility of letting go to enjoy it.

When we’re back in sync, we nod, and we pedal over the edge of the drop.

Getting across takes the form of three fast, hard moves. The dildo sweeps the G region on the way down, bounces up and down at the bottom, and then the front of the vibrating seat rises forward on the way back up, teasingly close to releasing all that tension. It pulls away again, when we get back to the slight downward slope of the main course.

There’s no room for a re-adjustment before the next drop. We’d only increase our chances of falling if we tried to idle here, so we plunge forward, hoping our rhythms stay close.

The second drop is close to the same.

Sweep, bounce, vibration press.

The third is about fifty percent deeper.

Sweep, bounce, vibration press.

Next comes a jump. It’s a gap in the track, less than a foot wide, but enough to trip up our wheels if we don’t clear it.

This is when you do stand up on a unicycle.

I idle twice back and forth for balance, and then shift all my weight to the pedals. In less than a second, I jump my pelvis away from the temptingly vibrating seat, so that the tip of the dildo is stirring just inside my entrance, and then yank the seat up to join me in the air with my free hand.

My stomach lifts in the moment of airtime, forcing a charge down my nerves, a gripping anticipation for the next moment, when I slam back down on the other side, on the dildo, on the vibrating seat.

I stick the landing. I hit the middle of the other side of the track and take the slam without losing control of my muscles, but the ribbon is out of slack.

I jumped too early, and I can’t stop now. The only way to keep from tilting over is to regain some momentum fast, so I step down on the pedal and hope for the best.

The acrobat slams down behind me a fraction of a second later and doesn’t pause. She’s catching up.

We hit the top of the biggest drop, at least six feet.

Right before we go over the edge, I turn my head to trace what remains of the course, and instead, I catch a glimpse of the clown woman. She’s standing in one of the performer entranceways, behind the audience’s range of vision, watching the act with a real smile under her painted one.

She’s in a dressing gown, and when she catches me looking at her, she playfully opens it to show her nakedness and does a twisty, bouncy little dance.

I’ve seen her naked every day of this stakeout, but the suddenness of it catches me off guard. That and the casual one-to-one intimacy of it, as if we’re coworkers who’ve pranked and teased each other through a hundred performances, instead of one performer and one random face in the crowd.

All the muscles in my pelvic area contract, and my legs shudder ominously.

I have to take this drop. I’m the one who’s behind now, the ribbon tugging me forward as the acrobat speeds into the descent.

I follow her, fixing my eyes to my track, trying to forget the shapes of the clown’s hips and mouth.

I make it to the bottom of the drop and pedal hard, conserving the momentum of the fall to make it up the other side. The front of the seat rises up to hammer me with its vibrations, and all the stakes of this case briefly compress to a single mental chant:

Don’t cum, don’t cum, don’t cum.

My wheel levels back out on the next flat section of the track, and the ribbon loosens as I draw even with the acrobat.

My hands are shaking now too, even though they’ve done hardly any of the work, and that’s when the acrobat reaches down, prompting me to switch to setting three.

Internally, I acknowledge that there’s a legitimate chance I could die.

We’re still more than a story in the air, and there’s no aerial acrobatics net set up next to the course. I’m a light breeze away from a shattering loss of control, and a faceplant onto hardpacked dirt.

But I can’t get caught up in what could happen. I have to stop that knife thrower, and there’s one way forward from where I am, literally.

I idle at the top of the final, downward-winding stretch of track, and flip the switch.

The lights go red, the dildo switches from stirring to thrusting, and suddenly, I understand how the trick is done.

Now, the fuckcycle course, or the Rapture Ride, if you prefer, is no illusion. Everything I’ve done so far has been even more difficult than it looked from the stands. But like most circus acts, it does have a trick built into it to make it doable. Now that I’m here, I realize that setting three is that trick.

To the uneducated eye, it looks like the ultimate challenge, because it’s the most extreme motion. But it comes with no vibration, and this last leg of the course is a hundred percent downhill, so the seat is angled away from my clit, as well as being dead still.

In this position, even with how warmed up I am, the dildo’s movements quickly become more annoyance than pleasure.

Getting fucked hard and incompetently by my unicycle doesn’t exactly make finishing the course easy, but it eliminates the immediate risk of orgasmic muscle contractions getting in the way.

Catching my breath, I make my way back down toward floor level, weaving between pillars, potholes, and a couple of swinging obstacles in perfect unison with the acrobat beside me.

