Author's Note
Always on show, a living performance. Do you want to watch the freak show?
I wasn't quite sure about posting this here, but I thought I would as the character is vague enough to simply be a little chestnut pony. Hope that's okay - tagged as OC.
I'm not sure what to say about this one. Writers throw up their sickness in their books. And something has been making me sick to the very core of my being for too long. I needed to get it out of me and this is what I've gotten down.
I've been writing more equine tales to get things out of my head, but they are only on Patreon at the moment. I'm going to trickle them onto these sites, so as not to flood with lots of very different stories at the same time, but they're up there if you'd like to read them immediately. It's just how I work thorugh my problems and there's been so much conflict lately, even if we may be coming to the end of it. But that's completely separate to this story, of course - this is about something very personal and that I'm very, very tired of, even if is is the few and not the many.
Thanks for reading, lads and ladies, and I hope you will enjoy my suitable equine musings (whatever is suitable for FIM Fiction only, otherwise will be on FA, SF etc) here going forward.
The Freak Show
The Freak Show
Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)
The lights glare, a sea of faces pouring down on me in the middle of the arena. Up and up they rise, all the way up to the ceiling where the hanging lights ensure I am well on display. I think they call those ‘stands’, but I don’t see what is in the name as there’s nothing ‘standing’ about them and every person watching is planted on their buttocks, fat and chowing down on all manner of confectionary.
I don’t get to eat. Not like that. I heard them earlier, saying how it’ll make me fat and round, a cow on stage. Nobody would want to come and watch me if I was rolling on my stomach, a mare in foal. Rules apply to me that don’t apply to them and I simply can’t understand why this is imposed on me when everyone else seems to get away with it.
But I’m not one of them and I’m not entirely something else either. I’m somewhere in-between. Different charms and rulings apply when you are on show, the prancing pony for the crowd to gawp at.
A circus act, a show pony with a gleaming coat. Oh, I am primped and I am polished, chestnut hide shining as if polished with a fine cloth, burned umber over sleek, powerful muscle. I am in my prime and yet they whisper and mock – yes, I hear them! – saying I’m fat and, when you think about it, should I really be eating that? No matter that they are heavier than me, thicker than me, do less work than me. I need to eat and yet they tell me I should not.
Why is that?
Wheeling, I rear back onto my hind legs and paw at the air. Although my mouth is open in an equine scream, it is silent, nostrils vibrating and yet no sound coming out. Did they steal my voice too? My last defence? My voice is only my own and as much as I pivot and buck, hurling my body from the confines of the ground, in stunning leaps and rears, letting my body speak for me.
And they laugh. Oh, how they enjoy my performance. The monsters point and gape white teeth, pink, fat mouths gaping for more. And I deliver too, letting them shout and squeal, my name ringing to the rafters. It’s not all that bad sometimes. They’ve given me many names and the one I have today is but a drop in the ocean of terms that could be used to refer to me, many of them impolite. And yet I am the impolite one.
Hands reach over the barriers to grab at me, even as my hooves kick up sand and there is a reason no other performers but myself are in the arena. Like a baby’s hands, they clench and wave, demanding attention that, really, I have not the time to give. That’s not my job and not my place – get back! I snake my neck out, teeth bared, but they laugh at my daring to impose a boundary, one that is, ostentatiously, ignored.
Of course, I must be reprimanded. The whip cracks out and I veer off from it before it makes contact, eyes wild with a rim of white, blood spots showing in my nostrils. I snort and puff and blow, every bit a fearsome beast of legend, but the crowd only laughs, goading on the ringmaster to make me dance more – all for their amusement.
But I do not cavort to his routine and create my own, throwing my body skywards and dancing sideways, piaffe on my hooves. My hindquarters bunch beneath me, raw power and energy, and I think that, this time, they will see me for what I truly am. Oh, I am foolish. Yet I am myself and I will always bear that flicker of hope in my heart, that tiny flame that, perhaps, things may be different this time, next time, that time.
They cry out for change and they cry out for more. I should be doing something different, they say, but I was dancing to begin with for my own pleasure. If they enjoyed the show, then that was merely a bonus, a chance left up to them to see true beauty thrumming beneath the surface. There’s an image of me in their minds that I do not fit – oh, but I can fit! They scream and clamour for that fit, fists banging. I only have to try and, don’t you know it, I can change! I can be strong enough to change!
Only to be what they want me to be.
My tail flags, showy to the last, and I passage down the lengthier side of the arena, for, as an out of shape oblong, it is imperfect – as am I. I know what they want to see, the wildness tamed and brought under control, yet I am not to be controlled and, damn them, they should know it!
A neigh rips itself from my throat, curdling into a scream – my voice! I can speak and I can tell them how I feel! It is only their shortcoming if they choose to ignore it. And so I whip myself up into a gallop, hooves pounding the sand down and down and down so that it is so hard packed that barely a grain is flicked up by my raging passing. Tail streaming behind me like a banner, I whinny and call out, replying in turn, telling them just how I am, who I am, so they’ll learn.
Boos echoing, ricocheting from beam to beam, one egging on the other into a heavy mass, one body snarling out its contempt for what was only ever intended to be entertainment. And what was so wrong with it? They thought they could do better, fix me, change me, covet me. My eye gleams and I throw a buck, challenging them to try. They are the ones who do not dare!
Come to see the freak show? Darling, ain’t you in for a treat.
For I may be a circus act, but their fate, well, they’ve not met it, planted in their seats. Ever the observer, they will not be the show and I am not willing to fulfil their fantasies, their dreams and, yes, their hopes. Because they are theirs, not mine, and that should have been clear to see all along. Yet they think me capable of doing it all for them and, really, I cannot imagine just where they got that impression from. Did they think I was responsible for lives I’ve never touched, bar through the tentative reaches of my performance, my show? There is irrationality here, but it is not in my mind.
Lights glance off my hide as I spin to face them, the ringmaster shaking his head and bowing out. Victory thrums through me, a tangible shiver. He knows. He knows I’m not to be his. And perhaps the rest of them would do well to take heed of his change, for I am hardly about to change for the desires of someone else. Where I may be a dreamer, I know logic when I see it and all four hooves are now firmly planted on the ground.
The crowd mocks, rude gestures flying, and I close my eyes to them, exhaling softly as I bow. One foreleg flings out before me, mane spilling down the proud arch of my neck. I am what I am, who I am, and they will not change that. Yet I suppose they don’t have to accept that either, even if I don’t understand it.
Cool sand presses to my knee and I blink away the glare of the lights, spots appearing on the inside of my eyelids. They are white noise in the background and my flanks heave, regaining breath, as a fine lather of sweat and foam flecks my chest. The lights dim, leaving me in a white spotlight, as if nothing exists in the world, or, at least, besides my equine body, patient in the climax of performance. Screams fade, leaving me there, quiet and calm, awaiting my next move.
Welcome to the show.
