"To you, my fair Maria. May you never grow bald." Colonel Diamond held the glass of bourbon aloft...
And to you, Colonel," his companion replied. "May you never grow up." Maria downed her drink in a single gulp then poured another. "Here's to another day. And another dime."
"You mean," the Colonel corrected, burping gently, "another night. And another crowd. Pass the bottle."
Maria held the bottle out of his reach, teasing him. "Can't you reach it? The World's Smallest Bastard can't reach his bourbon?" She dangled it above his arms. "Step right up, ladies and gentlemen. Come and get it."
The Colonel hopped in rage. "Give it, you bitch," he squeaked. He flayed at her thighs with tiny fists, then landed a kick just below her right knee.
"You little shit," she yelped as the Colonel grabbed his bottle.
"Stupid hairy bitch," he mumbled as he sucked greedily at the liquid.
"I'm getting tired of you," Maria announced calmly. She picked him up by the back of his tuxedo coat and threw him across the room. Dirty dishes shattered to the floor as the Colonel slid down a formica counter top and toppled onto a couch. He perched atop a dirty yellow pillow and glared at Maria. When she laughed, he shot her the bird, thrusting his middle finger up and down as he humped the pillow.
Maria danced closer. "Poor baby," she crooned. "Will no one play with you?"
"Play with yourself, you hairy whore." The Colonel swiped at her silver dress.
"Ooooooh.... he's getting mad. I love an angry man." She tickled him under his chin, sliding the straps of her dress down to her elbows. The top fell to her waist and her breasts swung to each side as she shimmied in front of the Colonel. She was as good as Peaches, the top showgirl in the All-Nude Review, and she knew it. But no one would pay to see Maria. At least, not pay to see her dance like this.
The Colonel grabbed for her again and she stepped back, laughing. Muttering in frustration, he placed the bottle of bourbon on the counter then flung himself on her like a horny Chihuahua that has spotted a dangling leg. Wrapping his legs around her waist, he locked his arms behind her back and began to hump, grinding his pelvis into the hard mesh of her dress.
Maria laughed and reached for the bottle. "You're a perverted race, Colonel," she told him, unbuttoning his shirt with one hand and swigging from the bottle with the other.
"Midget's aren't a race, we're a refinement," he said, burying his face between her breasts. He bit and chewed at each one hungrily, running his tongue over the soft fur. Her breasts were as round and dark and hairy as coconuts. He lapped at each nipple with a greedy tongue, thinking to himself that not even Tarzan had balls to match his. No sir. Colonel Diamond was the real King of the Jungle.
Maria bopped him on the head when he nipped too hard, then kicked off her shoes. She supported the Colonel with her arms and knelt on the rug, setting the bottle of bourbon safely near a couch leg. She lay back on the narrow trailer rug and stared at the wall as the Colonel paused to remove his shirt. A calendar dangled crookedly near the door; the date was circled in red. She tried to remember why.
"Willya relax," the Colonel ordered as he unzipped his pants.
"Happy birthday," Maria muttered, remembering.
"What?"
"Happy birthday. Today's my birthday."
"Hmmm...." The Colonel was busy struggling out of his miniature tuxedo pants. "Sweet sixteen and never been laid." Free at last, he pawed at her scarlet panties.
She pushed him away in disgust. "I'm not sixteen."
His laughter was squeaky. "Neither are you sweet. And you have definitely been laid."
Still staring at the calendar, Maria reached for the bottle of bourbon again and flung it across the room. It spun lazily in the air, liquor spraying the carpet before it crashed against a wall. Glass shattered, the shards skittering across the linoleum toward them like hungry insects. Golden liquid ran in rivulets down the cheap wallpaper.
"What the fuck's the matter with you?" the Colonel protested.
Maria sighed and reached for him. Nothing ever changed. Only the date changed. The days remained the same.
So many days. Always the same.
She listened, bored, as the Colonel's rhythmic grunts mingled with the hum of the generator outside the trailer's front door. The sound was nothing, she thought, compared to the buzzing that had ignited in her brain.

