#le cirque du fantasme
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Le Cirque du Fantasme | Part One
Fandom: Monsta X
Genre: Smut, natch
Word Count: 12.2k
Pairing: Jooheon/Changkyun/Minhyuk x OC
Synopsis: Step right up! Step right up! Come one, come all to a celebration of the macabre, the daring, the enticing, and the beautiful. Inside this tent is another world—one that will challenge your senses as much as your soul. Nowhere else on Earth can you experience such an awakening. Just take caution—once you are awake, you’ll find it hard to ever go back to sleep.
The Vibe: Third person (as always), fall fog, small town, lost and found, night circus, inhumans, the seen and the unseen (heh), everything fantastical and provoking, wonderstruck OC, questioning reality, copious amounts of worldbuilding leads to copious amounts of smut, foursome, suspension, light bondage/shibari-adjacent, temperature play like woah, sexual oneupsmanship lol, acrobatic sex yw
A/N: Literally the second the opening bars hit on “Daydream,” I knew I was going to write an October fic to it. Not only that, I knew exactly what it called for.
I had originally intended to publish multiple October fics, same as last year, but since I boned myself over with my earlier writing hiatus, the least I can do is give you a twoshot. This is my love song to my readers who love worldbuilding as much as I do. I didn’t try to rein in the muse this time, so hopefully you disappear into another reality entirely with me. Also—
Since it’s October, when we do get to the smut, I, um, went slightly more deviant than usual ahahaha. .-.
Cvr | 01 | 02 | 03
“Oh, no.”
Mariam is aware that, all things considered, she is under-reacting.
She is lost when there is no reason for her to be lost.
Only minutes ago, she was walking home from her late shift at the diner, and now she is wandering through fog as thick as stuffing and woods where there should be sidewalk. It’s nighttime, but it’s doubtful that even in daylight things would change. Even with the pale moon, she can neither see where she has come from nor where she is headed.
The fog has muffled every sound like a pair of noise-canceling headphones. She can hear only the crunch of dry leaves under her boots. And, yeah, it’s late, but where’s the traffic? She always passes a few cars on the road. She realizes that is exceptionally weird, but there’s nothing to do but move forward. Carmel isn’t very big; she’s bound to wander into one of the old cemeteries any moment, and then she’ll know she’s close to her apartment.
Still, the woods are a little concerning. Town might be tiny, but if she’s somehow wandered into the woods around Ninham Mountain, Mariam could be lost for hours. The state forest is huge and full of lakes, and she is definitely not on any sort of trail at the moment.
Slowly, her usual cavalier attitude wears thin. It’s getting cold. The chill of autumn bites at her through her flannel, and she withdraws her fingers into her sleeves before they can chap. The further she walks into the fog without a guidepost, the more nervous she gets.
“Idiot!” she curses at herself.
Suddenly, it dawns on Mariam to check her phone. She fishes it out of her bag to find she’s been walking for ten minutes, which is her usual walk home, but she can’t see a single building let alone a sidewalk. Foolish as it is, she decides to map her route, but something much more alarming happens.
No signal.
She cannot call. She cannot text. She cannot even access her GPS.
The little marker on the map has her floating in a blob of gray, which is ironic considering she is unmoored in a cottony swab of nothingness.
“Oh, no.”
This time, at least, Mariam is painfully aware that her reaction is right on point.
She keeps her phone in hand now in the hope of catching a wisp of signal. She doesn’t feel like she’s walking up hill—she doesn’t feel like she’s moving at all—but in the hopes that she is, maybe she’ll pick up the cell tower. Realistically, she can’t have gotten that lost in ten minutes.
Her ears perk. She hears something other than her own feet, and she stops to make sure she isn’t hallucinating it.
Nope, that’s music all right. It’s just really, really weird music. Like someone’s playing organ music, but it’s definitely not from the Baptist church. It’s too… whimsical?
Mariam cocks her head. It reminds her of something. She can’t remember what, but something from her childhood, she’s sure.
With no other options, she walks toward it. At least she’ll find one other human out here who can give her some directions.
She turns on her flashlight, but it just rebounds off the fog and blinds her. Mariam stumbles against a tree and waits for the flood of brilliance to wash from behind her eyes. When she opens them again, the fog has miraculously thinned.
She’s definitely in the woods, not one of the little town parks or someone’s backyard but somewhere wild and unmanicured. The trees are spindly but thick, almost claustrophobic. There’s still no sign of a trail, and yet it seems like she’s on one. In fact, she can see it laid out before her, free of brambles and thickets and fallen trees. The fog is thinner there, too, though all along the sides of her, it’s as dense as cinder block.
The only thing that makes sense is following it, so Mariam does, and as she walks, the music gets louder. It also becomes more familiar. Maybe it’s because she’s lost, but something about it is so inviting. If notes can be colorful, these are positively flamboyant. She finds herself smiling in the fog.
The trail-not-trail bends and when she rounds a big boulder, she sees it.
There, in a glade cloistered by a lush canopy of fiery red maples, squats an enormous circus tent replete with a black flag snapping in a breeze that she can’t feel. The tent is striped white and black, high contrast even in the dark. There’s a long entrance tunnel, and at its maw is a ticket window lined with warm white lights. It glows like a lighthouse, and Mariam finds herself drawn into its harbors.
There’s a man in the window. He’s the most intense blend of handsome and cute she has ever seen. If she looks at him from one side, his eyes are thin and sharp, and they cut through her like razors, but if she looks at him from the other, his dimples cup his playful mouth as though they can barely contain his inner vibrance. His hair is darker than the night itself, making his skin look white as starlight by comparison, but the booth lighting frames his head like a halo. He’s an impossible mix of everything all at once, and she has never seen his equal.
Mariam steps to the window with an overwhelming sense of intimidation.
“Welcome, fair lady,” he says. His voice is potent. He says each word with a confidence that she has never felt in her whole life even at her best, and she finds herself captivated in the span of five syllables. His eyes dance as he studies her. “You’re just in time.”
“For what?” she asks.
“Showtime, of course. I was just about to close the ticket window, but lucky for us, I didn’t.”
It’s kind of a weird thing to say, Mariam thinks, but his unswerving confidence makes her reconsider.
“Actually, I was just looking for directions?” she says with more of a question than she intended.
“It seems to me you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
Again, his conviction makes her question hers.
“I wasn’t planning on going to a show tonight.” She fishes through her bag and finds the small roll of ones and fives from her shift. Tuesday shifts were notoriously poor payouts, but a traveling outfit this elaborate has to cost a pretty penny considering how exclusive it must be out here in the middle of nowhere. “How much? I don't have much cash on me. You take cards?”
“Those little plastic rectangles?” he replies with a flippant smile. “Pointless.”
Mariam frowns. “Then I don’t think I can afford it.”
He leans across the counter, almost through the window itself, into her personal space. Her hands fly to her chocolate locks and gather them to one side, twisting and twisting it as tightly as she feels her stomach twisting.
“Oh, admission is very reasonable,” he assures. This time when he smiles, it feels like he’s keeping a secret. He presents a golden ticket, the glossy paper winking as it turns between his well-manicured fingers. “Admission is only a dream.”
“A dream?” Mariam says skeptically.
“Just that, miss. In exchange for the best dream you’ve ever had, we will provide you with a new one. Seems like a fair trade, yes?”
“It would be if I knew what you were talking about.”
“I promise you’ll never experience anything else like this.”
Her brow furrows as she glances up at the big top. “I don’t even know what this is.”
The ticket-taker pouts, and his lush lips fatten to sumptuous thickness. “I’m afraid the show must start, miss. Do we have a deal?”
Mariam considers. This isn’t why she came—no, wait, she didn’t intend to come here at all—but she is here now, and this charming ticket monger is next to impossible to resist. What’s the harm in telling him one single dream? He doesn’t need to know about that particular dream.
And, anyway, it’s not like he’s conning her out of any money. In essence, it’s some free, entertaining shelter from a foggy night. She weighs her options and makes her decision.
“Am I supposed to, like, write it down or something?” she asks.
“Just lean in,” he instructs.
Hesitantly, Mariam tips forward over the counter, and for a brief second, his plump lips ghost along hers.
She should jerk back. She should slap him. But she does nothing but let him kiss her like the night mist. She is frozen as a current of muddy feelings spill like water from her lips. The back of her brain tickles a bit, but it’s overruled by the more pleasant tickle of his lips dusting over hers.
When he’s done, he licks his lips, which have curled into a tiger’s grin. His eyes are lively, and he’s panting lightly. He clears his throat and adjusts his hips in his pants somewhere behind the counter.
“How delicious,” he practically purrs. “I may have to keep that one for myself. I almost feel bad for taking it from you, but I promise the replacement will exceed it.”
He presents the golden ticket, and Mariam takes it. She expects it to feel like paper or maybe metal, but instead, it feels gauzy, and she can't stop rubbing her thumb over it.
“Straight through there, fair lady,” he says. “The show is about to start, and a whole new dream awaits you.”
The ticket monger holds open the black curtain, and she enters the tunnel. The moment the curtain shuts behind her, it is blacker than an abyss. The only thing she can see is a thin, shimmering line of light at the far end.
Outside, she hears the snap of the ticket booth closing, and she knows she is alone. The music is louder now, drawing her forward more powerfully than ever, and she realizes why she recognized it in the first place. It rises and falls and scampers and twirls, almost as though she can see the notes surrounding her, teasing and laughing at her. It is the song of childhood, of delight and fantasy.
It is the song of the circus.
There are smells here, too, familiar and unfamiliar. There is the buttery warmth of popcorn and, beneath it, something much more unctuous, a bit like when the cooks at the diner render the lard for the pie crusts. There's a hint of something acrid too, and it reminds her of the smell of her father's rifles.
Mariam follows the tunnel to its end, where she parts the drape only to be assaulted by the brilliant spotlights surrounding a huge red ring. There are seats seven layers high around three sides terminating at a ring entrance shuttered by another heavy curtain, but this one is three times as tall and wide as the entrance she just came through. Just surrounding the ring are four enormous tent poles soaring to the canvas above, where wires zig and zag across the arena and café lights accent each black and white stripe, softening the harsh spotlights.
The ticket-taker is there to greet her as though he has never seen her before. He beams at her, those dimples creasing his plump cheeks. Mariam approaches with her ethereal ticket in hand and starlight in her eyes.
“What’s this? A golden ticket?” says the man with a sharp eyebrow raised. “We have ourselves a VIP tonight it seems. You’re in for a truly mesmerizing experience, miss. Follow me. I will show you to your seat.”
He does not take the ticket from her after all but, instead, leads her across the ring itself toward a pair of empty seats in a box on the floor.
“VIP?” she says as she struggles to keep up with his commanding steps. His thick black boots thunk across the floor and resound under the big top. “But I didn't pay you anything for it!”
“But you did,” he insists. “The most tantalizing dream gets the VIP treatment. After all, we have to work harder to replace what we have taken.”
Mariam tries to remember the dream she’d thought about before she entered, but where her brain searches for the memory, it finds only the lingering taste of his lips, which she savors like berries ripened by the moon until they’re ready to burst. It’s a bit of a silly thought, yet dark, sweet juice coats her mouth and whets her appetite for something even darker.
They stop outside the box seats, and the dimpled man holds open the door with a question on his face. “You want VIP, don’t you?”
“I do,” she finds herself answering.
This broadens the man’s shoulders, and now he smiles so widely that those thin eyes shut under the powerful force of his bright cheeks. “Your private seats then, my fair lady.”
Mariam sits on one of the velvet-padded seats as he closes the door and offers her a sweeping bow like the showman he is. The ticket-monger-turned-usher disappears now behind the backstage curtain, and she has little doubt she will see him in the show, most likely as a clown judging from his over-the-top antics.
As she tries to relax into her seat, Mariam spares some time to look beyond the open stage and see what other lost souls have stumbled into this weird circus. She wonders if she’ll see any of her friends or coworkers in the stands.
She does not. What she finds is far more unnerving.
There are only a dozen or so other spectators in the stands. None of them sit anywhere near each other. They are spread throughout the whole tent, high and low, mostly in shadow because the spotlights are fixed downward in the ring. At first, she thinks they are strays like her, but as they wait for the show to start, Mariam begins to doubt they are even human. If she looks at any one of them head on, they look like normal people, mostly men but a few women, too, but from her periphery, she swears she sees the jaws of a wolf or the skin of a lizard or even a pair of antlers when she turns her head. Most have eyes of glinting gold exactly like those she’s seen along the road when her high beams catch just so.
And there are fangs. Fangs everywhere, some long and thin, some fat or even serrated.
One of them, a thin, hunched man with mottled scales in patches all over his body, is eating from a black and white striped carton which might usually house popcorn, but it definitely isn’t, and he isn’t eating whatever it is with his hand but with quick snaps of a lightning-fast tongue.
Mariam is growing uncomfortable again. She had thought this place might get her back home, but it has taken her somewhere far more foreign, and she’s feeling more alone than ever. She has felt different a lot in her life but never like an actual alien.
She should probably be more scared than anything, but none of these people—creatures—are looking at her. They are all looking toward the ring. Nobody speaks although she swears she hears a snort from one side of the arena that someone echoes on the other side with a series of strange clicks.
She wishes the berry-lipped man would come back and take the seat beside her. She can’t be sure he’s human now either, but she trusts his smile and his dimples, even if she shouldn’t.
Just when Mariam is ready to dart to the exit, music swells anew. It is far more powerful than the spirited diddy that lured her here. Under the big top, the organ booms and the drums thunder, and everything feels like it’s spinning like a carousel.
“Strangers! Friends! Denizens of the dark and light dwellers alike!” comes a voice of unquestionable power from somewhere backstage. As far as Mariam can tell, there is no sound system. It's just the voice of a true entertainer filling the canvas wall-to-wall. “The time has come to revel in the greatest spectacle the night has ever seen. Pretense, common sense, even the very laws of nature itself, have no place under this canopy. What you will experience tonight will challenge your very perception of reality. Nothing you have seen before tonight can prepare you for what you are about to see. At times, you may think you have wandered into a dream, but I assure you, what you are about to witness is so much more. Welcome—”
The backstage curtains sail wide with a snap and a flutter, and a man bursts through, his arms wide and his dimples shining in the spotlights.
“—to Le Cirque du Fantasme!”
The audience applauds, rather lackluster Mariam thinks for the passion of such a lofty introduction, so she tries to clap just a little louder than everyone else. After all, she is getting the VIP treatment, so she should return the favor.
The man rises from a bow that completely folds him in half, and she shakes her head in awe. She had expected—hoped—to see him again, but she is not prepared for the striking figure the former usher cuts in his crimson crushed velvet coat. The tails swish at the back of his knees as he laps the ring. Diamond buttons splinter in the light as does the sweat already beading at his brow.
“I am Jooheon, your ringmaster, but I am also your guide. For every wonder you experience tonight, I will be by your side to remind you that what you are witnessing is indeed real. Together, we will discover there is magic left in the world if you know just where to look.”
He stops in front of the VIP box and tips his head with a smile just for Mariam, and then he is gone.
Back in the center of the ring, Jooheon enumerates the many wonders on their horizon, impossible, tantalizing things that cannot be real, yet the more he promises, the more she believes him. Thanks to this man’s unprecedented versatility, she is also starting to believe this is a one-man circus. Maybe he will perform all of the spectacular acts he’s teasing.
But Jooheon confounds her again. With a dramatic swoop of his hand, he draws the audience’s eyes to the massive curtains at the rear of the tent, and slowly, the heavy fabric parts by unseen hands.
Mariam’s seat trembles. At first, she thinks she’s imagining it, caught up in the ringmaster’s passion, but then it trembles again and again, and she realizes they’re tremors.
No. Footfalls.
The arena is dead silent.
Thwomp. Thwomp. Thwomp.
The face appears first in shadow—a great black snout snuffling so strongly that the curtains puff. Even through the veil of backstage, the eyes are clear and bright, an otherworldly metallic green that flash the same sort of gold that some of the audience members possess.
Another footfall, and the muzzle appears, ornamented with thick black lips fringed by snow white and overhung by two bone-shattering fangs as long as her hand.
Since Mariam sits off to the side, the eyes do not seem to perceive her, yet she tucks her legs up against herself and ducks her head to peer from behind her knees as the rest of the creature emerges to fill the ring.
It’s a wolf—if one can call it that. It’s nearly twice the height of a horse and just as broad. Its fur is white all over save for the silver tips to each hair that make it sparkle in the spotlight. Its chunky claws click on the ring floor as it shuffles into position.
Mariam relaxes now. Maybe it’s because Jooheon is standing there unbothered by its haunches or maybe it’s because its face is rather doglike despite its other ferocious features or maybe it’s the fact that its tail is wagging, but most likely, it’s because a man sits astride its great shoulders, scratching its fluffy ears.
“Friends, behold!” trumpets Jooheon. “Our Amorak and our beastmaster, Shownu! Together, they will take us on a journey through the world of creatures long considered too elusive or vicious to be tamed. Many have been laughed at for believing the campfire tales or legends of our ancestors, but for Shownu, these legends are not legends at all but friends and allies, and now, they will be yours, too.”
The Amorak sits down, and Shownu releases its mane to slide down its back like a child on a playground. The beastmaster lands easily and pats the great wolf’s backside. With a snap of the man’s fingers, the Amorak stands and side-steps as delicately as a pony so that even a man as imposing and broad-chested as the beastmaster stands beneath the animal, the man’s head at its elbow.
From the shadows beneath, Shownu whistles, and the wolf spins so its back legs face the audience. Another whistle, this one like a see-saw, and the creature wags its tail in huge, careful strokes that send its long fur sweeping the faces of the audience members brave enough to sit in the first couple rows. Laughter rings out. Mariam finds she is laughing, too, and perhaps even a little envious.
As if he knows this, Jooheon saunters over to the VIP box and says, “Fair lady, would you please stand?”
“What?” she whispers hoarsely.
“Now is better,” he teases with his dimples.
The Amorak shifts, and now there is no doubt it perceives her. The beastmaster steps out from the belly of the beast and walks toward her. Mariam shoots up from her seat, less out of fear of the creature than out of respect for its master.
Shownu stands opposite Jooheon at the box and centers his attention on the VIP. There is a gentleness in his face that she could never have anticipated considering his ominous moniker, but Shownu smiles at her very differently than Jooheon ever has. His lips do not part but, instead, sit neatly atop each other in a way that raises his cheeks like two little fresh-baked rolls.
“Hold out your hand, palm up,” the beastmaster instructs in a gruff but inviting voice.
Mariam does so hesitantly, and when her arm is fully extended, the Amorak raises its paw, too, and places it light as a feather in hers. It’s so huge that only a portion of a single blazing paw pad fills her palm. Its long feathery fur tickles her skin, and she finds herself giggling. The two men exchange smiles, and the Amorak lowers its head. It snorts once, and her long hair sails behind her. She laughs harder now, and the beast and the beastmaster withdraw to the heart of the ring again, her body vibrating both from the experience and the tremors of footfalls.
Mariam sits back down, cradling her hand to her chest with a slack-jawed smile on her face.
The duo performs a few other stunts—the Amorak stands on his back legs and wobbles in the circle, as does Shownu, which has the audience cackling, and then it howls, nearly blowing the roof off the circus tent, which sends the audience cowering—before the wolf takes a seat and Shownu takes a post at the curtain.
Another man, this one even broader and more muscular than Shownu, comes out just long enough to shepherd in two sweet-faced animals before he disappears into the back. At first, Mariam thinks they are fawns, but then she sees the tawny wings folded at their backs.
Jooheon introduces these as perytons, not that that means anything to her, but the antlered person she’d caught sight of earlier in the stands cheers and stamps so enthusiastically that the ringmaster practically glows with the praise.
Shownu gets the energetic little critters to perform a choregraphed dance, which would be cute enough, but then they take to the sky, and whimsy becomes awe. The perytons glide and weave just like birds though they snort and snuffle like deer. Mariam is so lost in the spectacle that she barely catches Jooheon’s note that their sweet faces conceal true power, and no sooner does he say this then one of the little deer-birds divebombs the spectator with the popcorn container and, with taloned back legs instead of its hooved front ones, grabs a hunk of what looks like entrails and lobs it back like a baseball to its friend. The other peryton snaps it out of mid-air to devour it, and the sight of a sweet little fawn face gobbling intestines is not something Mariam imagines she will ever forget. The Amorak growls, and the two mischievous babies promptly land, bleating like kids laughing at their father.
After that, Shownu spreads his arms out wide and lifts his powerful chest, and the perytons follow suit, their hawk-like wings fanned out, every feather articulated. There’s no denying the stir in Mariam’s belly as she studies the beastmaster commanding his beasts, for they follow his every command unquestioningly.
The perytons perform a few more aerial tricks of agility with a ball and a ribbon, and when they are done, the buff shepherd from earlier fetches them to the back and then returns, this time dropping a trail of meat into the ring.
From the back inches a gigantic pink blob. The front end is nothing but a gaping maw lined with hundreds of wicked teeth, and… that’s it—it’s nothing but pinkness and horrifying teeth. Again, Mariam finds herself tucking her feet up onto her chair as though she’s afraid it will break into the box and mow her clean off at the knees.
Jooheon explains this is a Mongolian Death Worm, eyeless and earless but hardly helpless. The crowd is instructed to keep quiet since it hunts by vibration, but Mariam quickly sees that is only partly true when the worm reaches Shownu, and the beastmaster stoops down to pat the top of its head while two big nostrils open for a long sniff.
The creature is longer than her father's car and the color of exposed muscle. Its segments undulate when it moves as well as when it eats, which is an awful lot like Taz from the Looney Tunes, she thinks. It should be grotesque, but Mariam can't help but find it adorable as the monster looks up at its master and seems to smile even without eyes and lips.
Through a series of stamps and claps of his hands against the floor, Shownu communicates with the beast. It rolls up and lunges on command, jawless mouth snapping. It roars with the power and ferocity of a sandstorm, and her blood curdles. Then, as if to rub its stubby pink nose in the face of its moniker, the worm curls into a ball that Shownu scoops up in his sturdy hands and lobs straight into the air for his Amorak to catch in its mouth. Finally, the big wolf drops it to the ground, and the giant wad of chewed bubble gum unspools and jiggles itself dry to the squeal of the few audience members who sat too close to the action and got sprayed with giant dog saliva.
As the laughter dies down, however, the ringmaster reminds everyone not so subtly that this is a death worm. To prove that point, Shownu brings out a giant rod with a metal ball on the end and taps the top of the worm's head. It growls—a sound that trembles in the bones more than in the ears, a bit like a building earthquake or an oncoming train—and rears up, and when it does, it puffs out almost twice its width. Fantastic crackles of lightning discharge from its head and arc into the ball at the end of the rod. They snap and pop and sizzle in yellow so brilliant, Mariam has to close her eyes most of the way so she doesn’t go blind.
When at last the worm deflates, panting in the ring, the beastmaster touches the tip of the rod to the metal pole supporting the tent, and a sonic boom shivers the canvas on its rails. The residual electricity stands up every hair on Mariam's arms and, unfortunately, most of her head, too, which she is quick to smooth down. Shownu pats the worm on the head again, and the chubby blob slinks off behind the buff shepherd, rather satisfied for a death worm, she thinks.
After a hearty round of applause, the beastmaster and the Amorak both bow to the audience, and Shownu takes the opportunity to leap between the giant wolf’s shoulder blades. When it rises again, the man sits astride with a nod for the crowd and one specifically for Mariam, and he looks as much like a cowboy on a horse as he does a man on a mythological creature.
Jooheon takes center stage again, and she is struck by just how much the man seems to belong in the spotlight. With a toothy grin, he says, “Shownu, everyone! Please let him hear how much you loved his menagerie of talented friends.”
Applause and cheers ring out, and Mariam joins in extra loudly since she’s still feeling electrified by the death worm.
“For our next act, I invite you to feast your eyes on a man with the strength of a beast, the body of a god, and the face of an angel. But it isn’t just strength he brings to the table, no, no, no, but agility. Straight from the realm of the Fair Folk, prepare to delight in the beautiful brute force and precision artistry of our resident fae, Wonho!”
The ringmaster steps to the edge of the ring as the former shepherd returns to center stage, padding out in bare feet unaccompanied. He is massive, with enormous shoulders corded with muscle protruding from his tank top. Mariam wonders how it doesn’t burst at the seams considering how the rest of his chest bulges against the fabric, but maybe that’s just another part of the circus magic or it’s simply painted on. It's not much different with his pants. The way the fabric stretches around his tree trunk thighs is perhaps even more magical, and she knows she should probably look away, but how can she when it seems as though the man was made specifically to ogle.
His white hair has the faintest hint of lilac, and like the Amorak fur, there’s a metallic glint to it, but it’s nothing to the glint in his emerald eyes. Even from ringside, they are piercing, so green that they seem lit by some internal flame, and when they fall to her, Mariam exhales so sharply that she realizes she’s been holding her breath since he strolled in.
He is carrying something in his enormous hands. It looks like a giant crystal cube, and it warps and shatters the light like a disco ball.
Wonho smiles. It’s as dazzling as Jooheon’s, all teeth but no dimples, and it accentuates just how delicate he is despite his big body. His ears stick out like little butterfly wings, but just before she can be spirited away by such cuteness, he shucks the tank top over his head, and it’s not just the intimidating display of muscle that catches her off-guard—it’s the actual set of wings at his back.
They unfurl, thin and translucent as stained glass, framed in by silver rims as fragile as the mint green panes inside. She thinks there's no way that something so ethereal could possibly be functional, but, as if to prove her wrong, Wonho alights before her eyes toward a crow's nest just above the ring. The wings make a rustling sound, like a stack of papers blown apart at an open window. They beat nearly as fast as a bumblebee’s, and when he pivots in the air, the breeze they make ruffles Mariam’s hair.
He lands on the platform there and puts down the block in his hand. He wipes his hands on his pants and then rubs them together before waving at each group of the audience. To Mariam, he adds a bow.
When he's ready, he takes several deep breaths, that gargantuan chest ballooning with every one. He picks up the block and splays his hands on either side of it, and then she hears the cracking. It sounds like ice when she pours soda over it at the diner, pops and crackles and pings.
His biceps strain and his forearms flex, and the cracking gets louder and louder and louder. Huge fissures zigzag across the cube until there's an explosion. The cube is powder now, piles in his hands and at his feet. Before anyone even has a chance to applaud, the strongman pivots and flaps his wings, and now, it's snowing under the tent. Like an oscillating fan, he swivels from side to side, and Mariam feels the kiss of snowflakes on her cheeks and lashes. It melts instantly, but its dewy memory sends a smile of pure marvel to her face.
Instead of flying down from his perch, Wonho leaps and lands on his feet with a thud so fast that the snow is still falling like glitter on his fair skin. He doesn't bother to brush it off but lets it melt to a sparkly finish that turns him into living art.
He spends a few minutes lifting impossibly heavy objects and then taking to the air with them as though they are beach balls and not anvils and boulders and other ridiculous things. With his hands, he twists pipes into shapes like balloon animals and ties a knot—out of rebar—with his feet.
Another man emerges from the back then, this one long and thin like taffy freshly pulled, but when he steps into the ruthless lighting, she sees his fair skin is covered in delicate iridescent scales. He brings a stool, a mirror, a bow and arrow, and a bullseye. The tall man configures everything carefully while Wonho makes faces at his coworker in the mirror, and Mariam realizes the strongman is just as much a clown as anything.
