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CHARLIE’S ANGELS: THREE RING CIRCUS
CHAPTER ONE: DEATH TROUPE
Dylan, Natalie, and Alex were sitting in the living room of Nat and Pete’s apartment in varying states of boredom, pigging out on junk food, and watching a well-worn DVD of Big Trouble in Little China. Days off for the Angels were few and far between, but they always made time to hang out together. Quality time was decidedly less relaxing when you were being shot at by bitter ex-boyfriends or crashing through a ceiling with a pissed-off criminal mastermind.
“What are you doing? Roundhouse kick from the back! C’mon!” Dylan said exasperatedly.
Alex smirked. “Dylan, the keyword here is ‘vacation’.”
Dylan tossed a popcorn kernel at Alex’s head. It bounced off her forehead and landed in Natalie’s hair.
“Hey!” Natalie cried. She flung a piece of popcorn at Alex in retaliation. Soon, popcorn was flying everywhere in handfuls, like a bullet siege, only more butter-y and delicious. Dylan was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. Even Alex was giggling. Suddenly, Natalie stopped, her expression one of intense concentration.
“Hold on. I think I hear something.”
The three automatically snapped into battle position, their eyes searching the room warily, searching for any sign of movement. Suddenly, a sound cut through the air like a knife.
Ding-dong.
“The doorbell! That’s Pete!” Natalie said, returning to her usual, gangly self. She raced towards the front door. Spike, her puppy, gave an annoyed “humph” as she nudged him out of the way with a bunny-slipper-ed foot.
“Why is Pete ringing the doorbell to his own apartment?” Alex asked, suspicious.
“Oh, Nat and I were hanging out in here one night, you know, just watching movies while you were on a date with Jason, and Pete snuck up behind us to say hello, and he ended up with a concussion from us not hearing him come in. He surprised us,” Dylan explained, nonchalantly.
“Ah, I see, so he makes his presence known first…”
Natalie opened the door so quickly that she almost fell over, yet another less-than-coordinated moment. Luckily, Pete was there to catch her.
“Hi,” Natalie said, smiling.
“Hey, Nat,” Pete said, helping Natalie to her feet. “Uh… you have a popcorn bowl on your head.”
“It’s a long story.” Dylan chortled as she walked up to the front door. “Let’s just say all three of us are going to be on vacuum duty.”
“Well, you might not have time,” said Pete. “You see, I’ve got kind of a surprise for you guys.”
Pete took three paper rectangles out of his back pocket. Natalie took one and examined it curiously.
“Omigosh, tickets!” Natalie squealed happily. “I love these things!”
“The Avante Soliel Circus,” Alex read aloud. Her eyebrows knitted in confusion. “How did you afford these, Pete?” The Avante Soliel was a renowned French acrobatic group. One ticket was easily half a thousand dollars. As a child, Alex remembered being entranced by them on television, but her mother discouraged wasting money on something so frivolous. Her father promised her he’d take her to see them someday. Sadly, he died before he had an opportunity. As much as she loved her stepfather, she thought it would sound strange to ask him to take her to a performance- strange, and somehow disrespectful.
“Yeah. These are great and everything, but not if you end up having to pay off the mob or something,” added Dylan.
Pete smiled his usual cheerful smile. “No prob. Some guy just walked up to me at work today and gave me three tickets. So I thought, maybe Charlie could fly Nat and you guys out to see it.”
“You’re the greatest!” Natalie said, throwing her arms around her boyfriend’s neck and giving him a thank-you kiss. Then, more soberly, “You sure you don’t want to come with?”
Pete waved his hand dismissively. “Nah. You guys go have fun. I won’t get in the way.”
“Hold on,” Alex said, still sounding rather wary and suspicious. “What guy walked up to you? Who was he?”
“I’m not sure,” Pete’s brow furrowed in concentration. “Cameron, Calderon, … Camden!” He snapped his fingers. “Camden Othbury. Kind of weird actually. I don’t remember him from the office.”