Outside, the sun set and their world cranked slowly to a start. Business picked up as soon as the Monster Tractor Show was over. The crowd thickened steadily until the midway was jammed with swarms of gawkers, drunks, lovers and children. The gawkers stared slack-jawed, their well-tanned faces perspiring from excitement, their farm clothes shiny with fresh starch. The drunks and lovers wandered randomly across the packed-dirt paths, bumping into one another, sucking at straws and faces, soaking in the sounds and the lights with a greedy excitement, breathing in the grease-soaked air, as if it could somehow change their ordinary lives into something better. Maria hated them all. But she hated the children most of all. So clean, so well dressed, so well-cared for, so spoiled, gripping the hands of their parents, stuffing their fat little faces with sweet after sweet, eyes glazed over from too much sugar and too much indulgence, bored with it all, really - because how interesting was a bunch of freaks and twirling lights when television could do so much more?
Maria left her trailer quickly a few minutes before showtime, pulling a flowered robe around her and stepping over the thick electrical wires that snaked through the grass and mud. She picked her way through trash and broken glass to slip inside a flap in the back of a large tent.
Swaying slightly, she stood behind the show platform, adjusting to the dim lighting inside the tent. On the other side of the platform, in front of a curtain, unseen spectators coughed and whispered, stamping their feet like horses on the muddy, straw-covered floor. The spring air was cool, still tinged with winter. Maria shivered and wrapped the robe more tightly around her body. Her stomach lurched at the stale cigar smoke filling the air - a sure sign she'd had too much bourbon before the show. Again. If the boss found out, she'd be in trouble. She was already on probation for spitting on a snotty sorority girl in Lauderdale last spring.
Belching, she escaped into a side room and waited for the first nightly show to begin. A bare light bulb dangled from the ceiling, distorting the shadows of the figures in the room, casting misshapen images on the grimy tent walls. Her feet slapped against the bare dirt floor as she kicked junk food wrappings and Styrofoam cups out of her way, heading for a folding chair in one corner. Speaking to no one, she sat and lit a cigarette. The others ignored her in return. They had troubles of their own. That was fine with her. She sat, arms folded over the back of the chair, wondering if the persistent ache in her right breast meant trouble. Cancer, maybe. That would be her luck.
On the other hand, did she really care?
There was little movement or sound in this side room, only the odors of smoke, grease and beer, a trio of stench that formed a kind of queasy curtain to capture and hold the sullen unhappiness that permeated the stale air.
Maria nodded briefly when the Colonel entered the room, then went back to staring at the flap that served as a door to the main room of the tent. Beneath the flap, dozens of pairs of feet shifted closer and closer to the painted stage. She swore silently at the trim ankles encased in soft leather flats. With satisfaction, she watched the clumsier work boots trampling the smaller, more feminine feet as the audience jockeyed for position.
A clock on a side table ticked loudly in the silence of the waiting room. As the long hand inched toward seven o'clock, Maria's co-workers began to move about. Ursula, the Amazing Albino Woman, patted alabaster powder on her face, sneezing when she got too much up her nose. Professor Inferno - the Amazing Fire-Eater - joined forces with Roberto, the Rubber-Faced Man, to help a huge black woman onto a platform set against the side room's wall. The woman wheezed and waddled into position, then immediately began arguing with a slender man dressed in a sleek, red-vested suit.
"This is the last week I'll do it for thirty percent," the Fat Woman insisted, her slow southern drawl belying the anger in her voice. "Next week, I get a quarter out of every fifty cents. Or I'll quit tonight. I swear I'll walk out on you tonight. They pay extra to see me, you hear? Extra. I'll quit. I swear I will."
"Go ahead and quit, you stinking fat tub of lard," Maria thought to herself. It's not like half this country isn't eating itself to death. They could find a 700-lb. replacement over night, and probably someone a hell of a lot quieter to boot. God, but that woman could yap her craw until your jaw ached just listening to her. Maria didn't even know her name, and she didn't care to. She and the Colonel just called her Fat Ass and left it at that. Fat Ass was nothing compared to Maria, not when it came to this sideshow. No sir. Maria was one-of-a-kind. And Fat Ass was one of many.