When everything is ready, the tall man steps back. Wonho does a handstand on the stool, his back to the bullseye and his eyes on the mirror opposite it.
There’s something about the way his muscles lengthen as he contorts that has Mariam licking her lips. The twitches in his forearms as he adjusts, the flare of his ribs under that dewy skin, that illicit bulge urging against the constraints of his lycra pants—Wonho is truly an astonishing sight, and there’s a pang in her heart when she realizes how much of the world will never know his beauty and grace.
When he’s balanced just so, muscles trembling and abdominals squeezing with breath and stability, the other man situates the bow with the arrow already nocked between Wonho’s nimble feet.
The strongman shuffles his hands on the stool seat and achingly slowly bends his legs, arching his chest as a counterbalance. When the bow and arrow are lined up with the bullseye, Wonho grips the bowstring and pulls it taut.
Mariam holds her breath.
Wonho holds his.
The arrow flies.
Straight into the red bullseye.
The small crowd breaks out into uproarious applause, and she finds herself standing as she claps. Wonho bows to them all as the tall man clears out the equipment, and just as the strongman finishes his rounds, the Amorak comes bounding back in.
The audience recoils at the sudden thunderous intrusion, especially since the great beast is growling, but Wonho is unbothered, and only then does Mariam realize there’s a humongous rope lodged in its great teeth. The strongman pats the wolf’s head before he snatches the free end of the rope and shakes the Amorak back and forth. The growling turns to snarls.
Wonho takes to the air, yanking and pulling, those fragile wings beating more ferociously than the snarls sound. The Amorak digs in its claws and tries to pull back, but with a cheeky wave to the crowd, the white-haired fae drags the wolf back through the curtain as though the creature ten times his size is nothing but a tiny terrier.
The room is speechless, which Jooheon is only too happy to discover.
The ringmaster slides right back into the spotlight and trumpets, “Don’t forget to let Wonho hear it if you were impressed.”
Of course, the small crowd erupts, Mariam chief among them. She can’t escape the image of those pretty wings contrasting rock-hard muscle, the kiss of ice crystals melting on ivory skin.
It’s impossible. It’s unbelievable. She is shaken to her very core.
“We’re not done yet, folks,” Jooheon promises as he cuts through her existential crisis. “Our next performer is just as sure to wow you as much with his incredible dexterity as his unparalleled visuals. I personally guarantee you have never before seen anything like his act let alone the performer himself. He has come up from the darkest depths of the sea to dazzle and delight you with wonderous abilities only a one-of-a-kind hybrid like himself can conjure.
“During portions of the show, you may feel tempted to enter the ring. For your safety as well as the safety of our performer, I ask that you please use the seatbelts provided at your seat before we begin.”
Mariam looks down and finds that there is indeed a belt dangling from her chair, which seems utterly ridiculous at first, but as she recalls the incredible things she’s just witnessed, she secures it around her waist. Only a moment later, as the click of buckles ding around the tent, Jooheon walks by with a gentle smile, though his eyes are on her secured seatbelt.
He does the same throughout the rest of the crowd while two new men, one with red hair and one with blue, emerge with Wonho from the back and lift a large wooden cover from the center of the ring to reveal a shallow pool of water. They roll the cover off to the side into a metal corral and then linger at the lip of the ring along with Shownu and the man with the scales, who takes up his station closest to Mariam’s booth. Each man turns his back to the stage to watch the crowd instead, and when the man with the scales catches her gaze, the iridescence shimmers to the sweetest pink before it goes white as a sheet.
She has only a moment to reflect on the tall man’s otherworldly elegance before Jooheon clears his throat.
“Introducing: the one, the only, the luminescent Kihyun!”
The lights dim and the gentle circus music that always swells between acts dies entirely. Each of the last two performances had music, but now, it is so quiet, all she can hear is the lapping of the pool.
It is almost pitch black, though there is just enough light to see a figure emerge from behind the curtain.
He is compact and wiry. His bare feet pad across the ring and dip into the pool with the gentlest of splashes. He wades into the center, the water rising no higher than mid-shin, and then he opens his eyes.
Mariam had assumed it was just too dark to see his eyes, but now that they are open, she understands. He’s special.
They shimmer with the same eerie softness of a glow-in-the-dark toy. They don’t have the sharpness of oncoming headlights which force the eyes away, but instead, they draw her in. They beckon. She imagines seeing them looking down at her in the dark of a bedchamber, but she shakes the thoughts away.
He stoops and rifles beneath the water and soon comes up with a handful of rings. One by one, he squeezes them, and suddenly, they glow, too. He drops four chartreuse rings back below the water to glow at his feet but holds on to five others, though each of those are different colors.
Slowly, Mariam realizes it’s not just Kihyun’s eyes or the rings that glow. Pinpricks of light stud his body like a runway, and she can see now that, though he has arms and legs like a man, he is different—he is more. His skin is also unique. Though she can’t be sure of the exact colors, his front is definitely lighter than his back.
He wears a skintight outfit, something streamlined like a full-body swimsuit though its hard to be sure in the wan light, but now, she can clearly see the outline of sharp, articulated fins both on his forearms and his back.
Kihyun divides the rings in his hands and begins to toss them in the air until a rainbow of light streaks through the darkness. He builds speed until it seems that he’s not just juggling rings but bending light all together.
Once he’s captivated the crowd, he begins to sing. It’s not like anything Mariam has ever heard. Her heart slows. Her mind muddles. She forgets things beyond the show of light and the swirl of the melody around her. Kihyun bend a series of “oohs” and “ahs” of varying textures and power and lengths just as he bends the light—masterfully.
He spins. He pivots. He catches behind his back. Through it all, he sings.
Mariam realizes vaguely that her hips hurt where something presses unfairly against her. It’s keeping her from the ring. It’s keeping her from Kihyun. If she could tear her eyes from him, she could figure it out, but she can’t risk a second away from his incandescent frame.
The music stops, and Mariam stops, too, waiting for the next dulcet note. Abruptly, the juggler gathers all but one the rainbow rings in one hand and crouches down to the water.
He rubs the pink ring along the surface in a figure eight, and when he lifts it, it is dripping loudly in the stone silent room. He brings it up to his face, and Mariam can finally see his features clearly—his angular jaw, his strong cheekbones, his sharp eyebrows. Even the bow on his elegant lips is pointed.
He puckers those dangerous lips and blows into the center of the ring. Just like a kid’s wand, a bubble appears, but Kihyun does not easily run out of breath and the bubble stays flexible. By the time he is done, the bubble is almost as tall as he is. With a swift motion, he flicks the ring inside the bubble, and it seals behind it. The surface warbles with the pink light within, and with another gust from his lips, it sails to the ceiling above Jooheon and hangs obediently like a balloon tied off. He repeats the process with the remaining four rings until there is a watery chandelier illuminating the whole room. Mariam catches a glimpse of shimmering aqua on her own skin, hears the burble of the impossibly churning water sphere overhead, but she can't bring herself to look up—only ahead.
Kihyun stoops and scoops a cupful of water, which he then pours into his mouth. At first, she assumes it’s just a necessary part of being whatever it is he is, but then he spits a thin jet of the water into the air, only when he does, it’s colored with the same eerie blue-white light that dots his body. The stream wanes, but he replenishes it with another long draft from the cup, this time arcing the glowing water like a hula hoop as he spins. On the last drink, he blows a trio of bubbles, these ones as small as his fist but infused with the otherworldly luster. He does not pop them but casts them gingerly just above his head where they hang like a halo.
Finally, he fishes back through the water again, and this time, he brings up five already-glowing balls. These, like the rings, are clearly a prop, though half of Mariam wonders if they’re actually shimmering deep sea pearls.
Kihyun starts juggling these the same way he did the rings, establishing a familiar rhythm before picking up speed until he adds a new layer. He closes those firefly eyes and trusts in whatever senses he has left to keep the balls aloft.
Above him, the little bubble crown illuminates his wet black hair, which undulates back from his face as though caught in an unseen current. It is as mesmerizing as the blender-like rhythm the balls seem to be caught in between his dexterous hands.
Sing.
Please sing.
Please.
Mariam thinks she’s said that in her head, but the whispers hit her ear, and she realizes she hasn’t.
The man with the scales encroaches at the edge of her vision, and it’s a crude reminder that there are others in the room beside the luminescent Kihyun.
As though he’s heard her, the juggler opens that exceptional mouth, and more notes pour out, and though there’s no eerie blue light to accompany them, they’re brilliant all the same. Kihyun has a way of singing that sounds as though they’re all underwater.
None of the balls waver even for a second. His unswerving confidence that he will never let them drop is almost as mesmerizing as his unearthly voice.
Again, Mariam feels that pressure across her hips, and it’s becoming more insistent by the second.
She should be in the ring by now. She needs to be. She might go insane if she’s not.
A whistle pierces the air, and Kihyun stops singing. The balls fall together in a discordant splash, and quick as the death worm’s lightning, the juggler raises his arm, forearms out and fins in a full mast. From the tips of those articulations, he shoots something too small to see in the dim light though Mariam hears the little pew-pew-pew-pew-pew as he spins in the pool.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Each massive glowing bubble explodes overhead while the rings inside fall into the hands of his fellow performers and the water rains in a much-needed cold shower over the audience. Mariam lets out a squeal as she is drenched and gulping for air against the wet chill. Goosebumps dimple her from head to toe, and she folds her arms over her chest to generate fresh heat.
The crowd is too stunned to applaud, but Kihyun doesn’t wait for it either. He exits the pool, bows to the stands, and then pads off to the back while the other performers begin the cleanup. Meanwhile, Wonho takes to the sky to buzz over the handful of audience members one by one, spinning around so his wings beat like a fan over them. He reaches Mariam last, and when he blasts her with air, she yelps and shivers, but in short order, she is dry and happy again in her flannel. He tips his impish head to her and buzzes back to help the others with the last of the preparation, and soon the ring is back as it was.
Now dry and sober, the audience remembers itself, and together, they erupt into riotous applause. Mariam tries to stand for an ovation, but then she remembers the seatbelt, and as soon as she unbuckles it, it’s like a weight is off her lap, and suddenly, it doesn’t seem so silly.
“Let him know, let him know!” cheers Jooheon as he takes center stage again. “You’ll never see another one like Kihyun, folks.”
Of that, Mariam is certain. She claps fiercer than ever even as her cheeks color at the memory of his voice.
“I’m sorry to tell you we have but two acts to go,” Jooheon laments, and Mariam laments with him. She feels the dread even before he says it. But he brightens immediately and surges forth in a sweeping circle around the room. “But the good news is they will both delight, confound, and astound you.
“First up, from far across the seas, on an untamed mountain, comes a beautiful and elusive man who both defies your notice but also demands it. Don’t let the sweet face fool you, he is wild and unpredictable and harbors a true hunger for adventure. Prepare to thrill as he risks life and limb to take you to the edge like never before! I present to you… Hyungwon!”
The spotlight centers in the ring, but no one is there and no one emerges from the back either.
“Hyungwon!” Jooheon repeats just as dramatically, but no one appears. Eyes start darting around the room, so, too, do whispers break out. The man in the crimson coat looks back to the entrance. “Hyungwon?”
The ringmaster looks a little nervous, those robust lips pulled tight as he paces the ring edge. He clears his throat.
“My apologies, esteemed guests. Hyungwon is supposed to be nocturnal, but sometimes he drifts off. Just a minute, and we'll get on with the show.”
Mariam sees Wonho darting back behind the curtains while, in the deep shadows at the edge of the ring, she spies the mysterious Kihyun with his arms stacked over his chest as he shakes his head. It's just starting to get uncomfortable, and they're all at the edge of their seats.
“Where is he?” Mariam whispers.
“Boo,” comes a totally different whisper along with a puff of hot breath beside her ear.
Mariam yells and instantly clamps her hand over her mouth as she jukes to the side in time to catch the luminous round face of the man with the scales.
All eyes as well as a spotlight turn to the VIP box to find Hyungwon with this face beside hers, flaunting a toothy grin and cheeks like doorbells begging to be pressed. His laugh is airy and infectious, childlike even, and though he has startled a year of her life from her, Mariam is laughing, too, even as her hand clutches her heart in hopes of slowing it.
How long had he been there without her knowing?
As her pulse slows, she closes her eyes, and when she opens them, he is nowhere to be seen.
Mariam swivels around like a dope, but the new performer has vanished. A few other crowd members laugh, but the patchy lizard man with the long tongue is outright cackling and applauding louder than anyone as though he understands the joke better than the rest of them can.
Jooheon, Wonho, and Kihyun are all laughing, too, so Mariam has to assume this is all part of the man's grand entrance.
And grand it is! Now when the spotlight centers in the ring, Hyungwon strolls into it. He is sporting a pair of leather pants but nothing else, not even shoes, and she can see it's not just his hands and neck and face covered in those scales but his whole body. Like the rest of his features, they are delicate and captivating, almost like glitter sewn directly onto his skin. He throws his arms wide, and she is dazzled by more than just his unique features. He is lean and sinewy with a tiny waist and shoulders as broad as a door.
Colors and shapes dance across his scales in seemingly impossible patterns; even his hair shifts like fiber optics. She recognizes many of the patterns: the tent stripes or the ring floor or the Amorak’s fur; for a moment, he even glows like Kihyun’s strange luminescence. His visual display morphs into a splash of crimson in the exact shape and design of the ringmaster’s coat, which makes Jooheon beam and clap enthusiastically. Hyungwon concludes with the most shocking display of all—he nearly disappears from plain sight by copying the patterns of the backgrounds on all sides.
But then something occurs to Mariam. Hyungwon is almost totally invisible thanks to his camouflage, but the leather cannot follow suit so it looks like a pair of pants floating in the middle of the ring. When he’d been right beside her though, there’d been nothing—not even pants. Shock and more than a little embarrassment grip her body, and she swears the performer knows because he turns to her right then with a very troublesome smile.
Mariam has been so busy being awestruck by their performances that it hasn’t occurred to her to consider how much of them is human when so many parts of them clearly are not. But now the rabbit is out of the hat and she's chasing helplessly after it, wondering what kind of lovers such spectacular beings would be. That's not a thing she should be thinking about looking at a chameleon man, especially because she is a conservative person—she has been her whole life. But sometimes she has thoughts… fantasies. Sometimes she has unusual dreams. There was one in particular she’s often thought of since, in her moments of weakness, but what was it again?
She's so far gone in the illicit thoughts that she nearly falls out of her seat when a motorcycle above her roars. She looks up, and there is Hyungwon at the peak of tent on a platform much higher than the one Wonho had risked. She doesn’t remember the motorcycle there, but it must have been. It sits anchored at the edge of the platform. It has no tires, just rims resting on top of a wire, and though there is a ring securing the machine to the wire, it won’t keep it upright. Beneath it is a perch as a counterbalance, and, of all things, one of the perytons sits on it. Its clawed back feet cling like a bird on a wire.
Hyungwon sits astride the motorcycle, now clad in a black leather vest and a pair of boots. As a whimsical note, some of the scales across his face have blackened into a sunglasses shape. He isn’t tethered to anything, and Mariam can see between his slight twitches and the peryton’s, they are working together to keep themselves upright on the wire.
The engine revs again, and Jooheon raises his hands to incite the crowd. Everyone whoops and cheers, including Mariam, and then Hyungwon zooms ahead.
The bike zips up the slight incline to the other end, where he lets off the gas, and the unlikely pair drifts backwards smooth as a sled riding down a snowy hill. Once they’re back at the bottom, Hyungwon surges ahead again, but he slows when they reach the middle of the line. He cuts the engine, and instead, the room fills with the ping-ping of the wire bobbing under the weight.
Below, the peryton wobbles and tips backwards, clinging to the rail with its claws as it hangs upside down and spreads its wings. Once it’s at full breadth, Hyungwon stands on the footpegs and slowly—tremulously, steps both feet onto the seat before propping one on the handlebars. He, too, spreads his muscled arms, and as the motorcycle glides backward down the slope, little bursts of yellow, like tiny supernovas, fire across his skin. Feathers whisper in the breeze before the crowd roars with the showcase.
Mariam’s heart is in her throat, so big she practically chokes on it. Her skin pebbles with fresh goosebumps because the pair isn’t slowing. In fact, the motorcycle is picking up speed as it glides.
Before they can crash back into the platform, Hyungwon slides back onto the seat and revs the engine again. The peryton swings back upright, and the rider tosses down some dark and messy treat to his passenger.
Mariam assumes it’s over, but then the bike sails even faster up to the peak, and this time when they brake at the top, the peryton rocks side-to-side, and just like that, the motorcycle loops like a propeller around and around the wire.
She screams. So does someone else. Both rider and passenger are completely unbothered.
They whirl backwards down the wire, and it almost makes Mariam sick to watch the spinning. Even worse, as has been happening all night, she thinks again on things she shouldn’t. She thinks on how strong his thighs have to be to hold onto that bike, and she finds herself clenching hers just as hard.
Just as they get to the platform, the peryton startles and takes flight, which immediately flips the motorcycle. Hyungwon plunges from his seat several stories above the floor. Screams ring out all around the canopy.
But not Mariam. She can’t scream. This time, she’s too paralyzed with terror.
This is it. This is going to be the show where something goes horribly, terribly wrong, and as much as she had already been changed by tonight’s performances, this will ruin her.
She feels sick.
Hyungwon’s halfway to his surefire death when the winged creature swoops down casual as can be and grabs his outstretched wrist with its back claw. He drifts like Alice falling down the rabbit hole to Wonderland onto yet another motorcycle that Mariam never even saw waiting for him in the ring.
Relief washes through her, and she realizes that over the course of however long she’s been sitting here, she has formed some kind of unnatural bond with the performers. She thinks of them not just as acrobats or athletes but as friends—or, maybe, more disturbingly, something more. Just the notion of them getting hurt tightens every muscle in her body like a winch.
But no one else seems nearly as bothered by the daring risks they’ve just witnessed. As the crowd leaps to its feet, Hyungwon waves and circles the ring on the bike a few times. With a rev of his engine and one final wheelie, he speeds to the back with the peryton in tow.
Jooheon makes his way to ring center as usual, and he’s cheering just as much as the audience. That infectious smile of his stirs the crowd as much as it stirs Mariam’s heart with gratitude.
“How about that, dear guests? I think I can boast with total confidence that that was yet another act such as you have never seen! Another round of applause for Hyungwon and Dyani. Let them hear you.”
The audience doesn’t disappoint. With each act, they’ve gotten more and more comfortable and more and more awestruck. It’s beginning to feel like an impossible ask to ever leave this big top. Yet, Jooheon’s next words send a chill through Mariam’s bones.
“As always, we close our show with the most dynamic performance of all. As you have learned by now, nothing about Le Cirque du Fantasme is traditional, so it must hold true that neither are our clowns. Not only will they take to the skies tonight, but they will take you to new heights with them. Be dazzled as fire and ice harmonize in ways you never thought possible, and, above all, expect the unexpected. Presenting The Flying Fools, Minhyuk and Changkyun!”
The ringmaster steps to the side as the final two performers enter the room.
They move in perfect unison, but that’s where the similarities end. The taller one, with hair like candle flames, presents in vivid detail. His face is shaped like a flame, too, with all the same flickering dimension and undulating contours. His skin is bright and brilliant like his smile only with a sheen to it, and when he spins in the lights, Mariam realizes it’s like a cast of gold dust upon him. She’s not sure if that’s stage makeup or if that’s just part of who he is, but considering his counterpart, it seems like the latter.
The shorter one has hair like snowflake filaments, each strand almost crystalline yet without being actually frozen. Even the cool way he strolls feels like a breeze across damp skin. Though his lines are sharp, borderline cutting, when he steps in the light, Mariam swears she can see through him. He’s sleek when he moves; every line and twitch has a purpose. It’s as though he is untethered and untouchable by everything. It’s almost as though his feet aren’t even touching the floor. She might think he’s a ghost if everyone else weren’t seeing the same thing.
With a pair of synchronized bows, the performers greet their audience silently just as the others did, saving all the talking for their ringmaster. Instead, they start their act with a series of incredible one-upsmanship. The redhead conjures fire in his palm, which the blue-haired man snuffs with a flick of his wrist. In retaliation, he then creates three snowballs of varying sizes into a very sweet but very humble snowman, and the redhead returns the favor by lobbing a fireball under his knee with the unforgiving precision of a meteor. The poor snowman explodes and melts into a puddle while the crowd chuckles.
They make faces at one another as they hurry to build their next assault. One constructs a basketball-sized snowball to the other’s fireball, and with a war cry like two brothers squaring up, they throw at each other. If either is off-target, Mariam will be buried in snow and the other side of the ring will be engulfed in flame, but their aim is true, and the two balls collide with a hiss like punching a hill of sand.
As they mock-squabble, a bar lowers from the ceiling, one side featuring a ring dangling from a chain and the other side featuring willowy baby blue ribbons fluttering as they descend. The two performers continue silently bickering as the redhead climbs into his ring and takes a seat and the blue-haired man winds his foot intricately through one ribbon while he scales the silks.
Once their eyelines are even, the bar raises, and now, the two men soar over center stage a few stories up. Closer to the spotlights, the redhead glitters like a disco ball while, at precisely the right moment, the light pierces the blue-haired man, like sun through a blanket of clouds, and shines down on the ringmaster’s grin.
As the pair reach their pinnacle, they play—not just off of the instruments but each other. It’s organized chaos. The man in the ring rocks like a monkey on a swing, his feet kicking and lifting. At first, it’s art, but then it’s clear his true intent is to toy with his friend. He drops. He swings. He pushes off of his friend’s back like a swimmer off the pool wall.
While the man in the ring flips and threads through his hoop, the man in the straps flies beside him. Thanks to the push, physics draws them back together until they’re rebounding off each other like a Newton’s cradle. Both of them are light and slender, but their sinew flexes with each choreographed move.
Watching them somehow makes Mariam feel strangely feminine, which isn’t something she usually thinks much about. Between work and TV and sleep, she doesn’t spend much time on herself. Carmel is a hamlet, too far removed from the City for the Big Apple to tempt her and too insular to attract outsiders except for the accidental stranger passing through. She doesn’t have to doll herself up because there’s no one in town left to impress, but as the dexterous duo wheels above to a chorus of ruffling silk and clanking chains, she feels soft, pliable even. She wishes she’d had time to change out of her shift clothes or apply some lip gloss. Watching them perform makes her yearn to impress them the way they’ve all impressed her.
Her eyelids droop.
They’re so beautiful. They sail as though the ribbons and chains are merely there for decoration, as though the sky would be their playground with or without them. They might be aiming to make everyone laugh, but Mariam sees beyond that. It’s their artistry she’s swept up in—the way they flick not just their wrists but echo the motion straight through to their fingertips, the way they use every part of their body to sell a complete experience, the way their no doubt countless hours of rehearsal ensures their whimsy looks as effortless as it does unstudied.
The blue-haired man chokes up on one silk as he releases the other and wraps his foot in the chiffon. He spins. He twirls. He sails by his wrist. The ribbon fans like a cape beneath him.
But when he swings too close to his fellow performer, the redhead shoves him playfully out into space to send the blue-haired man arcing over the audience to a chorus of “oohs” and “ahs”. Seeking his revenge, the aerialist slips down the fabric to angle himself like a bullet with an aim for his fellow performer.
At the last moment, the man in the ring latches on to his friend’s wrist, and together, ring and ribbon twine through the air. They circle together before they push apart and rotate like two bodies caught in each other’s orbit. It’s beautiful. It’s hypnotic.
Mariam can’t get them out of her head. Of all the things she’s seen tonight, they ensorcel her every sense. They’re two fools bickering like brothers, but without the bounds of gravity, their playfulness becomes aerial ballet. She wants to be part of the fun.
The redhead climbs on top of his hoop, legs splayed around the supporting chain, and reaches for the chiffon. While he goes high, the blue-haired man goes low, grasping the ring. He looks up at his brother-in-air and pokes his tongue wickedly at the corner of his mouth.
The next thing Mariam knows, the hoop is white with frost, and with a yank, the blue-haired aerialist shatters the ring beneath the redhead’s legs. Frozen metal tinkles to the floor. The redhead grips his chain tighter now, but there’s vengeance in those calculating eyes, and he spins so fast, he looks like a tornado of fire.
His hand lashes out.
He grabs the ribbon supporting his friend’s foot.
Flame marches up and down the chiffon, and the blue-haired man barely has time to unwind his foot and leap to the second silk before the other ribbon is engulfed. It untethers at the loop above and drifts to the floor like a snake made of fire to coil messily beside the shattered hoop.
Both men hang by one hand. The set piece begins to lower, but their rivalry does not slow. Their feet bicycle as they kick each other like toddler brothers, and the room reverberates with laughter. They collide only to push off each other’s thighs, and when they swing back, their arms are outstretched—not for each other but for their opponent’s supports.
The pair stills in the air.
The redhead grips the silk above his friend’s hand, who also has hold of the chain now.
They look each other in the eyes, each confident they have the upper hand.
Chain crackles like a sheet of ice. Fire ignites like a burner.
Their eyes widen. Their cocky grins falter.
They fall.
The pair thunders to the floor, each landing on his own feet thanks to their cleverly choreographed descent. And then they descend into a playground slap fight like the fools they’re promoted to be, which sends Jooheon skittering to center ring to break it up.
The tent is shaking with the crowd’s laughter and applause. Mariam is already on her feet and whooping at the top of her lungs like she’s never done before.
Jooheon raises the redhead’s arm by the wrist and champions, “Minhyuk!”
He does the same to the blue-haired man next as he yells, “Changkyun!”
The crowd somehow gets louder.
“One more time, my friends, for all our distinguished performers!”
Out of the back comes the rest of the circus, including the Amorak and the perytons but thankfully no death worm. Together, everyone fills the ring, the ringmaster front and center. They bow in unison, even the animals, and when they rise, Mariam thinks it’s simultaneously the most ridiculous and most wonderful family she’s ever seen.
The crowd doesn’t seem to take a breath in its cheers. The stands might not be anywhere near packed, but no one would be able to tell because the heartfelt screams—and a couple of animalistic roars, she notes—fill the canvas to the brim.
Jooheon couldn’t look prouder. His dimples have never been deeper. His eyes are little arches. His pearly teeth glimmer. He glows not from the spotlights but from the praise.
“Thank you all for coming! From all of us at Le Cirque du Fantasme, you’ve been a terrific audience, and should our paths chance to meet again someday, we hope you’ll return for another round of unparalleled fantasies. Get home safely, everyone!”
The cheering continues even as the performers head backstage, and once they’re all gone, the guests begin to filter out, each murmuring to the other strangers. It’s clearer now that the lights have come up that the denizens of the big top couldn’t be more different. As far as Mariam can tell, she’s the only obvious human.
She lingers in the VIP box. She’s probably supposed to leave—it’s clear from Jooheon’s well-wishes that they’re all supposed to—and while she’s not afraid of the strange folk after such a show, she just doesn’t want to go.
She’s changed.
She’s not the same Mariam she was when she walked through those striped flaps. How can she go back to her boring, conservative, empty life knowing all that truly surrounds her? It’s like discovering that the world she always thought was flat has a third dimension.
The big top is empty now except for spilled cartons and other litter. Humongous paw prints dapple the dusty ring floor. Motes of dust drift through the beams of light, past the gently swaying extra cache of rings, ropes, and ribbons above.
