A Queda - The Fall
- Locked due to inactivity on Oct 18, '24 3:54am
Thread Topic: A Queda - The Fall
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Chapter 5Performers are jerks
The next morning, I woke to an incredibly sore back. I had slept on the ground, on top of the single sheet and stained pillow Juno had so kindly provided me. I sat up and arched my back, and it gave a loud crack I was pretty sure wasn’t natural. I groaned and forced myself into a standing position. don’t recommend sleeping in jeans. I had marks from where the creases pressed into my skin and sore legs all morning.I stumbled towards the door and opened it to see a little boy with blazing hair, looking up at me with wide eyes. Literally blazing. Like, on fire. ‘Agh!’ I shouted, stepping back. ‘Blaze, what the-‘[indent]Blaze giggled and his hair went out. ‘Hah! You should’ve seen your face!’This is why I hate small children. I stared at him with wide eyes. ‘H-How did you-‘Blaze laughed and ran away as Juno approached us.Juno glanced at Blaze, then at me. ‘He does that sometimes.’‘W-Was his hair-‘‘On fire? Yeah.’ She was acting irritatingly nonchalant about this.‘Is that normal?’Juno shrugged. ‘For him. But I can do the same with ice, so I’m not one to talk.’ When I stared at her, mouth agape, she rolled her eyes and grabbed my wrist, then dragged me into the hall. I had no choice but to follow, since her grip was so firm I was kind of scared she was going to turn me into an ice sculpture if I attempted to pull away. I figured she could do that if she could turn her hair into ice.She pulled me through the hall, and we came to what looked like a loungeroom. Except it was huge, with several couches and a big screen TV. Around 15 people, of all ages, lounged around, talking and laughing half-heartedly. Most of them held wooden bowls with some kind of slop in them. The mood didn’t seem so light, but I was more focused on the expensive décor.‘You know how you said you didn’t want to be a circus performer?’ I said, looking at Juno.She raised an eyebrow. ‘Yeah?’'I can’t see why.’Juno rolled her eyes and led me to a couch. She practically shoved me onto it. ‘Everyone, everyone!’ she said loudly, and several eyes fell on me. I fidgeted uneasily with the bottom of one of my braids. ‘This is- er, what’s your name again?’ Juno looked at me.‘Joi,’ I mumbled.‘Happy. This is Happy,’ Juno said, returning her gaze to the crowd. ‘She’s from the 21st century. Be nice. Thorn’ll give her a position soon.’I glanced at the crowd. I noticed Bug, watching me, completely expressionless, and Dove, who scowled. I gulped.‘Er, what does that mean? A position, and the 21st century part?’Juno looked at me, then Dove. ‘You didn’t tell her?!’‘I did it last time!’ Dove complained.Juno sighed, rubbing her temples. A man spoke up. He was leaning against one of the couches, and couldn’t have been older than 20. He had black hair flowing to his ankles, so he could’ve been some kind of anime character.‘Listen, Happy, when kids like you fall from the ceiling, it’s usually Thorn’s doing. He’ll have some kind of plan for you, and you’ll be working in his dumb circus for the rest of your puny little life, just like the rest of us,’ he said, looking deeply irritated by the fact I even existed. -
Juno sighed but didn’t argue. I figured that didn’t bear well for the rest of my life.I had only just processed the fact the ground had swallowed me whole, and now this? My stomach lurched. ‘No, that can’t be true,’ I said shakily, standing up, which was hard to do since my legs felt like jelly.Cole chuckled dryly. ‘Just you see, kid.’Another man, who’d I’d only just noticed looked exactly like Cole with white hair, rolled his eyes. He sat on the couch Cole was leaning on. ‘Stop scaring her, Cole. I’m sure Thorn will give her something easy like harnesses or lights.’Cole shrugged. ‘It’s just the truth.’‘There’s really no way out?’ I demanded, trying to hold back my panic.Cole spooned some of his slop, wrinkled his nose and let it drip back into the bowl. ‘Nope. We would know.’I just stared at him for a moment. Cole’s white-haired twin rolled his eyes and looked at me. ‘Apologies for my brother. Though, he is right.’‘Oh, great,’ I grumbled, sitting back down. Juno handed me a wooden bowl of slop. ‘Eat,’ she told me.
