Rachel Vincent - Menagerie

“Just a sec.” A handler stepped into the light falling over and through half of Geneviève’s cage. He was a stout, balding man in a Metzger’s T-shirt but no vest, hat, or sequins whatsoever. His shirt was stained with sweat, his boots caked with dirt, and a lit cigarette dangled from his mouth. This was a behind-the-scenes man if I’d ever seen one. He held what looked like a thick stick. “This ought to get her up for you.”

Geneviève whined, and the sound reminded me of a puppy we’d had when I was in middle school, before she’d chewed up the legs of my dad’s favorite chair and he’d made us give her away.

Claudio growled, accompanied by a snarl from the adlet, and when assorted hisses, growls, and the clang of metal rang out from across the ring of circus wagons, I realized that the entire hybrid section of the menagerie knew exactly what was about to happen.

“Last warning, Genni,” the handler said, and though her whining intensified, her eyes did not open. Too late, I realized that the handler’s stick was actually an electrified cattle prod.

“No!” I shouted, and dimly I was aware that I’d squeezed Brandon’s hand hard enough to make him flinch. My other hand had crushed the glossy pamphlet.

“It’s okay,” the handler said. “She makes us do this all the time.” He shoved the cattle prod through a small hole in the steel mesh at the back of her cage.

Geneviève yelped in pain, and Claudio’s growling crescendoed until it was almost all I could hear. The handler jabbed the traumatized werewolf one more time, and she scuttled out of her corner and into the light.

Rage filled me like a bonfire lit deep inside my soul. Geneviève was a little girl, no more than thirteen years old. She trembled on the floor of her cage, knees drawn up to her chest, heels tucked close to her body in an attempt to cover herself. She wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in the hollow between her knees, letting her long, tangled blond hair fall down her nearly bare back.

“Oh...” Shelley breathed, clearly horrified, and this time Brandon’s hand clenched mine. None of us seemed to know what to say. Even Rick looked uncomfortable.

“Stand up, honey, and let them get a look at you,” the handler said, as Claudio continued to growl and pace in his cage. The male werewolf couldn’t see Geneviève, but he obviously cared about her, and he clearly knew what was happening. “I’m not going to tell you again,” the handler taunted, his cigarette bobbing with every word, and the girl-wolf began to tremble.

The cattle prod scraped the iron bars on its way into the cage, and Geneviève stood faster than I would have thought possible. She scrambled toward the front of her cage to escape the weapon, her eyes still squeezed closed, as if her refusal to see us somehow meant that we wouldn’t see her.

In that moment, I wished more than anything in the world that I’d made my friends sit through a boring birthday dinner with me instead of using Brandon’s tickets, so that at least we could have spared Geneviève this one moment of humiliation in the string of such instances that no doubt comprised her entire existence.

Genni’s hair brushed the base of her spine and did much more to cover her than the white bikini bottom and tube-style swimsuit top she’d been made to wear. Her arms and legs were thin and her rib cage was plainly visible through her skin. The outsides of her thighs were peppered with pairs of red welts that could only be burns from the cattle prod.

Little Geneviève obviously resisted her handler quite often. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved by that fact or horrified by it, so I settled for a deep sense of awe that a child so young had survived—so far—an existence I couldn’t even imagine.

On display. Nearly naked. Ordered to perform, and tortured for refusal.

I hated myself for being there to see it.

I started to head to the next cage and relieve Geneviève of the audience that gave her handler the chance to abuse her. But then she opened her eyes, and I was too mesmerized to move.

She had Claudio’s eyes. Exactly. Beautiful golden wolf eyes in a little girl’s face.

“Open your mouth, Genni, and let them have a look at your teeth.” The handler circled the end of her cage, still carrying the cattle prod, and Geneviève scuttled away from him. The name embroidered on his shirt was Jack. The tip of his cigarette glowed red in the shadows.

“Genni...” he warned, and when Claudio started howling, Jack banged on the end of the male wolf’s cage with the fist holding the cigarette. “Pipe down, Papa!”

Understanding crashed over me with a devastating weight and stunning intensity. The father was caged feet from his half-naked daughter, unable to protect her, yet forced to hear every offense heaped on her.

“Genni!” Jack shouted, and she turned on him, hissing, hair flying, her lips curled back to reveal long, sharp canines among the teeth in her otherwise human mouth.

“Ain’t that somthin’?” Jack took a long drag on his cigarette. “Have to file ’em down once a month, or she’s likely to bite a finger off when we groom her.”

“You groom her?” Brandon sounded sick. Shelley looked pale, and Rick was staring at his feet.

“Have to. That one won’t do nothin’ on her own. Has to be prodded into brushin’ her own teeth in the mornin’.” He brandished the forked end of the cattle prod at her and she hissed again, then retreated to the back of her cage. “No, no, don’t sit down, Genni. Give the good people their money’s worth.” Jack turned back to us. “Wanna hear her howl? She’s got a helluva voice, that one. Not much for speaking, but she howls like her mama did.”

“Did?” I didn’t want to ask, but I wanted to know. “She died?”

Jack shrugged, and the tip of his cigarette left squiggles of light dancing in front of my eyes. “Who knows? Sold her off last year.” He turned back to Geneviève, who stood in the darkest corner of her cage. “Give us a howl, darlin’.”

But Genni had had enough. She sank to the floor against the rear wall of her cage and vanished into the shadows again, closing her eyes so the twin points of yellow light disappeared.

Jack moved toward her with the prod again, and the fire burning in my belly burst into a full-body blaze.

“Leave her alone,” I said, and when the entire hybrid tent went silent around me, I realized that my voice sounded...different. Not lower in pitch, but larger somehow. More robust.

Brandon, Rick, and Shelley turned to look at me, their eyes wide. Distantly I realized that my scalp had started to tingle and that the heat blazing deep inside me now threatened to burn me alive.

It was a boundless and terrible heat. And it was not entirely unfamiliar.

Creatures in cages all around the tent turned to stare. Sounds I hadn’t even realized I was hearing suddenly ceased—the snort of something equine; steady small splashes from the special section across the ring; and the constant rustle of feet and hooves on hay.

Jack was too intent on causing pain to notice the sudden silence. “It’s no trouble.” With his back to us, he moved toward the center of the cage to lengthen his reach. “It’s just—” he twisted something at the base of the prod “—a little jolt.” He shoved the cattle prod between the bars and through the mesh, and Geneviève howled when the tip touched her right calf.

“Get the hell away from her!” I shouted, and my hair rose on my scalp, as if the power sparking through me had charged it at the roots. It floated around my head, not in thin tendrils, but in heavy ropes of hair, twisting around my face in my peripheral vision.

My pamphlet fell to the ground. Brandon dropped my hand. Shelley made a strange noise as she and Rick backed away from me.