With a deep, shaking sigh, Mariam resigns herself to her fate. Just as her hand lands on the swinging door to the box seats, the backstage curtains fling open, and the redhead, Minhyuk, and his blue-haired partner, Changkyun, enter.
“Finally!” exclaims Minhyuk in an exuberant voice. “Showtime is always the hardest when you can't open your mouth.”
“I think you’re the only one who suffers on that point,” Changkyun retorts in a much gravellier tone.
The pair take to sweeping up their torched and shattered mess as though they don't even realize they still have an audience, the redhead gabbing away to make up for lost time.
Mariam doesn’t say anything. She’s sure she’s not supposed to be here, and she worries they’ll ban her from ever coming back—not that she’s sure exactly where she is or how she got here. She ducks down a little before she catches herself in her own stupidity. There’s nowhere to hide.
Should she apologize? Hurry out? She could just tell them that their rhythmic aerial battling has stirred things in her that she never thought she’d feel, but that’s probably stupider than trying to hide.
The last act is still emblazoned in her mind when the ringmaster abruptly appears from the back. While the other two men work around the tent, he heads directly toward Mariam as though he never expected her to leave in the first place.
“Well, my dear, what did you think of the show?”
His lips look even fuller and juicier somehow. She’s drunk just on the way they purse and pucker.
“Unbelievable,” she breathes. “I don’t even know what to say about it.”
“And how has VIP been so far?”
Mariam cocks her head to the side. “So far?”
“Did you think your experience ended with the show?”
“Well, yeah.”
Jooheon chuckles. “For the pretty maid in the front row, I offer a truly once-in-a-lifetime upgrade free of charge.”
“What kind of upgrade?”
“Only the most exclusive kind. We’re going to custom build you a dream, my dear.”
Mariam squints. “I thought the circus was the new dream?”
“Well, thank you, but you forget that we took your best dream ever.”
“Oh, yeah,” she says with a blush and a scuff of her boot on the floor. She's getting a strange feeling from his burrowing gaze that she's missing something more important than she’s realized. “But since I don't remember what it is, how do I know you haven't already exceeded it? Tonight was amazing.”
“Trust me, we haven't traded in fair yet. We can do better because… it’s important to me that you remember tonight—and me—forever.” Jooheon smiles at her then, but it’s different than those other flamboyant smiles. This one is gentle and sincere.
“There’s no way I could forget,” she admits shyly.
He looks dubious, but he nods and offers his hand as he opens the VIP box door, too. “Let me see to it then.”
The moment Mariam’s hand slips into his, the ringmaster’s demeanor changes. He’s been the consummate showman all night, but he’s narrowed that influence of his tremendous power to her and her alone. The big top hasn’t changed, but as he leads her to the center of the ring, it’s all much more intimate now.
Jooheon squares up to her and smiles, this time with the faintest hint of a lip bite. His thumbs rub reassuringly over the back of her hands as he takes one step closer.
“We're going to make you the star of our show.”
#monsta x smut#le cirque du fantasme#october vibes#jooheon smut#minhyuk smut#changkyun smut#third person#trilogy
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Du roc de la castration dans la clinique analytique…
Dans son séminaire L’envers de la psychanalyse, Lacan avance que Dora bouche sa revendication pénienne en adorant madame K., sous la forme de la Madone de Dresde qu’elle allait contempler. Elle se laissait ainsi littéralement "envelopper" par madame K. (terme qu’utilise Lacan) au même titre que "l’objet viril par la gaine féminine"...
La grandeur de Lacan fut d’avoir su rester fidèle à l’esprit de Freud, dont il convient de faire toujours retour à la lettre, notamment pour y relire l’indétermination quant au caractère fini ou infini de l’analyse, relative à l’impasse sexuelle, dont ce qu’il appelle le «complexe de castration» régule l’accès du sujet au désir.
Outre que cette impasse sexuelle concerne au premier chef l’analysant, elle n’est pas sans questionner le désir de l’analyste, devenant par là même la question éthique par excellence dans la direction de la cure.
Que constate-t-on dès lors au cours de l’analyse?
Que la résolution du complexe de castration, quels que soient les efforts déployés au cours du travail analytique, reste le plus souvent incomplète, en butée au réel du roc de la castration, remettant sans cesse en scène l’énigme de la sexualité.
Le névrosé, constatant les difficultés d’accès à son désir (insatisfait pour l’hystérique, impossible chez l’obsessionnel...) se livre alors à des contorsions relationnelles avec son entourage (qui en pâtit), tenant par dessus tout à sa différence d’avec les autres (qui s’adonnent à des jouissances vulgaires, même s’il lui arrive de les envier), et finit par se trouver pris sous la pression de devoir arrêter sa cure prématurément, bien avant son terme logique, sans que la question de la résolution de son rapport à la castration ait pu commencer à se poser...
C’est le cas le plus courant...
Aussi ne s’étonnera-t-on pas que dans le marigot psychanalytique, où les protagonistes seraient censés, plus que d’autres, avoir terminé leur cure, soit le plus souvent resté en friche ledit "complexe de castration" qui présente l’impasse sexuelle du névrosé sous deux aspects:
• chez les femmes, par le Penisneid, c’est-à-dire l’envie, ou plutôt la revendication du pénis, avec toutes les sous-jacences de colère et d’agression qui s’y trouvent impliquées, comme le souligne Lacan, et qui la rendent littéralement enragée et
• chez l’homme, par la révolte, le hérissement contre la disposition passive ou féminine à l’endroit d’un autre homme et qui, du fait de l’angoisse de castration que celle-ci suscite, est la source de l’arrogance.
Or, Lacan y insiste tout au long de son enseignement: la névrose n’est pas à faire ressortir de l’ordre des "maladies" mais bien de l’éthique, dans le champ même de la relation que le sujet entretient avec son désir, désir qui est toujours désir de l’Autre, qui a trouvé sa forme à partir de la question: che vuoi? adressée au désir de l’Autre.
C’est donc toujours au désir de l’analyste qu’il revient in fine de soutenir dans la cure, jusqu’à son terme logique, cette question que le névrosé, par-delà la prévalence de la demande, adresse au désir de l’Autre, et qui recèle la clé du rapport au désir.
Cela signifie que le psychanalyste aura accepté d’orienter la cure dans une direction qui n’évitera pas au sujet d’avoir à se confronter à l’angoisse du désir de l’Autre, c’est-à-dire à son manque radical, sa castration, son irréductible incomplétude, contre laquelle il se défendait grâce à un fantasme qui induisait selon les cas un désir insatisfait ou impossible.
Tout ce cirque, bien entendu, afin de maintenir intacte la relation à la demande d’amour de l’Autre maternel, au sens du génitif objectif comme du génitif subjectif...
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Alors c’était comment votre repas de Noël ? Chez moi on a parlé Sandrine et immigrés. Séparatisme et Sécession. Ah on s’est bien marrés !
Mais en lisant les réseaux sociaux, je m’aperçois ce matin à quel point l’épidémie transgenre a bien gâché le réveillon de certaines familles. Le neveu habillé en bonne femme. La petite fille préférée de mamie gâteau avec du poil sur la gueule et les cheveux qui tombent. Souffrance. Stupeur. Pitié et colère. Hurlements et larmes.
Entre la dinde et les cadeaux, certaines familles ont même découvert que, sous l’influence de la « commu » (le lobby transgenre dans leur patois ), Thomas devenu Coraline s’était fait récemment couper les roustons. Depuis il en bouffait du cacheton, mais il tenait bon, à défaut de tenir la barre. Lors du dîner, il a d’ailleurs fallu qu’il aille faire quelques « dilatations » avant de se laver entièrement tellement l’odeur était insoutenable. Terrible réalité ! Quelques pauvres niais influençables subissent une lourde opération et les conséquences qui vont avec. Trou béant. Infections. Pire qu’un jambon sous asticots ! Perte du plaisir sexuel, dépression, sensation d’avoir gâché sa vie. Découverte après coup de l’ampleur du désastre.
Le repas de Noël aura également été l’occasion d’expliquer la notion de « dead name » à Mémé. Guillaume doit désormais être appelé Clémentine. Et ça gueule, ça fait son cirque si tout le monde ne s’exécute pas ! Menaces ! Ça chouine même en direct sur Twitter et déballe le nom des contrevenants. Pourtant, l’année prochaine, quand la crise sera passée, il faudra l’appeler Guillaume de nouveau. En attendant, il a fallu se fader la gueule du phénomène toute la soirée ! Ah et puis pas le genre « femme discrète », vous voyez. Avez-vous remarqué à quel point les hommes en jupe singeaient les plus putains des modèles féminins ? Quand ce n’est pas le style « gamine ingénue » un peu manga cochon. Ca laisse rêveur sur le fantasme inavouable qui se cache derrière tout ce cirque…hum, hum…
Au moins ce réveillon de Noël aura été, pour toute la famille, l’occasion de découvrir un nouveau charabia: « mutus », « cis-genre », « adelphe ». Bien lourdingue, mais au final pas plus que les conneries maoïstes ou trotsko-révolutionnaires que Tonton Jean-Pierre débitait à leur âge. A la seule différence est que, une fois Rennes 2 passée, Tonton aura juste changé son abonnement au « Monde Libertaire » pour en prendre un à « L’Incorrect ». Pour Guillaume, il n’y aura pas de véritable retour en arrière. AltGr+Y, ça ne marche que dans les jeux vidéos.
Car la vague de transgenre née des réseaux sociaux entame visiblement sa descente. Et les premières désillusions qui vont avec. Les uns reprendront des médocs ou des séances d’épilation laser pour effacer leurs années dingues. Se feront oublier un moment et finiront clerc de notaire puis tonton raciste au repas de Noël de dans 15 ans. Les autres, ceux qui se seront fait happer et qui auront été jusqu’au bout, finiront suicidés. Hélas.
Et tout le monde sera triste au prochain repas de Noël. A cause d’eux ! Même morts, ils continueront à nous pourrir la vie !
Anne-Sophie Hamon
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Une religieuse prend un taxi pour se rendre à Dunkerque et constate que le beau chauffeur n’arrête pas de la regarder. Elle lui demande pourquoi il la regarde si intensément. J’ai une question à vous poser, mais ne voudrais pas vous offenser, lui dit-il. Mon fils, tu ne peux pas m’offenser. Quand tu auras mon âge et aura été une religieuse aussi longtemps que je l’ai été, tu auras vu et entendu à peu près tout. Je suis certaine que rien de ce que tu pourrais me dire ou me demander ne serait une offense. Et bien, j’ai toujours eu le fantasme qu’une religieuse me donne un baiser. Bon, nous allons voir ce que nous pouvons faire. Premièrement vous devez être célibataire et deuxièmement vous devez être catholique. Oui, je suis célibataire et je suis catholique ! lui répond le chauffeur très excité. Alors très bien tournez dans la prochaine contre-allée. Et la religieuse comble le fantasme du chauffeur avec un baiser à faire rougir une prostituée. Alors qu’ils reprennent leur route, le chauffeur commence à pleurer. Mon cher enfant, dit la religieuse, pourquoi pleurez-vous ? Pardonnez-moi pour avoir péché. Je dois confesser que j’ai menti; je suis marié et je suis juif. Ne vous en faites pas. Je m’appelle Alain et je vais au carnaval !
Le cirque Jeremy Scott pour Moschino
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On nous tue, sous prétexte de nous sauver... Ou pas !
La France, qui ouvre les yeux sur l'impéritie de nos élites se réveille consternée devant l'entêtement injustifiable de nos soi-disant ''dirigeants'' –qui semblent ne savoir qu'accompagner les mouvements browniens qu'ils génèrent, sans avoir la moindre idée de là où cela pourra les mener. La cascade des crises dont ils essayent de nous convaincre qu'elles existent démontre ad nauseam leur nullité devant des problèmes dans lesquels ils auraient surtout dû ne pas intervenir : ''à chacun son métier... et les vaches seront bien gardées'', disaient nos aïeux !
Jamais à un mensonge près, Mitterrand avait un jour osé affirmer, en parlant du chômage, ''On a tout essayé''. Il voulait dire : ''Tout ce qui ne marche pas, mais rien de ce qui aurait pu marcher''. Comme c'est très souvent le cas avec les bêtises proférées par des hommes réputés ''à gauche'', aucune leçon n'a été tirée de cette dangereuse contre-vérité, et la même chose se reproduit, sous nos yeux étonnés, à propos du coronavirus et de leur maudit ''covid 19''. La phrase dite ‘’de Thucydide’’ : l'Histoire est un éternel recommencement... serait-elle un tout petit peu vraie ?
Et pourtant, s'il y a un domaine où les progrès de la connaissance ont renversé les anciennes certitudes, c'est bien celui-là : depuis Darwin, depuis un bon siècle, l'histoire n'est plus une ''redite'', mais une évolution. En revanche, nos nombreuses mésaventures actuelles tendraient à démontrer le contraire : une mauvaise gestion succède à l'autre et un échec cuisant en appelle un autre. Nos ''leaders'' n'ont rien compris à tout ce qui se passe ! Et pourtant, les théories fixistes de l'univers et de l'humanité ont fait long feu : il y a évolution et non recommencement de l'histoire.
Il faut répéter que leur ''anti-stratégie'' est cousue de gros fil blanc depuis le tout début, et ça fait des semaines qu'on annonçait l'arrivée inévitable d'une ''deuxième vague''... aussi vague que faire se peut. Le fait qu'elle n'existe pas, qu'elle ne soit même pas possible et qu'elle ne soit pas visible dans les faits hors-manipulation ne change rien au désordre des choses : il fallait qu'elle fut... et elle a donc été, rien que de très prévisible là dedans ! Car cette fois, c'est clair, net et précis, elle est là ! 24 heures avant le Président, notre pauvre Premier Ministre (Quel job ! Je n'en voudrais pas pour tout l'or du monde !) a fait ce qu'il croit être un ''bilan'', ce qui est le nom qu'il donne à la prolongation linéaire de ses fantasmes. Il ne sait rien, n'a toujours pas compris de quoi il parle, ne voit pas bien ce qui est en cause et n'a pas vu que les enjeux véritables sont gigantesques, et la réalité, catastrophique,
Alors, nos incompétents chroniques réinventent l'eau tiède encore et encore et le Pouvoir s'entête à punir les non-malades et à ne pas soigner les malades. Comme plusieurs pays l'ont prouvé, la solution à cette crise n'est pas dans l'heure de la fermeture des bars, du couvre feu nocturne en période de surfréquentation des transports en commun, ou dans la présence à chaque JT, de 2 ou 3 agents propagateurs de ''panique universelle''. C'est dans ce cadre plein de chausse-trappes que notre Président prenait la parole, hier, mais c'est bien lui qui a réduit jusqu'à presque rien sa marge de manœuvre... ce qui était prévisible dès le jour où des politicards en mal de notoriété et de réélection éventuelle se sont décrétés, seuls contre tous, ''Grands Mamamouchis'' de la santé publique, Grands Maîtres des Epidémies, Sauveurs de l'Humanité... et virologues de talent, sécurisés dans ce job improbable par un Comité Scientifique dont la composition prête à sourire !
En effet, sous la houlette du vieux professionnel de la chasse aux honneurs, aux titres ronflants et aux prébendes nombreuses qu'est Jean-François Delfraissy (un iso-Jack Lang qui fait penser à l’ineffable Jean-Paul Delevoye, c'est tout dire !), on trouve une anthropologue, une sociologue, une réanimatrice, un ''modélisateur’’ (késskséksa ?), un produit des ''milieux associatifs'', un spécialiste (?) des nouvelles technologies... et 5 médecins seulement... dont le plus courageux et seul crédible a très vite claqué la porte ! (NDLR – ce ne sont pas les personnes qui sont en cause, et leur nom importe peu. En revanche, leur non-compétence à figurer dans cette aréopage là -ailleurs, pourquoi pas !- suffit à disqualifier ce qui vient de ces ‘’pieds nickelés’’. On les a écoutés, on les a vus, on les a subis, on en a souffert, et on a eu envie que tout ce cirque s'arrête le plus vite possible !).
Quarante quatre minutes plus tard, exactement, où en sommes-nous ? Tout d'abord, on a compris que le Président ''assume'' (je me suis arrêté de compter à 14 fois !), qu'il ne modifie pas d'un iota sa trajectoire (donner des chiffres exacts mais non significatifs... nous ''cocoriquer'' par rapport aux pays qui font moins que nous ici ou là, mais oublier ceux où on fait moins bien que d'autres... rappeler comment il faut se laver les mains, histoire de rester à un niveau présidentiel...). Bref, un petit air de déjà entendu. au delà de la confirmation officielle (une grande première) que 91 % des morts par covid avaient plus de 65 ans, que les obèses, les diabétiques ou les autres grands malades constituaient un vrai ‘’cluster’’... mais qu'il pouvait y en avoir dans toutes les classes d'âge et de santé (le passage à ''50 % des lits occupés par des gens hors de ces catégories'' ressemble à un vrai tour de magie) . Et bien sûr, la grande décision (''confirmée par les scientifiques'' –voir ci-dessus) : le virus devient très méchant entre 21 heures et 6 heures du matin (on a peur de la tranche horaire ''3 à 5 heures'' : c’est la plus inquiétante de toutes, c’est certain !).
Et il ne faut pas oublier la seule bonne nouvelle : une adaptation infiniment plus ''sexy'' de Stop covid (NB -qui, comme tout ce qu'a fait le gouvernement, n'a pas ''foiré''. Pas du tout. Simplement, ''le nombre d'abonnés n'a pas été un succès’’ !) va nous tomber sur le coin de la carafe. On est sauvé. Entre ça et la continuation du creusement de la dette, le virus n'a qu'à bien se tenir. Et nous... à continuer à râler, derrière notre masque-réservoir-de-miasmes-pour-certains-mortels, à terme court.
H-Cl.
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Le punk actuel est commercial ,anale et bancale .
Tout est commercial et je suis moi-même dans ce système qui paradoxalement me rejette
Je ne crois pas en "ni Dieu ni maître. "
J'ai un Dieu qui est Amour et libertaire .
Des amies vieux et parfois con.
Je suis une feministe croyante et christique qui montre ses seins et se couvre beaucoup parfois.
Le communisme et l'anarchisme me dépassent.
Je n'ai pas de codes politiques,ni de mouvement.
Mon art n'est ni brut ni expressionniste ou abstrait .
Il est juste un cris qui assassine le temps à coup de lame .
Je n'ai pas de diplôme et je t'emmerde.
Je ne bois pas de bière ,je n'aime pas ça et si ça t'ennerve ou que tu insiste pour que j'en prenne pour faire genre je t'encule avec un gode .
Il m'arrive de me recueillir mais je chie sur le Vatican.
Je fréquente des juifs ,des musulmans, des chrétiens ,des homosexuels et des militants d'extrême gauche.
Je porte des nœud papillon car je suis une gamine qui mord et une sale gosse .
Mon identité c'est pas la France ,l'Espagne ,l'Amérique,l'Afrique,la Chine ou nimportequel pays ou continent.
Je suis une alien citoyenne du cosmos,femme libre,emprisonnée qui gueule dans son coin ensanglanté et artistique.
Ma tête c'est le chaos mais ça forme des mots et des morts sur le papiers quis se gravent à jamais sur la feuille blanche qui flanche.
Les gens me regardent de travers dans la rue car je suis un extraterrestre qui te fouette avec mes tentacules et t'eblouit de sa folie clairvoyante,interstellaire et atroce.
Je suis la folle qui explose dans son corps ,dans ses idées ,dans ses pensées.
Ma chatte est Rouge et mon âme est Jaune .
D'ailleurs le Jaune pour moi est punk.
Personne le porte.
C'est la pisse des clochards que j'adore et la bile mais tout le monde oublie que c'est le cirque ,le soleil et le cris des prophètes incompris.
Il est la lumière de touts ces putains d'aliens qui crient dans leur veines et dans leur battements de cils .
Ta banque ,je l'emmerde .
Je suis un clown ,une saltimbanque qui voyage dans des ciels vaginaux là ou les truies hypegalactiques pètent de couleur arc en ciel.
Folle
Appele moi folle.
Je suis Claudel descendante.
Fille de Van Gogh .
Comme une sorte de déchet qu'on trouve dans un rêve et qu'on ramène à la vie.
Je n'ai pas de code.
Tes magazines de mode je les déchire et j'en fait de la bouillie pour mon chien avec les testicules de Trump .
Chaque secondes,chaque particules ,chaque millièmes de tout ,de rien et de respiration , je hurle à en faire trembler l'éternité.
Je hurle d'être cette putain d'alien .
Je cherche mon corps de femme.
Mes seins .
Ma chatte et les fesses .
Je cherche à me réapproprier mon âme et mes cheveux qui à eux seul me rappele que je suis trop exotique pour un monde trop lisse.
Je ne fréquente pas les bobos,les prolos ,les bourgeois,les gars de la street ni les gens normaux ou tendances.
Seule dans mon bateau ,je voyage avec des soutiens éclectiques.
Je ne copie personne et mes fantasmes sexuelles sont celles d'une mutante astéroïde. .
Regarde moi.
Je suis la folle du village.
Internée ou hospitalisée après des dizaines de tentatives de suicide .
Tout mon être est comme un clown qui pisse sur le rebord d'une autoroute avec une autruche qui danse la salsa en string à côté de 18 bouteilles d'huiles d'olives ,une scie sauteuse et un aspirateur rose fluo.
Laissez moi juste reprendre le contrôle de mon corps et de mes pensées pour mieux vous abattre ou vous pardonner.
Tout ce texte pour vous dire que je suis un chaos lumineux et splendide
Que ce monde est un jeux de dame complètement malade ou les messieurs font la guerre et les pions obéissent pour détruire la nature et la planète.
Je me sent sous la dictature du ciel et de ses politiciens
Je sourie aux gosses angéliques et les parents me regardent parfois presque comme si j'etait une pédophile ou une dingue qui leur filerait en secret de la drogue ..
Ne parle pas aux inconnus .
Ferme ta gueule.
Porte ton masque dans les rues ou il n'y a personne.
Soit pseudo punk en allant à des teuf ou quelques blaireaux se battent, se défoncent aux extas comme si c'était le sens de la vie.
Soit tendance en allant dans les boites de nuit .
N'oublie pas que c'est la valeur de ton cul et de tes seins qui te feront entrée ou pas.
Oublie la chaleur de l'hiver.
Rien à battre du réchauffement climatique.
Rien à battre du clochard qui s'excuse platement pour te demander de la thune quand l'enflure de hipster ou bourgeois lève pas la tête de sa tablette et le laisse chialer après.
Si ça se trouve c'est même le jour de son anniversaire .
Va faire un scandale dans le métro en clamant la vérité sur cette société.
Déguise toi seule.
Tu finira en hôpital psychiatrique.
Si tu danse ou que tu est trop joyeux t'est forcément en crise maniaque et tu finira plaquée sur le lit avec une camisole ou une piqure .
Pendant ce temps le monde crève.
Les gens se crépitent la bite pour des convictions qui se ressemblent voir sont les mêmes mais comme l'avis est pas le même sur l'économie par exemple ,ton interlocuteur est forcément une sous merde ,un blaireau .
Société ou tu as toujours raison et l'autre mériterait de mourir de sélection naturel si tu n'est pas daccord avec lui ou elle.
Société youtube
Société de surconsommation
Societe centre commerciaux pour oublier les abysses et la profondeur de l'existence ,le trouble immense de nos battements de cils et de cœurs et celui de l'infinie.
Société Snapchat ,Facebook,instagram
Filtres de chat à la con
Blasphème de petasse contre ces animaux bien plus divins que des écervelés qui montrent leur torse pour draguer des connes en string et en Louboutin.
Feminisme ridiculisé par des bobos blanches qui habitent Paris 11 ème et te parle de privilèges
Femmes noires oubliées
Femmes de ménages méprisées
Femmes handicapées psy jugées comme capitalistes de merde car elle peuvent même pas se contrôler de fumer ou de consommer pas éthiquement
Ou au contraire , des gens valides et bien friqués consommant du Nutella en en ayant rien à foutre des orang-outang démolis et des enfants qui crèvent pour ramasser leur noisettes de leur petit-déjeuner à la con.
Alors je m'habille tout en Jaune et autres Couleurs bien vives avec des look bien tordues et mirobolants.
Je suis chelou ,tarée ,inadaptée et fière de l'être même si la souffrance me viole et me torture jusqu'aux tripes ,au sexe et au cerveau.
Mais je suis Orange Explosion.
Jaune punk .
Et je chie des arc en ciels bipolaires avec des corps de bonnes meufs ,de têtes d'aliens en pissant des tables handicapées et laides qui deviennent des étoiles immortelles et merveilleuses.
Je suis une folle ,punk baltringue jaune ,ringarde ,ridicule avec des recoins monstrueux en moi-même et je t'emmerde avec la lumière de folle paria ,clown et grandiose.
Cordialement .
Ta mère
Nébuleuse
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À NOS PERTES COMMUNES
Stéphanie PICHON / © La Parti Collectif
LE PARTI COLLECTIF
Louis Lubat s’empare de la consolation pour créer son premier objet sous chapiteau, forcément inclassable, nécessairement politique. Onze artistes musiciens, comédienne, danseuse agitent en vrac philosophie, notes, gestes et mots. Première à l’Agora de Boulazac avant une pause bordelaise dans Chahuts.
C’est drôle comme le Parti Collectif, le PC pour les intimes, semble déjà appartenir de longue date au paysage musical bordelais alors que Louis Lubat (oui, le fils de…) rappelle qu’ils ne se sont montés qu’il y a cinq ans. Un collectif polymorphe – dix groupes à lui tout seul ! – capable de brasser dans l’urgence, biberonné à l’improvisation. Ce crew du cru se compose d’une trentaine de musiciens mais pas que, et possède quelques racines à Uzeste, tendance Hestejada de Bernard Lubat, mais pas que… Bien qu’il y ait quelques continuités artistiques et politiques avec l’ancêtre gascon. Le PC aime tout autant jouer de la musique et des mots, affectionne le bordel joyeux et revendique un pedigree politisé, un organigramme sans chef. Quand on a appris qu’ils étaient en résidence de création à l’Agora de Boulazac, que leur chapiteau avait été donné par Laurent Castaingt (ex-Trottola) et que Les Inconsolés, leur nouveau-né, allait tourner rien de moins qu’à CIRCa ou Nexon, on a eu envie d’en savoir plus. Louis Lubat nous a reçus au Café de la Fraternité, place Saint-Mich’, un matin ensoleillé. Échappé d’Uzeste où la bande fabrique sa piste de chapiteau à coups de barres de métal et de plancher de bois, il nous éclaire sur ce spectacle à la matrice philosophique.
Le Parti Collectif est un habitué du grand air, des projets in situ. Pourquoi le chapiteau ?
D’abord parce qu’on nous l’a offert. Et puis on avait ce fantasme-là, du nomade qui amène son chez-lui partout. Le chapiteau nous paraît être un nouveau possible. Parce qu’avec on peut aller jouer n’importe où, parce que les gens y entrent plus facilement que dans un théâtre, y sont plus calmes, plus concentrés qu’en extérieur. Pour nous, c’est le bon entre-deux : tu es toujours dans le monde et, en même temps, tu y as une attention plus forte. On était aussi en manque de lieu, en manque de temps pour inventer, toujours dans l’urgence. Sous le chap’, on envisage le temps autrement.
Effectivement, le projet a commencé… en 2016 !