“Camden Othbury? Where have I heard that name before?” Dylan mused absently. But as much as she tried to remember, she came up with a blank.
Inside, the tent was even more incredible. Thousands of seats circled a circus ring the size of a ballroom. Elephants with jewel-encrusted tusks paraded back and forth across the arena draped in sapphire-blue Persian carpets. On the back of each elephant was a woman in and elaborate fairy costume, doing a series of pirouettes. In the spotlights, their silver wings looked liked gossamer cobwebs.
“Wow! This is amazing!” Natalie said, taking a contemplative bite of cotton candy.
“Doesn’t it seem kind of suspicious that this Camden Othbury guy would just hand Pete fifteen-hundred dollars worth of tickets with no provocation?” Alex said. She had been sulk-y and skeptical the entire evening, but both Dylan and Natalie could tell that she was just covering up the excited joy of her inner five-year-old Alex.
“Lighten up, Al!” Natalie said. She pointed up at a row of trained monkeys in tiny, red fez hats that were cavorting across the top rafters. “Look, monkeys! You like monkeys!”
“It still seems iffy,” Alex said, still frowning.
“Not everything is a stakeout,” an eye-rolling Dylan said. “Hey, go find our seats, you guys. I’m going to go get a funnel cake.”
Dylan waved to her friends as they disappeared into the pre-show crowd. Once she was alone, there was a markedly different atmosphere to the circus. The rhythmic motions of the elephant dancers seemed eerie and ritualistic. The men on stilts hocking caramel apples to the gathering audience were suddenly menacing. Calliope music whirled and eddied through the fried-food-smelling air like the soundtrack to a bad dream.
Dylan pulled her black denim jacket tighter around her shoulders, feeling suddenly cold. Somehow, she had wandered away from the main crowd and into the backstage area. Wooden rafter and ladders reached up to the shimmering cloth ceiling at odd, jangling angles. Occasionally a few masked ballerinas or a huddle of mimes would walk past, speaking in rapid French.
Suddenly, a strange smell wafted past Dylan’s nose. Cigarette smoke.
She whirled around. Someone was leaned against a wooden support beam, his angular profile in full silhouette. Cigarette smoke swirled around him in a silver haze.
The above-head floodlight swung around while focusing of a pair of singing conjoined twins. The illumination was brief, but it was enough. Dylan got a fleeting glimpse of the pale face, the hawkish nose, the sharp, intense eyes. Then the man in the pinstriped black suit whirled around and stalked gracefully away, leaving nothing but the stub of a cigarette behind.
“The creepy, Thin Man,” Dylan murmured. “I thought he was dead.”
Perplexed and curious, Dylan began to follow after him. The backstage area was empty and unguarded. She guessed everyone was in position for the show to begin. It probably already had. Nat and Alex would be worried about her. Still, she wanted to know why the Thin Man had mysteriously reappeared, especially after taking a twenty-story dive from the top of a building onto the unforgiving asphalt. And especially after their… interesting… encounter right before he got a sword through the chest.
She picked up the pace, darting between support beams and ducking under service ladders. She would see maddening glimpses of his well-tailored black suit or tendrils of cigarette smoke and follow eagerly in that direction, only to face empty air. How did he keep avoiding her? And why? They weren’t enemies anymore.
A thunderous burst of applause exploded from the distant audience. A voice, presumably the ringmaster’s, rang out over the whole big top.
“Ladies and gentleman!” An upper-crust English accent, plumy, refined, and yet somehow snide. That voice tugged at the depths of her memories. Where have I heard him before? But she was too busy chasing after the Thin Man to give it further thought.
“All right, all right. Calm down. No need to go into hysterics. It’s just a circus.”
Another glint of stage light on the Thin Man’s highly polished leather shoes.
“Hey! Wait!” Dylan called after him. “What are you running from…?”
“What’s that, young miss? Why, you’re right! This isn’t just any circus. It’s the most wondrous, magical circus on earth,” the ringmaster’s voice echoed.
