The Empty Mirror
Chapter 24: Unhappiness
Venturing with certainty into the tent immersed in a bath of milk and crimson nuances, a twisted circus emerged from the sewer depths. The show unfolded in the Hades of the sewers, where the tent, saturated with decay and the filthy chaos inherent in those shadowy corners, maintained a subtle red and white glow, highlighting the resounding joy of a circus.
Though the tent might be highly repellent, it still retained a delicate shine that enhanced the jubilant substance of a hemisphere. The cape, now somewhat blackened, boasted slightly muted colors. We crossed the entrance that expanded majestically, and Constance extinguished the oil lantern upon realizing that the circus was illuminated by hefty yellowish spotlights, whose intensity made moths fluttering around them contort and squeak, masochistic in the face of that blinding light.
Under the seemingly antiquated spotlights, they defied logic by lacking any visible connection to a power source. Peering inside, I could discern a sort of yellowish pus that expanded and pulsated in its concavity. Constance produced two tickets for the circus performance; on them, the likeness of a clown adorned with vibrant colors and a red nose was spat out.
The tickets decomposed, turning into confetti as if they had been approved and stamped. The confetti scattered over the murky waters of the sewer, soaking and vanishing instantly. In my position, I remained silent and continued after Constance with cautious and deliberate steps.
However, during my journey across the deck that housed the ring, thus shaping the circus stage, I was unable to distinguish any ticket booth dispensing the precious tickets for the performance. The only tickets present were those Constance safeguarded, hidden within the folds of her attire, as if the circus clowns resisted becoming a farce for the public.
The areas designated for gastronomic delight unfolded in the distance, showcasing a myriad of sweets—hash-covered marshmallows, ice cream with cookie chunks and caramel sauce, cakes with thick icing, and others, all delightfully infused with glucose. However, they held no mystery for me; I recalled Constance had already offered similar delights before. Moreover, the pungent stench wafting from the sewers, repulsive enough to strip any soul of its appetite, added to the displeasure.
Constance sensed my aversion to sweets and chose to remain silent on the matter, merely continuing her march. It was evident that I was already weary of the whole sugar affair, which continued to invade my already disturbed senses.
My gaze could only revel in the contemplation of sugar and decay; my sense of smell was besieged by the repulsive stench of the sewers, with a subtle amalgamation of tenderness. My hands resisted the seduction of touching surfaces soaked in monosaccharides, and my ears were assailed by the constant sound of thick drops falling on the drains. The incessant noise of corroded machines spinning cotton candy did not escape my perception.
On the muddy path of the sewers, we advanced without concern for our garments and footwear, completely disregarding the filth that surrounded us. Constance seemed to pay it no mind or rather resigned herself to the grotesque journey. In my case, I tried to banish from my mind the splashing of water on my feet and ignored clusters of a gelatinous substance writhing on the ground, as if dancing, as if an amorphous conglomerate slid and coiled around my limbs.
Even under the circus tent, everything remained unchanged. The surface lay submerged in murky waters and sticky appendages.
Finally, we reached the stands where the light from the spotlights diminished significantly, creating a spectacle of nuances. We settled into the seats soaked with resignation, choosing a spot near the central ring to enjoy the show without being too close or too far. Despite the desolate appearance of the stands, they were actually occupied by scattered porcelain dolls. These figures, worn and aged, wore tattered and faded fabrics, with unkempt hair mimicking gray, though elegantly arranged.
The porcelain composing the dolls, now cracked and aged, bears deep fissures resembling open scars. Their once smooth surface is veiled by a discolored and stained patina. Worn remnants reveal dry cracks and detachments, while a stale odor permeates what was once the essence of childhood innocence. Each fragment whispers a story of decay, turning charm into a grotesque display of inevitable decomposition.
The paint adorning the faces of these dolls is merely a prudish display of dull and unpleasant colors, as if they had been applied by malevolent hands. A morbid being masturbating in the panties of a porcelain doll conceived as a friend for tender infants, creating a whore-like makeup.