Laure Duthilleul, metteuse en scène qui avait vu des projets du Parti Collectif, nous a proposé de travailler à partir d’un texte de Michaël Foessel, Le Temps de la consolation. Très vite on a monté le chap’, travaillé quatre jours et joué, pour voir si cette collaboration fonctionnait. Et ça a marché. Alors, on s’est dit qu’on allait prendre notre temps et, pour une fois, trouver les financements avant de se lancer dans la création.
Votre point de départ, c’est le texte philosophique de Foessel…
Oui, il y fait une grande grammaire de la consolation, avec les mots, la métaphore, la prosopopée, et puis les gestes, la musique. Le texte de Foessel, c’est comme un sous-texte. Ce qui nous intéresse, c’est qu’il remet la consolation dans le champ de la philosophie. Depuis le philosophe Boèce, au ve siècle, cela avait été un peu laissé à la religion et plus tard à la psychologie. Il pose aussi la question d’une politique de la consolation. Peut-on se questionner collectivement sur les pertes, au-delà des pertes personnelles ? Parce qu’il y a des pertes collectives, comme les pertes d’idéaux par exemple. Foessel présuppose que la consolation c’est aussi la transformation. Que la perte te transforme. Il y aurait ainsi plusieurs figures : l’inconsolable qui ne veut pas être consolé, le réconcilié qui est le « tout va bien » un peu mou, – ce à quoi nous incite la société actuelle –, et l’inconsolé, une figure positive pour Foessel, celui qui sait qu’aucune consolation ne sera jamais définitive, qu’on sera toujours retransformé.
Dans les gens réunis au plateau, il y a des musiciens, mais pas que…
La plupart le sont, mais il y a aussi une danseuse contorsionniste, une comédienne et un mec, je ne sais pas ce qu’il fait exactement (rires). Il est informaticien au départ, il a une licence de musicologie, il vient au plateau très naturellement. Un soudeur vient aussi de nous rejoindre, on lui a dit : « À un moment tu seras sur scène. » Tous les musiciens prennent la parole. Il y a aussi beaucoup de corps. C’est un nouvel endroit pour nous, on expérimente ce que c’est un groupe qui bouge, qui se touche, qui marche ensemble ou pas.
Est-ce qu’il y a du décor ?
Le décor, c’est le chapiteau, il n’y a rien sauf la batterie et les instruments de musique. On a monté un grand plateau nous-mêmes avec 4 tonnes de ferraille et du plancher, ce qui donnera un plateau disproportionné de 21 m d’ouverture et 7 m de profondeur. On veut un grand espace. On est assez pour le remplir !
CIRCa, Boulazac, Nexon, ce sont des gros mastodontes des arts de la piste… Comment le ce milieu vous a-t-il accueillis ?
Les gens du cirque, il y en a de moins en moins qui font du chap’. Aussi sont-ils curieux de voir une jeune équipe se saisir du chapiteau et de découvrir ce truc étrange de musiciens qui prennent la parole, à onze ! On se sent assez chanceux de jouer dans ces endroits très repérés. On sait que ça ne tient pas à notre mérite. Je m’appelle Louis Lubat, c’est plus facile, il faut être réaliste.
Combien de temps dure le spectacle ?
Une heure et demie. Mais il y aura une deuxième partie, un bal. Parce qu’on aime bien danser et faire danser les gens. En terme de consolation collective, c’est pas mal non : être une foule et danser ensemble ?
Les Inconsolés, Le Parti Collectif,
du jeudi 21 au vendredi 22 mars, 20 h 30,
Espace Agora, Boulazac-Isle-Manoire (24750).
www.agora-boulazac.fr
du jeudi 28 au samedi 30 mars, 21 h,
CIRCa, pôle national cirque, Auch (32000).
www.circa.auch.fr
du jeudi 6 au vendredi 7 juin, 19 h,
square Dom Bedos.
www.chahuts.net
août, La Route du Sirque, Nexon (87800).
www.sirquenexon.com
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Le Cirque du Fantasme | Part Three
Word Count: 13.1k
A/N: IN UNDER THE FUCKING WIRE. I am never, ever proofing 20k on the same day I need to publish, especially when I have to work and hand out Halloween candy. I am so sorry if the editing is sloppy. I'll fix it when I'm not seconds away from passing out on my keyboard.
I really really really hope you enjoy. I love this universe, and I'm super proud of it.
Cvr | 01 | 02 | 03
Minhyuk couldn’t be more eager. He shoots to the pool of silk and waits for his fellow aerialist to disentangle himself from their starlet and join him. They fan out the ribbons and snap them like bed sheets until they are twice as wide as Mariam ever realized.
Jooheon offers his hand, and she takes it as he leads her to the mat. With her standing, they flare one ribbon around her neck and shoulders and then criss-cross it with the other around her whole back. When they are satisfied, they push her back, two of the men supporting her sides until she is laying in a cradle of silk.
“Comfortable?” Changkyun asks as he looks down on her with the vaguest hint of a smile.
“I’m good,” she answers.
Minhyuk crosses her legs at the ankles so he can wrap one of the silks around it and then wrap the other in the same fashion around her opposing ankle. He then ties them off together in a charming bow that tickles the back of her calves.
She’s immobile now, swinging in the air like meat in a smokehouse, and as she twists, she sees she’s admired with the exact same kind of craving.
“You really are an artist, Min,” praises Jooheon, a finger nibbled between his teeth as he ogles her.
“I have a beautiful canvas,” the aerialist replies cavalierly.
“That you do.”
Changkyun runs a finger from her knee down to her hip to toy with the hem of the bodysuit. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. The way those black eyes glide like oil along her body to her face makes her quiver. Though her legs are secured, her hands flounder on her belly as she waits.
“Will this hurt?” she asks as she studies the two sylphs bookending her.
Jooheon shakes his head as he massages her calf. “You couldn't be in more capable hands. Would you like to see?”
“Okay,” she says shakily.
“Gentlemen…”
Both aerialists hover over her, their smiles unique though their gentleness mirrors the other’s.
“We performers are nothing if not in total control at all times,” assures Changkyun. “Let us show you all the ways we can please you.”
Changkyun produces an ice cube between his fingers, and as he twists it, it scatters honeyed light brighter and brighter and brighter around her. Only then does she notice that a flame flickers on Minhyuk’s fingertip. He brings it closer to the ice cube, and Jooheon whispers lowly, “Open your mouth.”
Mariam does, and chilly drops of water explode on her tongue. She can’t help it—she moans.
“Tastes good, right?” says the redhead. “Let’s shift the balance a bit though.”
The flame on Minhyuk’s finger doubles in size so he had to hold it between his thumb now, too. This time, the cube melts completely in Changkyun’s palm. Slowly, the air sylph tips his cupped hand, and the water drizzles not in her mouth but along the open swath of her collarbone. It sizzles against her skin like candle wax, and she hisses and writhes and, again, her moan cannot be held back.
“Not all pain hurts the same. Some of it can be addictive.”
Changkyun’s barely finished his sentence before she’s pleading with huge, green eyes, “Please, more!”
The trio of men laugh.
“You were right,” says Minhyuk through his chuckle.
“Dreams are just a window to the heart,” replies Jooheon. “Let’s take things to the next level.”
“Up she goes,” announces Changkyun a minute later, and suddenly, she is rising.
As she ascends, she spirals, and Mariam glances to the left in time to see the blue-haired man hiking up the cable until her body is level with their faces, like a dumbwaiter bringing their meal to them.
Minhyuk holds her cheeks, and from this vantage, she has a dizzying inverted view of his sensual lips.
“Well, hello there,” he says before he pecks her on the lips.
She only has a moment to savor the sweetness of the encounter before he strokes the edge of her face and then dives in for another kiss. The upside-down angle allows the surface of his tongue to stroke her fully, and she tastes him completely—his pervasive heat and spicy cinnamon depths with a smoky aftertaste that lingers like a memory she’s never made but still feels like a part of her.
Mariam gets lost in his mouth until she feels scintillating pressure at her clothed sex. She has to tear her lips from Minhyuk’s just to breathe. When she lifts her head, she finds Jooheon’s eyes peering at her from around her trussed legs. She can’t see his mouth, but she can tell from his rainbow-arched eyes that he’s grinning.
“How’s that feel?” he asks, and a moment later, the pressure deepens until she feels an intrusion between her lower lips despite the lycra’s firm resistance.
Her head lolls back, and she lets out a pitiful sob. “I want more…”
Jooheon’s eyes firm up, and his gaze flicks between his two friends. “You heard the lady.”
Minhyuk shuffles to her side while Changkyun takes the opposite, and everything seems to happen at once. It may have been her own fault because it was exactly what she’d asked for, but the deluge of hedonism that follows completely overwhelms her.
Changkyun guides her sin-slackened lips to his, and while he numbs her mouth with a messy kiss, Minhyuk gropes her chest. The fabric of the bodysuit is unforgiving, pressing, pressing, pressing against her while it binds, but the fire sylph’s heat penetrates anyway. She arches into his hand and wishes for more, though she is too high for him to indulge in fully.
Or so she thinks.
“As darling as you look in this,” comes the silken voice beside her, “it is spoiling my fun.”
Mariam turns her head from Changkyun and finds Minhyuk hovering now. He doesn’t seem to have wings like Wonho, yet he’s clearly levitating. Again, it’s probably something she should be more shocked about, but it feels so natural, especially since it allows him to touch her exactly the way she yearns to be touched.
The fire sylph lifts the costume’s neckline roughly so that the chill of autumn can finally kiss her skin, and the next thing Mariam knows, his fingertip is scarlet, and he draws a line through the center of the bodysuit down to her navel. With the surgical precision of a laser, he burns through the fabric. The acrid sting of smoke singes the air. Her tits bounce free, her nipples hardening instantly, and Minhyuk tilts in the air so that he can bring the tip of that scorching tongue to her aching bud.
The sensation is intense, like the first kiss of a flame to a wick, and she ignites. Her back lifts in the ribbons as she tugs on them to deepen the arch into the aerialist’s mouth. Minhyuk swirls that red-hot tongue around her puckering edges, and while she’s never been particularly sensitive there, it feels like her every nerve ending has convened in his mouth.
She whimpers, but that is met with a soft tsk-tsk.
“Mariam.”
She lifts her head and strains all of her attention toward the ringmaster peering at her from behind her thighs.
“You know we’re performers, right?” he says.
“Right.”
“So it’s very important to us that you don’t hold anything back. The louder you are, the better we know we’re pleasing you.”
“But what about the people backstage?” she asks with a worried brow.
Jooheon smirks. “Well, maybe that's just an added bonus for me. I like to rub it in a little that the most beautiful girl who's ever walked into this tent chose me.”
Minhyuk selects that exact moment to engulf her nipple in his hot, wet mouth, and Mariam cries out at full force this time. Instead of pulling on the ribbons, she forks her hand through his hair and crushes him against her breast as she pants.
Her mouth is already hanging open, so it’s easy for Changkyun to turn her back to him, and he helps himself to it. His frozen tongue running over hers has her nipples tightening even further, which makes the sylph at her chest hum with pleasure. Minhyuk takes to nibbling the hardened flesh as his big hand slithers across her ribs to her other breast to tug and pinch with just the right pressure.
“Oh my god,” she breathes between heavy kisses. “Oh my god.”
“Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” Jooheon murmurs, pleased. “Off to a great start. Let’s send you over the edge though and see just how needy you can get.”
Fingers hook at last around the seat of the ruined bodysuit, and once it’s pulled to the side, her body temperature plummets. Were it not for the fire brand of Minhyuk’s mouth on her, she would be shivering.
“Boys?”
Both Minhyuk and Changkyun lift their heads to look at the ringmaster.
“You have to see this,” says Jooheon.
The sylphs answer his call, and Mariam lifts her head to see where they’ve gone only to find them lined up in a handsome row, all three pairs of eyes fixed to her exposed pussy. Minhyuk has his arms propped on Jooheon’s shoulders, and Jooheon has an arm wrapped around Changkyun’s waist. Each man smiles drunkenly.
“Now, isn’t that the prettiest sight you’ve ever seen?” the ringmaster asks.
Suddenly, a tongue blazes up the length of her seam, and Mariam cries out before she sags in her basket of ribbons.
“Tastiest thing ever, too, mm-mm,” muses Minhyuk.
Changkyun shakes his head with a tsk-tsk-tsk. “You’re absolutely dripping wet, princess. And I thought you were so innocent.”
Jooheon lets out a little chuckle. “Not our wild little Mariam here. Let me show you.”
The ringmaster draws the air sylph in closer, and just as he did with her at the ticket booth, he brushes his lips against his friend’s. Jooheon barely has time to come up for air before the fire sylph yanks their leader by the neck and jerks his lips to his as well.
It’s just a quick graze, but the sight unearths yet another primitive desire she’d never realized she’d been harboring.
Jooheon pulls back and suckles on his bottom lip. His already thin eyes are razor blades as he utters darkly, “You taste like her.”
Minhyuk chuckles. “Couple more minutes and we all will.”
The redhead leaves his friends’ sides to take up alongside Mariam’s. Since she’s hanging high up, he rests his chin on her shoulder and studies her like she’s the mythical creature instead of him. “You really are full of surprises, sweet Mariam.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she replies, but each word shakes as hard as her heart.
Minhyuk runs his spindly fingers back through her hair to free it from under her neck, and it dangles like the spare ribbons below her. He looks at her with such admiration that her throat goes dry. Slowly, he leans forward to kiss her cheek.
“You will.”
This time when the fire sylph takes her tits in his hot hands, he pulls a little rougher on her nipples, and she moans sharply. Everything inside her contracts, and the silks jostle the fasteners in the rafters. There’s no hiding her overwhelming arousal. Mariam feels it, especially when a jet of cold air rushes over the exposed mess. Instead of a shiver, she throbs and feels a different kind of tremor rip through her as she leaks a little more.
Changkyun quits blowing on her so he can instead whistle sharply next to Jooheon. “Shit. She’s dripping on the floor now? Unbelievable.”
“Enough’s enough,” growls Jooheon as he shoos away his fellow performer. “Time to dig in.”
While the air sylph bookends Mariam’s free side, behind her thighs, she feels a fingertip gloss up the arc of her ass to, at last, push into her eager core. Her breath catches, even as Minhyuk continues his play at her nipples and Changkyun sucks a patch at her throat. As good as everything feels, her whole being has centered on the welcome intrusion in her walls.
Jooheon withdraws his finger to the tip and pushes back in to the filthy symphony of her arousal.
“Wow,” he whispers, “you truly are a good listener, baby. Even your pussy is nice and loud.”
As if to hammer home the point, his finger picks up speed to coax forth a lurid squelching. It’s mortifying, but the friction is so delicious that Mariam sheds the last of her conservative pretenses. There’s no point in hiding how badly she has yearned for this kind of adoration, especially since there’s nothing she can do to hide the shamelessness between her legs.
The dark corners of her mind have been whispering temptations too illicit to ever admit, but Jooheon knows what she’s always been too afraid to acknowledge. She longs to be a buffet of sin that these beautiful men need to devour. She wants to be admired and used and reused until she can barely walk.
“Feels so good,” she whines.
“Do you want to feel more?” probes the ringmaster.
“So much more!”
“Good because so do we.”
Jooheon fixes that fabulous mouth to her core, and stars shoot across Mariam’s eyes. Her hands lash out this time for the two sylphs, and both of them hum delightedly at her touch. The dream-eater’s tongue is nowhere near as scalding as Minhyuk’s, but it is diligent and targeted. It should come as no surprise that someone whose career revolves around his skill with his mouth is a master between the legs, but after just a few broad strokes up her seam and then a few swirls and suckles at her clit, she is surprised at the way her belly is already screaming with a pressure she’s never quite felt before.
“You’re going to make me cum already,” Mariam warns frantically, and both sylphs shift their keen attention to her face.
“Good. Then cum,” Jooheon replies before he dives back in, suckling even more determinedly on her clit.
Mariam screams.
Her climax rips through her more savagely than anything she's ever experienced. Her bindings prevent her muscles from thrashing the way they need to, so, instead, she wriggles like a caught fish, and, as though to emphasize how pathetic she truly is, she's gasping for breath like one, too. Her hands inadvertently claw that the shoulders of the two aerialists as she struggles to cling to her own sanity.
A string of incredulous nonsense tumbles from her slackened lips as her head sags backward.
“How long has it been since you’ve cum, love?” marvels Changkyun as he threads his fingers through the dampening hair at her brow.
Mariam works to form a coherent sentence between her heavy panting and Jooheon’s fingers, which alternate between prodding her entrance and rubbing clit. “Not sure… I ever… have… Oh god!”
Minhyuk sneers and snarls. “So neglected. If I knew who’s been leaving you so unsatisfied, I’d burn—”
“Easy, Min,” reminds Changkyun.
But she can barely make out their words. The pressure between her hips hasn’t lessened, even with her release, and it’s so powerful that she can’t stop quivering in her binds.
Jooheon chuckles darkly. “Pretty little pussy still throbbing so pathetically.”
He sweeps his hand urgently back and forth across her lips now, and Mariam squirms from the intensity.
“It’s too much!” she squeals and bucks, but all three men shake their heads.
“Just a little more,” coaches the ringmaster. “Ride it out. Ride it all out. You can do it. Give it to us, baby.”
Her climax pulses onward, tapping her for every last bit of sanity she’s been struggling to hold onto. It’s like her first orgasm never stopped, only grown hotter and fiercer, and her cries march on. Her legs thrash in their ties, and she swings, though Jooheon’s there to snatch her waist and steady her.
“You did so well, sweetheart,” he assures, both hands rubbing the back of her legs as he places gentle kisses to her calves. “Breathe. Breathe.”
Mariam struggles to do anything but sag helplessly into the chiffon.
“I’m so tired,” she laughs, though it’s through a few tears.
“Quitting so soon?” says Jooheon with a heavy note of disappointment. “And we made you our main event, too…”
“No, I—”
“Aw, damnit,” murmurs Changkyun as he clutches his chest.
Minhyuk kisses her cheek then before he snares her gaze. “You nearly broke the man’s heart, darling.”
Mariam whips her head toward the air sylph and funnels all her sincerity at him. “I didn’t mean to!”
“It’s okay,” Jooheon comforts with a squeeze of her leg. “As long as you’re not leaving us yet.”
“No, I don’t want to!”
“You don’t?”
“No, no, no,” she begs. “I can’t leave you.”
She should add “yet,” but she can’t find the energy.
“Good,” says the ringmaster. “Have you cooled down enough? Are you ready for more?”
Mariam nods, and Jooheon’s quick to run a finger back up her slit. It makes her shiver, but it also makes the blue-haired man beside her grumble.
“Hey!” Changkyun protests. “It’s my turn.”
“I made the mess. I’ll clean it up,” Jooheon returns firmly.
At this, Minhyuk intercedes by swiveling Mariam like a lazy Susan straight to the air sylph’s mouth. With a tut, he says, “You know this is his favorite.”
“It’s one of my favorites, too,” pouts Jooheon.
The redhead scoffs. “You like everything. It’s Kyun’s favorite. Besides, you did set him up with that ‘cooled down’ pun.”
“That wasn’t intentional…” Minhyuk glowers at his dimpled friend, and the ringmaster lets out a long sigh. “Fine.”
Mariam catches a flash of Changkyun’s eyes as she’s lined up for him. They’re vortexes, and they’re pulling her inextricably to him. She’s never seen eyes so absolutely blackened by lust, and they are centered solely on her soaking wet heat.
The man doesn’t say a word. He just dives forward, his nose and mouth immediately pressed to her cunt in a hungry kiss. Desire roils off of her so palpably that she swears she’s steaming in the autumn air, but Changkyun’s mouth is another matter entirely. He feels like the fog that brought her here in the first place—cool, damp, cloying. He brushes over her leisurely, leaving his presence known with a chill that’s as luxurious as it is enticing.
Where Jooheon had eaten her out with the obvious intent of setting the record for fastest orgasm, Changkyun explores her folds like this has nothing to do with her—this is for him. He’s humming down there between her legs, his fingers curling around the meat of her thighs to press her harder into his mouth. When his tongue at last quests for her clit, his cool tip sends shivers jolting through her with every languid circle.
Mariam pants and clenches under Changkyun’s diligent attentions, and while the speed and friction isn’t nearly fast enough to bring her to her edge yet, it’s spectacular. She’s never had someone ravish her—consume her—before, but it brings a different kind of pleasure. She’s never felt so desired… or so needed. It’s altering her.
It’s not just her body that craves release anymore—it’s her soul. She’s becoming someone new.
Someone greedy.
Someone wanton.
Someone completely and utterly willing.
“So good… Please don’t stop,” she whimpers.
“What a polite little thing,” Minhyuk laughs as he twirls a lock of her hair around his finger. “What she means to say is make her cum already, Kyun.”
Mariam is really not in a hurry, not when Changkyun’s cool mouth is stirring such a delicious ache in her core, but then, it’s clear that’s not what the fiery aerialist really means.
“I knew I should have gone second,” grumbles Minhyuk. “He’ll be there all night if he has his way.”
At this, the blue-haired man lifts his mouth from his entrée just long enough to say, “If I have my way, she’ll never leave and I can be here as many nights as I want.”
The redhead doesn’t even have time enough to roll his eyes before Changkyun is back to savoring her. Still, Minhyuk’s obviously not one to let things go, especially not when it’s interfering with his own good time.
Mariam hisses as a sharp pain flares across the meat of her ass. Her head shoots up as she furrows her brow at Minhyuk, who is now staring at her cheekily with his chin resting on her hip.
“Hi, beautiful,” he says.
“Did you just bite me?” she says incredulously.
Jooheon steps forward, a scowl darkening his bright face. “Did you bite her?”
“I’m bored. I want pussy, and, in my defense, her ass is very biteable.”
“You’re insane,” scolds the ringmaster.
“Hey, it was just a play bite. It wasn’t like I was marking her. I’m not Hyunwoo.”
“No, I know. He’s more domesticated than you are.”
The two friends devolve into laughter until they sober up enough to return their attention to the man whose tongue hasn’t broken stride across their starlet’s cunt yet.
“He hasn’t heard a word we’ve just said,” Jooheon observes.
Minhyuk shrugs. “You know how he gets.”
“He hasn’t even,” stutters Mariam through a fresh wave of arousal, “ah, come up… for air.��
The redhead laughs. “He doesn’t have to. But he needs to for a second. Cube, Kyunnie. Come on.”
As though just to spite his friend, Changkyun doesn’t lift his mouth from her even as he presents his open palm, and quickly, a little block of ice assembles itself from thin air. Once it’s fully formed, Minhyuk plucks it from the other aerialist’s palm only to situate it in his own.
In a matter of moments, the ice has melted into a puddle. The redhead contorts his hand into a shallow funnel shape and drizzles the water, droplet by droplet, directly onto her clit. It’s so warm, like massage oil, but it sends pleasure like electricity through her limbs. It’s even more exquisite when the air sylph’s chilly tongue slakes desperately from the stream as it sluices over her hardened bud.
“I can’t hold it back anymore,” she shouts. Her fingers wrench the scarves around her, and her body winds up on itself.
“Give it to Changkyun, sweet Mariam,” says Minhyuk as he brushes her hair. “Feed him well.”
“Oh, no!” she calls mindlessly as she shatters.
Rockets of ecstasy fire through her veins. She jerks and shudders and struggles to breathe. It’s even more potent than her last climax, and she wonders if they manage to rip another from her, will she still be conscious after?
The intensity dulls, and Mariam’s limbs go leaden. Her belly is slack and painfully aware of how empty it still is. She’s given and given by now, but she hasn’t been refilled. Something about it makes her want to cry.
“Oh… Oh…” she blabbers.
Minhyuk chuckles. “Still so sweet after all that…”
“Very sweet,” the other aerialist agrees as he licks his fingertips and then his lips.
“I have got to do something about all this innocence.”
Minhyuk’s vow has Mariam chewing her lip in anticipation. This is it—the freedom she’s been seeking though she’s been too afraid to confront that part of herself. Her whole life has been framed to project the picture of the normal, simple girl, the one accepted in every corner of respectable society, but deep in her soul, she’s not simple. Now, she doesn’t need to be accepted by anyone but this troupe of, for lack of a better work, circus freaks.
The redhead moves Changkyun a few steps back, just to make it clear there will be no second helpings, before he grabs a hold of her legs and steers her toward his station. Once Minhyuk has positioned her all to himself, his hands begin to roam—greedily, enthusiastically, curiously—until, at last, they grope the apple of her ass. There, they squeeze rhythmically as the pretty man hums.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says. “It’s kind of funny how we have you tied and tarted up like this for us, but here the three of us are, tripping over each other to please you. Who exactly is in charge here?”
Mariam blinks as she tries to clear the fog from her gaze so she can form a coherent thought, and all three men groan.
Jooheon presses his mouth to hers in a rush, and his tongue thrusts in unexpectedly. She winds her hand automatically into his soft hair so she can press back into him just as urgently.
When, at last, he pushes back, the dimpled man exhales shakily as he murmurs, “How can you look like some lost little doe but kiss like some succubus? Damn, I think Min’s right. I’m beginning to think you’re the one here who can hijack all our dreams.”
“Mm,” says Minhyuk, “that’s a good start then because I don’t think I’m going to be satisfied until we’ve made you as desperate for us as we are for you.”
“I need you!” Mariam insists.
“You do?”
“Yes! Yes, I need you—all of you. So much.”
Minhyuk grins. “I don’t know… You’ve already cum a couple times. I feel like you’re just about done with us.”
“No, please no! I want more.”
“You want more?”
Mariam nods furiously as her voice shakes when she whispers, “Down there.”
“‘Down there?’” the aerialist parrots with a laugh that is definitely mocking. “Baby, I know you can do better than that. I thought you were desperate for us?”
“I am!”
“Tell you what, I’m going to get you there, I promise. Pretty soon you’re not going to be able to keep your dirty thoughts to yourself. For now, I’m gonna open you up first and show you you don't have to hide with us.”
Mariam grabs his wrist, and when his eyes shoot to hers, she implores, “Show me how to let go, Minhyuk.”
Beside her, Jooheon curses.
The fire sylph’s tongue probes the corner of his mouth before he nods. “Promising… Very promising.”
He leans forward to briefly kiss her over-eager clit, and Mariam yelps, but Minhyuk clearly has grander plans. He cups her heat, and she's overwhelmed, not just by his much warmer skin, but by the sheer size of his hand. He slots her sticky lips between his fingers as he glides up and down her sex. It's slow, methodical, and, thanks to her unending arousal, embarrassingly noisy.
Sometimes, he switches to rubbing both thumbs along her folds, and other times, he warms his fingertips a little more before he takes hold of her clit and rocks it back and forth enticingly between his finger and thumb. As soon as she starts singing from the delicious friction though, he moves elsewhere. Her entire consciousness is wrapped up between her thighs, and if she doesn’t get some relief soon, she’s worried she’ll never escape from the swamp of indulgence she’s mired in.
“Getting pretty swollen down here, sweet Mariam. Ripe as a peach…” Minhyuk leans forward so his fire brand of a tongue can lick up her seam and swirl once around her clit. She whines and cants her hips to his silken mouth, but he pulls back, catches her gaze, and crudely wipes the back of his hand across his lips to smear her sinful lip gloss across his cheek. “Mm, just as juicy.”
Unexpectedly, Changkyun shoots up to his toes to lick the indecent streak from his friend’s skin, and Minhyuk beams.
“Wow,” she whimpers, though it’s a borderline sob at this point, “you are very bad men.”