The slim man in the shiny suit was pointing his cigar at Fat Ass. "So quit. Go sing gospel songs in a choir. Earn forty fucking bucks a week. I don't care. Quit." He shoved his derby back over his thinning hair and ducked under the flap, heading for the stage. The World's Fattest Woman swore after him, raining down voodoo curses on his manhood and wishing ill health on his illegitimate progeny.
The Colonel straightened his bow tie, bored, and peered out the side crack of the flap. He frowned at the crowd, straining to hear above their rustlings and whispers. He couldn't hear a goddamned thing and had to watch for the moment when the barker pointed toward the flap for his cue. Just in time, the Colonel swept aside the flap and pranced up the steps to the stage, his hands held high above his head like a prize fighter entering the ring. The applause died down as he opened his palms for silence.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN," the Colonel cried, "and those of you who are neither - I welcome you equally to our show! I am the World Famous Colonel Diamond, the World's Smallest Colored Midget." It was as politically correct as the sideshow got. Twenty years ago, well past the days of Martin Luther King, Jr., they'd still billed him as "the tiny little nigger Colonel." Not that he cared. So long as he got his hooch and his bootie each day, the Colonel could give a shit what they called him. He'd been with the show since he was twelve years old and he knew that none of it mattered.
"My friends and I welcome you here tonight," he continued as the crowd stared up at his tiny frame, "to show you firsthand what a quirk of fate or an act of God can do to a fellow human being. I was born of normal parents in Alabama. I have been with this fine show for over forty years..." The Colonel shouted to be heard over the restless hum of the crowd, already they were ready for the next freak to step forth.
Back in the waiting room, Maria watched Fernando, the Incredible Sword Swallower, spray his throat with an aerosol anethesia. Cheater, she thought, wondering what floated his boat. He'd never come on to her. Was he a fag? That would be rich. Think of the fortune he could make in porn movies if he was, he could swallow anyone, anywhere, anytime. She lit another cigarette, squinting through the smoke at the feet beneath the flap. How old was she today, exactly? Was she fifty, or had that been last year?
"Bad crowd tonight," Rubber Face said. "Restless."
"Hick town," the Magician agreed. "They want sex."
"We all do," the Fat Woman said and cackled.
Maria threw her cigarette on the floor, grinding it out with a quick twist of her foot. "Shut up, all of you. Every crowd's a bad crowd. They all want the same thing. They want to feel better than us, that's what they want. Every night you morons sit there and say, 'bad crowd' as if it were any different than the night before. Why don't you all just shut the fuck up."
"What's biting your ass tonight?" the Magician asked, producing a huge fabric flower from his sleeve and offering it to her - before plucking it away to reveal his middle finger extended stiffly at her face.
"No one would bite her ass," the Sword Swallower offered, laughing. "Little Maria Sunshine." He laughed again.
Maria sat back down. "You know where you can put your swords, Fernando."
Rubber Face giggled. "Now that would be a real god-given talent."
Maria ignored them all and stared back at the space beneath the canvas flap. She hardly noticed as, one-by-one, most of the other freaks left to take their places on the stage. Rubber Face, the Magician, Human Pin Cushion, the Amazing Albino Woman, Frog Boy, Snake Girl... each mounted the platform to the glowing introductions of the Colonel and the gasps of the gaping crowd. Maria sat through it all, chain-smoking, mesmerized by the patterns of feet and the steady dropping of empty cups on the dirt floor.
"Maria! Maria!" Fat Ass yelled across the room. "Your cue! Hurry up. It's a nasty crowd."
Maria shrugged and pulled off her robe. Her silver dress glittered obscenely against her darkly-furred body. Straightening her shoulders, she pushed through the flap.
"And here she is, at last," the Colonel trumpeted. 'MARIA THE ASTOUNDING APE WOMAN. Half-human, half-monkey." Scattered applause and disappointed groans died against the heavy canvas walls. What the fuck had they expected? Her to be giving a gorilla a blow job or something? She walked toward the microphone and stared up at the ceiling as she droned her story in a mechanical voice.
"I was born of normal parents," she began in a monotone, the opening words for nearly every one of their spiels, "I was born of normal parents in the West Indies. I have two perfectly normal sisters and a normal brother."
"Fuck your brother!" someone shouted from the crowd, winning whoops of laughter from the less-sober on-lookers.