Dylan stopped, looking around wildly. Her heart beat in her ears. The ghost-scent of cigarette smoke hung in the air like a long-forgotten memory.
There was a single footstep on the sawdust floor behind her.
Dylan whirled around. It wasn’t the Thin Man. It was a man roughly the size and width of an industrial refrigerator. There was nothing “enchanting” or “whimsical” about the way he was dressed. In fact, he looked about as whimsical as Vin Diesel on steroids.
“What are you doing here, little girl?” he said in a thick French patois.
“Uh…” said Dylan awkwardly. Chasing an ex-serial killer who fell of a tall building three months ago. And you? No, that wouldn’t work.
“Never mind. Get into costume. Your act is just moments from now.” He shoved a silvery costume into her arms.
“Hey, you’ve got me confused with-” Dylan began. Suddenly, a shadow flitted past the corner of her eye. The Thin Man. His pale gray eyes caught her gaze for a moment, then he climbed the ladder to the trapeze tower, disappearing into the blinding brightness of the floodlights.
“What act would that be, exactly?” Dylan said, somewhat distractedly. Her eyes were still searching the ceiling.
“The Decent of the Divine Swans, of course! What a moronic question!”
Dylan shot him a confident smirk. Not the smartest move, Anthony. I think you’re slipping. “You know what? I think I changed my mind.”
“Pierre? It’s Othbury. Is everything in place?”
Camden’s eyes traveled upwards to the trapeze artists’ crows nest. A redhead young woman stood on the one on the left, dressed in an ornate white leotard. Although her outfit was far from characteristic, it was clear who she was- Helen Zaas. The girl from Lee’s report. An Angel.
“Wonderful,” Camden said, grinning like a shark. “Carry on.”
He walked out into the glaring white light of the center ring to continue the show.
“She wouldn’t miss the trapeze artists on purpose. Maybe she got lost. This place is pretty crazy.”
“Nat.”
“What?”
“Nat, look up!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please!” the ringmaster shouted. Dylan could see him standing in the center of the ring below. He was tall, blonde, handsome in a flamboyant way- and, strangely, just as familiar as his voice.
“I would like to draw your attention to the performers above!”
The spotlight swiveled in a half-circle, sending a flash of light across the Thin Man’s face. He was staring back at Dylan, devoid of expression.
“You will notice that there is no net below them whatsoever! And, to be certain, a fall from this height would kill them… instantaneously.” He let that last word draw out with a wicked delight. The crowd murmured.
“But there is no need to worry. Our trapeze artists have been very well trained.”
Dylan realized that the ringmaster was staring up at her, a cruel smile painted on his face.
“Begin,” he said, and calmly disappeared off the stage.
There was no time for hesitation. Dylan jumped.
She caught the wooden handlebar and went plummeting downwards. Horrified exhilaration whirled through her brain. Momentarily, she was blinded by the brilliant floodlights, deafened by the noise of the crowd- and then the Thin Man swung past her, like the shadow of a bird across the sun.
Dylan hurtled back upwards and then curved down again, crossing paths with the Thin Man once again. She reached for the sleeve of his black suit. He reached for her red hair. Dylan’s fist closed on empty air, but the Thin Man’s, unfortunately, did not.
Dylan let out a cry of pain and surprise. The Thin Man buried his face deeply in her hair and let out an unearthly howl. Before Dylan could respond (most likely by causing him some sort of physical pain), they were swinging in opposite directions again. Only this time, a pair of not-exactly-friendly hands grabbed her wrists and pulled her up onto another, higher set of trapeze bars.
Dylan let out a strangled shout that was cut off when someone held a curved dagger to her neck. She was hanging upside down from the handled bar by her knees. A skeletally thin woman with a heavily made-up face had her pinned there with on lethally sharp stiletto heel.
“Hush, ma Cherie,” she whispered, bringing the edge of the blade up to Dylan’s chin.
