Unnatural

IS IT ANIMAL OR VEGETABLE?

YOU WON’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!

~ from Unnatural

I had to feed her the Postman thanks to you.  Then I had to deliver the rest of the mail and dispose of the truck.

~ from Unnatural

A GUY SO GAUNT he scarce cast a shadow in the sun hiked the roadside, jacket folded over the crook of his arm, a white buttoned shirt damp with perspiration.  Air outside the city was refreshing and clean after the stale oily fumes of congestion and machines.  He preferred the simpler existence he had known in the Carnival, where a child fleeing abuse found a home; where he’d been employed a dozen years.  The enterprise had failed due to a harsh economic climate, the troupe of unconventional misfits disbanded.  And there he was — out of work, homeless, back to being on his own — once again the victim of manmade circumstance.

His first family had been as dysfunctional as the second, but with the “Carnies” (a term they didn’t appreciate) Darius Exavier blended in.  He belonged.  Exavier was a stage name.  Originally his surname, the brand administered at birth, had been something else.  That was a long time ago, an abstract surrealist point in his life that had blurred in the distance.  The city behind him was now such a blur.  A vast relief to walk away from.  Crowds of people in cramped spaces.  Human wolves and sharks circling.  Clamor and paranoia, combined with the stench of misery and lost hope.

He would rather be alone, isolated, than to suffer that torment.

Darius had arrived in its concrete and metal midst with several friends:  a Fortuneteller, a Knife-Thrower and his girlfriend, and a Contortionist.  The psychic (a pretty redhead who masqueraded as a Gypsy in an ebon wig, with a crystal ball and Tarot deck for props) cautioned him that his life was in peril, that he should trust only himself.  He liked her but had been too shy, too awkward and unconfident to admit it.  Then Alfonso the blade-tosser tried to slit his throat, accusing Darius of flirting with his assistant.  He had merely caught her when she stumbled.  He had even wondered if she did it on purpose, to make her lethal Latin-tempered boyfriend jealous.

The Thin Man dourly exited the city with just the clothes he wore.  Eventually, tired of lugging his jacket, he fancied letting it fall.  He wasn’t the type to think in advance.  He lived purely in the moment.  Thinking ahead led to ideas, then to goals.  Dreaming was for children.  The notions he had in his brain as a boy were thrashed out by his parents and older siblings.  Reality was a brutal teacher.