Le Cirque des Noirs

On the ninth Hallows Eve of that decade, the moon was shining so violently white that it tore open a hole in the sinister night sky. To the wild-eyed monster children dancing about the streets dressed as movie stars and super-heroes, plastic mannequins and glitter-pixies, the creatures tumbling from that invisible rip were only shooting stars, just two brilliant streaks of white braiding across the atmosphere, twisting and twining around each other in a child’s game of chase. A momentary glitch in science, a trick of the light, and then nothing, save for the faint echo of laughter that could simply be passed off as the guitar-strum shimmer of wind through the low-hanging cypress trees.

The stars, who, in fact, could hardly be called divine at all, streamed at high speed through the universe, darting away from each other only to wind up attached fleetingly by the lips before parting once again. Blissful trickles of lighthearted mirth fell from their dusty lips and drifted over the celebrating town beneath them, creeping like a thin layer of sleek oil over water. They were more illusion than reality, just smoke in mirrors, yet their fingers stayed irreversibly clasped together as if this child’s play was really a force that could tear them apart.

Frank reached the earth first, landing nimbly amidst the shadowed grove of trees. His sneakers didn’t make a single sound, even with the momentum that drove him onto the soft-packed dirt. Grinning wildly with the thick ropes of adrenaline that burned through his veins, he neatly dusted off imaginary specks of dirt from the thighs of his second-skin jeans and patiently tilted his face up to the thicket of shattered branches that he’d just plummeted through. Not even a second later Gerard came crashing through the branches just a half-step to his left, slamming into the ground with far less grace than his lover before him had.

Though the smile on his face didn’t falter, Frank let a slow sigh filter from the very back of his throat. “You know how Lucifer feels about damaging the human world, Gerard,” he said in a soft, quiet voice, pursing his lush lips together in a scolding pucker. Like all demons, he was designed for the purpose of temptation: thick eyelashes that framed irises so dark that they reflected every particle of light in proximity; a full, rosy mouth; a body so sculpted that he almost appeared statuesque in his tranquility under the thin layer of dark, modern clothes that clung to every curve and angle.

Gerard stood shakily at the bottom of the small crater that his fall had created, sorely rubbing at his shoulder. In one swift leap he was back on the edge of the hole, peering at the impression his body had made on the earth with a glimmer of something gleefully akin to pride. Like the smaller man at his side, Gerard was dark and fatally attractive to any eye, human, divine, or damned.

“Well, Lucifer’s also the one who made us swear that we would stay out of Heaven on this night, too, and we didn’t listen to that either, did we? We’re already fucked, Frankie, so let’s have fun with it, hey?” Gerard teased his smirking lover.

Always the composed one, Frank lifted himself slightly on his toes and began to calmly pick the leaves and twigs from Gerard’s messy mane of ebony hair. “Getting kicked out of Heaven and damaging the human world all in one day—you know Luc’s gonna have a bitch fit.”

“I know.”

“Good, just checking. Now come on, we better get back to the Underworld before Peter sends another one of his uptight messengers down to tattle on us. There’re only so many angels whose wings you can duct tape together before they start to get suspicious.”

He slipped his hands into the slitted pockets slung loose at his waist and stepped lightly around the crater, steps so soft that they might have gone unnoticed by anyone nearby. Gerard’s hand shot out and clipped around his thin shoulder. “Why go?” he asked airily, gently drawing Frank close to him once more.

“What?” The younger man wrinkled his delicately shaped brows and shrugged the hood of his jacket away from the crown of his head.

“Why should we go?” Gerard repeated, throwing his arms out as if to embrace the silent blackness around them. “How often do we get to play human?”

“We are not human.”

There was an almost tangible ugliness tangled within Frank’s beauty, a cruel glint in the corners of his eyes and the tips of his sharpened, elongated canine teeth. He snarled a little and Gerard’s lips spread in a wicked grin.

“Exactly. Frank, nobody here can touch us. We are Lucifer’s angles, we can do anything we want,” he murmured in blurred, excited tones. “Anything.”

Frank’s dark eyes darted around the grove, pinpointing every sound, every fractured shred of moonlight. There was a slow, uneven pant to his breathing, and his face gradually glazed over until a low, mysterious smile curled on the curve of his lips. In one, swift motion he was behind Gerard with one hand cupped under his lover’s chin to bare the ice-pale flesh of his neck. He locked his sharp teeth around a straining tendon, pressing until the older man yelped slightly and a few drops of blood as black as their eyes pooled under his tongue. Pulling away with a low hiss, he tasted the coppery liquid that coated his slightly-chapped lips and then pressed them to Gerard’s with a crazy urgency that seemed to have arisen with the warmth and shiver of his partner’s skin.