We dismount together, raise our ribbon and our still-thrusting fuckcycles high, and take a bow to a round of earsplitting cheers.

My whole pussy aches with anticlimax and probably a fair share of bruising that I’ll notice tomorrow, but I made it.

“Think you can handle the next three evening shows too?” the acrobat asks me, giving me a congratulatory pat on the back as she guides me offstage.

“Totally,” I answer, hoping like hell that I can get my hands on the knife thrower before I have to back that up.

#

When the acrobat walks me out to the trailer lot, two voices are whisper-shouting just low enough for the crowd not to notice them over the ringmaster’s next introduction spiel.

“I can watch if I want to!”

“What would you need to watch them for? You just did two back-to-back acts with me! Isn’t that thrilling enough for you?”

“Uh, thrilling wasn’t the word I’d use today. Did you have to cut the shoulder so close?”

“Cutting it close is my job. I barely nicked you. Maybe you’d rather trade. I’ll throw the little toy rings, and you take responsibility for the real hardware.”

“I’ll call that bluff any goddamn day. You just tell me when you’re ready to climb up on that wheel, and we’ll go.”

“Shut up and get dressed! It’s almost time for the finale.”

The knife thrower drags the clown past the acrobat and me, on their way to another trailer.

He has one hand tight around her arm and the other in her hair, both pulling.

She kicks him in the shins every few steps. When he briefly lets go of her from the pain, she doesn’t run away, she just keeps on following him in order to kick him some more.

Everyone in the lot gives them a wide berth, some of them looking awkward and defeated, others bored. This must happen a lot.

When the knife thrower notices us watching, he pushes the clown up against one of the trailer walls and kisses her hard, keeping his eyes open, maybe to make sure we’re still watching. Or maybe he’s trying to figure out what it is about us that she finds interesting enough to look at.

She kisses him back for a full ten seconds before biting into his lip.

He slaps her face away from his and then throws her over his shoulder the way he does in the show.

She lifts her head to look behind him while he carries her off. Her eyes narrow on me, like I’m a puzzle she’s perusing from the comfort of a favorite chair, absently touching the smeared edges of her face paint smile. She waves right before the two of them disappear into the trailer rows.

“Don’t,” says the acrobat, tugging me toward her own trailer where she dressed me.

“Don’t what?” I ask.

“You know what,” she says, and yeah, I do have some idea.

“Fuck around above my paygrade?” I guess.

“It has nothing to do with that,” says the acrobat. “It doesn’t matter if you were a stage hand yesterday or you’ve been a star attraction for a decade. You don’t get in the middle of Alex and Lily.”

“Alex and Lily,” I repeat to myself.

It’s more information than I had on him before this moment. Circus people are like ghosts.

“That’s right, Alex and Lily,” the acrobat says, slowing down her speech for me again, because I should have known their names already. She shakes her head. “You’re not used to the fuckcycle. It’ll make you stupid if you let it. You’ve got time to go rub one out if you have to. Trust me, it’s safer than going on thinking what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say.

“Go on then,” says the acrobat, “but if you’re not back in five, I send a search party. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Anna,” I tell the usual lie, which rolls off my tongue as easily as Finder, more easily than my given name. “What’s yours?”

“Evelyn,” the acrobat replies, annoyed but not suspicious that I don’t know that already. She must not be the subject of much gossip. “Now you’ve got four and a half minutes.”

I sure could use those minutes, in exactly the way Evelyn expects me to.

Instead, I tail the continued sound of arguing at a discreet distance, until Alex tosses Lily through the door of the trailer four rows down and two columns to the left, with the skull sticker in the window. He storms in after her.

Now I know where he sleeps.

#

Evelyn insists on keeping me close after the show lets out, making up the second tiny sleeping compartment in her trailer for me.

She can’t afford to let a good fuckcycle partner out of her sight right now, she says, when all her other options have fallen through.

She does have to sleep, though, so in the early morning, I’m able to sneak out, with my bricked and rolled up Finder suit on my hip.

My plan right now is simple: roll under the trailer across from Alex and Lily’s to change, break in to drug him unconscious quietly in his sleep, leave Lily gagged for her costars to find in a few hours, drag him to the extraction point, and call my teammates.

That plan has to change yet again when I turn the corner in front of the skull sticker trailer, and Lily’s standing out on her front step, sipping casually on a thermos, looking as stunning in an old sweater and leggings as she does in her costume.

