Chapter Text
It was easy not to care about her at first. To dehumanize her. After all, she had the exact same gimmick as Kaufmo; a clown who isn’t funny. Been there, done that. (It didn’t end well.) After he abstracted, she was his replacement; a coincidental trade-off, nothing more, nothing less. One cartoon freak for another. I didn’t even feel the need to torment her at first – the newbies tend to handle that part on their own. Especially her. For a second there, she was as crazy as Kinger. That early in the game, it meant she definitely wasn’t going to last long. So why pay her any special attention? What would be the point? It wouldn’t make us any less doomed.
But the longer she stuck around, the more I realized how much comedic potential her omnipresent exasperation had. Making her the President was particularly entertaining – almost enough make me forget just how [%$!#]ing miserable we all are. Almost.
But then we lay together under the stars. And looking over at her, there, in the darkness, the sky sparkling above us, I couldn’t help but be reminded of him.
It was all downhill from there.
He was the first one I met when I joined the circus. Before Ragatha or Kinger, even before Caine. I showed up with a smile permanently fixed onto my face, still feeling the phantom weight of the headset, even though it wasn’t there anymore. Nothing that should have been there was.
But he was. He was cute, in a cartoonish way, with those precious little blush circles and the little eyelashes. I thought he was a girl.
A look of surprise came over his face, but then he stepped right up to me, examining me. “You’re new,” he said, and his voice was deeper than I expected, almost guttural, but smooth, like peanut butter. I’d have liked him immediately if he was human. But he was a giant frog and I was a purple [%$!#]ing rabbit. I looked him dead in his shining, exaggerated eyes and said,
“What. The. [%$!#].”