The dolls' makeup slides over the porcelain like a mask whose grace has been dishonored. A thick layer of rough and uneven white chalk highlights the underlying cracks and wrinkles. The carmine red of the lips, instead of being seductive, appears as an open wound, bleeding incessantly. The eyes are framed by black lines dripping downward, creating an effect of black tears fused with a grayish shadow evoking despair. This makeup, instead of enhancing beauty, becomes a nauseating expression of decay, a silent scream of elegance corrupted to the grotesque. At least on the surface of their faces, where the porcelain is not shattered, as they gazed toward the spectacle.
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In a chromatic play provoked by the lights of the spotlights on the central stage, a bull emerges like a colossal giant, a privileged one among its kind, with a jet-black hue. Its imposing horns stand out against the rough skin, and its prominent muscles denote colossal strength. Its skin, as dark as midnight, reflects an intimidating presence. But the most unsettling is its countenance, painted with clown makeup in a distorted conception of laughter. The grotesque and disfigured strokes of the paint reveal a sinister smile, with the eyes highlighted in a disturbing tone. A nauseating amalgamation of brute strength and aesthetic horror, this bull embodies a disturbing duality. As I watched the bull trotting across the stage, I wondered uneasily if I was witnessing a circus show or a bullfight.
From the sands of the bullring emerged a masculine figure, upright and robust, like a ghost dancing in the circus ring. His epidermis, chiseled by time, displayed aged hues but with a youthful countenance, and his dark brown eyes resonated with the depth of the night. A halo of darkness enveloped his short and shadowy hair, barely discernible beneath the attire of the bullfighter.
Adorned in a classic suit, shades of gray and gold intertwined not to evoke elegance, but to project a grotesque and repulsive fashion. The jacket, more akin to a decaying insect's cuticle, bore ambiguous stains suggesting the presence of a metallic shroud, while the lackluster gold lost its brilliance in a dull glow. The gray trousers, with disheveled creases, boasted indescribable stains, and the torn and stained black stockings added a faded touch, as if witnesses to the feast of hungry larvae.
Instead of enhancing, the accessories contributed to the macabre appearance. The wide-brimmed hat defied fascination with its deformed shape, while a pungently scented bullfighting cape waved in the bullfighter's hand, revealing frayed embroidery. Instead of boots with veins resembling sick arteries, he wore a pair of clown shoes that defied all norms of good taste: huge, bulbous, with twisted tips pointing upwards and covered in a viscous mix of garish colors sliding between indescribable shades. The soles, a mixture of rough and slippery textures, captured attention with chaotic and outlandish designs.
Each step unleashes a pungent perfume, an unpleasant blend of rancid latex and sour paint, weaving a nauseating experience for any unfortunate witness. It resembles an affront to culture, an outrage to the bullring. Even I, as a spectator unfamiliar with bullfights, feel outraged, furious at such a vile affront. It gives the impression that someone mocks humanity, deriding its culture and heritage, laughing at its own filth.
I perceive it in the torero's lifeless eyes; I barely glimpse the hatred, the anger, the shame. His aversion is so intense that tears of despair and helplessness slide down his eyes, accompanied by a barely audible muttering of grinding teeth, even from a distance. Despite his anger-contorted face, he seems to be manipulated by metallic fragments that control and animate his expression, leading him to make horrendous gestures of smiles and exaggerated, clownish expressions. His face takes on intense shades of crimson, a red that paints his lips like a courtesan.
A whore with cunt and phallus tinted in colourful tones, reddened by her own blood that slides due to the exaggerated gestures she is forced to perform. At this point, I cannot hold my gaze on such a disturbing scene, which ridicules and upsets, disfiguring the man into a prostitute, inducing the most inhuman cognitive martyrdom. That disformed appendage that treats everyone as its sexual toys, with which to masturbate.