“Come then, let’s join the circus, lover. We’ve only got this night,” he purred.

The leaves on all the trees trembled as Frank took off running, his steps lighter and quicker than any man who walked the earth’s ground while the sun sat atop its crowned zenith. His fading chuckle echoed back in all directions like an auditory hall of mirrors, an allusion to its epicenter as the demon melted into the wall of manic tree trunks and saw-toothed branches. Gerard was quick to catch up, lustfully clinging to Frank’s trail; their fingers brushed every few seconds in a touch so electric that they left fires burning in their wake, the smoke climbing above the treetops to alert both Heaven and Earth that mischief was in love that night.

They broke free from the woods at the end of a street that was only illuminated by old-fashioned iron-glass streetlamps. Not a single light from bulb or television flickered through the closed curtains of the row of darkened houses, and so no child dared to come knocking at any of their doors. The solitary couple slowed to an average pace, though their steps were still too light to be considered human. Their fingers twined together in a loose knot, a webbed net which connected them even as they strayed apart.

Frank walked a couple of steps ahead, growing slightly uneasy as the darkness of their street bled into the next. This one was well-populated with writhing masses of child-humans, each one screaming in rapture and begging for tricks or coloured sweets, masquerading as some fantasy beast or creature of the night. There were no shadows to dive into; the moon hung low on the clear fabric of night like a thin silver disk.

“Behave yourself,” the younger demon warned, his voice a soft growl. He shot a warning glance at his partner, but Gerard’s eyes were bright with excitement and the corridor-reflections of warm lights preyed through open doors.

Gerard drew his hood over the curves of his face, energetically pushing thick waves of hair away from the black glow of his eyes. They glimmered like shattered pools of ink in the sharp pallor of his skin. Each slow blink held an almond-shaped mirror that paralleled the thousands of shimmering stars spun above their heads.

“Relax, Frank,” he whispered in a voice saturated with wavering animation, “We fit in just fine with these human children. Look at their outfits, they look just like Lucifer said they did. Why do they dress differently on this night, do you think?”

“Fuck, an angel!” Frank hissed, instinctively baring the sharpened teeth at the corners of his mouth.

Gerard’s laugh was easy and liquid, carrying in foreboding tones along the neighborhood walls. “It’s a costume, Frank. Just make-believe.” He chuckled deep from his stomach and then stepped forward again; this time he was pulled back, his arm stretched to its limit. As he turned back he saw that his lover was still clinging hesitantly to the shadows, his incisors digging into the plush flesh of his lower lip.

“They can’t harm us, you know,” he softly reminded the man, drawing him into the circle of his arms. His lover melted into his body in a way that Gerard knew could not be achieved within the limits and dimensions of a human life, their angles syncing perfectly to create no space between. These touches, they went far below the surface of skin, past the thick matrix of bone, popping like synapses inside of Frank’s blood. An instant calm radiated over him, followed by a musical rush of mind-numbing desire. He fought to stay utterly still as the older demon encased his lips with his own soft mouth.

In the dim shadows just outside of the reach of the lights’ fingers, Gerard cupped his lover of more than a hundred years’ cheek and said, “Now won’t you come have fun with me? How often is it that we get to be on Earth on Hallows Eve?”

There was a little give, and then Frank’s hand slid down Gerard’s arm to link with his fingers once again.

The moon briefly slipped behind a narrow skin of clouds, shadowing the street in an eclipse of black.

The couple emerged into the busy street, stepping directly into the line of starry-eyed monster-children gliding down the sidewalk. At first they were able to walk unnoticed, grinning slightly and tugging on each other’s hands to point out daggers of amusement on the front lawns of houses and the oozing web of mist that hung over the crowds. But as the moments went by, people started to notice something. Maybe it was the way the two men walked with their feet barely touching the cement; maybe it was the eerie tensioned fingers of discomfort that crept along the parent’s and children’s spines as the two demons passed by. It began with whispers, mothers grabbing onto their sons’ hands and pulling them to the other side of the street, children old enough to know that something wasn’t right ushering their younger siblings around the corner just to be off of the same walkway as the two, shadow-clad young men. Fathers threw protective arms around their families and suggested that maybe they get to a safer part of the neighborhood, “They shouldn’t let perverts hang around places where children are allowed to roam free”.