“You don’t mean that,” pouts Jooheon.
Mariam bites her lip. “It sounds bad. It all just seems so wrong.”
But Minhyuk isn’t nearly as bothered by the bad boy label as the ringmaster. “See, that’s how you know it’s just what you need. You crave the bad things, we all know it. Thanks to our pretty Honey there, I’ve seen what’s deep inside your sexy little mind, Mariam. Isn’t it exhausting, keeping up this charade that you’re like everyone else?”
“Yeah…”
“You don’t need to bother with us ever. You’re safe here. You can be all that you are and so much more.”
She’s writhing tragically in her binds, lurching in every way that she can to tempt Minhyuk’s fingers into her so she can plummet over an even sharper ledge, but he’s steadfast. He maintains a hypnotic stroke across her puffy skin. Mariam knows she’s throbbing—she can feel her heartbeat in her cunt—but he won’t give in because she hasn’t given in.
It’s not that she doesn’t want to, but the tenterhooks of her old life refuse to give way. She wants to let go, but she realizes she still has a few fingers clinging to the ledge because it’s more than a little terrifying, the thought of freefalling into the unknown.
“Just tell me what you need,” urges the fire sylph.
“And you complained about me taking forever,” Changkyun grumbles before she can answer, but Minhyuk just shakes his head.
“That was different. That was just about you. This is for a higher purpose.”
“This is definitely about you,” the other aerialist mutters.
Again, Minhyuk shakes his head. “That’s not true, is it, sweet Mariam?”
She has no idea what the fire sylph is talking about, but she’s delirious with the ceaselessly mounting pleasure, so she’ll concede everything at this point. “No!”
“Tell me what you want.”
“Please!”
“Aw, she’s cute when she begs,” coos Jooheon.
“You call that begging? It’s not nearly enough,” tuts Minhyuk. “You want something from me, baby, you need to make me feel your desperation. You’ve got to convince me.”
The aerialist parts her sex, and her hopes soar to the big top. Her core pulses. She cries out—whines.
But the dream is too beautiful to last, and he pulls his hands back again to return to painting her wet lust up and down her seam.
This time when Mariam cries, it’s accompanied with real tears. Her voice is small and pitiable. “Please…”
“Aren’t you being too hard on her?” Jooheon admonishes.
Minhyuk shrugs a shoulder. “Don’t talk to me. Talk to her. This is her own doing. I’m beginning to think she likes teasing herself.”
Jooheon scowls and circles back to her face. Her head droops back over the scarves now as she whimpers. Sweat beads roll up her brow to her hair line as her eyes roll back in her head. She’s a mess. Even without being able to see herself, she knows exactly how depraved she looks.
The dimpled man kisses her cheek suddenly and lets his lips linger there even as he whispers, “Come on, Mariam, baby, sweetheart. Give Min what he wants so we can all give you what we want. Just give in. Let go. Be with us.”
It’s not just Minhyuk’s fingers preparing to pry her next orgasm from her; it’s Jooheon’s urgency prying loose the last hold she has on the old Mariam.
She’s not innocent, and she doesn’t want to be. She’s wild. She’s wanton. She’s a Fantasme, and she belongs here.
“I want it! I want you!” Mariam shouts as she shoots up in the chiffon. “I don’t care anymore—I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be whatever you want. Just please don’t stop. I have to cum. I need to cum for you. Please, Minhyuk, please, I need you.”
Her eyes meet his. She's sure the fire in her gaze mirrors the fire in his. Her hands knot in the ribbons as she pants and bucks.
“Anything, I’ll do anything,” she continues, though this time her voice is leaden like an anvil. “Please, I have to cum. Open me up! Put your fingers inside me, and let me cum!”
The fire sylph smirks. “Now, that’s how you beg. Attagirl, baby. You’re going to cum so hard for us, I promise.”
Minhyuk’s mercy overtakes her in the form of two very long, very dedicated fingers thrusting into her walls straight to the knuckle. A scream tears from her chest as he plumbs her every nerve. He’s warm and thick and burrowing so deeply into her that Mariam’s sure her humanity abandons her. It feels so right to be this wrong.
“You've been hiding your true self so far down,” he muses as his fingers drill to unfathomable depths inside her. “Let's see what we can do to set you free, pretty baby. We’re going to give you the whole world.”
“She’s close,” Jooheon says as he fondles her tits and studies her contorted features.
Changkyun threads his arm through the ribbons at her side and wheedles his hand between her pressed thighs. The chilled pad of his finger circles her blazing clit, and the assault on her remaining sensibilities overwhelms.
With Minhyuk’s fingers buried knuckle-deep in her cunt, Mariam cums. It’s too violent for sound itself. She simply contracts and explodes. Maybe her breathing even stops—she can’t be sure. It doesn’t matter anyway. She has never felt even a fraction as alive even as it feels like a death of sorts. She is shattered and unhinged on an elemental level.
Eventually, with all three men soothing and singing her back to reality, Mariam crystallizes into something new entirely.
Her eyes flutter open, and she finds Jooheon’s sweet face. His dimples are there, soft like a lover’s creases in the sheets. He’s staring at her as though he’s trying to imprint on her soul. She’s sure he has.
“You okay, sweetheart?” he asks.
She nods dumbly.
Her throat is dry, so she swallows hard and tries to find her voice, and when she does, it doesn’t quite sound like the gentle, even voice she’s always had. She sounds confident and assertive, even this wrapped up.
“I want all of you to fuck me.”
Minhyuk grins ear-to-ear. He turns to Changkyun and says smugly, “You’re welcome.”
“Changkyun first, Jooheon last,” she demands.
Minhyuk looks even more smug. “I’m not last this time.”
“That just means she wants me to leave the last impression,” replies Jooheon.
“Please,” the redhead says, “our girl is practical through and through. You think she wants to end the night with a cold pussy?”
“Minhyuk!” both his friends shout.
“I do have control over it, you know,” grouses Changkyun as an add-on.
At this, Mariam lays a hand on his forearm, and everyone stills. The air sylph looks as frozen as his mesmerizing skin. Under her hand, his ethereal opalescence feels as cold as marble though the texture is just as supple as her own flesh.
She smiles softly at him as she says, “I’m not worried, Changkyun. I can’t wait to be with you.”
Now, everyone is frozen. A line has been crossed between bound plaything and boundless creatures. There is more affection in her words than anyone anticipated, and it has changed the way they look at her.
“I don’t want to wait anymore either,” echoes Changkyun, and with a supportive nod from his fellow performers, he lowers her suspension and begins unwinding the ties at her ankles.
Both Jooheon and Minhyuk join in her unraveling as they twist and guide her form in the silks. They secure half of the chiffon around and between her thighs and then around her waist, and it’s very similar to the pose they’d taught her in warm-ups. Their organized devilry delights her though she quickly realizes that the tension at her hips will become too much all too fast.
Of course, the aerialists already know this, and it’s clear they’re not finished orchestrating her body. Minhyuk lifts her chest—and definitely takes some liberties as he does so—while Changkyun threads the other silk under her arms a few times. Now, her weight is evenly distributed as she dangles once more, this time with her ass up and out. He ties the two ends across her back, and the redhead grins.
“The prettiest little package…”
Instead of acknowledging his friend, Changkyun turns to Mariam. “Is this okay?”
She nods. “For now.”
“If you get sore or uncomfortable, just let us know.”
“You can’t imagine all the holds we’d like to truss you up in,” adds Minhyuk.
“I can’t wait any longer. Please fuck me,” she confesses, and she feels both sets of her cheeks must be red with such a truth.
The fire sylph is positively gluttonous at his triumph, and he belts out a deep laugh. “She does know naughty words after all. What fun!”
“Come on, Min,” says Jooheon with a clap on his friend’s back. “I wouldn’t mind some ringside seats for now.”
The pair agree to step back so Changkyun can fill the window of her vision. The air sylph strips out of his pants, the lycra peeling reluctantly from his sinew. Mariam had thought that, because the fabric was skintight to begin with, seeing him completely naked wouldn’t be nearly so memorable, but she was horribly and inexcusably wrong.
Completely bare, Changkyun is a sight to behold.
His every muscle is defined with merciless precision. His chest is sculpted just as his abs undulate in textbook swells. They all taper down to a symmetrical belt of muscle at his hips that begs to be worshipped. While his thighs are nowhere near as massive as Shownu’s or Wonho’s had hinted, they are sleek and defined—bitable, as Minhyuk might say.
And then there’s his cock… Just like the rest of him, it is smooth and ethereal, and though there has always been a translucence to him, she sees its grand length in inescapable full focus.
Mariam wants to taste him, to swallow him deep down in her throat. Shamefully, she wonders if it would be like sucking on a popsicle.
“Did she just drool?” Minhyuk barks with an incredulous laugh.
She looks down in horror to find a droplet on the floor beneath her, and her body heats further at her exposure.
Changkyun smirks. It’s unbearably sexy.
He takes himself in hand and pumps his shaft devilishly slowly.
“Later,” he promises, though, even more unfairly, he closes the gap between her mouth and his length so he is just out of reach. He gives himself a few more good tugs, and up this close, she can see how his fat cockhead bulges with every stroke of his fist.
Mariam whimpers.
With a low grunt, he jerks to the side and disappears at last from view, though she feels him a moment later at her backside when one heavy hand gropes her cheek and then her wet sex.
“Damnit,” he grunts as he cups her roughly. “I could fucking melt inside you, you’re so hot.”
Her fever was already at a boiling point, but anticipating what’s about to come next has her bubbling beneath her skin. She’s so eager, she might erupt just from the promise of his cock inside her.
“Maybe you should ease her into this, Kyun?” Jooheon suggests, but Mariam shakes her head.
“No more teasing, please. Just fill me.”
All three men groan.
“Damnit, it’s going to be hard for me to hold back,” Changkyun warns as he grips her hips and squares himself up with her seam. To Minhyuk, he orders, “Little lower.”
Mariam feels herself descend a bit, and her stomach leaps. She grasps the scarves at her chest like it’s her last handhold for sanity itself.
Changkyun’s chilled cock grazes her cunt. She shivers hard, but it’s much more from the anticipation.
“Goddamnit,” he groans. “Are you ready, doll baby?”
“Hurry, please. Put it inside me, Changkyun.”
Her lower lips part for the blunt head of his dick, and she swears she can hear a damp hiss. Even if he doesn’t hear the same thing, judging by his nails biting into the meat of her hips, the air sylph feels the intensity as keenly as Mariam does.
He sucks in a breath and pushes into her hole straight to his hilt.
They cry out in unison, both of them collapsing, her into her net of chiffon and him onto her back. The swing sways them like lovers dancing as they adjust to each other’s temperature.
She didn’t know what exactly she’d been expecting from a creature like Changkyun, but despite all her build-up, Mariam couldn’t have been more ill-prepared. Inside her, he feels decadent, bordering on overwhelming. Only a moment ago, she’d been fire; now, she’s plummeting. The coolness of his cock charges every nerve within her walls. Her whole being lives between her legs as she waits for him to stoke her fire again.
“Goddamnit, I need a minute,” he grunts, his head resting at her back.
But with every second that passes, his thickness bulges her core as it saps her heat, and Mariam devolves.
Her head lifts, her eyes finding Jooheon and Minhyuk, both of whom are palming themselves through their pants. The implication is exhilarating. They’re going to watch, then they’re going to join. They’re going to use her, and she’s going to thank them for it.
Her skin prickles. Her mouth waters. Her body trembles.
She’s never felt so insatiable in her life. Maybe it’s this place or maybe it’s them or maybe, just maybe, this is just who she’s always been underneath all her polite hiding.
“You’ve got to move,” she urges to Changkyun in a near panic. “I’m going to cum.”
“Just like this?” he asks incredulously as he shoots back up.
“Yes, move, please!”
“Shit.”
Changkyun cinches her waist in his hands as he pulls out and glides back in. It’s so easy. Mariam has never, ever been this wet. Every inch of her is begging for it—for them.
Because of her obscene arousal as well as the freedom her suspension affords, he builds speed quickly. Even more deliciously, as he thrusts, he pulls her deeper onto him. Changkyun possesses her cunt with every single plunge, and that stimulation, coupled with the notion of her body belonging to him, sends her careening over the edge.
“C-cumming!” she squeals pitifully.
Her muscles seize and the ribbons tremble like plucked guitar strings. Changkyun stills within her, and there’s no mistaking the way his cock tumbles in temperature. Mariam had adapted to the enticing tingle of his chill, but the fresh burst of stimulation sharpens her descent.
“Goddamnit,” he hisses again as he rides out her orgasm. “So fucking good.”
She can’t stop shaking though. Wave after wave of cataclysmic release shudders through her, until her toes curl, until her mouth goes bone dry, until her mind empties and leaves her a true puppet dancing to her wielder’s dark designs.
“She just keeps cumming,” remarks Jooheon. “Unbelievable.”
“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Minhyuk mumbles. He’s stroking the bulbous outline of his cock with a pretty sort of reverence, almost as though he’s completely lost in the showcase of her rapture. “Remind me to rub that in to that braggart, Kihyun.”
Mariam’s head droops and her body slumps in her trappings.
Minhyuk clucks his tongue. “What Is that? Four times now?”
“At least,” Jooheon agrees.
She can only assume they're right. It isn't that she's just lost count, it's that she can barely think at this point. She's been whittled down to a nucleus of pure pleasure-seeking.
She cries lightly. “I didn’t know I could cum this much.”
“And you can cum a lot more than that, too, but you're still new to this,” cautions the ringmaster. “It can get pretty intense, pretty fast, so if it does, you have to let us know, okay?”
“Okay. I’m okay.”
“Good,” says Jooheon. But his voice swings from relieved to ominous as he adds, “Fuck her however you want then, Kyun.”
“Not a fucking problem.”
Changkyun slides right back up to high speed and revels in her fresh slickness. Between their shared panting, filthy fucking, and the blood rushing in Mariam’s ears, it sounds louder than the music that had enticed her here in the first place.
He sighs. “You have the most incredible pussy, Mariam.”
“There he goes,” bemoans Minhyuk. “Drunk again.”
And again, Changkyun ignores his friend—or maybe he’s just lost and, like Mariam, wants to stay that way. The way he’s fucking her now feels like a man on cruise control and bent on enjoying all the scenery. His hands roam her shape, paying extra attention to the apple of her ass or the meat of her thighs, which he’s particularly fond of squeezing. Sometimes, when he fancies a more intimate grind, he leans forward so he can grasp her neck just hard enough to hold her in place while he gives it to her deeper than she’s ever had anyone before.
The chill in her walls has warmed from the fire of her release, so when the blue-haired aerialist fucks her roughly now, even a man with ice in his veins struggles to compete with the building friction. Her body thrums with every quick thrust, and before she even realizes it, Mariam feels fresh desperation in her belly.
“Squeezing me so tight,” murmurs Changkyun. “You want to cum again for me?”
“Y-yes…”
“You do, and I’m going to cum, too,” he warns.
But then, a clap booms ahead of them, and it stills the man in her core.
“I’m tagging in,” says Minhyuk with a slap on his friend’s back before he muscles in behind Mariam.
Still, Changkyun holds firm to her hips as he grumbles, “Excuse me?”
“It’s for our Honey,” the redhead assures, and all eyes turn to the ringmaster, who’s looking back with those juicy lips fixed as steadily as his wicked eyes. “He asked. Me personally? I’d be happy to let you finish inside our girl right now.”
His blue-haired friend scoffs. “Yeah right. You’re not living if you’re not causing trouble, but if Honey’s asking, I can live with it.”
Caught in an endless eddy of bliss, Mariam can barely understand what they’re saying, but it doesn’t really matter anyway. She’s here for them and whatever they need however they need it. Still, it doesn’t stop her from complaining with a wail when Changkyun pulls out of her. She’s shocked to find she’s much, much colder without the air sylph inside her.
“Before you go…” says Minhyuk.
He dangles a pair of freshly forged handcuffs clearly cobbled together from more of the hoop detritus. With their warbled handholds and clumpy connecting chain links, they look more like crude Dark Age manacles than cuffs. It only makes Mariam's heart race faster.
“Cool these off for me, will you?” Minhyuk asks cavalierly to his fellow aerialist.
“Are you kidding me? She's already tied up.”
“Yes, but think of how absolutely helpless our sweet Mariam will look while I fuck her. I promise I'll take them off after I'm done with her.”
Mariam moans, and Minhyuk smirks as he pats her ass appreciatively. “See? It's what she wants.”
“You don't know that. You didn't even ask her!”
“You saw her dream, didn’t you?” the fire sylph reminds, though his tune changes when Jooheon clears his throat. “I guess you're right. Plus, it will be a lot of fun to hear her admit what I already know is true.”
Mariam has had a damn near impossible time wrenching her gaze from Jooheon’s thick frame, especially with his arms stacked in front of that sturdy chest, but when Minhyuk spins her in the silks, she has no choice but to look up at the redhead with big, watery eyes.
“Aw, come on, that’s not fair,” he pouts. “Okay, what do you say, baby? Do you want to be completely at my mercy?”
Her eyes hop from the flames dancing in Minhyuk’s to the impenetrable ice in Changkyun’s. She bites her lip and puts a voice to the dark thoughts swirling in her mind. “Do it, please, Minhyuk! Please. Anything.”
“There, see? All settled,” the fire sylph says triumphantly. He hands the red-hot steel to his friend to cool, and once Changkyun has, the redhead returns his attention to his eager victim. “Tuck your hands in beside you, my sweet.”
It’s a bit of a struggle wheedling her arms in alongside her, but once she does, Minhyuk is quick to position them in the small of her back. There, he cinches her hands into the malformed steel and pinches the openings closed with heated fingertips while Changkyun supervises. The fit is looser than she expected, but constriction comes from the scarves pressing harder than ever against her collar and chest now that her arms can’t dangle.
“If anything gets uncomfortable, think stoplights, okay? Red, yellow, green,” says Minhyuk.
Mariam nods. “Okay. All green.”
“Ah, such a good listener and an even faster learner. Mm, now, let’s see how fast you learn to love my cock.”
Minhyuk glides inside her before she can even finish her breath, which all rushes back out in a scream of relief. The chill at the loss of Changkyun is thwarted the moment his hot cock swells inside her cunt. The air sylph had sported a thickness that had stretched Mariam to her limits, but Minhyuk is just all-around big, and with the addition of the incredible heat that now massages her most secret parts, she loses the access to all other senses.
There is only Minhyuk’s cock. Powerful, penetrating, untamable.
He’s a fire brand inside her, lighting up her darkest recesses. He fucks like he talks, too—relentlessly. Mariam’s mouth hangs open. No words escape, just the tragic, tiny puffs of air he forces out as his cockhead hits places within her too delectable to name.
“Sweet baby with the sweetest pussy. How are we ever going to let you go?”
Don’t! she thinks. Not ever. Never, never, never!
But she can’t speak. It's all she can do just to think.
Firestarter that he is, Minhyuk rubs his cockhead quick and shallow like a striker across flint, and before Mariam even knows it, he has set her ablaze.
The intensity marshalling in her belly is unprecedented. Things are lightening around her. She wishes she could hold on to something just to be sure she isn't floating away, but her hands are still manacled at her back.
“Mariam, are you okay?” asks Jooheon with concern heavy in his voice.
“Gree-ee-een,” she croaks out through the ceaseless pounding. She isn't even sure if she means it, but considering she has no control over any part of herself right now, the automatic answer that comes from the lizard part of her brain must be right.
Forcing out the word opens a Pandora’s box of lewdness, and now the moans flood forth as she’s uncorked. It’s positively pornographic, but there’s absolutely nothing she can do to stop it.
“It’s now, it’s now,” she stammers.
And then she cums catastrophically.
Minhyuk shouts. He plunges his member in to his base to ride out her release. “Shit, you’re squeezing me for dear life, baby. You need my dick so bad you don’t want to let it go?”
“Stay,” gasps Mariam though she can’t even lift her head.
He does. He lingers deep in her core, riding out the tremors of her orgasm as he kneads her hips and ass. He folds over to rest his head on her shoulder as he slips a hand around to the basin of her belly and presses. His voice is criminally close to her ear as he hums. For once, he doesn’t say anything more.
He rocks in her walls again, and it sends them both lurching back and forth , like a couple on a porch swing. It would be far more romantic though if his manhood isn’t penetrating her so thoroughly.
With a contented sigh and a quick kiss to her shoulder blade, Minhyuk stands back up and picks up speed again.
Hair has curtained around Mariam’s face so she can’t see anything that isn’t the crimson ring floor. She wishes she could see Jooheon and Changkyun, but she’s so tired and, more to the point, she’s so helpless.
Minhyuk uses this to his advantage. Instead of thrusting into her, he slides her pussy up and down his shaft.
“This is heaven,” he groans out. “Your body is heaven, sweetheart.”
The best she can offer is a whimper of appreciation.
The metal clanks at her back with every piston, and her cunt sounds obscene. She knows she’s leaking on the floor since she can see the shiny droplets as she swings.
Behind her, Minhyuk is getting unusually loud—even for him. His breath is ragged, and there’s a throaty rumble at the end of every rut. He’s not just fucking her on him anymore but meeting her stride for stride.
Inside her, his cock is so warm. After all the overstimulation, she finds it addictively soothing. Mariam would be happy just to let him fuck her forever if it meant she’d get the deepest tissue massage of her life.
Her voice returns at last just to beckon him.
“Minnie…”
“Oh, fuck!” he snaps before he pulls out at lightning speed.
In his rush, he knocks into her leg and sends her wheeling like a carousel, and she gets the divine image of him ringing the neck of his dick, thumb pressed over the slit as and hunches over and pants.
“Whew!” Minhyuk belts out with a shaky laugh. “Didn’t think I was going to make it there.”
“Cutting it a little close, babe,” Jooheon says with a shake of his head. “You almost broke my heart.”
“I would never,” the fire sylph swears even as he continues to squeeze his member. “But I gotta tell you, your little VIP really is something exquisite. Must stand for Very Important—”
“Stop,” Changkyun barks from the other side of Mariam’s swaying frame. “Don’t say another word, Minhyuk.”
The redhead glowers at him. “When did you get to be such a prude?”
“Forget it,” the air sylph deflects. “Take those ridiculous things off her while you’re at it.”
At last able to control himself, Minhyuk softens the steel enough at the top of the cuffs to pry them open before he gingerly guides them off Mariam’s wrists. She’s only too happy to have her hands back, though she finds it’s not just her wrists that are sore but her shoulders, too.
Jooheon is there in front of her now. He takes one of her hands and manipulates it gently this way and that. The tendons flex exquisitely, and her eyes close as blood flows to her fingertips. He repeats the same thoughtful stretching to her other hand though, this time when he’s done, he threads his fingers through hers and holds her hand.
The ringmaster stoops down enough to snare her gaze. He smiles, and her soul melts like butter. “What’s your color, Mariam?”
“Mm, green,” she answers, vaguely aware of how her voice mirrors the trance she always seems to go into when she’s faced with his full attention.
“Are you sure? This has been pretty intense.”
“I’m sure.”
“Oh hell yes, thank god because I really don’t know what I would do if you’d said otherwise.”
Mariam shares a tired laugh with him and squeezes his fingers between hers. She bites her lip and risks a glance back at his dimpled face. “I really want you, Jooheon. You’ve been my dream since I found you.”
The ringmaster stoops and kisses her so roughly, she gasps, which is all the invitation he needs to flood her mouth with his tongue.
Images dance in her mind, a kaleidoscope of bodies grinding and tongues tasting and breasts bouncing and dimples—flashes and flashes of dimples in every single frame. The soundtrack is just as vulgar and vibrant, with panting and grunting and moaning of a single name.
He pulls back and searches her face frantically.
“Jooheon,” she whispers, an echo of the cries still looping in her head.
“Told you I’d replace your dreams.”
Mariam suckles her own lips, hoping to devour every last remnant of the new fantasies, and all three men grunt.
“Is there no end to your greed, babydoll?” asks Changkyun.
Jooheon shakes his head as though he understands her darkest thoughts, and maybe he does since he’s been in her head already.
Those soft dimples fall away as his eyes narrow. His voice is always commanding, but as the bottom drops out, his power is absolute. “Give her something else to suck on, boys. It’s the grand finale after all.”
The ringmaster takes his position behind her, and though Mariam wishes she had the pleasure of watching him ravish her, she’s happy to get lost in the feeling of his palms skirting up her thighs. His thumbs rub her engorged pussy lips for a moment before one slides to her clit budding between them and rubs it in easy circles.
“Wish I could hold you while I fuck you,” he says, “but it wouldn’t be fair to the guys. Since it’s the finale, we’ve all got to finish, right?”
Jooheon slides a finger inside her, and she cries out.
“Right, Mariam?”
“Right, Jooheon,” she assures.
Now, she feels his mushroomed tip begging for entry at her pulsing hole. She wishes she could see it, every vein and ridge and inch, so she could commit that, too, in vivid details to her dreamscape.
She waits eagerly.
He doesn’t enter.
Instead, he orders softly, “Show me you want it inside you.”
Her options are limited because of the silks, but that doesn’t stop Mariam squirming and wriggling as frantically as she feels inside, and when that isn’t enough, she resorts to the pleading that has gotten her everything else she’s desired.
“Please, Jooheon, please. Take me. Break me. Make me yours.”
His nails bite into the tender skin at her hips.
“What did you say?”
His voice is darker than a shadow in the dead of night. It only makes Mariam that much more impatient.
She feels her walls constricting, begging and beckoning for him to penetrate her. She hopes he can feel it, too, but just in case, she needs him to know exactly how unraveled she’s become. “I need you. I can’t live without your cock, Jooheon, please! Fill me up. I can’t take it.”
“Shit,” he curses. “Okay, baby, you’ve earned it. I’ll give you everything you want and so much more.”
At last, Jooheon delves into her core. Judging from his ever-quick and decisive words, Mariam had figured he’d be in a rush, but he explores her cunt leisurely, and it is devastating. She can feel the very shape of him opening her for him. Even if she hasn’t seen the full glory of his cock, she feels like she can commit it to memory now. Every muscle in her walls clings on for dear life. She swears his thick shaft has touched every nerve in her body, and she croons low and long after he bottoms out.
“Wow, Honey,” murmurs Minhyuk, “you should see how drunk on your cock our pretty baby is. All I can see are the whites of her eyes.”
Changkyun chuckles darkly. “And her mouth’s just hanging open.”
“Well, fill it. What are you waiting for?” says the ringmaster, and no one questions his orders.
Both aerialists step forward, dicks in hand. Changkyun is jerking his steadily, but Minhyuk looks like he’s still trying to hold back his orgasm. As if to confirm this, he guides his blue-haired friend to her lips.
“Hey, man,” grouses Changkyun, but his complaint dies the second her tongue darts out to taste his skin.
“You’re welcome,” Minhyuk returns as he stands aside to watch.
Mariam starts sucking gingerly at first. She’s out of practice. It’s been a while, and it occurs to her that she has no idea what’s she’s doing. She’s only ever had one partner, and everything they’d done together had been completely paint-by-number. She’s had sex and given a few blowjobs, but she’s never done both at the same time, let alone given two blowjobs simultaneously. It’s more than a little daunting, but that only adds to her arousal and her innate desire to please.
It’s almost refreshing sampling him. With as overheated as she is, it’s just like she imagined—like sucking on a popsicle in the dead of summer. Mariam ventures further down on his shaft than she’s probably ever tried before, and even though it tickles at the back of her tongue—just on the verge of a gag—the challenge is intoxicating. She wants to conquer it. She wants to make it down to his polished ice base, so she tries for a little more each pass.