After I attempted to force a majority of the slop down my throat, a loud voice thundered down the hallway. ‘Roll call!’The performers scrambled to set their wooden bowls in a pile on the coffee table and lined up against the wall of the living room.I frowned and glanced towards the direction of the voice.‘Happy!’ Juno hissed, yanking me next to her at the end of the line. Her hand was ice cold as she grabbed me, and I was pretty sure I could see frost, well, frosting at her fingertips. ‘Stay quiet,’ Juno whispered into my ear. ‘Maybe he won’t notice you.’I didn’t have time to wonder who he was before a tall, slim man walked into the room.I hadn’t seen Gloria Thorn without his circus attire – that said, I’d only seen him twice before now. He wore a loose white button up shirt and brown slacks. He watched us with one red eye, since his left was upturned into his skull, just a bit of the iris visible. I shivered.He stalked towards us, using a cane I was pretty sure he didn’t need.I looked up at him, gulping. He was intimidating in a way I couldn’t describe. Something about him just radiated confidence and power. And something about the performers lined up to my right radiated fear and not-power. ‘Ah, my dear performers,’ Gloria said with a slightly manic grin, ruffling Blaze’s hair, which swiftly set on fire. Gloria pulled his hand back. ‘A lovely morning, is it not?’ -
Nobody responded. I was pretty sure that smart Alec Cole would’ve said something like, ‘We’d know that, you skinny hippo, if we weren’t stuck in your freaking basement,’ but he kept his mouth shut, which was probably for the best.Gloria made his way to the end of the line, the end I was not at, and bonked his workers on the head with his cane as he counted. I supposed it was a new take on the word ‘headcount’.‘One, two, three…’ Gloria muttered as he made his way down the line, bonking people on the head with his cane. He got to Juno. ‘Fifteen!’ he stated with a satisfied grin. Then his gaze turned to me and his grin faltered.‘Sixteen,’ he murmured, looking me up and down. ‘The number of wholeness and perfection…’ He bonked me on the head. I winced. ‘No, no, far from it. This will not do.’He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me forward. His cane pushed my arms to my sides and my feet together, then my chin up. I may or may not have been too scared to move otherwise.‘Interesting, how interesting,’ he muttered. He gestured towards me with his fingers, wiggling them at me. ‘Who is this?’ he asked his performers, voice laced with disgust and weariness, like he’d had enough of his own circus and was daring us to try his patience.Nobody responded. Blaze put his hand up.Gloria pointed at the young boy with his cane. ‘Yes?’Blaze spoke in a slightly shaky voice. ‘She fell from the ceiling.’Gloria blinked. ‘Excuse me?’‘She fell from the ceiling.’Gloria’s gaze turned to me with an expression of confusion and irritation. He bonked me over the head with his cane again. ‘What is your name, child?’I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t form the words in my mouth. My mind came up blank. ‘M-My name?’‘Yes, child, your name.’‘I…’ My legs shook. My name. I’d forgotten my name. ‘I don’t know.’
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Gloria’s lips curled into a smirk. ‘Well, you need a name. How about… hm… Sienna? No, that won’t work… Hazel? No… Ah, I’ve got it!’ he said, bonking me over the head with his cane. I resisted the urge to snatch it out of his hand and smack that horrible grin off his face. ‘Queda!’I frowned. ‘Excuse me?’‘It’s fall in Portuguese. Get it? Because you fell from the ceiling?’ Gloria said with an amused grin. So far he didn’t seem so scary, just annoying.I rolled my eyes. ‘Funny.’He bonked me over the head with his cane. ‘I know! They didn’t put me in charge for nothing, Queda. Now come with me.’ He turned around, holding his cane against his shoulder.I glanced at Juno worriedly, but she shrugged, looking nervous herself. I gulped and turned back to Gloria, who had started walking.‘Come on, Queda, we haven’t got all day!’ he called over his shoulder, smirking. I jogged to catch up with him.
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Chapter 6I become a technician
I followed Thorn out of the basement, upstairs into his mansion. We climbed through a trapdoor into a huge bedroom. There was a king-sized bed against the wall, a bunch of ceiling-high bookshelves and a desk scattered with papers and open books. I spotted a few photos Blu-Tacked to the wall, one of a redhead man, maybe about twenty, and a brunette about the same age, one that looked a lot like Gloria. There were a few others, and I recognised a younger version of Juno, Thorn and the same redhead.As I looked back to Thorn, the ringmaster turned to me. His bright red eye had gone dark.‘Listen here, girl,’ he growled, stepping towards me. I backed up against the wall, looking up at him with wide eyes. ‘I don’t know how you got here. And I doubt a kid like you could harness the amount of magic it would take. You have 10 seconds to explain before I torture it out of you.’ He held the cane against my neck, pushing me into the wall.I tried to summon the words to explain, but it was hard to talk while being choked. ‘I-I don’t know!’ I gasped, trying to squirm out of his grip.He bared his teeth. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?!’ he shouted, pushing his cane harder. ‘You must know!’‘I don’t! I-I swear!’ I coughed, still struggling against him. ‘P-Please!’Gloria narrowed his eyes, but stepped back, pulling his cane off my neck. I doubled over, gasping for breath.Thorn looked me up and down. ‘You really don’t know?’I shook my head, coughing. ‘Th-The floor just caved in under me. I woke up here.’He seemed to be debating whether or not to believe me. ‘Listen up, kid, because I’m only going to say this once. I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but I’m going to give you some free advice, don’t. I can be capable of things you can only dream of. If you do so much as think of destroying everything I’ve created…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, which didn’t do well for my nerves. -
Gloria turned away, adjusting where his sleeves sat on his wrists and sighed. He glanced at me over his shoulder with his piercing red eye. ‘So, Queda,’ he said, leaning on his cane. He narrowed his eyes at me, which looked horrifying since the whites in the left eye were only visible. ‘You don’t look exactly performer material.’‘Is that, er, an insult?’ I asked. I didn’t like how he called me Queda. I didn’t remember my real name, but the name Fall was just sad. ‘Yes, Queda, it is an insult. But we need more workers backstage anyway, so no matter,’ Gloria said, bonking my head with his cane again.I rubbed the top of my head, wincing. ‘Can’t I just go home?’Gloria watched me for a moment, then begun to laugh. It was a loud – and slightly manic – laugh, that made my skin crawl. When I looked up at him and didn’t crack a smile, his chuckles slowly died down.‘You’re being serious?’ he asked, probably confused I hadn’t caught up with the joke.‘Yeah. I want to go home,’ I said, cheeks burning.Thorn chuckled. ‘You’re funny, Queda. Perhaps you can be a clown. And no, you cannot go home.’‘Why not?!’‘You’ve already seen things! We can’t let our little secrets get out to the public, child!’ Gloria snapped, scowling down at me.I frowned. ‘What secrets? It’s a circus.’Gloria’s jaw clenched, and I thought I saw a hint of fear flicker in his eyes. But his manic smirk returned and he walked back to the trapdoor which led to the basement, the one we’d climbed through. ‘Run along now, Queda. I’ll find a position for you soon enough.’
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I turned my gaze to the trapdoor, taking a step back. ‘N-No.’Gloria’s smile disappeared. ‘What do you mean, no?’‘I mean no. I’m not going back down there,’ I said, taking another step back. I backed up towards the bedroom door and put my hand on the doorknob.Thorn stood up straight and walked towards me, holding his cane over his shoulder. ‘It would be best if you didn’t do that, Queda.’I opened the door and sprinted through it, almost running into a sink. The only door in Thorn’s bedroom led to a bathroom? I whipped around, my eyes falling on Gloria’s smirking face. The last thing I saw was the butt of his cane slamming into the side of my head.
≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫
I woke up with a certain someone’s head wings tickling my nose. I groaned and rolled over, covering my face with my hands.Dove sighed and stepped away from me. ‘We really need to stop meeting like this, Queda.’I looked up at her, rubbing the side of my head. I could feel a small bump from where Gloria’s cane had smacked me. ‘What’s my real name?’Dove rubbed her arm. ‘I… I can’t say.’‘Please,’ I pleaded, sounding more desperate than I would’ve liked to admit. ‘Dove, I need to know.’Dove looked away from me, sounding genuine. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’I stared at her for a moment, before laying back down on the bedroll either she or Thorn had thrown me on. ‘Mnnph…’ I groaned, rubbing my face with my hands. ‘What happened?’‘Thorn chucked you down the trapdoor,’ Dove said, kneeling beside me. She pressed a towel to my head, which must’ve had ice rolled up inside it because the edges poked against my skin. I could barely feel the cold against my bump. ‘You were unconscious. You’re lucky Bug found you and carried you to my room, yet again.’ -
I leaned into the makeshift ice pack, seeking relief from my throbbing head. ‘Sorry about that.’‘Not your fault. You must’ve said something to really upset Thorn,’ Dove said, crossing her legs on the ground. Her head wings flapped around her ears.‘I tried to escape.’‘That would’ve done it.’I sighed, curling up on the bedroll. It had only just begun to sink in that there was no way to leave. I was going to spend the rest of my life in some rich guy’s basement, with a bunch of theatre kids and dancers. ‘So, what’s the story with those wings on your head?’ I asked, pointing at the white feathered wings just above her ears.Dove focused on her knees, picking at a scab with her free hand. ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’‘Are you, like, God or something?’‘Shut up.’I smiled and closed my eyes. ‘Mind if I sleep here?’Dove rolled her eyes. ‘Sure, why not. You’ve taken my dressing room ceiling, why not take my bed too?’I pulled the thin blanket up to my chin. ‘Thanks, God.’‘I despise you.’I was asleep by the time she finished that sentence.
≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫
I didn’t have nightmares often. I wasn’t scared of the dark, or the monsters that may or may not exist in my closet. Gloria Thorn’s basement seemed to be an exception.I don’t remember what I dreamt of, but I remember waking up in a cold sweat. I was still curled up on Dove’s bedroll, and I must’ve been out for a while, because the wing-headed girl was laying on the floor next to me. I sat up, looking around. Blaze and Bug were also in the room. Blaze’s nose lit up with fire as he slept, the flame growing every time he snored and dying down when he exhaled. Bug was cuddling a stuffed cockroach. -
(Authors note: I have changed the names of Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. 5 is now 'Theatre kids are jerks' and 6 is now 'Thorn is a jerk'. It'll be clear why I have in a few more chapters <3)
I stood up and opened the door slowly, trying not to be so loud as to wake the three. I shut it behind me as I stumbled down the hall. I walked into the lounge room. The television was blaring something and sat on the couch was Juno.The older woman looked up at me and smiled weakly. I couldn’t really see in the dark, but she looked like she had bags under her eyes. ‘You okay, Queda?’I sat down next to her, looking down at my hands in my lap. ‘What’s my real name?’Juno pursed her lips, her gaze turning back to the television. ‘I’m sorry, kid. I can’t say.’ I sighed, looking at the TV as well. It was on low volume, so I couldn’t really hear it.‘What are you watching?’‘Some documentary,’ Juno said, ‘about supernatural humans.’I raised an eyebrow. ‘You said you have some kind of ice power, right?’She nodded, fiddling with her hands. ‘I do.’‘How many of the performers are like that?’Juno exhaled deeply, and I was worried I’d said something to offend her, but she responded after a moment or two, ‘Maybe six. Seven, if you count Bug.’‘What’s so special about Bug?’ I asked, crossing my legs on the couch.‘He’s 10% cockroach.’‘I hope you’re joking.’‘I’m not.’I blinked. ‘I’m not even going to ask.’Juno nodded. ‘You don’t want to know,’ she said, turning her attention back to the TV. It was silent for a few moments. -
‘What did Thorn say to you?’ Juno asked, glancing at me from the corner of her eye. ‘We were all worried.’I raised an eyebrow.Juno rolled her eyes. ‘Fine, I was worried.’‘He basically just interrogated me on my existence. Bonked me over the head with his cane a couple times. Then knocked me out and I woke up with Dove’s wings in my face,’ I recounted, trying to make it seem like I’d been braver than I actually was.‘Wow,’ Juno said quietly, which conveyed my thoughts exactly. ‘That’s rough, kid.’I nodded. ‘Does he… do that often?’Juno sighed. ‘More than I’d like to admit.’I looked back at the TV. ‘So, what’s your deal with him, anyway? I saw a picture of you in his bedroom.’Juno looked like she was trying to suppress her surprise. ‘Y-You did?’I nodded. Juno looked down at her hands, which she clenched into fists, then clasped together. ‘Right. Er, Thorn and I’s past… it’s not something I’d like to get into.’I watched her for a moment, before sighing and turning my gaze back to the television. I opened my mouth to speak, but Juno cut me off and stood.‘I-I’m going to turn in for the night. Try and get some sleep, okay, Queda?’I looked up at her, shoulders slumping slightly. ‘Are you sure you can’t tell me my real name? Like, the one my mum gave me, not Thorn?’‘I already said, kid,’ Juno said, averting her gaze. ‘I can’t tell you. Not if we both want to make it out of here alive.’I stared at her a moment, feeling a pang in my stomach. I looked down at my shoes, taking a shaky breath. ‘Alright,’ I mumbled.Juno pursed her lips, watching me a moment before walking away. I heard her footsteps echo down the hallway and the door to her room open and shut. I curled up on the couch, watching the documentary about supernatural humans.
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(i've given up using indents bc gtq is being weird and spacing out too much so enjoy)
Chapter 7
Juno is how old?
The interesting thing about the circus? I doubt the media shows how terribly performers are treated. Either that or evil ringmasters is such a cliché, and I later learnt, after all this, that there are a bunch of horrifying stories about falling in love with said evil ringmasters on Wattpad.
I think it’s very obvious that Gloria Thorn isn’t like that. He steal’s people’s memory (because that’s possible apparently) and gives them sad names.
Example: Queda.
Meaning: Fall. Probably from a dressing room ceiling belonging to a moody girl with wings on her head. Who despises me.
I woke up the next morning to said moody girl standing over me. ‘Queda, get up. We want to watch TV.’
I groaned and stretched. ‘I’m sure you’ll manage without your screen time, bird girl.’ I was spread out across the couch and rubbed my eyes, looking around groggily. I realised almost all the performers were looking at me in annoyance. I huffed and stood up.
Dove glared at me. ‘Don’t call me bird girl.’
‘Why not, bird girl?’
Dove looked like she’d punch me if everyone wasn’t around. I arched an eyebrow. She glared and sat down on the couch. I walked away and to my room in hopes to get more sleep, bumping into Juno as I walked down the hallway.
‘Queda, I was looking for you,’ she said, looking down at me.
I sighed. The name Queda wasn’t growing on me at all. I despised it more and more every time somebody called me it. ‘What is it?’
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