Frank heard the first undertones, and he watched as the street started to clear. Parents who couldn’t explain why they were suddenly so disturbed clutched onto their children’s hands and disappeared into other neighborhoods where they were relieved to feel the anxiety release its icy grip. And he frowned.

“Gerard, these people are frightened of us,” he murmured in a low voice, pursing his lips as he saw the panicky whites of their eyes.

The older demon, who hadn’t seemed to have noticed the clearing street, didn’t even turn his head at the sound of his lover’s voice. “You’re being paranoid, love. They know nothing.”

But Frank couldn’t seem to ignore the nagging strings that were tightening inside of his chest, only screwed tauter by Gerard’s incessant bouncing on the heels of his feet. He whipped his head around, each confused blink holding the alarmed stare of some human-mother or father. “No,” he said, in a firmer voice this time, “No, Gerard, look. Look at the way the whites of their eyes show. They’re like rats in cages.”

And they were. Gerard turned as the circus was fading, as people in their houses flicked all of their lights off and closed the curtains as if to ward away some invisible apocalypse-rising that was saturating the air. He paused in his cheerful parade to watch the thoroughfare recede with a pitiful, heartbroken pout on his shadowed lips.

“Why are they leaving?”

“We make them uncomfortable,” Frank murmured darkly, “They don’t know who we are, except that we pose a threat.”

At that moment they reached the corner of the street they had been heading down, and they found themselves facing a gathering of young men sitting on a low wall that surrounded the garden of a fenced-in old mansion. Though they could have simply kept walking, could have continued until the very end of the street where there were now less people to scare off, they didn’t. The tragically lovely demons halted simultaneously in their promenade, observing the poorly-lit circle of thugs.

The adolescents were assembled around something very small and terrified on the squat brick wall; they roared with laughter as the dark thing shrieked and flapped its tattered wings. A small black bird with petrified yellow eyes and a scream that tore at its tiny vocal cords as it strained against the rusted silver thumbtacks they had pushed through the tips of its wings. Its cracked beak opened and closed with its thrashing, snapping together hard enough to chip at the end.

As Frank witnessed the boys push the tack deeper and deeper into the fragile muscle of the little blackbird, his black eyes grew wide and burned sharply with the rush of horror. For a fleeting moment he was that little bird surrounded by the ugly faces of men who wanted to hurt him, men who wanted to make him bleed; his mouth opened and he let loose a frightened scream that rattled like a skeleton across the deserted street.

Every face in the broken circle turned to the demon-couple as his cry filled the moist, clammy air. They were filled with shock and alarm at his high, cracked pitch, and for a moment the only sound was that of the struggling little blackbird, its claws scraping violently against the rust-red bricks. And then the patronizing snort of the skinhead reclining by the young bird’s head.

“You don’t like our little game?” he asked in a voice brimming with amusement, his eyes and teeth glittering with a cruel moonlight sheen.

Frank squirmed against Gerard’s constricting fingers, reaching out desperately for the small, suffering creature that pleaded with him with innocent yellow eyes. “Let it go!” he screamed, his voice breaking on the last note.

The unsightly skinhead only tightened his smirk and gestured toward the little bird with long, bloody hands. “Oh yeah? Are you willing to trade places with it, faggot?” he snarled.

Before anyone could even blink, his consorts’ laughs barely a breath in their lungs, the skinhead was lying cold on the floor, his head smacking into the concrete with a sickening thud. Frank’s eyes widened as the man’s eyes fluttered shut, and nobody made a single sound.

One of the men dropped to his knees by his leader’s side, the little bird forgotten. The others just stared at Frank in fear and disbelief, slowly backing away. “You’re a freak, fag, you hear me?” the man kneeling on the floor cried, and then he too was knocked to the ground, his weight crashing into the concrete.

The rest of the boys began to sprint down the street, tripping over each other and ripping their clothes on the harsh gravel in their mad attempt to get away. Nobody looked back over their shoulder; the fallen boys were left motionless and alone on the ground by their latest victim, not even a lasting thought on their friends’ minds.

“What did you do?” Frank uttered in a whisper as thin as a veil, turning to his lover with wide, mirror-eyes.

Gerard’s face was hard as stone and bitter; his black eyes shone like liquid under the immaculate streetlights. “I didn’t kill them,” he replied. “I’ll leave that honour to them.”