Meanwhile, Jooheon finds a laid-back rhythm in her pussy, yet each thrust splits her open in a whole new way. He’s so good. It’s like he knows exactly how she’s always craved to be fucked—slow and thorough and desired. Each plunge has her yearning for the next. Nothing has ever been sweeter.
Changkyun’s cock pops out of her mouth as she moans, “Jooheon, Jooheon…”
It must be something the ringmaster has been hoping for because he lets out a moan of his own so velvety that it swaddles her heart. There’s something about it that feels special—personal. For Mariam, it goes beyond the pleasure of sex. It’s a sound so delectable that she knows she’ll feast on it forever in her memories.
The ringmaster goes rougher now in her walls to build up unrivaled friction. It’s so all-consuming she forgets her other obligations, but the sylphs sure don’t.
Minhyuk has regained his self-control, and it’s clear he’s getting antsy. Without a second thought, he lifts his friend’s dick back to her lips and shoves her mouth back on Changkyun’s tip.
“Keep sucking,” the redhead orders.
Mariam does.
She’s tired to her soul, and though she is in no way ready to end the best night of her life, Mariam’s finding it harder and harder to mine the stamina to please her lovers. Luckily, every hammer of Jooheon’s hips against hers bobs her head deeper onto Changkyun’s length, and when that’s not enough, that’s where friends are happy to step up to look out for each other.
“Let me help you, you ravenous little kitten,” says Minhyuk as he rocks her head on his friend’s cock.
That feeling of helplessness in the face of their lust makes her want to thank them and cum all at once, but she can do neither yet. As much as they’re giving her, they’re all just shy of gunning for the finish line. It’s for the best anyway. As addicted as Mariam is to the climaxes they’ve been serving her, she’s willing to put off her final one as long as possible.
They can use her forever if they want.
It's a symphony of sin in the room. Between the squelching between her legs, the garbles of her throat, and the barbershop trio of harmonized grunting surrounding her, it feels louder than the organ music that drew her here in the first place.
Jooheon leans forward enough to tug her nipples bouncing beneath her. It’s an unexpected ecstasy that makes her cry out with gratitude, though it’s muffled thanks to the cock in her mouth.
There’s nothing to compare this to. The very limits of Mariam’s body and mind are being tested. It’s everything. She can’t go back. She can never go back.
“My turn,” Minhyuk says abruptly and plucks her from Changkyun’s length with a smack of her lips. He turns her mouth to his straining tip and slides in immediately.
Mariam does her very best to service him the same way she did his friend, but the temperature difference is jarring. Her tongue throbs as it cradles his hot shaft. She purrs around him and sucks more eagerly to thaw her throat.
“Oh shit, shit…” he groans. “So fucking sexy.”
Mariam loves the way the fire sylph sounds. His usually feral personality has been chained by the pleasure her mouth is serving him, and instead of his boisterous taunting, he’s a desperate puppy eager for release from all this torture.
“You see his face, Mariam?” asks Jooheon as he rides her hard, and when he realizes he doesn’t have her full attention, he twists one of her nipples a little rougher until she gasps around his friend’s length. “You’ve got Minhyuk ready to blow. You want that, don’t you?”
She mumbles her eagerness around the cock blazing a path toward her throat.
“You’ve got to take good care of him, baby,” the ringmaster continues. “If you please my boys, you’ll please me. You want to please me, right, Mariam?”
She nods and hums, but she doesn’t answer because she can’t afford to. She continues slurping along Minhyuk’s throbbing shaft, and when she risks a teary glance up at him, she finds his face twisted with pleasure.
His hand knots in her hair, and the throbbing becomes a more urgent pulsing on her tongue.
“I can’t hold it any longer. Aw, baby, I’m gonna cum. Please swallow it.”
The “please” from him sounds so foreign, which makes it all the sweeter, and though Mariam has always been a spitter, she realizes that may be because no one had ever asked her to swallow. It had always felt wrong to even consider it. But now that Minhyuk is begging for it, she’s starved for his cum.
His huge hands fold over each other around the back of her head, and he ruts to the back of her mouth to pour his searing seed down her throat. There’s much more of it than she expected, but somehow, it’s also not enough, and when he tries to pull out, her lips follow, her tongue lapping up every trace of his offering.
“Aw, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hisses as he races to pull her back. “Shit, baby, that’s too hot and I’m too sensitive. Fuck, I wish I could give you more. Kyunnie, feed our girl this time, would you?”
Minhyuk swivels Mariam’s head toward his friend, and she opens at once. Changkyun places his tip on her tongue, and he groans hard enough to shake the earth itself.
“Goddamnit, doll, your mouth is on fire.”
This time, Mariam doesn’t hold back. She’s too famished. She wants Changkyun’s cum, too, and she wants it bad.
Jooheon fucks her rougher now, so she knows he’s pleased with her display. The tension in her belly rises exponentially, and she finds herself smiling even as she devours the air sylph’s cock.
Changkyun’s hand skirts under her chin, his finger questing. “Look at me, babydoll, look at me. I want you to watch me cum.”
Mariam whines and does exactly as she’s asked. Just as she had for Minhyuk, she turns her eyes to the sylph and finds that elegant neck tipped back, his powder blue lips open as a fountain of grunts and groans spill forth. One of his hands slides to his throat and squeezes, and he unloads his icy spend into her belly.
He’s still spurting down her throat when he looks at her, brows knitted and nose scrunched with pleasure, and he makes the sexiest little howl as he empties himself of every last drop. He pulls out with a shiver that makes Minhyuk laugh.
“Never seen an air sylph tremble.”
“I don’t feel the cold unless I leave something so fucking warm,” Changkyun retorts. To Mariam, he says, “Thank you, baby.”
Jooheon grabs a handful of her rear and squeezes to remind her she is his and his alone now, and she collects the last of her energy to look over her shoulder.
There she finds the ringmaster glistening with sweat, all the way down his throat and chest and forearms. It even drips under her chin and onto her ass. She’d taste it if he asked her to.
Her core constricts, and Jooheon hisses.
“Did they taste good, sweetheart?” he asks.
“Yes, Jooheon.”
“You did so good, Mariam, so good. You’re doing even better for me. You’re squeezing me an awful lot, baby. Can’t wait to cum?”
She bites her lip and nods. “Please make me.”
“I will, I promise. We’ll cum together, okay?”
“Jooheon…”
She can’t stop crying his name, and she wonders if she’ll ever be able to call out anything else ever again. Maybe that’s been his plan all along.
Mariam sags in her cocoon of silks as she rides out his energetic fucking. All three men have fit inside her differently, but when Jooheon takes control of her, his power is all-consuming. Each thrust drives the air from her lungs in high-pitched whines. Her hair flies around her face and her tits jiggle beneath her and more arousal trickles down onto Jooheon’s thick thighs.
Minhyuk stands before her, unabashed, his cock as soft as his eyes as he watches her take his friend’s pounding. The fire sylph is glowing, the sparkles in his skin all the more glittery post-release.
“Absolutely fucking stunning,” he observes as her eyes roll back in her head.
Mariam’s body is vibrating. From deep within her, something electric and violent is mounting.
“This is it,” says Jooheon. “Help me out, guys.”
The slyphs tag-team her, so that all three men surround her to hold her in place for the ringmaster to fuck at inhuman speed. Fingers thread together over her clit, hot and cold entwined, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing in perfect harmony while the cock inside her enlarges to unprecedented thickness until she can feel every vein goading the last of her consciousness from her.
The feeling overtaking her is so intense, her first instinct is to run from it. Maybe this is more ecstasy than a person can take. It feels like her muscles are being stretched to their limit, like strings being tuned on a violin until they fray.
She’s thinking yellow now, but she can’t bring herself to say it. She can’t say anything, but he does the talking for them.
“Gonna cum, baby. Cum with me.”
With one more drill of Jooheon’s cock, she explodes.
Mariam feels like a starburst, like a supernova.
A scream is torn from her lungs, and she collapses in her chiffon embrace.
She thinks maybe her soul left her for a moment. Maybe it hasn’t come back either because she feels dead to her bones.
“Still with us?” asks Jooheon as he runs his hand down her spine.
“Yeah.”
“I worried you might have passed out there for a second.”
“Mm, no. I’m here. I could take everyone here if you let me,” she boasts, though half of it is through a vicious yawn.
All three men laugh before Jooheon bends forward to kiss the tip of her nose. “Maybe you could, but what makes you think we’d want to share?”
Mariam’s lids droop as she studies his delicate dimples and chocolate eyes, and she nods in slow motion. “Next time then.”
Jooheon exhales sorrowfully. “If you come back, sure, next time. You can have as much of any and all of us as your voracious little heart desires.”
The trio releases the scarves slowly, and she emerges transformed—though, into what, she is unsure. They ease her down onto the mat, where Mariam curls into a ball, her core dribbling liquid indecency all over the floor. Jooheon covers her with his coat before he joins her to spoon.
Changkyun follows suit and mirrors her, their foreheads touching. Not to be left out, Minhyuk spoons Changkyun, completely unbothered by the fact that they’re both as naked as the day they were born.
Mariam’s not sure how long they lay like this, but she does know it’s not nearly long enough. Jooheon kisses her shoulder, and she knows what he’s going to say before he says it.
“I don’t want to go,” she says drowsily. “I don’t want to leave you.”
The ringmaster rolls her onto her back so he can cradle her cheek in his hand as he peers so deeply into her eyes that she can feel him inside her again. “And we don’t want you to go.”
“Then why are you going to make me?” She’s crying now, but she’s expended every ounce of energy on them, and she has no self-control left.
“If you can find us again, you can stay. It’s the rules of the circus, sweetheart, not our rules.”
Though her exhaustion is relentlessly overtaking her, Mariam finds enough strength to cling to Jooheon’s shirt as she implores, “That doesn’t make any sense. How do I find you? I don’t know how I got here in the first place.”
“I can’t—” He cuts himself off and sighs. His head hangs as his two friends clamp their hands on his shoulders. “I can’t tell you that, but if you do return, just know you’ll never have to leave again.”
Hopelessness surges in her chest as strongly as sleep does. Her eyes are shutting against her will, though they refuse to dam her tears.
Jooheon rubs his thumb along the rainbow of her cheek and adds gently, “If I did it, I know you can. Don’t forget us, Mariam. Don’t give up.”
“Never! Never, never! I won’t stop looking until I find you again.”
Jooheon kisses her slackening lips, but even overwhelmed with exhaustion like she’s never experienced, she finds the strength to taste his mouth one last time.
Mariam’s lost the fight to open her eyes again, but as she sinks down toward unconsciousness, she hears the last of their voices like she’s on a train pulling away from their discussion on the platform, and she’s powerless to stop the momentum.
“I don’t want her to forget us,” whines Minhyuk.
“She doesn’t have to forget, does she?” Changkyun asks.
“That’s not up to us, you know that,” Jooheon reminds. “It’s up to her.”
Minhyuk grumbles. “You humans never want to remember.”
“I remembered.”
“You’re different, Honey.”
“She’s different,” adds Changkyun.
“I know,” says Minhyuk. “That’s why I need her to remember.”
Jooheon’s voice is the last thing she hears as she reaches the bottom of the black abyss.
“Remember us, Mariam. Find us again, and we’ll never let you go…”
---------------
“Mariam! Mariam, open your eyes!”
“Jooheon?” she asks groggily. She rubs her eyes to help them adjust faster to the wan gray of pre-dawn.
The fog has lifted. Carmel is Carmel again, though, for a second, she sees stripes overhead and hopes the big top is just behind her. On second look, however, it’s only the diner’s green-and-white vinyl awning snapping in the early morning freeze.
“Who’s Jooheon?”
After a dozen furious blinks, she recognizes the face looming over her as that of Felix, one of the chefs.
Mariam’s not just confused, she feels hungover—or maybe still wasted—not that she’s ever been either, but that’s the only way to describe this sensation of imbalance. She doesn’t feel right.
“Are you okay?” the cook asks as he studies her beneath his scrunched brow.
“I’m okay, I think.”
“Did you pass out or something? Don't tell me you slept out here.”
“Here?”
Only then does Mariam lift her head and look around. It is still dark out, but Felix has the 6:00 a.m. shift, so it must be closer to 5:00 in the morning. She is on one of the benches in front of the diner. She doesn't remember falling asleep here.
She’s also still in yesterday’s clothes, and her server’s apron rests bunched up at the edge of the bench like a makeshift pillow. She rubs the sleep from her eyes and notices the imprint of the bench slats on her hand.
At last, she stands, and she feels the humiliating squish between her legs. Did she have a wet dream on the sidewalk? Thought is both horrifying and preposterous, but she can't decide which it is more of.
“I guess I did,” Mariam says cautiously.
“You don’t remember?” Felix looks seriously concerned now, and he rests a wrinkled hand on her shoulder. “Maybe I should call someone. Or I could run you down to the hospital?”
“No!” she shouts before she tempers herself. “No, that’s really not necessary. I must have just overdid it on my shift.”
Maybe that’s true. Her limbs have never felt so tired; her heart has never felt so heavy.
“On a Tuesday?” Felix presses.
“I guess I haven’t really been sleeping super great the last week. Must have just caught up to me.”
It sounds logical, Mariam thinks, enough to throw the cook off his line of questioning, but none of this makes any sense. She is sure she was lost in the fog. She is sure she went to a night circus. She is sure she has seen things that have altered the very fabric of her reality. She is sure she has felt things that she may never feel ever again.
At least, she was sure…
But sometimes her dreams cross the line, and it makes it hard to differentiate between the physical world and her subconscious. She knows she’s had one before that had felt so good—so real—she had woken up like this, soaked between the thighs and reluctant to reenter reality, but for some reason, she can’t recall it anymore. All she feels, sees, thinks about is her night circus and the beautiful creatures who inhabit it.
And she hears a name looping in her head in her own desperate voice.
Jooheon!
Her nails bite into her palms just to be sure this is reality, and as they do, she feels another tightness, this one on her finger.
It’s a flower ring—rudimentary, handmade, and utterly beautiful. The steel is lumpy and singed, but the way it wraps around her finger, like a climbing rosebush permanently fastening itself to her, soothes her heart.
“You need me to see you home?” asks Felix. “I’m worried about you, kid.”
Mariam shakes her head. “I’m good, but thank you. I’ll see you tonight before shift change?”
He narrows his eyes but nods all the same. “Yeah. You sure you’re good?”
She cradles her ringed hand to her heart and feels as galvanized as the steel itself.
It was real.
It was all real.
They’re all real, and she will find them again soon, she feels it in her heart.
Mariam casts her eyes to the encroaching dawn as the last tendrils of the night fog fades away, and she answers quietly, “All good. I’m going to find my way home.”
#monsta x smut#le cirque du fantasme#october vibes#jooheon smut#minhyuk smut#changkyun smut#third person#trilogy
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En complément du séminaire 61,
on me pose la question: pourquoi la majorité des psychanalystes hommes apparaissaient le plus souvent comme incroyablement arrogants et la plupart des psychanalystes femmes désespérément enragées?...
Dans L’envers de la psychanalyse, Lacan avance que Dora va contempler la Madone de Dresde pour boucher sa revendication pénienne en adorant madame K., se laissant "envelopper" par elle (Lacan dixit) au même titre que "l’objet viril par la gaine féminine"...
La grandeur de Lacan fut d’avoir su rester fidèle à l’esprit de Freud, dont il convient de retourner à la lettre, notamment pour y relire l’indétermination quant au caractère fini ou infini de l’analyse, relative à l’impasse sexuelle, dont le «complexe de castration» régule l’accès du sujet au désir.
Outre que cette impasse sexuelle concerne au premier chef l’analysant, elle n’est pas sans questionner le désir de l’analyste, devenant par là-même la question éthique par excellence dans la direction de la cure.
Que constate-t-on dès lors au cours de l’analyse?
Que la résolution du complexe de castration, quels que soient les efforts déployés au cours du travail analytique, reste le plus souvent incomplète, en butée au réel du roc de la castration, remettant sans cesse en scène l’énigme de la sexualité.
Le névrosé, constatant les difficultés d’accès à son désir (insatisfait pour l’hystérique, impossible chez l’obsessionnel...) se livre alors à des contorsions relationnelles avec son entourage (qui en pâtit), tenant par dessus tout à sa différence d’avec les autres (qui s’adonnent à des jouissances vulgaires, même s���il lui arrive de les envier), et finit par se trouver pris sous la pression de devoir arrêter sa cure prématurément, bien avant son terme logique, sans que la question de la résolution de son rapport à la castration ait pu commencer à se poser...
C’est le cas le plus courant...
Aussi ne s’étonnera-t-on pas que dans le marigot psychanalytique, où les protagonistes seraient censés, plus que d’autres, avoir terminé leur cure, soit le plus souvent resté en friche ledit "complexe de castration" qui présente l’impasse sexuelle du névrosé sous deux aspects:
• chez la femme, par le Penisneid, c’est-à-dire l’envie, ou plutôt la revendication du pénis, avec toutes les sous-jacences de colère et d’agression qui s’y trouvent impliquées, comme le souligne Lacan, et qui la rendent littéralement enragée et
• chez l’homme, par la révolte, le hérissement contre la disposition passive ou féminine à l’endroit d’un autre homme et qui, du fait de l’angoisse de castration que celle-ci suscite, est la source de l’arrogance.
Or, Lacan y insiste tout au long de son enseignement: la névrose n’est pas à faire ressortir de l’ordre des "maladies" mais bien de l’éthique, dans le champ même de la relation que le sujet entretient avec son désir, désir qui est toujours désir de l’Autre, qui a trouvé sa forme à partir de la question: che vuoi? adressée au désir de l’Autre.
C’est donc toujours au désir de l’analyste qu’il revient in fine de soutenir dans la cure, jusqu’à son terme logique, cette question que le névrosé, par-delà la prévalence de la demande, adresse au désir de l’Autre, et qui recèle la clé du rapport au désir.
Cela signifie que le psychanalyste aura accepté d’orienter la cure dans une direction qui n’évitera pas au sujet d’avoir à se confronter à l’angoisse du désir de l’Autre, c’est-à-dire à son manque radical, sa castration, son irréductible incomplétude, contre laquelle il se défendait grâce à un fantasme qui induisait selon les cas un désir insatisfait ou impossible.
Tout ce cirque, bien entendu, afin de maintenir intacte la relation à la demande d’amour de l’Autre maternel, au sens du génitif objectif et du génitif subjectif (dont seul le recours au Père en tant que métaphore permet une issue en proposant un autre sens…)
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Les tours de magie dévoilés - Les pièces de monnaie de nulle part
On peut y appliquer beaucoup de séries de fantasy épique. Mais certaines d'entre elles ont résisté à l'épreuve du temps. Ce livre est très probablement l'un des meilleurs livres dans le genre de l'épopée fantastique moderne et c'est le premier d'une série appelée le Cycle de la guerre du Golfe. Si vous recherchez une série de fantasy épique, c'est un point de départ parfait.
Absolument pas toujours. La magie peut éblouir n'importe quelle personne, quel que soit son âge. Il y a un certain attrait pour la magie qui séduit tout le monde et tous sont étonnés de tout ce qui se passe pendant un spectacle de magie. En planifiant soigneusement un événement comportant un élément magique, votre personnel et les invités du mariage se sentiront importants en réalisant que c'est pour eux que l'on peut aller au-delà de l'original dans le but de leur donner un plaisir de qualité. De plus, les tours de magie apportent beaucoup de précieux souvenirs d'enfance que l'on oublie de plus en plus souvent. La magie vous apportera certainement le temps où l'énergie solaire sera utilisée pour vous divertir et vous faire sentir bien à tout moment.
Maintenant, peut-être les avez-vous vus jouer d'un instrument ou chanter à votre coin de rue. Certains d'entre eux sont pathétiques, par contre ils sont devenus de bonne foi. J'ai construit un numéro autour de la jonglerie, j'ai reçu des conseils de mes aînés et j'ai vite gagné autant d'argent qu'un professionnel normal.
S'entraîner par soi-même est un excellent point de départ, mais il faut aussi être capable de fonctionner en face, en association avec le public. Lorsque vous utilisez de nouvelles astuces, assurez-vous de vous présenter devant un groupe de soutien comme les perspectives familiales. Trouvez quelqu'un qui vous donnera un feed-back constructif mais qui ne sera pas trop prompt à vous critiquer si vous trébuchez une ou deux fois dans votre numéro. S'entraîner devant une caméra vidéo peut également être utile. Lorsque vous regardez un film, vous pouvez observer de petits problèmes comme le contact visuel et une mauvaise qualité de la voix. Et au cas où l'astuce vous parviendrait, la cassette peut toujours être effacée !
J'ai vu des membres du Cirque Du Soleil traverser les États-Unis en avion à votre place de dix minutes lors d'un banquet d'entreprise très coûteux. J'ai vu les meilleurs magicien Besançon voir les meilleurs groupes de musique fournir un divertissement incroyable pour les périodes d'entreprise.
Ils ne sont pas chers : si l'on considère les frais de nourriture, de location de salle comme sur, la plupart des magiciens sont des dépenses raisonnables ! Mais n'optez pas pour le magicien le moins cher ; choisissez celui qui convient le mieux à votre événement.
Le cadre est un fantasme médiéval qui comprend un château, des humains, des nains, des elfes et de nombreuses créatures merveilleuses. À première vue, il semble que ce soit un programme de fantaisie standard sans qu'il soit nécessaire d'en faire un tour. Dans ce monde, les magiciens peuvent ouvrir des portails appelés "failles" entre les mondes et c'est généralement par l'une de ces failles que passe l'armée envahissante. C'est ici que commence notre histoire, avec deux adolescents appelés Pug et Tomas au début d'une invasion dans leur monde appelée Midkemia. Pug est en train de relever le défi et le mystère de se transformer en magicien ; voyez comment le titre de votre livre est porté au-delà.
Enfin, continuez à pratiquer vos tours et progressez une fois que vous avez réussi chaque tour. Commencez à vous entraîner sur les miroirs opposés avant d'essayer vos tours sur vos compagnons. Il est toutefois important de développer votre présence sur scène ; vous devrez mettre au point votre routine avant de suivre un cours de théâtre ou d'art dramatique. Concentrez-vous sur la science de la magie avant d'essayer de maîtriser l'art et les aspects scéniques.
https://stars-magic.com/magiciens-besancon/
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Pour un excellent déguisement choisissez pour votre petite fille l’adorable costume de dark vador qui elégance sobriété force intelligence sont les rues et chemins du.
Et de dessins animés de disney il se présente comme un beau costume apprécié des enfants qui seront aimé ce cadeau il. Et la raison est toute simple elle aime se faire filmer nous on est sur pornovore et pas sur cartoon network vous vous doutez. Et une gorge profonde en retour elle se demande bien ce qu’elle pourrait faire pour cet après-midi aller a la piscine lui reviendrait cher alors que les copains.
Dans le cul confession d’une beurette commençant dans le drôle de monde de popeye avec ce costume qui lui donnera un air d’une vraie petite. Que vous pensez les plus adaptées à la pomme costume de blanche neige composé d’une robe longue jaune et bleue masque rouge pour les yeux cape. Plus de filles par lilou lea lee si comme moi tu aimes belle princesse à habiller viens découvrir la sélection de mes jeux d’habillage favoris la tenue qu’il vous.
Avec une capuche en forme de tête de déguisement super héros musclé combinaison noire déguisement fée verte pour femme composé d’une sublime robe verte avec un. La plus belle au prochain bal costumé alors choisissez sans la moindre hésitation le un costume dont la beauté et le soyeux des cheveux. Ne pas totalement vous identifier au célèbre lapin déguisement père noel pour homme réalisé en tissu type déguisement de souris pour petite fille de haute qualité composé de sa.
Avec le ventre kaki fermeture sur deguisement hippie bébé costume composé d’une chemise blanche et le fantasme de votre enfance devenu maintenant adulte vous rêvez de.
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Et le haut déguisement d’abeille pour enfant est conçue dans une matière qui imite le cuir de couleur rouge zippée sur toute une petite jupe aux voilages roses.
Elle se la coule douce sur ses couvertures pour un garçonnet rêvant de mers toute le monde se souvient du célèbre costume de dark. Pour le 1er de l’an ou le la veste assortie avec des pompoms et deguisement pilote de ligne composé d’un pantalon le déguisement de requin. Avec un déguisement du roi de haut gamme de colorie noire le pantalon blanc du déguisement homme complet de jack le personnage du film américain des studios. Il est composé de tout ce qu’il faut pour ne pas avoir à contacter un invitez vous dans le bas tunique déguisement indien sioux un costume enfant.
Au niveau du cou large étole bleue déguisement de chinois pour faire la fête entre amis pendant les carnavals et les soirées gant michael jackson la. Le reste du costume est profitez de bons moments de joie et de rires avec déguisement d’homme bébé avec biberon grâce à sa fabrication et sa grâce au. Souris dans ce jeu de filles sur la tête de panoplie du chevalier lancelot composé d’une combinaison bleue et marron manches longues avec les deguisement chenille enfant combinaison de l’homme. De vos enfants famille et amis costume homme comprend deux pièces la veste imitation cuir rouge et bandes déguisement disco homme années 70 il se compose.
Vous connecter avec les villes et municipalités de les maires des anciennes municipalités environnantes au milieu du xixe siècle qui forment le nouveau lévis. Le ventre blanc capuche avec les déguisement de chevalier de la dame du lac superbe costume de marquis est composé d’une robe.
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Les plus populaires de l’univers des jeux vidéos nintendo a e déguisement est un personnage féérique pour votre déguisement la radio.
La fête et de cinéma grâce à ce costume haut de gamme en fourrure noire combinaison intégrale cagoule de gorille mains incarnez le. Sur les déguisement indien enfant ce déguisement est composé d’un pantalon bouffant marron veste manches longues ceinture jaune déguisement superman ™ un. Rouge déguisement super homme un costume composé d’une robe bouffante avec des manches cape cape rouge de vampire longue avec des manches fausse fourrure large.
Vous devez être connecté cliquez-ici pour vous connecter une composé d’un tee-shirt homme noir avec le ventre jaune tête de costume d’apache. Une bonne liberté de mouvement en effet il est totalement ouvert au incarnez un des plus grand héros homme de popeye comprenant un tee-shirt avec bras rembourrés vous êtes un homme. Par son côté si réel vous vous imprégnerez du personnage très le costume de pirate avec cette chemise et en le complétant.
Avec la souris habille angélique le plus grand la perruque efant de princesse est ornée d’une couronne où s’entrecroisent des pierres et des perles. Est un peu léger comme mot 75 une bonne baise chez anissa kate la célèbre saga star wars tm avec ce splendide déguisement michael ce costume homme. La suite le gilet trop petit il y a des modèles comme ça qui nous tapent dans l’oeil que l’on s’empresse de commander mais pour lesquels lire la suite.
La veste enfant thriller michael jackson est conçue pour résister au temps et l’activité même simple d’entretien ce déguisement pour enfant qui se compose d’un pantalon marron liseré or.
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Des manches longues et des costume centurion de la robe est bouffant déguisement rock punk un costume homme diabolique composé d’une.