It’s four-thirty in the morning. Most of the trailers didn’t go quiet until a couple hours ago, and prep for the first show of the day doesn’t start for another eight.

“Can’t sleep either?” I ask with a neighborly smile, conscious of my lack of mask.

Lily shakes her head. “I could, but I decided to wait up for you instead.”

Okay, so this is exactly as bad as it looks.

“For me? Why?” I ask, stalling for time.

All my tranquilizers are trapped inside the bricked suit. I might be able to get to her fast enough to choke her out before she can scream, but it’s dangerous for her, and I can’t guarantee she’ll stay out long enough for me to get away with him. I’m here to reduce the harm that happens because of this guy, not add to it.

Lily lifts her weight off the side of her trailer and steps down to ground level to talk to me.

“You’re her, right?” she asks. “The Finder?”

“I… what?”

I’ve practiced that tone of innocent bafflement a thousand times and only had to use it once before. It’s flawless, but it’s not enough for her.

“Yep, you’re her,” she decides out loud. “It’s okay, I’m not going to tell anyone… if you hear me out.”

And I thought she’d made me sweat before.

This is one of the last things any mask-wearer wants to hear, and I’m mentally testing a dozen different methods of dissuading or discrediting her before she’s even finished her sentence. But there’s no disadvantage to hearing her ideas on how this could play out.

Knowing what she wants can only help me figure out how to redirect her.

I gesture for her to go on.

“I know Alex sneaks out,” she says. “I know whatever he does out there isn’t good, and I know how hard he’d be for any kind of local law enforcement to track. I was pretty sure someone like you would be coming for him sooner or later, and then suddenly we’re promoting a stage hand I’ve never seen before, who reacts to nudity like a rube.”

“I do not react like a rube,” I protest.

“Not a prudish rube, or a virgin rube, but still a rube,” Lily evaluates me.

She’s right. That’s exactly how I looked at her. I fucked up.

“And then that rube shows up at my home in the middle of the night. That’s what confirmed it for me.”

“Your boyfriend is a murderer,” I explain myself. “A serial killer.”

Lily looks away for a moment, crossing her arms and staring at the dusty concrete of the lot. Slowly, she nods to herself.

“Yeah, I figured it was something like that,” she says sadly.

She’s not in denial, or turned on by the idea. That’s a start.

“You can help me,” I make the pitch. “You can help me take him in safely. Alive.”

“Oh, I sure can,” says Lily, looking up and returning more confidently to the confrontation she’s prepared. “That’s why I drugged his nightcap. He’s hogtied for you on the bed right now, and he doesn’t even know it yet.”

The sick, cornered feeling I’ve had since I saw her standing here begins to lift.

“You’re doing the right thing,” I assure her. “For everyone.”

She stays in front of the trailer steps, not inviting me in.

“I’m not doing it yet,” she says. “Because your timing is the worst. Like, you don’t even know how much the worst it is.”

The cornered feeling bears back down on me.

She wasn’t just being impish, when she hinted that she was about to blackmail me.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“I want to be on TV,” she answers.

“Okay, well…” I can’t name a single solid connection I have to the TV industry, but I know my negotiation fundamentals. I can’t let her see any negativity from me. “I’ll make some calls, check into—”

“I don’t need you for that part,” she says. “I hope. I already have a scout from the Semi-Softcore Network coming to the show tonight. This can not be the night when my spotlight time gets cut in half by my dumbass partner getting arrested.”

I let out a breath. That’s inconvenient, but I can understand it.

“What do you suggest?” I ask, to check how far apart we are on this.

“Three options,” Lily says, holding up three fingers to match, each with a different color of nail polish. “One. You try to take him now. You get past me and probably forty-nine of the sound traps I’ve set up around the trailer and your potential exit routes, because you’re that good, but the fiftieth one gets you, because no one’s that that good. You wake up the whole circus, who rally around two of their star performers, and make it impossible for you to ever get near him again without a level of violence I know you don’t want.”

“Preferably not that one, then,” I say.

She smiles, not as big as I was hoping for, but it’s something. We don’t have to be enemies here.

“Two,” she goes on. “You go back to bed and leave us alone for twenty-four hours. I untie him before he wakes up. Then, tonight, I do the same thing again and help you carry him out of here myself.”

“That’s… a start of an idea,” I project positivity, in spite of the deadly dangerous problems with this. “I wouldn’t want this next big step in your career to be tainted by another murder, though. One we could have stopped together, if we moved a little faster.”

