Bab 20: A Stone Platform Used to Please Them All
"Hey, Ringmaster?" I whispered in a somewhat embarrassed tone. "Can you do me a favor?"
The Ringmaster walked towards me ever so slowly; I could clearly feel the noise his steps made the instant his sole hit the stone floor. He then chuckled as he wrapped his arms around my neck. "What does my little Timothy want?"
I felt a sudden twinge of an electrifying sensation running through my veins as soon as his bare hand touched my skin. "I wanna do the classic." I smiled at him as I purred while I nuzzled my head on his hard and sturdy chest. I started seeing how everything around me suddenly changed colors into a purple hue. I hadn't really managed to observe it properly earlier, but since I still have a bit of my sanity in me, I could finally conclude that everything around me had all their colors changed into purple.
"Is that all?" The Ringmaster said with a hint of a surprised tone as I heard the intonation of his voice heightened in a way I rarely hear from him.
"Yes, Ringmaster," I mumbled as I felt the sensation coming from my neck lessening.
The Ringmaster took his bare hands off the surface of my skin. I soon felt the electricity within me disappear as if it was dissipating from out of my pores. As I felt the shackles of the tingling sensation finally leaving me in my lonesome, I also saw that the violet hue overlaying my vision was also gradually disappearing until I could finally see different colors once again.
I didn't want to overthink it, but it felt like... The Ringmaster's touch has a profound effect on my mentality. I'm not so sure, though, for this is the first time he had ever touched me. It felt dirty, and it felt erotic in a rather poisonous way; for a minute, my fear of what he had done to me had blinded me from the task at hand.
Before I could even regain my consciousness, the Ringmaster had already started to abide by my wishes.
The classic.
He used his supernatural ability to drop George's head onto the stone floor. At this moment, all the life and vigor that once existed within George's eyes had already disappeared. He started mumbling to himself, which none of us could hear nor understand. Even after the Ringmaster smashed his head down, making him kneel on the ground with the lower half of his body perked upward and his head grinding on the floor, he only let out a soft groan before mumbling away once again with dead, deep, blackened eyes. The energy he once had when he was screaming from the top of his lungs was now gone, and the sheer nothingness within his voice has replaced it.
He looked like a mumbling dead man, willing to take his price, ready to accept whatever may come to his way. Perhaps he was thinking that all of this is naught but a dream, and soon, he would wake up in his room beside his wife after hearing the loud voice of his daughter waking him up on another lazy day.
I looked the same as him. While the Ringmaster busied himself trying to put George into proper position on the floor, sweat started to drip from my forehead down to my cheeks.
Is the Ringmaster hiding an ability from all of us? I have been with him and his band of misfits for years, and I have never heard him having the ability to instill an emotion to whoever he touched. I had always seen him touch people before, but none of them had the same effect as when I was convulsing earlier after feeling a mysterious thunder coursing through the crevices of my feeble body.
When I heard the thudding sound of when George's face smashed down onto the concrete floor, like a snap, I stopped pondering on what the Ringmaster had done to me before this moment and returned to thinking about the mission at hand.
A smile slowly appeared on my face when I saw George kneeling on the cold floor like a mutt waiting for its well-deserved punishment. The stone slab below George started to rise like a Jenga block being pulled away from the rest of the other blocks. It continued to lift upward with a loud grinding noise that sounded like the growl of a hungry tiger. When it stopped rising from the ground, it shook the entire ring for a few seconds, sending dust particles up into the air with a loud noise that sounded like the sound of a gunshot. I heard the people above on the balcony coughing once the dust reached them; the tiny particles covered everything around us like a thick layer of mist.
Although a layer of dust had muddled my vision, I could still see how the stone platform where George knelt started to rotate so that he could face the audience.
When the mist had finally subsided, I could see that the Ringmaster's invisible embrace had forced George to lift his face while he's still kneeling. His Adam's apple is grinding on the floor while he has his eyes on the spectators who are all excitedly watching as the events unfold. I could see his skin fold on his nape as if it was inviting me to cut through it as fast as possible. Usually, there should be a small space somewhere around the victim's stomach when they're doing this posture, but George's humongous belly did not allow him to show that sort of picture.
I stood beside the elevated stone platform, and before I knew it, the ground that I am standing in had started to lift as well, bringing me on the same level as the stone platform where George is kneeling. I saw just how abnormal his pose is and asked myself if a person like George can raise the lower half of his body like that with his head shoved down onto the floor. Looking at him like now, I started to realize that he looks like a right triangle.
More than anything, this reminded me of when I first read the Little Prince last year out of the sheer boredom I was feeling at the time. The way he has his head down and his bottom perking up made his posture look like the image at the beginning of the Little Prince wherein Antoine de Saint-Exupéry described the image of a snake eating an elephant though it looked like a hat in the eyes of grownups. Perhaps the fact that I am seeing that image while looking at George at this moment is a testament that my mental age has regressed by a considerable amount.
Unconsciously, a grin had gradually started to perk up on my lips, revealing a crooked expression that George had probably never seen before. Typically, a chain would appear on where the victim's limbs are to prevent them from struggling further. However, seeing that George had already lost the interest to resist his inevitable fate, it seemed that the Ringmaster had deemed it unnecessary to use the chains.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I screamed with the same amount of glee that the Ringmaster always used to present himself in front of his lovely audience. I tried to think of something to rouse their energy up before the big event, but I simply don't have the profound experience that the Ringmaster has, nor do I have the same smoothness and power that his voice has whenever he presents himself in front of the crowd. Thus, I said the first thing that comes into my mind. "Are you ready to see more!?" I said a little clumsily. I almost bit my tongue too, and the loudness of my voice is not as intense as the Ringmaster.
However, it was enough for everyone to show me their interest. Everyone above shouted as loud as they could, the audience started to stomp their feet on the ground making the whole court shake, and they all had their hands up as if they were all waiting for the rain to drop from high above. Their intricate and opulent costumes all looked different from the rowdy and downright pedestrian attitude they're showing right now.
It's exactly what I wanted to see.
With the biggest grin I'd ever shown to any person in my entire life, I pointed my ax towards the crowd with a wildfire raging in my eyes.
"I'm doing this to please you all!"
And they looked more than willing to show how pleased I'm making them feel.
Hadiah
-- Hadiah diterima Status Power Mingguan
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Power 
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