Unfortunately, Mongrel did not recoil. He merely regarded Nathan as he would an adorable puppy who'd gotten carried away while playing with a chew toy but was otherwise harmless.

"It disappoints me that you did that," said Mongrel. "I had hoped not to have to cause you to be zapped, but apparently that shall not be the case."

He reached into his inside suit pocket and took out a long metal pole, although it wasn't so long that it couldn't have credibly been resting inside the suit all this time. He touched the end to Nathan's chest. Nathan yelped at the shock, then felt dizzy, and then realized he was lying on the floor, twitching a bit. Then he realized that it was much darker than it had been before the shock, and getting darker all the time, and then he couldn't see anything at all, and then he didn't care.

SEVENTEEN.

When he woke up he was on a theatre stage, surrounded by monsters.

They were seated around him in a circle, nine or ten of them. None of them were currently devouring (or attempting to devour) his flesh, so they didn't seem immediately hostile, but they were certainly intimidating.

Professor Mongrel sat in the circle as well, as did a.s.sistant Kleft.

"Welcome back," said Mongrel.

Nathan wiped some dried drool from the side of his mouth. "Thank you."

"You may have noticed that you're still alive. I can't always guarantee that this will be the case after I poke you with my zapper, so I'd advise you not to give me further reasons to use it."

"I won't."

"Good. Now let me introduce you to your new friends." Mongrel pointed to a boy who looked about seventeen, with long red hair. "This is Donald. He can swallow a coin and make the necessary change when it emerges. Show him, Donald."

Donald popped a coin into his mouth and swallowed.

"It's not a quick process," Mongrel admitted, "which is why he tends to serve in more of a janitorial capacity than as one of the performers. But still, it's an impressive trick if you can stomach it. Moving on..." Mongrel pointed to a very large woman with a long, thick beard. "This is Mildred, the bearded lady."

"Pleased to meet you," she said, in a voice that wasn't nearly as gruff as Nathan might have expected.

"Does she frighten you?" Mongrel asked.

"Well, no," said Nathan. "I mean, it's just a lady with a beard."

"But it's unnatural!" said Mongrel. "Deeply unnatural! Doesn't such a departure from the norm strike you with fear?"

Nathan wasn't sure if he was supposed to just play along. He didn't want to get shocked again. "I guess it could be scary."

"No, you were right the first time. It's not. We've tried dyeing it a mult.i.tude of colors and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g it into the most frightening shapes imaginable-even a bat-but nothing works. It causes nary a tremble."

"I even tried throwing things once," said Mildred.

"Next we have Gondola and Horatio, the former Siamese twins. They used to be joined at the waist, until they were separated in a not-so-gruesome accident. Now, they look very similar, and yet they are two individuals. Does that frighten you?"

"No."

"What do you mean, no? Look how similar they are! If it weren't for the mole and the scar, you might almost mistake them for two copies of the same person!"

"I see that, but it's really more confusing than frightening. They're just twins."

"Twins who used to be joined together into a four-legged, four-armed, two-headed, one-shirted monstrosity! How can you not fear them?"

"Well, I suppose if they were attacking me or something, I might be uncomfortable."

"We don't want uncomfortable! We want a level of fear that makes you lose control of every bodily function you've got, including the ones hidden within your skin! We want our audience to be reduced to blobs of boneless jelly wobbling in the breeze!"

"Twins aren't going to do that."

"Blast!" Mongrel sighed. "I'm going to skip most of the other introductions to save time, but feast your eyes upon Gabriel the Alligator Boy!"

Nathan looked at Gabriel, who sat calmly on the floor.

"He doesn't look like an alligator."

"Perhaps not, but he acts like one!"

Nathan watched Gabriel for a moment.

"In what way?"

"Alligators spend most of their time lying in the sun. If there was sunlight in this room, Gabriel would be lying in it."

"Oh."

"If you stumbled upon an alligator out in the wild doing the exact same thing, you'd be frightened, wouldn't you?"

"I guess so."

"Oooohhh, well, listen to the big brave alligator hunter! Admit it, if you encountered an alligator sunning itself in the water not six feet away from you, your mind would be an absolute mess. Admit it!"

"I'll admit that," said Nathan. "But him just sitting there pretending to be an alligator sunning itself isn't particularly terrifying."

Mongrel let out a deep, long sigh, and then nodded. "I'm not going to lie to you. Professor Mongrel's Theatre of the Macabre should really be called Professor Mongrel's Theatre of Disappointed, Angry Customers."

"Or Professor Kleft's Parade of the Macabre," Kleft muttered.

"What was that?"

"I did not speak."

"Though we try not to publicize this, every bearded lady, ex-Siamese twin, alligator boy, stretchy man, lobotomy recipient, meerkat-tongued woman, and investment banker in this room knows that we offer a feeble theatre-going experience for an audience that desires fear." He grinned. "But that's where you come in, Nathan. I would not have to offer ten minutes of verbal buildup to convince customers that you are scary. You are the real thing. And you will save us all!"

Everybody in the room applauded.