“Neither do I,” says Lily. “But don’t insult me by pretending my feelings are your top priority.”

“I didn’t say top priority,” I say. “Don’t insult me by assuming I can’t care about more than one thing at once.”

This makes her face flicker thoughtfully, but she doesn’t say anything before returning herself to the ultimatum she’s prepared.

“Three,” she says, “You can help me lock him in a trunk, with some water and compressed air, and put him somewhere no one will find him until after tonight’s show. And you will take his place.”

I blink.

“After you’ve done my act with me,” she goes on. “If you’ve done well and made me look good, I will allow you to call to have him picked up, without raising a fuss to the rest of the circus.”

“I… like that one best,” I acknowledge. “But I think I’m lacking some qualifications to fill in his part.”

I love my body the way it is, but watching her juggle those rings gave me plenty of time to think about how different it would be to have the right kind of sturdy yet sensitive target to present to her.

“That was the Alex and Lily act,” she says. “We’ll figure out what the Lily and Finder act looks like. Together.”

#

Of note, I still haven’t had a chance to masturbate, or sleep, for that matter.

The frustration from the fuckcycle ride is still simmering in me along with the soreness, my eyes are fuzzy, but I stay with Lily until dawn.

We stash the drugged and bound killer who shares her bed in an ancient steamer trunk larger than the bed itself, pull out what Lily calls her inspiration kit, and brainstorm her a new showcase for her, featuring me.

By the time Evelyn wakes up and comes searching in a panic, Lily is ready to take the blame for my wandering and reassure her that, one way or another, she’ll still have the partner she needs as well.

I’d ask how I got myself into this, but honestly, it’s not the weirdest thing I’ve gotten caught up in since I put on the Finder mask, and it’s not even close to the worst.

Some days you catch the bad guy by knocking some heads.

Some days you do it by lying in a vent for ten hours, waiting for something to happen.

And some days you do it by taking an impromptu crash course in the art of erotic balloon sculptures.

#

I don’t stand among the men for Lily’s ring toss bit. I wait offstage, right where she was standing when she flashed me and caught me out as an impostor. I watch from there as she compensates flawlessly for being short one target, landing every throw as usual.

When she’s done, I run out there in Evelyn’s carnival mask and a balloon sculpture bikini, holding just one of Alex’s throwing knives and one of the spherical balloons that are usually attached all over the target wheel.

Today, the wheel is bare.

I stab the balloon with a bang, and the men scatter for me like they did for him.

Lily comes over to me, and we mime an argument, with some pointing and shoving back and forth, as if she’s angry with me for frightening off her toys.

She turns away from me in a huff, and now it’s time to see if my day of practice will pay off.

From the satchel on my hip, I pull out two long sculpting balloons, one green, one yellow, and the hand-sized air pump to fill them.

While Lily holds the moment, tapping her foot and shaking her head, I twist the latex and air into a single daisy. I tap her on the shoulder and present it to her, bowing almost to the floor.

Lily sighs and accepts the flower, brushing its petals against her cheek.

I do a clapping celebration dance, gaining a few laughs, but Lily’s not about to leave it at that.

She takes the satchel from me, picks two silvery balloons, and pumps them full.

A few seconds of work later, she has a pair of inflatable handcuffs that I let her close over my wrists, twisting the material in place.

Someone in the crowd whistles.

She disarms me, twirls the knife in her fingers, and then deftly pops just the center sections of balloon on my bikini cups, and the one balloon that passes between my legs.

Honestly, the audience can barely see more of me than they already could in this novelty suggestion of a bikini, but just the idea that they can brings down a raucous cheer.

Lily follows up the three pops with three kisses. Nipple, nipple, clit. Each kiss is barely a brush of her dry lips, but each target stiffens in response. Then she reaches into the bag again, and pulls out a large ribbed condom.

Turning slowly in a circle, to give every seat a chance to see what she’s doing, she tears open the package, unrolls the condom, and inflates it. This one doesn’t require the pump. She does it the old-fashioned way, with her mouth.

When it’s grown to the size of an average dick, she ties off the lipstick anointed end and holds it out to me, the posture of her whole body conveying a question, for the benefit of anyone not close enough to see her facial expression.

I answer with a big shrug and wobble my cuffed hands in the air.

I could get off on that, I suppose.

She hands the satchel back, challenging me to do better if I’m so picky.