Maria ignored the outburst. "I was born with a thick layer of hair all over my body and, as you can see, it has remained to this day."
Another shout rang out and laughter erupted. She stopped, staring down at the crowd. A neatly-dressed college boy was beaming proudly, a silver flask in his hand. Had he just said something about her hairy twat? Maria stared down at him, her fogged brain struggling to comprehend the words she had just heard.
"Go on," the Colonel whispered. "What the fuck's the matter with you tonight?"
"I was born of normal parents," she began again. The Colonel kicked her leg.
"You said that, for chrissakes," he hissed through a broad smile. "Snap out of it."
"Eat me, furball!" a voice shouted from the crowd, drawing snickers and a few rolled eyes. The same neatly-dressed college boy looked around, pleased at his audience. He was a regular Milton Berle, that one. His date took a step away from him, perhaps disgusted. But no, she was simply whispering into a friend's ear. The two young girls, slender and blonde and beautiful, looked up at Maria and laughed.
"Get on with it," the Colonel hissed.
He's a rich college boy, Maria guessed. And she's a spoiled little princess. A handsome college boy with a perfumed girlfriend at his elbow. Laughing at me. Maria stared down at them, silent.
"How about a threesome?!" the drunken boy shouted. "You, me and fuckin' Doctor Livingston." This time, his girlfriend did step away in disgust. The crowd just looked on, puzzled, not really getting the joke.
They both had rich daddies, Maria suddenly realized, as if their lives had opened up before her, giving her a glimpse of their future - and the power she had to change it, if she so chose. They were rich and well-bred, fated to marry. They'd have children, small children with blond hair and blue eyes, vanilla children who would fit neatly in an expensive station wagon, like eggs nestled in a carton, sitting in spoiled silence during rides to the country club. A whole pack of perfect, perfect children who would one day grow up to be drunken, cruel adults.
She stared into the college boy's eyes, as if daring him to fuck with her further. "I have led an otherwise normal life," she shouted into the microphone. "I have been married and divorced. I have a normal son..."
"What'd you name him? Cheetah?" the boy yelled, taking another swig from his flask. The crowd laughed obediently, they recognized that name, inspiring the college boy to make soft monkey noises that rose in volume until he was hooting in her face.
"Shut up!" Maria screeched at him. "Stupid fool! Stupid friends! Shut up!" She did not hear the gasp from the crowd.
"Eeee-eeee-eeeee-eeeee," the boy hooted back, grinning at her, hopping about the dirt floor, arms curled under like a gorilla's. The crowd snickered nervously. The girlfriend backed away, her face crimson.
"Shut up, Denny," the girl said uncertainly. "You're embarrassing me."
Encouraged by the laughter of the crowd, the boy could not be stopped. He hopped faster, grabbing his crotch, his hooting louder and louder.
Maria tore off a shoe and pointed the sharp heel at him. "Shut up. You do not know. You do not see. You do not know a thing. Shut up. Fool. Fool! FOOL! BE QUIET!"
The crowd froze. The boy stopped, staring at Maria, his eyes narrowed in anger. The Colonel and Magician grabbed Maria from behind and pulled her back, away from the microphone stand. Rubber Face - who was stronger than them both - took over, pinning Maria's arms tightly behind her as Colonel Diamond stepped back to the front of the stage.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the Colonel began, reaching into his pocket and holding up a handful of envelopes, "if what you have seen IS NOT ENOUGH. If still, YOU DO NOT BELIEVE. If still, YOU ARE NOT CONVINCED that this fur is genuine and covers her ENTIRE BODY - we will show you ACTUAL PROOF. For one dollar - that's right - only one thin dollar, we will sell you two, NOT ONE, BUT TWO intimate photos of Maria. And these are INTIMATE SNAPSHOTS, folks. They will prove that YES, this thick layer of hair does in fact cover her ENTIRE BODY. Raise your hands now for this amazing proof."
He stalked the platform, holding up envelopes, ready to take their money. Maria spit on the front row and the on-lookers stepped back quickly, afraid to raise their hands. She pulled and twisted in Rubber Face's arms, trying to break free, staring the crowd down. Daring them to raise their hands.
