No Grave Sneak Peak #4: A Performance

The leader stepped up on the stage and waved to the club.  He took off his coat with a broad flourish.  He wasn’t wearing a shirt under it, but instead was densely garbed in a robe of overlapping tattoos.  Thick, dark-hued suspenders held his pants aloft.  He seemed to be speaking to the crowd, and Tristan wished they had audio on the security feed as the man began to deliver a monologue, arms and hands making grandiose gestures as he crossed one end of the stage to the other.  When he left the platform after nearly a minute of talking, everyone in the club seemed to have their attentions fixed on the spot he’d stood on.

The first blurry figure dragged a fold-out chair with it up to the platform.  It removed a leather jacket from its body and rested it across the crest of the chair, turning towards the audience.

The figure began to twist its shoulder around, and its arm seemed to elongate.  It wrapped the limb up and behind its head, and started to pull its forearm across its own throat.  The image was too unclear to see what it ended up doing with the hand after that, but the arm shortly snapped back into place and the figure repeated the process with the other one.  Then it brought one of its legs straight up in the air, so that the ankle would rest just above the ear, and began to wrap it backwards behind its body.

“A contortionist,” Tristan surmised.  “Not exactly the kind of performance I was expecting from the description we got.”

“Not exactly, no,” Sam agreed.

The performance continued.  Limbs were woven together, peeled back, pulled from their joints, shifted into broken angles, and returned to normal.  It was only after this first segment that the true nature of the performer came about.  One of its arms stretched out too-long, an extra foot and a half Tristan estimated, and coiled its way around the performer’s throat.  The hand grasped the back of the chair.  The other arm extended, as well, and wrapped around its waist, holding it down.  It acted out its own strangulation, at first quietly realistic, but then growing in emphasis to wild parody, bringing the chair down on its side and dislocating its legs in its attempts to escape its own choking arms.  The crowd stared at the limp body for a few still seconds, then the performer stood back up and set the chair back in its place.

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