The Funhouse

understand.”
        He stood and approached her.
        She wanted to run. She couldn't.
        “You killed Victor,” Conrad said thickly.
        He had given the child-thing a name-Victor Martin Straker-which seemed ludicrous to Ellen. More than ludicrous. Dangerous. If you started calling it by name, you started thinking of it as a human baby. And it wasn't human. It wasn't , damn it. It was evil. You couldn't let your guard down for a moment when you were around it, sentiment made you vulnerable. She refused to call it Victor. And she even refused to admit that it had a sexual identity. It wasn't a little boy. It was a little beast .
        “Why? Why did you kill my Victor?”
        “It attacked me,” she said again.
        “Liar.”
        “It did.”
        “Lying bitch.”
        “Look at me!” She held up her bleeding hands and arms. “Look what it did to me.”
        The grief on Conrad's face had given way to an expression of blackest hatred. “You tried to kill him, and he fought back in self-defense.”
        “No. It was awful. Horrible. It clawed me. It tried to tear out my throat. It tried to-”
        “Shut up,” he said between clenched teeth.
        “Conrad, you know it was violent. It scratched you sometimes. If you'll just face the truth, if you'll just look into your heart, you'll have to admit I'm right. We didn't create a child. We created a thing . And it was bad. It was evil, Conrad. It-”
        “I told you to shut your filthy mouth, you rotten bitch.”
        He was shaking with rage. Flecks of foamy spittle dotted his lips.
        Ellen cringed. “Are you going to call the police?”
        “You know a carny never runs to the cops. Carnies handle their own problems. I know exactly how to deal with disgusting filth like you.”
        He was going to kill her. She was sure of it.
        “Wait, listen, give me a chance to explain. What kind of life could it have had anyway?” she argued desperately.
        Conrad glared at her. His eyes were filled with cold fury but also with madness. His wintry gaze pierced her, and she felt almost as if slivers of ice were being driven through her by some slow, silent, barely perceptible but nonetheless devastating explosion. Those were not the eyes of a sane man.
        She shivered. “It would have been miserable all its life. It would have been a freak, ridiculed, rejected, despised. It wouldn't have been able to enjoy even the most ordinary pleasures. I didn't do anything wrong. I only put the poor thing out of its misery. That's all I did. I saved it from years and years of loneliness, from-”
        Conrad slapped her face. Hard.
        She looked frantically left and right, unable to see even the slightest opportunity for escape.
        His sharp, clean features no longer looked aristocratic, his face was frightening, stark, carved by shadows into a ferocious, wolflike visage.
        He moved in even closer, slapped her again. Then he used his fists-once, twice, three times, striking her in the stomach and the ribs.
        She was too weak, too exhausted to resist him. She slid inexorably toward the floor and, she supposed, toward death.
         Mary, Mother of God!
        Conrad grabbed her, held her up with one hand, and continued to slap her, cursing her with each blow. Ellen lost count of the number of times he struck her, and she lost the ability to distinguish each new pain from the myriad old pains with which she was afflicted, and the last thing she lost was consciousness.
        After an indeterminable period of time, she drifted back from a dark place where guttural voices were threatening her in strange languages. She opened her eyes, and for a moment she didn't know where she was.
        Then she saw the small, ghastly corpse on the floor, only a few feet away. The gnarled face, frozen for all time in a vicious snarl, was turned toward her.
        Rain drummed hollowly on the rounded roof of the trailer.
        Ellen was sprawled on the floor. She sat up. She felt terrible, all busted up inside.
        Conrad was standing by the bed. Her two suitcases were open, and he was throwing clothes into them.
        He hadn't killed her. Why not? He had intended to beat her to death, she was certain of that. Why had he changed his mind?
        Groaning, she got to her knees. She tasted blood, a couple of her teeth were loose. With tremendous effort, she