Dylan did a backwards kick-flip, tripping the skeleton woman and sending herself plummeting downwards. The skeleton woman began to cackle insanely, and soon Dylan knew why- she was headed for the ground, where the floor of the most magical place on earth would soon be splattered with her brains.
A hand caught her arm. She looked up, her heart pounding in her ears, expecting to see another carnival freak. Instead, she saw another kind of freak: the Thin Man.
A wave of applause echoed from the audience. They think it’s all part of the show, Dylan thought in awe. She looked up into the Thin Man’s pale gray eyes.
“Thanks,” she said. The Thin Man’s face remained totally emotionless. Suddenly, a hand clasped her ankle and dragged her away. She somersaulted over and snatched the handlebar with one hand, triggering another round of applause. Feeling faint and disoriented, Dylan looked up at her captor.
“Nat?”
“Dylan!” Natalie shouted back at her over the noise of the audience and the blare of the calliope. She was wearing a white swan costume similar to Dylan’s, presumably stolen from the dressing rooms. “What the heck is going on?”
“That creepy ringmaster sent a group of carnie assassins after me,” Dylan explained.
Natalie performed an upside down handstand on the handlebar as the trapeze swung around in an inverted flip. “After all of us. We need to get out of here, pronto.”
There was a resounding crackle as a bullet rebounded off a wooden support beam. Alex flipped the handlebar of the trapeze backwards to avoid another round of shots. They stitched a row of bullet-holes in the rafters inches above her head. She swung forward and kicked the gun out of the assassin’s (a hunchback with a striped eye patch over one eye) hand and used the heel of her boot to catch it in midair. Alex fired a volley of shots at the horde of carnies swinging back and forth above and in front of her in a continuous line until something caught her off guard- that something was a kick to the side from a grotesquely tall contortionist who was twined around his trapeze like a spider. Alex slipped. Fell.
And then two hands caught her own. She found herself swinging forward, and saw that a man was hanging upside down by his heels above her and his elbows locked with her own was the only thing keeping her from plummeting to her death. Then she recognized him. The pale, solemn face, the immaculate haircut, the hollow gray eyes- it was the Thin Man.
“What the hell do you think you’re-” Alex began furiously. Suddenly, another of pair of arms linked with hers. She looked up into the upside down face of Dylan.
“Hey, Alex. Nice of you to swing by.”
“Hold on. Was that-”
“No time,” Dylan interrupted. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
Another spray of bullets struck sparks on the rafters, this time from a machine gun held by a short man covered in tattoos with a metric ton of piercings hanging off his scowling face. Dylan swung a graceful arc above the range of fire. Natalie, who was standing on the same handlebar, caught the Thin Man’s grasp as he swung by. The two now-connect trapezes pitched forward far enough for them to jump into the crowd and be lost enough to make and exit. The sound of gunfire and French profanity faded into a low hum in the background- and they leapt.
Dylan landed clumsily on her ankle. A sharp pain shot through her leg. She tried to run forward, but it was useless. A hand helped her up. It was the seemingly ever-present Thin Man, who stared back at her as if she were a mildly interesting species of bug, once again in his usual pose of guarded formality.
She looked at him inquisitively. “Why are you helping us?”
A bullet screamed past her ear and hit the Thin Man high on the shoulder. Dylan whirled around to see the attacker. It was the same set of Siamese twins who had been singing in the center ring earlier. Each used her single, functional arm to grasp a single old-fashioned pistol, which was pointed at the Thin Man.
He emitted a high, wordless screech and charged forward, drawing a dagger out of his sleeve and raising it above his head. In that moment, he wasn’t the rescuing hero- he was every bit the violent psychopath she battled in the alleyway a year ago. Suddenly, he dropped the dagger, wincing in pain. The gunshot wound was more serious than he had anticipated.
The conjoined twins took this opportunity to fire again. This time through the chest.