"Who wants to see her entire body?" the college boy shouted into the silence, looking around for support. His friends stepped back, the crowd seeming to melt away from him, leaving him alone in a half-circle directly in front of Maria.
"Pig!" Maria spit at him.
A hum of tension snaked through the thick air of the tent, this was not what was supposed to have happened. They had paid five dollars for this?
The boy was too drunk to pick up on the sour fear of the crowd. He reached into his pocket and produced a five dollar bill, then waved it in the air. "I'll give her five bucks for a blow job," he announced. "In the dark, she'll look just like everyone else." He doubled over, laughing at his own joke.
Maria pulled her right leg up, then pistoned it back viciously, slamming the sharp heel of her shoe into Rubber Face's shin. He screamed in pain and released her. Crouching low, she howled - a long, eerie, primeval wail, as if she were surrendering to her ancestors, as if she were trying to call on their strength, as if all of the boy's jokes about monkeys and gorillas had inspired her to call on the dead spirits of their common ancestors, seeking help in avenging her honor. The howl rose in the thick air and hovered beneath the grimy top of the canvas tent. It filled the space between bodies, wrapping around each spectator, echoing and throbbing, the hollow sound growing louder and louder until it lengthened into a hoarse wail that swelled the tent and stunned the crowd into motionless silence.
The other performers had stepped back from the lip of the stage, wanting to distance themselves from the sanctions that were sure to follow. Maria strode barefoot across the platform, straight toward the Sword Swallower. He shrank against the canvas, afraid, but she passed him swiftly, honing in on his equipment stand. She grabbed the handle of a sword and pulled it from its sheath, the narrow blade glinting beneath the raucous lights of the cheap chandelier overhead. She tested its weight, then turned back toward the crowd, a crowd that had started to press back, inching toward the exit.
Maria spun the blade around her head a few times, testing the balance, thinking back to her days in the thick sugar cane fields at home. Oh, she was an expert at this. The lazy circling of the blade quickened, it became a deadly arc, swifter and swifter the sword flashed as it whirled above her head like a helicopter blade. As one, the crowd and the freaks took another collective step back, moving away from Maria yet unable to turn their backs on the scene.
She bent low, using her entire body to twirl the blade, writhing with each orbit, her movements as supple as a cobra's when it is about to strike. She moved toward the boy with a series of quick steps, her howl stopping abruptly. An immense silence filled the tent and it seemed to Maria as if everyone gathered began to breathe together with her, inhaling and exhaling in a slow rhythm that helped her time her approach toward the frozen boy.
He stood, his khakis grimed with dirt, spittle running down his chin, staring at the whirling blade above her head. She swung closer with the weapon and his gaze fell to her face, where a slow smile spread across her bearded features. Hypnotized, he stared back at her. She began to laugh, then, moving one step closer toward him with every orbit of the flashing blade.
He stared at her contorted face, unable to turn away: her heavy dark brows joined in the middle of a broad forehead, above a flattened nose. Her thick lips had pulled back in a grotesque smile, revealing tiny, even white teeth. Coal eyes glowing, Maria pulled her lips back further still and began to hoot softly, imitating the boy, squatting slowly until her face was level with his. The sword had slowed above her head, gracefully circling to a stop in an upright position here it hovered, multi-colored pinpoints of light bouncing off the steel of the shaft, sending rainbow confetti reflections of color fluttering across the mesmerized faces of the crowd.
Maria's hoots grew louder as she imitated the boy's earlier insult. He finally opened his mouth, starting to protest. But with one swift movement, Maria silenced him by slicing the blade downward as she simultaneously spit in his face. The boy jumped back, shouting, and the sword thudded to the dirt floor. Its blade was stained with blood.
The boy began to scream.
The crowd pressed forward avidly, pushing and shoving, closing in a tight circle around him, gawking at what they saw. The boy stared back at each face in disbelief, still screaming. He held a fingerless hand aloft, blood dripping down his wrist and snaking its way to his elbow. He screamed and screamed as blood spurted from the four stubs on his left hand, spraying his yellow sweater with droplets that spread and ran like veins sprouting across the fine wool. The severed fingers lay in the straw at his feet, scattered between the sword and a crumpled beer can. The boy's silver flask leaked liquor nearby.
