[Torture Circus-On the Move]
Mark sat up abruptly, the muscles connecting his left shoulder to his neck convulsing, drawing his entire arm up in a swift motion. He blinked and the muscle convulsed again, this time with a bit less anger. The fits were getting worse, the heat made his body fatigued and not able to resist the spasms. And it didn’t help that he wasn’t getting enough water in his diet. The messy young bloke stood up slowly, his body trembling slightly. He was exhausted and he didn’t know where he was. Looking down at the ground to walk, the blonde noticed that his clothes were utterly rumpled and dirty. Bleck. He slapped at his clothes and dust clouded around him. He fidgeted, and they fell straight again. There he looked presentable again.”There we are.” He said thickly, his tongue heavy still. Now on to the matter of his current whereabouts. To discover that he’d have to remember what he’d been doing before he woke up just now.
Absentmindedly the scraggly youth floated a handful of pebbles as he strained to remember. It was about midday now, and he knew that his workday didn’t start now, and this certainly wasn’t a place he usually woke up. Unless, of course, he’d broken down this morning. That would make sense, considering all the aftershocks he was currently suffering through, mostly on his facial plane. The muscle around his eyelids was a popular place for the convulsions, and his neck, which made his head jerk to one side for a second. Moving around in the summer usually did such things to him, and this summer was especially trying. And they put him way off in the back of their setup, away from anything he could damage or pick up and hurl. So that was where he was.
Luxuriously Mark stretched, pulling his muscles until they stopped jerking around. He needed to get back now. He had a faint idea that if he kept up all the breakdowns and seizures he’d soon be out of a job. And out of a body too. The thought sent chills down his spine. His act wasn’t very popular anyway, no more than usual, so he wasn’t particularly valuable, and he had a strong feeling that the seizures would only driving his worth down. But how to get across the crowds to where he was supposed to be? Mark stepped out of the makeshift structure and looked around, squinting in the sun. There was no one around at the moment, probably for the best, but a few metres away, just out of the range of his powers, was a pile of wooden boards. They’d do well enough. He paced forward grudgingly enough; it was good he’d just had a bit of a rest because it always took a lot out of him, but hell if it wasn’t great fun to fly.
The board was too narrow to sit on, and it was a bit soggy, but it would do well enough. Mark stared at it for a moment and it leaped suddenly in the air, shaking itself off before hovering a few centimeters off the ground. He jumped on it and groaned as it tugged at his mind. He wasn’t very heavy, but it was still rather painful to carry anything heavier than a kilo. He lined his feet up a few centimeters away from each other, right against the edges of the board, and held his hands out at his sides. He lifted one, and the board struggled up a metre, then another metre, and then it jumped to about twice his height and started forward. His shoulders shook slightly as he kept himself perfectly upright and scudded through the air, the front of his skull starting to ache already. The board creaked quietly; it was not pleased with the weight on it, its place on the refuse pile warranted by its poor constitution.
Impatiently Mark bowed his head and the board increased its speed at the cost of a bit of his balance, but the grin on his face made up for the discomfort. He rose a bit higher as he returned to the more populated part of the setup, trying to avoid rushing over large crowds of people just in case he did fall. Of course, it would kill neither party if he happened to tumble; he was too light to do any damage to the guests, and they would cushion his descent. Of course, then they’d be severely unhappy with him, and that’d be quite distasteful.
A few people noticed him, looking up and shouting something or nudging companions and pointing, but Mark was fully focused and didn’t wave as he normally would. He took a round-about way back to the staff tent; from there he could just walk wherever he needed to go with only a little trouble, but the board didn’t seem to like the idea. As he was approaching the tent, he could see Ester disappearing back inside its arms, the board let out a whine. It had been sagging slightly under his feet, and suddenly it splintered right in the middle, where Mark was standing. He had time to go into a rapid descent, but the board crackled before he’d managed to make it halfway down, and he plummeted, landing in a curled ball and rolling back out onto his knees and then his feet. The carcass of the board still hung above his head, almost as if staring at him smugly.
For a little way away a child started clapping amused by his tumble, and Mark smiled at it and waved. It waved back until its mother grabbed it by the hand and tugged it away. Children were cute in that they didn’t have any worry, any foul premonition surrounding them. Mark stood, staring at the tent for a moment before ducking inside, the boards trailing after him. His head was beginning to ache but the excited pumping of his heart offset the pain. He spotted Ester quickly and grinned, moving over to her. He stopped a few meters away.
“Lo, Ester. Did I miss anything?” The muscles in his mouth didn’t want to work right and as he spoke the left one decided to stop altogether for a moment. In result he sounded quite drunk. The board halves caught up to him as he stood and began bumping against his shoulder as if wishing to be put down on the ground again.