The Thin Man toppled over backwards onto the ground. The dagger he’d been holding skittered away from him. Dylan knelt to pick it up.
“Okay,” Dylan said, shaking her coppery hair out of her face, “Now I’m pissed.”
An identical look of cold fur reflected on the conjoined twin’s faces. Slowly, with sadistic deliberation, they revealed throwing knives that had been hidden behind their backs. Every movement they made possessed a disturbing symmetry, like they were really one person reflected by a well-place mirror.
They fought the same way. Every move made by one twin had an equal and opposite reaction in the other. They hurled the throwing knives with an unholy speed and accuracy, but Dylan was thankfully faster- she caught every knife with the expertise of ten years of training.
They fought, harder for Dylan with only one blade while dodging the silvery glint of theirs. Dylan eventually got in a luck shot, slicing the arm of the left sister, half expecting a cut to appear on the right sister’s arm. The left sister screamed in agony, as did the right sister- but in fury.
The right sister seemed lost without the left. This gave Dylan enough time to grab the injured Thin Man coughing red and writhing in obvious agony, and drag him outside, careful not to touch the wound blossoming crimson on the white of his dress shirt and equally careful of her twisted ankle.
But as they reached the starry calm of outside the tent, the Thin Man pulled away from her violently, a look of fury on his pale features. However, the look of anger was not directed at her, but at a man standing in the shadow of the tent.
“I’m very disappointed in you,” the Englishman said. The Thin Man screeched, breathing heavily, blood sliding down his chin. The man lit a cigar.
“I suppose, if you want something done, you have to do it yourself,” the man’s voice going deep and low, sending a chill down Dylan’s spine. He pulled something from his pocket- it glinted- and pointed it at her.
The gun fired. The Thin Man screamed in fury. He jumped in front of her, actually cracking a smile, hugging her close, her head to his bloody chest. They were both knocked back a little as the bullet struck him in the shoulder blade. His eyes widened as he slipped from her arms, but Dylan managed to keep hold, suspending him barely inches from the dirt.
She looked up, furious, searching the shadows with her eyes, but the man had disappeared. At least she still had Anthony.
His eyes rolled back into his head as he gave a gurgled gasp.
…Or not…
“Somebody, help!” Dylan cried into the night. I’m not losing you again, Anthony. I can’t, she thought, attempting to lift him more into her arms, sliding to her knees.
“Dylan!” a voice shouted as a jeep screeched to a halt. It was Alex and Natalie to the rescue.
A gunshot blasted from inside the tent, close. The carnies were coming, the carnies were coming…
“Hurry!” Alex shouted as Natalie jumped out to help Dylan, but she wouldn’t leave the Thin Man. The two carried his unconscious form to the vehicle. It sped away, leaving behind the insane clown posse in its wake.
“Hold on… hold on…” Dylan whispered, stroking the Thin Man’s head.
Alex and Natalie looked at each other worriedly.
It took me five days to complete this particular posting. I had to check the paper version, then type half of it up, check it again, let the computer spell check do its thing, check it again, type of another fourth, check, spell check, check again, type up the last fourth, check, spell check, check again, edit, spell check, and read through it again to make sure everything was perfect, and check it again. That may seem insane, but if there is a single mistake in this, you'll really find out what crazy is. Emily says I shouldn't worry so much, but she's too chicken to post anything herself so I don't give her advice much lay way.
We don't own the Thin Man, sadly enough, though if we did, we would feed him a biscuit. We do own Camden and the circus freaks and well as the other original extras sprinkled throughout the fanfiction. Oh, and Camden Othbury is to be thought of as played by Eddie Izzard- yes the drag queen... He's still cool though...
A soundtrack list will appear at the end of the fanfiction. To give you a taste, the main theme of this fanfiction is "Say Hello to the Angels" by Interpol.
We wish you and yours a Happy Christmas, or whatever you celebrate this holiday season, and a great New Year. Remember to take care of one another and love one another.
So long,
Lilith and Emily