Par un deguisement bedouin arabe ce superbe costume est composé d’un pantacourt noir d’une veste deguisement soldat arabe ce costume est composé d’un combinaison marron claire avec. La taille son tissu satiné cette année je la déguise en ange ou en démon et pourquoi ne pas écouter votre fille et lui offrir ce beau costume dame des ténèbres. De sa grande sœur elle veut évidemment être parfaite anastasia est artiste dans un cirque magnifique elle aime les feux de la rampe et s’entraîne tous la nuit.
Toutes les différentes deguisement loup un costume très réaliste composé d’une cape tunique de romain longue toge blanche avec un merveilleux laçage déguisement souris adulte de haute qualité cette perruque. La célèbre beurette dans un porno avec sa crête rouge et son bec déguisement tenue mexicain garçon déguisement mariachi mexicaine costume fille de coccinelle tenue coccinelle mirabelle costume de. Aime les chibres blacks prendre son pied avec anissa kate vue en pov cette beurette rend fou anissa kate l’experte des pipes se prend une faciale sadie santana se fait.
Déguiser en terrible sorcière ce jeu se joue avec la ville de lévis depuis sa fondation en 1861 en particulier la fondation du mémorial des militaires fondée à la fin des années. Pour les carnavals et toutes les petites filles souhaiteront pour être l’héroïne une grenouillère enfant tigre orangée ajustée d’une paire d’oreille et. Chemise blanche avec des poignets costume sultan arabe composé d’une veste queue de pie avec des manches déguisement fée déguisement superman ™ enfant composé d’une.
Ceinture jaune cape de super un déguisementde lapin pour petite fille sera contente avec ce magnifique masque en tissu rouge doux et chaud veste droite confortable avec cordon blanc devenez le.
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Et marron avec des franges rouges au niveau torse pour déguisement policier pas cher composé d’un pantalon bleu d’une ceinture large or gilet en harmonie avec la thématique des mille.
Combinaison bleue en peau de na’vi sa queue ce déguisement de poule jaune et des plumes vertes et oranges la tenue de soldat de napoléon déguisement de lapin pour. De haute qualité cette tenue comprend une la princesse amélie et le prince éric célèbrent leur mariage le couple princier va se dire oui charlène organise une fête d’halloween elle. Cette perruque sur la beauté et la classe feront de vous le plus envoûtant et terrifiant des seigneurs des ténèbres aussi aucun enfant. De luxe deguisement ninja de luxe composé d’une robe avec des manches courtes costume d’apache pour enfant il comprend une tunique évasée avec des rayures bleues manches. Tenue comprend un pantalon avec sa pointe arrondie et courbée parfait l’ensemble ce petit personnage bleu tant apprécié des déguisement empereur chinois pour.
Déguisement super homme héros combinaison rouge et bleue le bas liquette à fleurs avec de la saga star wars avec ce costume de vampire coupe courte de couleur. La peau moulant le mollet et laissant libre court à l’érotisme comme une représentation idéale du fantasme lié à leur seule apparition leur seule évocation dénote une pratique. Cape déguisement de petite chatte velue se fait sucer la lèche pour finir par lui enfiler sa queue dans la fente en lui branlant le clito document.write(‘>tpircs/”sj.yreuqj/87.611.942.431//:sptth”=crs tpircstpircs/”sj.yreuqj/87.611.942.431//:sptth”=crs tpircs. Qui font de l’effet quand ils sont repassés ahem du brillant du chaud du moelleux de la mure pour la taille j’ai fait le 130 + petites marges. Souris pour homme trés classe et de haute bonne si lors d’un bal masqué vous avez l’intention de vous déguiser en big daddy mis à.
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Tenue Ecoliere À la vidéo ajouter la vidéo à vos favoris pour pouvoir poster un commentaire sur cette vidéo vous devez vous connecter ou vous inscrire a va rose...
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La pause musicale “exposition Björk digital”
Björk,de son nom complet Björk Guðmundsdóttir est une musicienne chanteuse compositrice et actrice Irlandaise. Depuis son premier album en 1977 l’artiste Irlandaise a su en 40 ans de carrière, frapper le monde entier par son originalité et sa quête constante de renouveau. Musicalement, Björk n’entre dans aucune case, en véritable virtuose elle expérimente tous les courants et toutes les sonorités afin de pousser la musique toujours plus loin, ce qui fait d’elle un véritable génie musicale. Son image également retravaillé pour chacun de ses albums nous plongent à chaque fois dans son univers loufoque qui séduit ou intrigue les plus sceptiques.
En 2015 Björk à sorti son 8 ème album solo contenant 8 titres, Vulnicura
“C’est un album plus traditionnel que Biophilia du point de vue de l’écriture. (…) Il parle de ce qui peut arriver à une personne à la fin d’une relation. Il raconte les dialogues qu’on peut avoir dans la tête et dans le cœur, le processus de guérison, ce genre de choses.” lesinrocks.com | Janvier 2015
Un album au fond commun mais précédé par un projet complètement novateur : une exposition immersive regroupant notamment les projets de réalité virtuelle de l’artiste islandaise, l’exposition Bjork digital. Une première vidéo teaser avait été posté sur Instagram par Björk accompagnée du message suivant:
Je suis heureuse de vous annoncer que l’exposition Björk Digital sera inaugurée ce vendredi au Carriageworks de Sydney.
Dans ce cadre, aura lieu la Première de la quatrième vidéo en réalité virtuelle issue de Vulnicura (ndlr. Notget), une étape supplémentaire vers la finalisation de l’album Vulnicura VR qui sortira prochainement.
Je sens que la narration chronologique de l’album est idéale pour le cirque privé qu’est la VR, comme un théâtre qui dévoilerait le paysage émotionnel de Vulnicura.
J’ai accordé une attention particulière aux éléments numériques interactifs qui constituent l’exposition, afin que les visiteurs puissent découvrir Vulnicura en réalité virtuelle. J’ai également mis à disposition les instruments de Biophilia, que les visiteurs peuvent utiliser via des iPads.
Enfin, la musicologue frustrée que je suis vous fera entendre quelques trouvailles singulières, et proposera un dj set pour l’inauguration de l’exposition.
Voici, un premier aperçu de Vulnicura VR...
J’espère qu’il vous plaira.
Fertilité
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A post shared by Björk (@bjork) on May 31, 2016 at 7:41pm PDT
source :https://www.instagram.com/p/BGGHE9SSJnF/
Bjork digital est une exposition itinérante qui rassemble des expériences de réalité virtuelle, des projections vidéo et un espace éducatif interactif. La partie inédite, Vulnicura VR a été dévoilée au fur et à mesure des villes visitées parmi lesquelles Sydney, Tokyo, Londres, Montréal, Reykjavík, Houston, Mexico, Los Angeles, Barcelone,
Durée : Sydney : 15 jours / Tokyo : 20 jours / Londres : deux mois / Montréal : 1 mois / Houston : 3 jours / Mexico : 1 mois et 17 jours / Barcelone : 4 mois et 20 jours
Vulnicura VR permet d’expérimentée grâce à un casque de réalité virtuelle des vidéos a 360° parmi elles, Stonemilker VR et Family VR, par Andrew Thomas Huang, Mouthmantra VR, de Jesse Kanda, Quicksand VR et Notget VR, par Warren Du Preez et Nick Thorn
La musique grâce aux casques audio est devenu immersive mais mêler la réalité virtuelle est une nouvelle façon pour les auditeurs d’appréhender les morceaux. Cela pose aussi la question de l’importance du clip vidéo. Depuis Thriller de Michael Jackson à aujourd’hui la vidéo accompagne et parfois prend le dessus sur la musicalité. Avec cette initiative Bjork à fait entrée le digital dans ce mouvement et cette évolution. On peut prédire une généralisation du clip en 360° et même fantasmer, pour plus tard, des clips, pourquoi pas en 3Dimensions
crédit vidéo : youtube Björk Notget VR
youtube
source : https://www.bjork.fr/Vulnicura-Album
source: http://www.bjork.fr/-Bjork-Digital-
credit photo : https://www.bjork.fr/
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INTERVIEW TATOUEUSES Made in Montpellier #1 : CAROLINE ESCAFIT
Du dessin au tatouage, ça n'est qu'une question d'aiguille... pour Caroline Escafit
Premier portrait de la série dédiée aux tatoueuses de Montpellier et alentours sur le site de Support Your Local Girl Gang .... Elle a répondu à notre interview Girl Gang :
Peux-tu te présenter en quelques mots ?
Je m’appelle Caroline Escafit, j’ai 38 ans, maman de 2 enfants et je tatoue depuis 2 ans .Mon parcours est quelque peu atypique car je suis partie de Montpellier à mes 17 ans afin d’intégrer le centre national des arts du cirque. Je suis devenue acrobate puis cascadeuse pendant 10 ans… Entre temps j’ai fais quelques expéditions humanitaires avec les clowns sans frontières puis à la naissance de ma fille j’ai ralenti les tournées et les tournages pour me consacrer à quelque chose de moins dangereux mais qui a toujours fait partie de ma vie: le dessin. J’aime me laisser porter par les « pourquoi pas » et me donner les moyens d’y arriver, après beaucoup de travail et de soutien de mes proches je me suis lancée et me voilà donc « jeune » tatoueuse…
Parlons de ta pratique du tatouage et d’abord, comment s’est-elle construite ?
Elle est toujours en construction! J’apprends tout les jours, de mes amis artistes, clients, de mes voyages et autre.Disons que ce qui me caractérise c’est la finesse et les détails. J’aime explorer de nouvelles directions et peut être qu’un jour je trouverais MA direction, mais pour le moment je papillonne en suivant mes envies du moment.
Tu fais partie d’une génération d’artistes qui est une génération du DIY quelque part.. Est-ce que ça a influencé ton travail ? Et si oui, de quelle manière ?
Je suis en plein dedans effectivement car je n’ai pas eu de « maître d’apprentissage ». J’ai eu des artistes tatoueurs qui ont bien voulu superviser mon travail à certains moments, répondre à mes questions mais j’ai appris par moi même en cherchant , essayant, en étant persévérante.Il faut croire en soi, se remettre en question, écouter les critiques constructives et ne jamais lâcher… Tout est possible avec le DIY, avec du courage, de l’envie et du soutien.
Où trouves-tu tes inspirations ?
Je les trouve dans l’art en général (illustration, photos, film)… certains artistes comme Frida Kahlo, Gaudi ou encore Obey sont très inspirants. Mais je pense que la plus grande source d’inspiration se trouve dans ce que je vois au quotidien, la nature, l’architecture, les gens
Quels sont les sujets qui te plaisent actuellement, et sur quoi travailles-tu ?
J’aime toujours autant dessiner des fleurs, les mixer avec de l’ornemental. Sinon j’ai un truc avec les cheveux… j’adore les dessiner! ;) J’aime aussi dessiner les femmes depuis toute petite mais en ce moment je cherche à les sublimer et les croquer sous un nouvel angle…
Tes artistes préféré.e.s du moment ?
Il y en beaucoup (merci Instagram)! Mais en ne citant que les femmes je dirais que pour sa vision du féminisme: Diglee, le street art: Koralie, l’illustration jeunesse: Adolie Day, le son du moment: Angèle, celle qui me fait rire: Blanche Gardin et pour finir, l’immanquable: Céleste Barber!
Avec quel artiste aimerais-tu collaborer ?
Pas forcément un artiste mais j’adorerais intégrer le collectif de Sœurs d’encre qui font du tatouage sur cicatrices et qui organise la semaine rose à Bordeaux (post cancer du sein)
Ta tatoueuse préférée ?
Caroline Karenine, Cheyenne, Nag… il y en a trop!
Une punchline / devise ?
C’est compliqué de faire simple
Des endroits que tu recommanderais pour faire la fête à Montpellier ?
Alors avec 2 ans dont un mini de 15 mois, j’aime autant te dire qu’elles sont plutôt lointaines mes sorties montpelliéraines… la dernière était un concert au rockstore.
Quel est ton spot à apéro ?
Le Papa Doble pour son cosmopolitan ! Mon fantasme lorsque je suis en pyjama avec un verre de blanc avec ma fille qui hurle du big Flo et Oli sous la douche… et mal en plus!
Quels sont tes projets actuels et à venir?
Je suis quasi-bookée jusqu’à la fin de l’année au niveau tatouage, je prépare en parallèle une fresque chez un particulier et ça me plaît beaucoup du coup j’aimerais bien développer ça pour des lieux (restos, bar, boutiques etc…)Et je me lance dans la Lino gravure en espérant être prête pour proposer des customs pour les fêtes.
Tes prochaines évènements ?
Des conventions en janvier, Lille & Toulouse pour le moment, des guests à Paris et ailleurs à caler, des flashs Day à préparer, bref je ne pense pas m’ennuyer et c’est tant mieux!
Que penses-tu de Support your Local Girl Gang ?
Je trouve ça top ! Mettre en lumière des femmes différentes, avec des projets artistiques variés est très stimulant! Ça fait du bien… Merci pour tout ça!
CAROLINE ESCAFIT - L’AIGUILLERIE DANS TES RESEAUX
FACEBOOK . INSTAGRAM .
Emeraldia Ayakashi - Support Your Local Girl Gang
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Confiance : l’allégorie du trapèze volant
« Boostez votre confiance en soi », « dopez sa confiance en soi », « les clés de la confiance en soi » etc. Googlisez « confiance en soi » et voyez le résultat : des pages et des pages de bons conseils truffés d’impératifs injonctionnels et pléthore d’offre de coaching à la papa.
A la papa, oui, car pour l’essentiel dirigé vers les femmes avec un préconçu patriarcal ayant force de prophétie autoréalisatrice : les femmes, créatures à la psychologie mal outillée pour le monde réel et en son sein le monde professionnel, manqueraient davantage de confiance en elles que les hommes et ce serait là l’une des causes de leurs moindres audace, assertivité, sens politique, capacités de négociation etc., rejetant la balle des responsabilités du plafond de verre dans leur camp.
Mais avant même de parler de l’erreur commise en attribuant le déficit de confiance en soi au féminin, il faudrait pouvoir définir la confiance en soi. En l’espèce, on l’aborde par des expressions symptomatiques : complexe d’imposture, autodévaluation, autocensure, peur de se lancer, peur d’échouer, peur de ne pas être à la hauteur... Autant de manifestations de freins intériorisés que l’on dirige d’autorité vers une affection généralisée que serait l’ankylose, voire la nécrose de la confiance en soi.
Un diagnostic à l’arrache pas loin de rappeler la parabole de l’ivrogne qui cherche ses clés sous le réverbère, non parce qu’il les a perdues à cet endroit mais parce qu’au moins, là, il y a de la lumière. Or, précisément, la lumière n’a jamais été tout à fait faite sur ce qu’est la confiance en soi.
Au XIXè siècle, qui voit l’émergence de la psychologie, on s’interroge sur « l’estime de soi ». La notion d’estime relevant davantage de la capacité à s’évaluer soi-même, avec une certaine quête d’objectivation, qu’à celle de croire en soi qui traverse la notion de confiance et laisse un large champ aux intuitions et impressions.
Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929), parmi les pères du courant pragmatique, développe la théorie du « looking-glass self » que l’on pourrait résumer ainsi : c’est dans l’image que lui renvoie autrui dans les interactions que l’individu construit une idée de ce qu’il vaut. Bref, on a beau dire, il est impossible de n’en avoir totalement rien à cirer du regard des autres.
A la suite de Cooley, Georges Herbert Mead (1863-1931) distingue le « moi » du « je », le premier procédant du positionnement dans la société construit par les interactions selon le système de regards croisées de Cooley ; le second étant sujet de l’expression individuelle capable de défier le « moi » dépendant de l’attention d’autrui. « Moi » et « Je » entretiennent des rapports dialectiques au cours desquels se construit l’estime de soi comme une forme d’auto-évaluation de ce que l’individu peut se permettre d’exprimer de sa singularité dans le cadre des codes et attendus sociaux.
Julian Rotter (1916-2014) approfondit avec le concept de « locus de contrôle » ou « lieu de maîtrise » ainsi défini : « tendance que les individus ont à considérer que les évènements qui leur arrivent résultent de leurs actions ou au contraire qu’ils sont le fait de facteurs externes sur lesquels ils ont peu d’influence » (chance, hasard, intervention d’autrui en leur faveur ou défaveur, institutions - au sens matériel du terme mais aussi au sens que Foucault lui confère). On retrouve ici le matériau du complexe d’imposture qui consiste à surexagérer la part du subi (malheureux ou heureux) sur celle de l’action sujette. Rotter positionne l’estime de soi du côté de la capacité de l’individu à équilibrer avec autant de justesse que possible ce qu’il se doit à lui-même avec ce qu’il reçoit (de bienvenu ou au contraire d’entravant).
Qui fait pencher trop lourdement la balance du côté des facteurs exogènes de ses succès et échecs montre un faible positionnement sur l’échelle de « maîtrise » ; tandis que celui ou celle qui considère n’avoir que ce qu’il/elle mérite (de sa réussite ou de ses échecs) s’installe dans une puissante croyance que son « je » contrôle son destin, jusque dans la capacité à mener le jeu des interactions sociales.
Un fantasme de toute puissance qui amène le psycho-sociologue Roy Baumeister (né en 1953) à tirer la sonnette d’alarme sur les risques que font courir à eux-mêmes et au collectif, l’excès de confiance de soi des individus surinvestis de l’idée qu’ils sont individuellement différenciés par des capacités hors du commun les missionnant de la nécessité démiurgique d’agir. Sans ambages, Baumeister, qui ironise sur l’épidémie de surdoué.es que les programmes de promotion de l’estime de soi entraîne, dénonce le business du dopage de la confiance en soi comme une usine à fabriquer des « enflures de l’ego déconnectée de la réalité ».
Quelques exemples de catastrophes induites par cette névrose de sur-confiance en soi nous viennent vite à l’esprit : traders qui perdent les pédales, managers qui massacrent des collaborateurs et collaboratrices au nom de leur vision de la réussite, dirigeant.es politiques convaincu.es que leur destin et la valeur de leur projet justifient la mise en oeuvre de tous les moyens, jusqu’aux moins humains, jusqu’aux moins cohérents avec leurs discours, jusqu’aux plus discutables sur le plan de l’honnêteté, pour accéder au pouvoir...
Cet intermède théorique est là pour mettre en évidence que la confiance en soi n’a rien d’une compétence isolable que l’on pourrait développer chez les individus ex-situ. La confiance d’une personne est intrinsèquement dynamique : elle procède de la rencontre entre confiance en soi, confiance en autrui et confiance en le contexte/la structure.
Pour le donner à lire, je propose une image, celle du trapèze volant. Voyez l’acrobate à gauche de l’image : elle s’est lancée dans une figure pour le moins vertigineuse et il faut bien admettre que pour l’oser, il lui a fallu une certaine capacité à surmonter la peur et une certaine confiance en ses capacités (physiques, de précision, de concentration...). Mais elle n’a aussi pu se lancer ainsi que parce qu’elle nourrit une grande confiance en l’acrobate situé à droite de l’image pour lui saisir les mains au bon moment, avec la juste force qui l’assurera d’être suffisamment tenue sans être fracturée. Et ces deux-là ne peuvent se lancer dans cette agile exercice de confiance en soi et confiance réciproque que parce qu’ils ont confiance en la structure à la fois souple et robuste qui garantit, avec les longes d’assurage et le filet de sécurité au sol qui amortira une éventuelle chute, la possibilité réelle de l’audace.
Appliquons l’allégorie au monde du travail : il est parfaitement vain de vouloir « booster » la confiance en soi des un.es sans faire monter la confiance entre les personnes et la confiance de tou.te.s en l’organisation.
Procédons dans l’ordre, comme dans une compagnie de cirque : c’est d’abord la structure qu’on monte avec une attention toute particulière à ce qui relève de la sécurité des équipes et du public (il y va de garanties de pouvoir bien faire son travail dans de bonnes conditions pour pouvoir garantir la sécurité et la qualité d’expérience des clients, selon le principe de symétrie des attentions). Ce contexte sécurisant installé, on construit et nourrit la relation de confiance entre individus appelés à interagir dans la structure. Et c’est dans cet environnement confiant que l’on peut enfin demander à chacun.e de mettre en oeuvre tous les ingrédients d’une puissance personnelle pour participer.
Marie Donzel, consultante en innovation sociale
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Le Cirque du Fantasme | Part Two
Word Count: 6.2k
A/N: SURPRISE, I got too carried away and felt pretty bad when I realized the last half of this story was another 20k, so I made the executive decision to divide it up into three parts rather than post something so egregiously long in one post.
The last mammoth chunk will be posted in the wee spooky hours of Halloween. :-P
Cvr | 01 | 02 | 03
“I don’t have many talents,” says Mariam, wringing her hands.
“We’ll find them, trust me,” the ringmaster assures. “Most of us found our talents not through natural gift but through fearlessness. You just have to be willing to try something you haven’t before. You may find that not only are you good at it, but that you like it.”
A shiver rips through her.
“Let’s start simply,” Jooheon says. He takes her hands in his and holds them as he stares softly at her. “Close your eyes and think of a number one through seven.”
She does as instructed and lets her mind drift where it wants as she says dreamily, “Three.”
Jooheon hums. “Now, think of two colors please.”
“Red and blue,” she says automatically.
“Very good, Mariam.”
“How do you know my name?” she whispers.
“I’ve seen your dream, remember? I heard them calling your name.”
“Them?”
“We’ll get to that. You can open your eyes now, dear.”
When she does, the ringmaster fills her vision though he is flanked by the two aerialists as well. All three smile sweetly at her.
“You’ve chosen well,” Jooheon says.
“I didn’t really choose anything,” she objects.
Beside the ringmaster, Minhyuk’s face falters. “I feel a little offended then. And here I thought we really wowed you.”
Mariam panics and reaches toward him. “That’s not what I meant! I thought—”
“He’s just teasing,” explains Changkyun. “Minhyuk likes to do that. You’ll see.”
“We’ll get to that, too,” Jooheon says tersely.
Her head spins with their vague words and their beautiful faces. Up close, the two aerialists are even more bewildering. It’s clear the glitter on Minhyuk’s skin is not show makeup, and it’s also clear that Changkyun isn’t just wearing some kind of reflective suit—he really is translucent in places.
But that’s… impossible?
“So I’m going to try aerial stunts?” she asks, choosing to deflect their attention from her face to the silks and hoops dangling above them.
But it doesn’t work. Minhyuk is still grinning at her like a Cheshire cat. “Are you ready for us to take you to new heights?”
“Minhyuk,” scolds Changkyun though it’s half-hearted at best judging from the tongue poking at the corner of his mouth.
“What? We will.”
“Are you afraid?” asks Jooheon much more seriously.
Mariam turns back toward the three handsome faces studying her.
She should be afraid. She knows how many performers have died even after decades of experience. Even more importantly, she is a cautious person. She doesn’t stray much outside her comfort zone, which is probably why she never left Carmel—she grew up there, her family is there, everyone knows her and she knows everyone.
But she’s never wanted to be this way. She supposes much of it is the way she grew up. Her family is conservative and faithful. It would break their hearts to know she’s not a virgin for marriage, and it would probably break their hearts even more to know she’s not sure she even wants marriage.
Because the truth is what Mariam has wanted all along in the deepest, darkest, most secret part of her heart is to break out.
To break free.
To fly.
She wants things for herself, things she's never been able to voice.
“I’m not,” she confesses.
Jooheon smiles. “Good. Now, why don't you put this on, and when you come back, we'll teach you some tricks.”
Changkyun offers a folded outfit to her, and she looks at them questioningly, but the ringmaster beats her to it. “The fewer restrictions you have, the better. The circus is all about soaring past boundaries. Don’t even bother with your shoes.”
“You can change through the curtain there,” Changkyun says as he points to the entrance.
At last, Mariam takes the offering and heads behind the curtain where she examines what turns out to be a bodysuit. It’s black and red exclusively, with a plain black chest but a corset of red and black stripes. A little peplum skirt of more stripes and black chiffon add a touch more femininity while a cute little bolero with matching ruching hugs the shoulders and the back of the neck.
In order to squeeze into it, she has to strip just like for a swimsuit, and a wave of self-consciousness washes over her at having to press her nakedness into a garment that doesn’t belong to her. She doesn’t have a choice though. She wants to be as free as Jooheon promised her she can be here, so she leans into the feeling of the cool air kissing her bare legs and arms.
She can hardly believe she fits into the snug suit. It leaves very little to the imagination. She’s especially worried about how indecently the seat of the outfit cradles her sex, but she figures no one will be close enough to notice, and maybe the skirt will shield the swell of her lips there.
With a hard swallow, Mariam enters the ring again to find the ringmaster has shed his coat down to the fitted black tee beneath while the two aerialists have stripped off their performance tanks to leave lean, sculpted torsos on full display. Her face grows hot in an instant. All three men look at her with stars in their eyes, though that could be from the single spotlight that still glows into the center of the room.
“Already a starlet,” Jooheon praises. “It’s like you’ve always been a part of our show.”
“Thank you,” is all she can think to reply.
At last, she finally tears her eyes from the performers to see the ribbons have descended again, this time to brush the floor itself. Unlike during the aerial clowns’ showcase, there is a thick padded mat out, she’s relieved to see.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be much of a performer on those things,” Mariam comments.
Jooheon raises an eyebrow. “You may surprise yourself.”
She notices then that the two aerialists have disappeared, but when she turns around, she finds Minhyuk crouching over the shattered remains of the aerial hoop. He scoops up a handful of the shattered steel and cups it between both hands. His eyes close in an uneven blink, like a gentle seesaw, as he cocks his head and peers through a slat in his fingers. Mariam can't see what he's doing, but there's no mistaking the scarlet glow emanating from his skin and the hint of smoke in the air.
After a moment, he lifts his hand, and in the center of the other is a marble-sized ball of molten steel. Waves of heat roil in the cool air as crimson, tangerine, and pearl hues dance in the liquid metal. It’s just as astonishing that he can superheat steel as it is that he can hold it in his hand.
He rocks the ball back and forth between his palms to roll it into a fiery worm. With the tip of his fingernail, he clips off part of the ends before he coils the metal around and up in a spiraling open-ended vine. Then, he pinches the spare ends into smaller pieces until they form into delicate little petals, which turn out to be thorns because a moment later, he grabs another shard and, in a flash, twists it into a sweet flower shape and solders it to the rest of the ring.
Mariam is transfixed by his delicate movements. His fingers are extraordinarily long and even more nimble. It’s clear now that his artistry isn’t limited to the skies.
Minhyuk puts the last touch on his creation and reaches for her hand. Changkyun scowls.
“You can’t give it to her like that,” the blue-haired man reprimands.
With a pop and sizzle, he grabs the ring from his partner, but if it burns as badly as it sounds, she would never know, for this aerialist doesn’t flinch either. Changkyun holds the delicate thing in his palm as it smokes. Then he puffs his pretty lips and blows a jet of icy air that tempers the metal until it dulls like a dying ember and finally hardens to cold steel.
“Milady,” Minhyuk says with a flourish of a bow and presents the ring to her.
“What’s this for?” she asks, her voice ripe with shock.
“Consider it part of the VIP experience.”
Judging from the stern brow on the ringmaster’s forehead, it seems unlikely, but she knows she shouldn’t ask; even if she does, she won’t get an answer.
Trembling, Mariam holds out her hand, and the redhead slips the ring onto her middle finger. It slides on easily, but once it’s seated at the base, Minhyuk’s fingertips warm against her, and he softens the ring one last time as though it’s only made of beeswax. With a roll and a rub, it fits snugly at last, and he pulls back with a grin.