I would like to cover my eyes, I would like to run away and I would like to shed tears of dread, but the noblewoman beside me seems oblivious to the strangeness. She, Constance, is managed like a sex doll, a victim of the disformity. The aforementioned pitiful aristocrat was nothing more than a doll with which to overflow seminal fluids into her vaginal canal, I find myself unable to dress this thought sharply, for I perceive it as the purest disgust towards orgasm, feeling the sensation of vomit burning in my throat.
That unfortunate lady was but a perishable phantom, a porcelain doll serving as a receptacle of the purest contempt, destined to satisfy lascivious cravings. Those two tormented souls were mere ceramic sculptures in the belly of that disformity, fearing myself dragged into unspeakable infamy.
I could not allow that formlessness to take away my identity. I tried to safeguard my dignity as Constance cheered the performance. Her cheeks took on an exalted flush, her mouth moist with stimulation, yearning to be possessed and penetrated. Her countenance revealed an indescribable dread, an immaculate desperation, a pain that escaped all words. The nightmare exceeded my expectations as I watched Constance writhe between delight and tears, her eyes turned to a blood liquor as dark as midnight, akin to petroleum.
With pearly saliva sliding to the floor and her genitals engulfed in vaginal fluids, the episode was becoming unacceptable. Anguish welled up in my being, causing nausea and nervous laughter to break out in a witch's wail.
On the set, the matador holds a torn and faded cape, soaked in stains of a viscous liquid of uncertain shade. The frayed ends are criss-crossed with strands of human hair, giving it a macabre appearance. A pungent stench, a fusion of stale sweat and rust, wafts from its folds, creating a nauseating sensation that invades the senses. This attire, stripped of any hint of elegance, becomes a grotesque manifestation of subverted bullfighting.
The bull, charging like a copper colossus, observes the most disturbing and vomitous scene. The bullfighter, with the imperturbable gaze of porcelain dolls, begins his performance. He begins with the ballad of regurgitations, vaginal secretions, and as the bull exhibits a clown-like painted countenance, he displays a prolonged period of prowess in the ring.
In the rough umbrosa, gutturals echoed like aphonic echoes from the very essence of brutality. Hoarse, piercing growls writhed in the blindness, forming a chorus of monstrous clamours that permeated the air with subtle revulsion. The howls, devoid of any hint of civilisation, tore through materiality, distilling an amalgam of visceral cruelty and grotesque despair. The howls, distilled with unrelenting rawness, fade into a twisted echo, revealing the raw essence of an untamed, grotesque nightmare unfolding in the subterranean abyss of sound, as if they had set their gaze upon me and banned the ring, leaving only the conclusion of the circus spectacle.
In an unexpected turn of events, the diestro unfurls some colourful elongated balloons and, with the skill of a virtuoso, inflates them. He moulds a chromatic sword with these balloons, where the amalgam of colours is an unusual weapon. With mastery, the matador concludes his performance. After a charge by the clown, he firmly holds the balloon sword and stabs the bull. The balloon, with pathetic logic, folds over the animal's rough skin, taking the bull to the ground to dissolve into a sticky lollipop that reveals its true substance: clown make-up.
The bullfighter pays homage to the stands at the end of the show. Instantly, pre-recorded, canned laughter echoes in the atmosphere, not ordinary laughter, but the laughter of those who no longer inhabit this world, the hilarity of dead people. The bullfighter seems to fade away, adopting an inert posture, as if trapped in a syrup of make-up. Only his clothes remain, abandoned in the same place where he lay, a limp bullfighter's costume.
Moments slipped by as I experienced unwholesome, viscous appendages that lingered and churned around my being, encircling my person and around my genitals. It was as if a monarch was lasciviously sliding her voluptuous legs over me, longing to rub her huge tits on mine. The rubbing became vigorous, determined to rub her lubricated anus against my genitals. Her seductive tongue tried to lick my lips and the inside of my mouth, raising doubts as to whether this entity, this bloodsucker, embodied my own reflection in the mirror.
The uncertainty lingered: was this disformity a reflection of myself? No, it couldn't be, for to transmute me into a fluctuant of the satellites would imply that this disformity stood as my mistress, my favourite whore. This whole unusual encounter went by the name of Giselle.