Nathan looked around at all of the performers, their faces lit up with a sense of hope, except for those who were staring at him with resentment, which was about half of them. He didn't know what to do. Could he really devote himself to a life of scaring people? Did spiders taste bad?

"I'm not sure I want to do this," said Nathan.

"You'd be part of a family," said Mongrel. "You'd never be alone again. n.o.body would ever judge you for the way you look."

"They'd be judging me all day! That's the whole point of what you're asking me to do!"

"Yes, but you need to understand, exploitation is the purest form of acceptance."

"What?"

"Tell me, Nathan, does a mother love her child?"

"Yes."

"And does she love her child more if he enables her to profit from his existence?"

"I'm not sure."

"Of course she does, just as a wife feels the love in her heart for her husband bloom when he brings home a larger paycheck. And if you can save us from complete financial ruin, well, I think you'll discover that you've never been so accepted in your life."

"Will I get paid?" Nathan asked.

The bearded lady and alligator boy both shook their heads, just a little, not enough to be noticed by Mongrel.

"Naturally. Didn't Kleft explain this to you?"

"He did, but then he seemed to take it back."

"No, no, no, you will most definitely be paid for your services. Granted, there will be certain deductions for incurred expenses and service fees, but we would never even dream of not compensating you for your efforts."

"How much?"

"It will be a fair wage."

The meerkat-tongued woman and lobotomy patient shook their heads as well.

"I won't do it for less than ten coins a week."

"Ten coins? Are you drunk, insane, or both? Even I don't earn that much, and if I did, I'd feel so guilty that I'd donate most of it to charity. I'll give you a half-coin every two weeks."

Nathan shook his head. "Eight coins every week."

"A half-coin every two weeks, and I won't smother you in your d.a.m.n sleep with a crusty pillow." Mongrel let out a cruel laugh. "Well, that charade of reasonable behavior on my part didn't last long, did it? I usually do better than that."

"Tell him about the oil," said Kleft.

"Below the stage, I keep a vat of oil boiling at all times. When one of my prisoners-there, I said it-does not do as he or she is told, an extremity goes into the vat. Prisoners, hold up your affected extremities."

Each of the prisoners held up three or four extremities, all of them burnt.

"It's very inconvenient to keep a whole vat of oil boiling at all times," said Mongrel. "It requires a great deal of wood and you have to check on it at least every forty-five minutes. That should indicate the depth of my pa.s.sion for dunking parts of people into it. And don't think that it's just a quick dunk, in and out and you're done. These dunks linger."

Nathan wiped away the tear that trickled down his cheek. "Why is there such evil in the world?" he asked. "Everywhere I go, I find nothing but cruelty! Why is this so?"

"I don't know," Mongrel admitted. "But personally, I think it's rather great."

"Cruelty for all!" Kleft declared.

"Sadness and misery," said Nathan. "I was born into a world that offers nothing but sadness and misery. Pain and sorrow. Heartbreak and agony."

"Yes, indeed!" said Mongrel.

Nathan wallowed in self pity for a few seconds, but then decided, no, it wasn't true. Penny and Mary had been nothing but kind to him. His parents had been somewhat ill-advised in their level of protection, but they'd always loved him. He had friends. Dogs were usually nice. He wasn't going to let a reprehensible s.a.d.i.s.t like Mongrel taint his view of life on this planet. There was goodness in the world.

"I don't care how heartless you are," Nathan said. "I still love you."

The boiling oil hurt even more than he'd expected.

"Don't go thinking that your teeth are so special," Mildred the bearded lady told him. "I could have fangs like that if I wanted, but I don't."

"Yeah," said Gabriel the alligator boy. "If you came at me with them right now, do you know how scared I'd be? Barely."

"n.o.body's going to pay to see you," said Gondola and Horatio, simultaneously.

"If you're to be our savior, then we must have required very little in the way of saving," said Winston the Tattooed Man, whose tattoo of a star was mostly covered by his shirt sleeve. "Perhaps we were at ninety-six or ninety-seven percent saved already, and your contribution added the extra three or four percent, which I don't have to tell you is a fairly unimpressive contribution."

"None of this is my fault," Nathan insisted. "I don't want to be here. I'm a captive, just like the rest of you. I'm not getting any special treatment. You saw the way he put my arm in the oil. We should all be friends."

"Friends?" asked Mildred. "With a freak like you? Surely you can't be serious!"

"I am serious," said Nathan. "But that's beside the point. We should join forces. He doesn't have enough boiling oil to stop all of us. I mean, he does, but he'd have to splash it all around. He couldn't dunk everybody."

"Do you think we haven't tried to escape?" asked Mildred. "Rarely a week goes by when we don't try to hatch some sort of scheme. And each time, as we bury one of our own, we agree that we shouldn't have done it."

Nathan was fl.u.s.tered. "Well, perhaps you could hatch a better scheme."

"There's no way out. The best thing you can do is put on as good of a show as possible. It's not such a bad life, once you lower your expectations."

"No," said Nathan. "It can't be true. I will escape tonight!"