Moving closer, the crowd gasped in unison as the boy finally fainted to the earth, his face smeared with blood. He rolled in the mud and landed on his back, discarded cotton candy clinging to his face and hair in delicate pink wisps.
In the silence that followed, Colonel Diamond scampered to the edge of the stage, peered down at the figure of the boy - and began to laugh. It started as a giggle that rose to a rasping, whining guffaw. Maria locked eyes with him and she, too, began to laugh, a hooting sound filled with equal parts of hate and glee.
Colonel Diamond grabbed a torch from the Fire Eater's stand and lit it with a gold lighter he pulled from his pocket. Flames leapt up as he ran laughing to the rear of the stage. The torch touched the center of the banner stretching across the tent wall and the sign exploded into flames.
AMAZING FREAKS OF NATURE read the banner until, within seconds, the canvas and paint in the middle of the sign collapsed inward, creating AMATURE as an impromptou indictment of the injured boy until these words, too, exploded, showering fiery bits of canvas over the crowd. Screams and shouts broke out as the on-lookers snapped out of their bovine stupor. Bodies stampeded for the door. People trampled the college boy in their panic.
"FIRE!" voices called out and the crush grew worse.
"YAHOO!" squealed the Colonel, watching the scurrying on-lookers flood toward the exit like a pack of rats on the run. He leapt onto Maria's back, the torch held aloft above his head like a banner being brought into battle. He bounced up and down on his perch, laughing and roaring with delight. Maria hooted softly beneath him until she, too, broke out in more laughter. The crowd was running now, pushing, shoving, pressing until the back rows gave way and the front canvas facade toppled under the weight of the crowd. Lights from the midway flooded in the now-open front of the tent, illuminating frantic faces and casting shadows against the back wall.
By now, the tent itself was on fire and the flames had spread to the cheap painted wood blocks on the stage. Embers dripped to the floor, found the dry straw, and fire began to race in lined patterns across the mud toward the fleeing crowd. The back canvas wall curled at the edges as the fire ate away at the tent.
Huge shrinking and growing shadows danced and darted on the remaining side walls as the Colonel dismounted and capered with Maria before the flames. Arms out-stretched, their legs bending and kicking, they whirled in a death dance alone on the wooden platform, circling and laughing as the flames climbed higher around them.
Outside, people crawled from beneath the canvas flats, faces bloodied and smeared with mud. The mob pushed back to the other side of the midway, leaving a fire break between themselves and the blazing tent. The remaining freaks shivered in their sequined costumes, forgotten by a crowd intent on more perverse pleasures. As sirens screamed in the distance, flames shot upward toward the night sky, the support ropes of the tent smoldering and sending off thick plumes of black smoke. Two men dashed back into the inferno to pull the injured college boy to safety. His fingers were left behind to burn. The World's Fattest Woman emerged from a thick curtain of smoke close behind them, wheezing and waddling her way to safety, beating her breasts and moaning prayers. The crowd gave out a cheer.
Only Maria and the Colonel remained behind in the tent, frolicking behind the wall of flames. By now, the Colonel had taken Maria's hand and was holding it high, leading her around the burning stage in a mad minuet. Their figures disappeared behind the fire and smoke. The crowd sagged with disappointment. "Look!" someone suddenly shouted, pointing in renewed excitement. Faces stared upward at the ceiling of the tent, where the Colonel and Maria's grotesque shadows could now be seen, flickering and flying across the canvas, darting like dark demons shot from the cannons of Hell.
"Listen," another voice called out.
The crackles of the blaze now mixed with the Colonel and Maria's wild laughter, until both sounds merged in a sustained whistle that swelled into a scream. A wind blew through, parting the curtain of flames for one last instant even as it fed the inferno: Maria stood over the fallen figure of a dying Colonel, the thick fur of her body ablaze with fire, her hands lifted upward in triumphant surrender, her blackened face turned toward the sky.
Outside, the crowd stood silent, gaping. Unable to turn away.

Katy Munger is a foiunding member of Tart City and the author of nine mystery novels, including four written using the pen name Gallagher Gray.