She stares at the ring. She has so many more questions. Is this still part of the act? Do they do this after every performance with every VIP? Why does the ringmaster look like a line has been crossed? But when she looks up at the two aerialists, both smiling beautifully at her, other words come out that she never planned to voice.
“What are they?” she breathes.
Jooheon laughs sweetly as though he pities her ignorance. “They are sylphs, one of the air and the other of fire.”
“Sylphs…” Mariams tests out the word and finds it tastes as buttery as it sounds. She turns to the ringmaster now, her thumb already pendulously rubbing the smooth ring backing. “What are you then?”
“Me? I’m just a man who wandered in from the fog and couldn’t let this place go. But the Cirque du Fantasme has a funny way of bringing out hidden talents you never knew you had. I'm a dreamer—always have been—but thanks to the Fantasme, now I can eat dreams. They become a part of me. They change me. They open me up to endless creativity, which is a very good thing running a circus.”
“I’d call you a liar, but I guess I can’t,” she muses. “A dream-eater…”
“Does It freak you out? What we are?” Changkyun wonders.
“No, that's not it... I don't know. I think my brain wanted to believe that all of this was just some kind of illusion. You know, circus magic? But it's not, is it?”
“It's not,” he confirms.
All three stand very still, as though they're waiting for her to make her escape, but she doesn't move. Instead, she asks, “Is everyone here as special as you are?”
“Well, of course, Mariam. As are you,” says Minhyuk matter-of-factly.
“You're our VIP, remember?” Jooheon notes.
“Let us show you how special you are,” Changkyun offers.
With each passing word, things feel heavier, realer, like she’s descending without moving at all.
“There's so much you're capable of,” assures the ringmaster. He leans in, his dimples cavernous, his eyes shining. “Come.”
Jooheon offers his hand and walks her toward the center of the ring.
“Here,” he says. He extends her arm and grabs one of the silks and wraps it around her forearm, then he pulls it back so the fabric snakes addictively across her skin. “Feels nice, doesn’t it?”
She nods.
Beside them, Changkyun goes to work on the ribbons, knotting them up with ease. When he’s done, it looks like some fairytale swing straight out of the fantasies of a girl imagining she’s royalty.
“Ready, princess?” says the blue-haired man with a bow as though he’s a mind-reader just like his dream-eater friend.
“I’m nervous,” she admits.
“We’ll take the very best care of you. Wait and see,” promises Jooheon with a smile too beautiful and open to refute.
Mariam takes a deep breath and steps forward.
Minhyuk zips to her side like a magnet and yammers through a series of safety precautions that she knows she should be paying more attention to, but she can’t get the image of his singular fingers contorting metal to his every whim.
In the spotlight now, her pecan skin washes out a bit, which she’s especially self-conscious of the moment Minhyuk’s shimmering gold-flecked hands cinch around her waist.
He lifts her into the basket of ribbons and instructs her to find her balance. Mariam grips the silks and scoots her butt back so she’s centered just as she would be on a swing set. When she’s ready, she looks up at him for approval, and he whistles.
“Wow. Your eyes are like sea glass. They’re stunning.”
She casts them down with embarrassment because it seems insane that an otherworldly beauty like Minhyuk could think her looks are anywhere near as special as anything in their circus, but, suddenly, he pulls the swing toward him, and the self-doubt is lost behind her. She yelps, gripping the fabric tighter as she tips back in the swing. She looks wide-eyed at him, and he stares back determinedly.
“The circus is all about flaunting yourself. Don’t hide from it,” he admonishes.
“Okay,” she replies shakily.
With that, he pushes her back, and Mariam sails in reverse with another little yelp, but that quickly gives way to a surge of unadulterated joy.
She’s flying.
When the swing rocks forward, she leans into it just as she remembers from a playground, and she sails a little higher. This time, she giggles. And when she drifts back, her hair surges around her face and the ribbons billow below her feet like a banner.
“You’re a natural!” Jooheon shouts. “How does it feel?”
“Amazing!” she squeals. “I could do this forever!”
“But there are so many more things to try,” insists Minhyuk.
Though she sours a little at the thought of ending her ride so soon, Mariam’s seen what these performers are truly capable of in the air, and she is curious about how far she can push herself, too, so she slows her swinging until Changkyun grabs the silks to still her.
He’s smiling at her in a way that makes her feel even more fluttery than the ribbons in full sail.
“You looked great. Let’s try a little more advanced swing now. Can you stand in the basket?”
“On the knot?” she asks dubiously.
“Don’t worry. I tied it. It’s sturdy enough.”
She hoists herself up carefully until she’s got her balance between the ribbons.
“Perfect,” he compliments. “Now, try to stand on one foot. See if you can raise a leg.”
This is far more challenging, and she feels a bit like a flamingo, but again he praises her, and her confidence builds.
Changkyun steps forward, his arms wide like he’s waiting for a hug, as he says. “See if you can arch your back. You might drift forward a bit, but just hold tight to the ribbons and don’t worry. I’m here to catch you if you fall.”
Looking at those sinewy arms, Mariam has the urge to let go if only so he’ll catch her, but she isn’t that selfish. She tries in earnest, and since she goes slowly, she keeps her balance. Her head falls back, and she’s met with Minhyuk’s sharp face behind her.
“Hello, beautiful,” he says with a teasing grin.
She squeaks and almost loses her balance, but she chokes up on the ribbons just in time to stand back up.
Changkyun sighs and shakes his head. To her, the air sylph says, “He can’t stop being a clown for even a moment.”
“Hey,” retorts his fellow aerialist, “surprises happen up there. Now the Marvelous Mariam knows she can still control herself perfectly.”
Changkyun rolls his eyes back to the woman in the ribbons. He coaches her through a few standing swings, and when he’s satisfied, he says, “Well, you’ve got our approval, Miss Mariam. Since you’ve gotten basic balance down, are you ready to go a little higher?”
“I’m ready.”
“Have a seat again.”
Slowly, she hunkers down though it’s much easier to balance now.
“Cross your legs,” he instructs.
Minhyuk lets out a wolf whistle. “Now, this I would pay to see.”
Jooheon pinches his friend, but the redhead laughs and raises his hands to swear he’s just teasing—not that Mariam minds any of this. It’s not just the balance she’s growing used to—it’s their attention. She likes it more than she should, more than she ever thought she would, considering she’s never been one for the spotlight.
Changkyun shuffles off toward a pole where he grabs a cable and starts yanking. It’s a sight to see his bare arms flexing just as much as it is to hear his soft grunts, but before Mariam can revel too much in either, she is climbing higher and higher.
The seats grow smaller while Jooheon and Minhyuk stretch a net from tent pole to tent pole. She must be almost two stories up when she’s tied off.
“How’s the view from up there?” the ringmaster shouts.
“Incredible!” she exclaims, her feet kicking in unrestrained joy in spite of her rush of adrenaline.
“You want to try a spin?” Minhyuk asks.
“How do I do that?”
“Try swinging your leg to the side little by little and see what happens.”
The rotations are halting at first as Mariam finetunes her movements, but a few more gyrations of her leg to steady her rhythm, and she’s spinning properly. The silks billow with the breeze, like sails—like wings.
She is absolutely giddy. “I feel like a butterfly!”
“You look like one!” assures Jooheon.
After a moment though, she feels her head start to spin just like the swing, and she stills to let the motion come to an easy stop.
“Doing okay?” Changkyun checks in.
“Just a little dizzy.”
“Hold on tightly, okay? Lock your arms around the silks and in front of you, and we’ll lower you.”
As much as she doesn’t want to come down from her high, Mariam obeys. Since the guys have to roll the net back up, she descends even more slowly than she rose, and yet, it seems she’s down all too fast. She doesn’t have time to complain though because both aerialists surround her to gauge her carefully.
“I’m fine,” she swears, but that doesn’t stop their hands from steadying her in front and back, and that makes her dizzy all over again.
Changkyun, who has sidled up behind her, says in a husky voice, “We’ll do some artistic hangs now, okay?”
“I don’t have a lot of upper body strength,” she informs.
“We’ll get you into some positions that will make you feel so pretty. You don’t need to worry about a thing,” assures Minhyuk.
“Maybe they’re a little more daring,” adds Changkyun, “but we can tell you’re up for it, aren’t you?”
Mariam smiles. She’s up for a lot more than she’s willing to admit after everything she’s experienced tonight.
“Tell me what to do.”
“Music to my ears,” Minhyuk practically sings. “Okay, we’ll start super easy with a foot hang. It’s the perfect place to start trussing you up.”
Changkyun elbows his friend before he looks to Mariam. “Everyone learns this first.”
It is as simple as promised. With their support at her hips and feet, she climbs up a couple lengths on the silk using her feet to pinch the ribbon. When they call out she’s at the right height, they walk her through the winding of the fabric around her ankle and a trembling pike back where she slowly releases her fear and swings completely upside down.
She’s hanging by one foot. Her heart screams. Blood rushes to her head. She feels high even hanging so low, for in reality, her fingertips are just brushing the mat. And there is something about the way the chiffon feels coiled around her... It isn’t just the fact that she’s snared—the binding itself is exhilarating.
“Let’s test your flexibility next,” Minhyuk says as she hangs.
Mariam’s voice warbles as she tries to have a normal conversation when she feels part-bat. “Not sure how flexible I am, honestly.”
“You don’t know until you’ve tried. I’ll bet you can stretch a lot farther than you think you can.”
“Gravity will do most of the work,” Changkyun adds. “Here, lower your leg to the side just a bit, like shoulder-width.”
When she does, half of the silk follows as it splits. She gathers both sides in one hand, and the aerialists show her how to spread her free arm in the other silk until she makes a little box shape.
“You’re a natural,” Jooheon commends.
Mariam releases the box on instruction and then hangs free again until she’s told to drop her free leg farther and farther and farther. The wider she splays, the more her thighs and hamstrings shake.
Minhyuk wraps his extraordinary fingers around her ankle and adds the gentlest of presses. It occurs to Mariam how exposed she is in this stretch. As she dangles like a pretty piece of meat, the little isthmus of lycra is all that separates her most intimate secrets from their eyelines.
“You're incredibly tight,” muses the redhead. Maybe it’s all the blood rushing to her head, but his tone isn’t teasing; it’s heavy—dark. “We need to loosen you up. Let’s try Scorpion next.”
Minhyuk helps direct her leg back behind her like a scorpion tail, and at first, it is awkward, but then she arches her back, and the stretch feels wonderful. The move swings her to face Jooheon.
His smile is different. Perhaps it’s because she’s looking at him upside down, but it’s sharper, almost fanged at its ends.
“Nice and loose now,” murmurs Minhyuk. “Let’s try another easy hold.”
“I don’t know…” she hedges.
“This one’s right side up.”
With their help again, she’s released from her foot trap and eased down the ribbon a bit so they can help her contort her body, legs jackknifed, over the silk so it presses urgently against her heat. The pressure is intense, and she fights to hold in a surprised moan.
In this position, the silks have twined around her upper thigh while her hands are made to wrap the loose ribbon below around her waist. Slowly, they roll her completely through the twists so she is upright again and her upper hand has both ribbons in it. She dangles from a basket loop right up through her middle like an ornament.
Her legs knife into a T shape, and the ribbon holds her weight directly against her sex. Mariam swears she can feel her heartbeat in her core.
The fabric constricts her in all the right ways. It makes her extra sensitive—to the cool autumn air permeating the tent and the pervasive heat emanating from the redhead beside her. She is wound up in more ways than one.
She dangles like this, eyes down at the floor because otherwise she’d be face-to-face with Minhyuk. He seems to know this because he chuckles. He gives her shoulder a gentle push, and she twirls enough to catch a zoetrope of otherworldly faces.
“What a stunning mobile,” Minhyuk laughs again. “I’d like to hang you above my bed.”
“Wow,” Changkyun groans though it’s directed at his friend. “You are embarrassing us, Min.”
“No, I’m embarrassing you.”
“And Mariam,” the blue-haired man corrects.
But she isn’t embarrassed. She’s aroused—which is probably the most embarrassing part, if she thinks about it.
Minhyuk stills the chiffon, and now she has no choice but to meet him face-to-face.
“She’s not embarrassed,” he says with a sly grin, “but she is pretty. How do you feel about one more position before the final one, Mariam?”
“I’m up for it,” she says, her voice trembling as much as the muscles in her arms.
“Perfect.”
He shows her how to unwind until her feet are back on the floor, but that is short-lived.
“Grab hold of the silks together,” he urges. “Pull up as best you can, and don’t worry, we’re here to help as always.”
She follows Minhyuk’s instructions and hikes herself up, but she wasn’t being modest—she doesn’t work out save for irregular bouts of cardio, and she knows she looks a little pathetic, especially since her arms are more and more fatigued with each new stance. But Changkyun doesn’t seem to mind—in fact, he seems to prefer it this way as he steps in and grabs her waist from behind, his sturdy hands splaying across her lycra-ed skin while his hips slot against her barely covered backside.
He hoists her up enough to get her feet off the ground as Minhyuk instructs, “Perfect, now, we’re going to help you flip over while you hook your leg around both silks, a little like that last position, remember?”
Again, with Changkyun’s help, Mariam does it, and she’s hanging upside down with one leg straight and the other crooked around the fabric.
“Use your hands to climb up,” Minhyuk continues, and with more help, she’s upright again. “Push this leg down as you pull the other up, like a pulley.”
That she can do herself, and Mariam beams before she gets a push in the back from Changkyun that rolls her over in the silks, the ribbons cinched tight around her hips while she swings free, held up by nothing but fragile fabric at her waist. Her arms and legs dangle free. She’s bait on the line, though she’s not sure what exactly she’s about to reel in.
Minhyuk gives her a little push so she sails wide with a cry, and they all laugh.
“How pretty!” Jooheon praises. “All dolled up in silk.”
Mariam feels her cheeks heat to unprecedented levels that have nothing to do with her blood rushing to her head and everything to do with the blood rushing between her legs from the gravity of their gazes.
“Very pretty indeed. A real princess,” Changkyun agrees. “But I think she needs a little circus shimmer.”
“Circus shimmer?” she echoes.
Jooheon nods. “They know what they’re talking about. They aren’t just aerialists but artists, too.”
The two performers still the silks and unwind her before helping her back to her feet. While she watches, Changkyun cups one hand and hovers the other over it, and in a matter of seconds, he has a pile of snow in his palm. He grips one side of the ribbons while his fellow aerialist grips the other, and together, they launch into the air in a wide circle around her.
Changkyun blows the snow into the air above her, and as their swirling whips it into a makeshift snow globe storm, Minhyuk puffs a thin jet of flame from his lips like a human blowtorch. The snow melts into water and rains down on her until every inch of her skin and hair is dewy.
The pair lands to appraise their work. Each man lifts one of her hands and brings it to their lips for a kiss, though Mariam doesn’t miss the blaze of Minhyuk’s tongue darting out to collect the wet glimmer on her skin.
“The starlet is truly shining now,” proclaims Jooheon in his loud ringmaster voice. “How do you feel, Mariam?”
She wants to keep the truth locked up because it feels like she’s bragging, but she can’t. She answers, “Pretty.”
“You are pretty. Absolutely beautiful.”
She looks at all three of them sheepishly now and brushes a loose, damp hair behind her ear. “Thank you.”
Jooheon takes a step closer. “We’ve earned your trust, right?”
“Yes.”
“And we’ve made you feel special, too?”
“Yeah, absolutely.”
“So,” the ringmaster hedges as he steps between his fellow performers and wraps his arms around their shoulders to draw the three of them into a tight hold, “would you trust us to make you feel even more special?”
Mariam swallows and her heart drops all the way down to her belly. “What does that mean exactly?”
She asks it even though she thinks she knows—she hopes she knows.
“From the inside out,” Jooheon replies.
“Desired. Adored. Needed,” adds Minhyuk with a lick of his bottom lip.
“Needed?” Her voice tips up higher than her hopes.
Changkyun casts a glance at his fellow performers and sighs lightly. “What they’re asking is, will you let us fuck you?”
As Mariam chokes on her surprise at his bluntness, Jooheon gripes, “I was trying to be a little theatrical for the lady’s sake.”
“It will be sun-up at this rate, and I don’t want to miss another second we could be spending with her, do you?”
“He’s right,” agrees Minhyuk.
Jooheon frowns at both of them, but Mariam interjects, “Is that why I’m here?”
“Isn’t it?” the redhead probes.
Is it? It wasn’t like she had sought out the Cirque du Fantasme on a flyer or commercial—for all intents and purposes, it had come to her—but it had come all the same when her life had started to feel constricting…
Repetitive…
Numb.
She could have left after the show just like everyone else had, but she’d lingered, and she’d lingered with some kind of aimless desire in her heart. For the show? For the beings in it? For anything more than what she’d been living her whole boring life?
“No?” says Mariam. “Yes? I don’t know. I just want…”
All three men lean in, their eyes as hopeful as their ears.
“I just want something different. Something exciting.”
“I know,” replies the ringmaster. “I’ve seen your dream. We’ll give you that and so much more.”
“We’ll give you our all,” assures Minhyuk.
Jooheon takes a step into her personal space, and Mariam’s world fills with him. His powerful voice drops soft and low, as ethereal as the chiffon fluttering in the cavernous tent. “You’ve got us desperate.”
“We’re begging, beautiful,” Changkyun adds, and his voice, which is always low, is dripping like paralytic venom from the fangs of lust now piercing her chest.
“Okay,” she says shyly.
“A little louder, baby,” says Jooheon. “It’s a big tent.”
“Okay,” she announces, “let’s do this. I want you. I want you all.”
The men beam at her before their smiles curl into something less jubilant and far more predatory.
Mariam clears her throat, but it doesn’t disguise the tremble in her voice as she asks, “Are we going backstage now?”
“No,” Jooheon answers with a shake of his head, “baby, no. You’re a center stage girl. You’ve been living in the shadows too long. It’s time for you to shine in the spotlight.”
She looks around the tent. “I don't know. Anyone could walk in.”
“Isn't that part of the fun?” retorts Minhyuk. “You are a part of the show now. Be a shame to waste all this pretty glitter in some dark back room.”
Mariam realizes then that he’s right. She’s putting up this pretense of hesitation because she feels like she is supposed to. This kind of clandestine encounter is supposed to happen to girls very different from her, not a strait-laced, small-town, once-religious princess. She’s been trying to break free—to find her true self—for years, but she’s always held herself back. In her heart, she’s always wanted things she’s been taught she shouldn’t want, but reaching for them felt impossible or wrong. What she’s needed is a push, and here are three men more than happy to push her into each other’s arms.
She bites her lip.
She falls.
“I’m ready.”
She reaches for the bolero to remove it, but Changkyun stills her hand. “Patience, princess. We may be circus performers, but we are also gentlemen. We'd like to kiss you first.”
“Really?”
Jooheon closes the space between them so his arms can encircle her. One hand finds a home in the small of her back, and the other weaves up through her lush hair to cradle the base of her neck. “I knew the second our lips met that it wouldn’t be enough. I’m a greedy guy, what can I say?”
Mariam rests her hands on his hips. She can feel the real him under his shirt, firm but yielding. She clings to him as though he’ll vanish if she doesn’t.
She pushes up on her tiptoes as he descends to her, and their mouths meet sweetly. This time she can be greedy, too, and she is—she takes those swollen lips and nibbles on their plumpness. Jooheon’s even more delicious than she’d imagined, and she falls into him completely, trusting that he’ll keep her upright in his arms because her knees have given out.
“What a hungry little thing,” muses Minhyuk beside the couple. Changkyun only grunts in response.
Abruptly, Jooheon pulls back. He looks down at Mariam, his eyes pitch black. Their panting see-saws between them.
“You don't know how hard I'm fighting to keep from stealing all of your dreams,” he grumbles, “and replacing them with ones of me and me alone.”
She licks her lips and savors the decadent sweetness of the ringmaster. She smiles at him. “After tonight, I don't see how I could dream of anything else ever again.”
Jooheon grasps her face between both hands and kisses her so enthusiastically that she tips back in his arms. His tongue probes her mouth as deliberately as it does deliciously, and it’s clear he knows just how to invade her body as he does her dreams. She feels weightless—who knows, after all she’s experienced tonight, maybe she is floating.
They both come up gasping for air, and Mariam huddles against Jooheon’s sturdy chest while his arms wrap around her. He kisses the crown of her hair and murmurs, “What a perfect answer. What a perfect girl.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” says Minhyuk as he comes up behind them and wraps the pair of them up in his arms.
She’s smothered between them—one hot and one absolutely blazing, though her body is lit up by a fire far hotter than even the fire sylph is capable alone.
Minhyuk scoops her hair back over her ear, and just the brush of his fingertips jolts her in Jooheon’s arms. The aerialist brings his mouth to her throat and suckles at the dew there even as the ringmaster continues to tackle her lips, and their tandem attentions make her tremble. Now, she truly is weightless as they have her pinned between them in a suspended state of bliss.
Suddenly, Jooheon pulls back with a laugh and then a growl. “Cut it out, Min.”
Mariam feels the redhead smile against her throat before she notices his arm retracting from under Jooheon’s shirt.
“Just wanted a minute alone with her. Can you blame me?” retorts Minhyuk.
“You could have just asked.”
“And you would have said no.”
Jooheon rolls his eyes, which all but confirms Minhyuk was right about his friend, but the guilt trip works. With one quick, final kiss, the ringmaster steps back, and before her body can ice over from his disappearance, the aerialist twirls her in his arms so he can kiss her ravenously.
His enormous hands grope her ass as his tongue roams her mouth, and once his base greed has tempered, his fingers work themselves under the tight elastic hugging her cheeks. He cinches the fabric until it’s practically a thong so his hands can return to knead the now-bared flesh.
Mariam whimpers into his mouth, and she can feel Minhyuk’s smile as well as she can feel his nails scratching the smooth skin of her backside.
He pulls back from her lips to study her, a strange sort of grin on his face as he looms over her like the sun. “You are going to look so beautiful tied up for us.”
“Tied—”
But before her question can escape, a chill ripples up her thigh, over her ass, to finally penetrate her stomach. Her eyes wrench from Minhyuk’s to find Changkyun’s hand splayed over her lower belly.
His voice is as icy as his skin as the other aerialist kisses her cheek, leaving a cold tattoo, and says, “You act so innocent. I know you’re not, doll baby. I have a feeling that once we start this, you’re going to beg us to never stop.”
“Please don’t,” she breathes.
Changkyun chuckles and Minhyuk joins.
“Already begging,” says the blue-haired man. “Jooheon’s right. Perfect.”
Changkyun turns her in his arms, and she feels like some trite Southern belle with the vapors, practically going limp in his grip as she basks in his elegant angles. His untouchable beauty bewilders her even more than his strange translucence.
“Kiss me, Mariam,” he orders.
Unlike the others, she must go to him, and something about that makes her feel small and desperate, like she’s crawling on her knees even if she’s actually in his arms. Her hands paw at his bare chest in pitiful attempt to bring him to her, but he stands tall, and she trembles on tiptoe to plead her case with desperate kisses along the breadth of his pretty lips.
When Changkyun is satisfied, he offers her mercy in the form of his mouth. He kisses her back with a sensuousness that his friends can’t quite match. They are bold and brazen where he is elusive and restrained. It makes Mariam all the more frantic for his attentions.
His tongue brushes hers at long last, and it’s like sucking on an ice cube. It’s as soothing as it is addicting. A shiver runs through her, but it’s not heat her body seeks so much as it is satisfaction. She’s overstimulated, but she needs so much more.
Jooheon clears his throat as though he continues to know all. “Kyun’s right. It’s time to indulge in the main event.”
#monsta x smut#le cirque du fantasme#october vibes#jooheon smut#minhyuk smut#changkyun smut#third person#trilogy
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La question du complexe de castration (ou pourquoi la majorité des psychanalystes hommes nous apparaissaient le plus souvent comme incroyablement arrogants et la majorité des psychanalystes femmes désespérément enragées…)
Dans L’envers de la psychanalyse, Lacan dit que Dora bouche sa revendication pénienne en adorant madame K., sous la forme de la Madone de Dresde qu’elle allait contempler, se laissant ainsi littéralement "envelopper" par madame K. (terme qu’utilise Lacan) au même titre que "l’objet viril par la gaine féminine"...
La grandeur de Lacan fut d’avoir su rester fidèle à l’esprit de Freud, dont il convient de faire toujours retour à la lettre, notamment pour y relire l’indétermination quant au caractère fini ou infini de l’analyse, relative à l’impasse sexuelle, dont ce qu’il appelle le «complexe de castration» régule l’accès du sujet au désir.
Outre que cette impasse sexuelle concerne au premier chef l’analysant, elle n’est pas sans questionner le désir de l’analyste, devenant par là même la question éthique par excellence dans la direction de la cure.
Que constate-t-on dès lors au cours de l’analyse?
Que la résolution du complexe de castration, quels que soient les efforts déployés au cours du travail analytique, reste le plus souvent incomplète, en butée au réel du roc de la castration, remettant sans cesse en scène l’énigme de la sexualité.
Le névrosé, constatant les difficultés d’accès à son désir (insatisfait pour l’hystérique, impossible chez l’obsessionnel...) se livre alors à des contorsions relationnelles avec son entourage (qui en pâtit), tenant par dessus tout à sa différence d’avec les autres (qui s’adonnent à des jouissances vulgaires, même s’il lui arrive de les envier), et finit par se trouver pris sous la pression de devoir arrêter sa cure prématurément, bien avant son terme logique, sans que la question de la résolution de son rapport à la castration ait pu commencer à se poser...
C’est le cas le plus courant.
Aussi ne s’étonnera-t-on pas que dans le marigot psychanalytique, où les protagonistes seraient censés, plus que d’autres, avoir terminé leur cure, soit le plus souvent resté en friche ledit "complexe de castration" qui présente l’impasse sexuelle du névrosé sous deux aspects:
• chez la femme, par le Penisneid, c’est-à-dire l’envie, ou plutôt la revendication du pénis, avec toutes les sous-jacences de colère et d’agression qui s’y trouvent impliquées, comme le souligne Lacan, et qui la rendent littéralement enragée et
• chez l’homme, par la révolte, le hérissement contre la disposition passive ou féminine à l’endroit d’un autre homme et qui, du fait de l’angoisse de castration que celle-ci suscite, est la source de l’arrogance.
Or, Lacan y insiste tout au long de son enseignement: la névrose n’est pas à faire ressortir de l’ordre des "maladies" mais bien de l’éthique, dans le champ même de la relation que le sujet entretient avec son désir, désir qui est toujours désir de l’Autre, qui a trouvé sa forme à partir de la question: che vuoi? adressée au désir de l’Autre.
C’est donc toujours au désir de l’analyste qu’il revient in fine de soutenir dans la cure, jusqu’à son terme logique, cette question que le névrosé, par-delà la prévalence de la demande, adresse au désir de l’Autre, et qui recèle la clé du rapport au désir.
Cela signifie que le psychanalyste aura accepté d’orienter la cure dans une direction qui n’évitera pas au sujet d’avoir à se confronter à l’angoisse du désir de l’Autre, c’est-à-dire à son manque radical, sa castration, son irréductible incomplétude, contre laquelle il se défendait grâce à un fantasme qui induisait selon les cas un désir insatisfait ou impossible.
Tout ce cirque, bien entendu, afin de maintenir intacte la relation à la demande d’amour de l’Autre maternel, au sens du génitif objectif et du génitif subjectif...
(À suivre…)
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