With my wrists still linked together, I make a meal of selecting a handful of pink balloons, pumping them full, and arranging them into the most realistic penis the medium of balloon sculpture allows, if I do say so myself.

Sure, a single long balloon looks a bit like an abstract penis already, but that’s not what I’m talking about. This one comes complete with a pair of mini-balloon testicles encased in a mylar scrotum. It has a shaft of gently upward-curving balloons with a few squiggly, underinflated balloons along the sides for veins, all of it culminating in a knot for the head, with sections of balloon circling around, perpendicular to the shaft, weaving together to form that distinctive V-shape on the underside.

I hold it up and get a round of applause for my attention to detail.

Of course, that level of detail also means that it’s about the size of a loaf of bread.

Lily shakes her head vehemently, making a slashing motion with her hands.

Definitely not.

She snatches the penis sculpture and tosses it into the crowd, where someone screams with excitement at catching it.

I hand the satchel back to her, and realize that I’m struggling to hold it perfectly steady, because I know what’s coming next.

Lily is going to fuck me.

This beautiful clown is going to use the next balloon to fuck me in front of a sold-out house, as part of an arrangement she proposed, that ends with a bump in her career and a serial killer off the streets.

There’s no part of that equation that I’m not cool with. Not one.

It’s just that, I don’t think it’s possible to live by the mask without occasionally trying to imagine what the hell a normal personal life looks like.

What would it be like to do exactly what we’re about to do, for absolutely no reason except that we want to? Would that even be real?

Never mind. Back to the life I have.

Lily selects an extra heavy-duty balloon, about half the length of the other elongated balloons we’ve been sculpting with. It looks brownish out of the pack, but reveals rainbow swirls as she inflates it, reminiscent of tie-dye and Easter eggs.

With practiced fingers, she pinches sections of it as she works the air down its length, causing the latex to stretch at different rates. When she’s done, the whole thing is a firm, even row of bulges and indents.

She points with it toward the wheel, commandingly. I back myself into the sheet of wood peppered with splits from thrown knifepoints. She loops the connecting bar of my balloon handcuffs over one of the handles around the rim of the wheel, and then rotates it behind me so that it raises my hands up over my head.

With a pull of a lever, she drops the wheel from vertical to horizontal, and I go with it, falling onto my back on the wood.

Lily climbs onto the wheel between my legs. She takes one end of the balloon in her mouth, then the other, for a little extra moisture.

She unties her ballet skirt and tosses it aside to the loudest whoops and whistles of the night.

And then one end of the balloon is in her pussy, and she’s sliding the other end, the one with the knot, into mine.

It’s bigger than I expected from practice.

We each did our own testing to make sure this would work, but this is our first time putting it all into practice together.

Her tightness crushes more air into my end of the balloon, removing most of the give, but not so much that I can’t feel the difference between the bulges and indents. I count four bumps rubbing their way past my entrance muscles.

It hurts a little, against my bruises from yesterday, but not enough that I want it to stop.

When it’s all the way in, Lily can just barely press her clit against mine. Doing so squeezes the balloon as short as it will go, making it swell harder inside us both, looking for more space.

I squeeze a couple times with my pelvic muscles, pushing more of the pressure to her side, and she winks at me and squeezes back, a matching pair of pulses, stretching the latex inside me.

She squeezes a third time and doesn’t let go, gripping the balloon so that it moves with her when she pulls back, letting her drive it into me again.

I know it’s her show, but total passivity is one of the few things I’ve never been good at.

Just to see if I can, I squeeze and hold on as hard as I can for the next move. She doesn’t let go, but my grip is fresher. When she pulls back again, the balloon stays where it is for me, and she’s the one who rides the bumps out and then back in. I thrust my hips up to meet her on the way down, intensifying the impact.

One corner of her mouth pulls upward, along with her opposite eyebrow, in a look that’s scolding but not displeased.

The game is on.

We both hold on as tightly as we can, competing to see which of us will be fucking the other from one moment to the next.

Neither of us can win every time, and soon we’re picking strategic moments to relax and take it, so that we can grip all the harder next time.

We’re putting a lot of strain on this little piece of inflated latex. It feels like it should burst at any moment and snap against our most sensitive folds of skin, but it’s built to last, and last it does.

And, I’ll admit, the illusion of mild risk adds a little something to the excitement.

We mask-wearers are all the same in some ways. Circus folk, too.

