giselle

They call it the Screaming Tent.

Not metaphorically.

Not as some cutesy, edgy little nickname.

No, no. Here, screaming is the whole fucking point.

The canvas walls pulse like lungs.

The moans are louder than the drums now.

And every step I take squelches against floors painted with the blood of those who asked for this—who paid for it.

The air is thick with heat and breath and smoke. It’s alive. Sticky. Sweet. Saturated in sweat and sex and incense that smells like cloves, ash, and something far more feral.

And in the middle of it?

Us.

I slip through the crowd, the scent of iron and submission crawling up my skin like a second pelt. Someone licks my thigh as I pass. Another drops to their knees, whimpering. I don’t stop. Don’t slow. I’m not here for them.

A stilt walker limps past juggling organs like juggling balls—glistening pink and purple.

Is that a liver? A kidney?

“Shit,” I mutter with a grin. “I missed a good show.”

To my left, a poor naked bastard’s strapped to a wheel—arms nailed straight into the spokes with silver stakes that glint real pretty in the firelight. Every spin drags his limbs further apart, bones creaking like they’re about to sing. His mouth’s all sewn shut, twitching like he’s trying to scream something poetic. Adorable.

A girl in a glittery clown mask rides his stomach like a carousel pony, moaning like it’s church, while some Viking-looking freak—full furs, bloody scroll, runes all over his neck—chants Old Norse prayers and burns symbols into the guy’s thighs with a brand the size of my fist.

Guess we’re doing devotions the fun way tonight.

The cirkies are everywhere, crawling through the crowd like spiders on drugs. One’s got a guest gagged and bent backward over a pew while they pour wine down his throat and slap him each time he swallows. Another’s dangling from the rafters upside down, jerking a leash attached to a man’s cock like it’s a bell rope and she’s calling mass.

There’s blood in the holy water, glitter on the corpses, and more than one set of teeth where they shouldn’t be.

I feel my nipples harden under the leather.

Gods, this place makes me giddy.

“You’re late,” Indie calls as I push past a wall of writhing bodies and into the center of the performance ring.

She’s standing before a woman on her knees—branded red, shivering, with a hunger in her eyes. Indie’s whip is already out, curling and cracking in the air like a serpent drunk on screams.

And beside her, lounging with one leg up on a low platform, is Lux. Not center stage. Not leading. Just watching the show and enjoying his queen in her true element.