It began with makeup.
Jack, unsure of what drew him to it, began experimenting. The greasepaint kits were kept in a rusted box
near the costume wagon—cheap brushes, cracked powders, thick jars of clown white. At first he only
watched the older clowns apply their layers. But one dusk, when no one was around, he tried.
A white base. A curled red mouth. Blue diamonds under the eyes.
He looked at himself in a sliver of polished steel.
It didn't feel like a mask.
It felt like him—drawn out.
Each night after that, he changed the design. Sharper smile. Wider eyes. Blackened brows. He became
obsessed. Each paint session was more intricate, more intense. Sometimes he applied it twice in a day,
scraping it off mid-show to redo it in the firelight. The other clowns laughed at first.
Then they stopped laughing.
Rosy noticed it too. She asked once, gently, if he was sleeping enough. He brushed her off.
But his performances were electric. Magnetic. Even the animals stopped to watch. His body moved like
liquid shadow, flinging joy and fear in equal measure. Children cried and laughed in the same breath.
And Jack—Jack drank it in.
The applause. The eyes. The attention.
It was everything he'd never had. And it filled a hole he hadn't realized was there.
Until one night, a little girl in the front row stared at him.
Really stared.
She didn't laugh. Didn't blink. Just watched. Her small eyes never wavered, not even when he twisted his
body into a grotesque pratfall or let out an animal howl that made nearby horses rear.
That stare broke something.
Not loudly. Not with sound. But like glass beneath calm water.
He felt it. A snap behind his eyes. A shiver in his breath. The applause no longer soothed—it clawed. The
lights no longer warmed—they exposed.
Backstage, shaking, he stumbled into the shadows behind the main tent. He was trying to breathe when he
heard her.
"Eluna?"
She stepped into the moonlight, the silver of her eyes dimmer than he remembered.
"I came back," she said, voice soft. "You're losing yourself."
"I'm not," he said. "I'm becoming who I was meant to be."
"No," she whispered. "You're becoming something else."
She reached out.
And fused.
He felt her essence wrap around his like a cloak. Her warmth, her sadness, her fear. For a second, he
wanted to fall into her arms like a child.
But something else came, too.
Something dark. A pressure in his skull. A whisper with too many mouths.
A leech.
It latched onto their moment of fusion—burrowed between Eluna's light and Jack's longing. Its hunger was
ancient and raw. It didn't rip them apart.
It stitched them together.
Jack fell to his knees, screaming silently.
Inside him now: Eluna's compassion. The leech's hunger. His own broken joy.
Three voices in a single throat.
When he stood, the paint on his face hadn't smudged.
It had deepened.
His eyes were darker.
His grin… wrong.
But the crowd never noticed.
They roared louder the next night.