“What did you do?” the younger demon repeated in the same tone of incredulity, but he knew he wasn’t really in need of an answer. He knew what his lover had done; he knew that while the thuggish boys were unconscious they would experience the ugliest nightmares they’d ever seen. And when they woke up there would be no desire to live, no desire for anything at all. And they would submit themselves to the darkness which eventually called everyone to do its bidding, to become a demon under a moon that never shone anything but black.

Gerard’s arm closed tightly around Frank’s slender waist, drawing him near. “Let’s go, Frankie. This place isn’t for us, you were right.”

Frank shrugged out from his lover’s arm and stepped around the bodies to the still-struggling bird. His yearning to unleash it from its bonds was overwhelming, yet he couldn’t bring himself to touch those battered, blood-crusted wings. A smooth, marble-coloured hand reached around him and gently pressed into the bird’s chest; instantaneously its wings stopped fluttering and its eyes froze over with an opaque glaze. Frank’s eyes clouded over with tears.

“Don’t worry about what you can’t save,” Gerard murmured softly, but firmly, trying to pull his partner away from the lifeless body.

“Why did you do that?” the lover whispered, yet he allowed himself to be tugged away from the street corner, his feet moving at a pace which no human would be able to see, but which felt like simple strolling to him. “Why did you do that, Gerard, why did you do that?”

It wasn’t a question that could be answered. But his lips kept moving until long after they had broken through the branches of the forest once again, repeating the same question again and again until his voice was hoarse and the black-crystal tears had stopped streaming down his lovely face.

They were by a pond, its surface unbroken like a flat, inky looking glass. Frank let his knees take him down to the soft green moss that coated the moist dirt around the murky water. He let his normal composure shatter and the black tears left stains on his cheeks. Sitting by the calm water, he observed his beautiful face in the depths and saw Gerard sidle up to kneel behind him, completing the image he saw of himself no matter how alone he was.

“They don’t know how it feels to not belong,” he found himself whispering to their reflection; in the water, his dark lips moved up and down, but they could make no sound of their own. “Those human-children, they don’t know what it feels like to be taken from what you know.”

“I know,” Gerard spoke softly into the shell of his lover’s ear, but he himself knew nothing of which his partner could speak. Still, he wrapped his arms around the hollow cage of Frank’s chest and ribcage, feeling the bony barrier between Frank’s back and his own clothed stomach.

Slowly his pale fingers drifted to the metal zipper of Frank’s hooded jacket, drawing it down the dove-tailed path until he was deftly unhooking it from its base at the younger demon’s slight waist. He slid his hands under the thin material, across Frank’s t-shirted chest, all the time observing with tender interest his lover’s face in the mirrored reflection that lay within the pool. Gently, he slipped his fingers into the shoulders of the cloth and pulled backwards, releasing Frank’s arms and torso from the crumpled material.

“No matter what you are,” he whispered against his lover’s bared neck, running his tongue along the veins that jutted out there and throbbed against the hot wetness of his mouth. He smiled as Frank’s throaty moans vibrated under the skin against his lips. The younger man’s eyes were delicately sewn shut, his lips parted and sparkling slightly with the ghost of black tears.

“No matter what brought you here.” The words trickled out of his mouth like star-dust, scattering over Frank’s jaw line and catching on the air they breathed. Tenderly, he snuck his fingers under the soft material of his lover’s shirt and smoothed his hands over the rounded belly and subtle dusting of hair that powdered his firm chest. He could feel Frank trembling, out of lust, out of fear, and he tilted his partner’s face back to catch his faltering lips. The way they met was like waking from a sleep of centuries, and Frank drove his hands into Gerard’s hair.

“No matter what you hide,” Gerard reminded Frank with an affectionate smile, drawing his lover’s shirt over his thin shoulders and revealing the tattered, graying wings that were hidden beneath all of the layers of dark clothing. Frank moaned slightly as the wind’s fingers lifted some of his weak, brittle feathers, still clustered and clumped with blood after all of these years after falling from Heaven’s gates. Another tear trickled down his saddened face, this one gleaming white.

“ Je vous aime pour toute les choses sombres qui connecte votre âme et votre corps à moi.”

I love you for all of the darkness that connects your soul and body to me.

Their lips and tongues met in a child’s game of chase, bodies twisting and blending as the moon above them fell into the hole in the sky, encasing the human world in a soft entity of darkness. And their skin melted into their bones, their swollen lips sheathing each others until they sunk into the pungent moss, the grass creeping over them until they were buried under the silken dirt. Out of the stray, off-white feathers grew two small, twisted black flowers, a tender circus of darkness that drew them back to where they belonged.