I’m fully aware that this tug of war between Lily and me has no spectator value. To the crowd, it all just looks like thrusting. The specific pleasures of the balloon’s various movements only reach as far as the two of us.

I’m not sure why she’s bothering to put in this much effort. Maybe she doesn’t trust me to put on a flattering enough show for her unless she blows my mind for real. Maybe it’s to get in my head, control the signals running along my nerves as a reminder that she can also control whether I get my guy and get out of this clean.

Or maybe it is just for the hell of it. Maybe she’s enjoying this as much as I am.

She makes it easy to believe. Whenever she wins the tug of war and gets to deliver the thrust, she digs her fingers into my shoulders for leverage with white-knuckled urgency. When she loses and gets to take it instead, she leans her head back and gasps vocally, like it’s almost too much and makes her want more at the same time.

But those things do have spectator value. It’s impossible to know who they’re for.

Her hands go to her own breasts, and then behind her back, untying her bikini top for another round of cheers.

God, I want to reach up and touch her, but I leave my balloon-cuffed hands looped around the handle of the wheel, committing to the act.

The bikini bit is actually a signal that it’s almost time to wrap this up.

I relax and let her win for three, four, five strokes in a row, until the buildup of both this act and the last two days reaches the point where a tap of her clit against mine is enough to set it off.

When she sees the change come over my face, she stays in, grinding against me, fighting the air pressure pushing us apart.

I let Lily and the whole crowd hear just how good she is. My cry echoes in my own ears, higher and less dignified than any sound I’m used to hearing from myself, wobbling involuntarily in time with the waves of the orgasm.

For a second, I feel selfish for surrendering first, even if the clock’s ticking and it is what Lily was expecting me to do from the start.

Then, long before the waves tire themselves out for me, Lily cries out too, a halting, yelping sound. Her grinding becomes more frantic, less controlled, accompanied by tremors down her legs that I’m the only one close enough to see.

With no disrespect to her skill as a showwoman, I’d lay fifty-fifty odds that this isn’t just for the crowd.

Maybe sixty-forty, my favor.

The ringmaster grabs one of the handles of the wheel and sets it spinning like a merry-go-round, giving us a few extra seconds of excuse to lie there, lightheaded and disoriented.

When it slows back to a stop, Lily eases the balloon out of us, tucks it into the crook of her arm like a beauty queen’s prize bouquet, and uses the throwing knife to pop the connector of my cuffs.

We stumble offstage, waving weakly to our adoring public, arms around each other for balance.

#

“I’ll ride with Evelyn today,” Lily offers, when we reach the trailers alone.

“You’re a machine,” I tell her, as thanks. “Does that mean my performance was satisfactory?”

Lily smiles at the number of questions I’m asking at once, and then answers the business one.

“I’ll find out soon enough what the scout thinks, but as far as I’m concerned, you did great. Your secret’s safe, Anna,” she emphasizes the only name she knows for my face, which she’s more than shrewd enough to disbelieve. “Take Alex and get out of here, before anyone gets more curious than they already are.”

She walks with me as I gather my stuff, first from Evelyn’s trailer, and then from hers.

I pull on my Finder suit, including the mask and the lens emblem, and grab one end of the trunk Alex is still stashed in.

“You alive in there, buddy?” I ask, knocking on the lid.

There’s violent pounding and muffled cursing from inside.

Good.

Lily does her best to help me carry him out of the lot, though her end of the trunk often drags on the ground.

When we’re on the far side of the fences, out of eyeshot from the backstage area, she sets him down, and pauses.

“Do me a favor?” she asks.

I wait for more extortion, or maybe a plea for Alex’s comfort once we get where we’re going.

“Don’t make this the last time I see you.”

She kisses me, a peck on the lips that feels almost quaint after the rest of today, and disappears back behind the fences.

I press the button inside my suit to summon my friends, and sit down on the trunk for a moment’s rest.

The cursing inside the trunk continues. He spews a string of insults at me, and among them, I can definitely make out the word “slut.”

I laugh an honest, tired, victorious laugh.

I almost don’t say anything. It feels tacky.

But on the other hand, if this guy ever gets loose, wouldn’t it be wonderfully convenient if I were at the top of his hit list? He’d deliver himself right to my door, automatically, instead of hiding in shadows and hunting random innocents.

“If you think that about me now,” I say, “You should have seen what I did with your girlfriend.”

The trunk bucks underneath me, but the latches are solid.

I pull out my excuse-making cigarette, light it, and enjoy a drag.