“ See the amazing Liquid Girl!” Shouted the man in a faded velvet jacket. “Watch her slowly melt before your eyes!”
Lights up.
The threadbare curtains are pulled back to reveal a girl in a blue woollen bathing suit, covered with white pearls. She is sitting on a stool in the centre of the stage. The stage is sloped at the front, and has a funnel that runs from below the girls feet to a trough at the front of the stage. Her skin is shining with droplets.
The crowd gapes as the droplets thicken and run down her body, dripping off her skin. Soon there is enough to form a puddle at her feet. The puddle grows until gravity takes over and it runs down the funnel in front of her.
The ringmaster of the freak show sells small vials of the liquid as the elixir of life. Again he takes up his spiel. “ Before you sits the Liquid Girl. She was once the centre of a spring the the vast deserts of Arabia. It was said that the water from this spring could cure all manner of ailments. People came from miles around to dip a finger in this sweet water and gain new wealth and well-being. Water is the source of all life, but she has given up her old existence to travel the world and so, aid all humanity in its suffering.”
The crowd claps and the girl drips. In her hands is a needle, bright under the spotlights. It flashes in and out of a greeny fabric and the droplets from her hands make wet splotches on the cloth. The ringmaster points this out to the crowd. “ This cloth has the ability to cure even the most seriously ill. One touch of this fabric can bring a dying man back to life, cure blindness or hearing loss.”
A man pushes through the crowd. It is the ringmasters assistant, Merrick. His mouth appears to be swollen with toothache. He speaks with difficulty. “ Can you cure me?” The Liquid Girl hides a grimace and smiles at him. She holds the cloth to his cheek, dabbing at it. He swallows the lump of potato in his mouth and shouts “ Amazing!” There is a sudden clamour to get to the stage and purchase the vials.
Lights go down.
The girl, whose real name is Emma, steps down from the stage drying herself with a towel. She sighs, it has been a long night. She looks Arabian, with dense black hair and tilted eyes, but she is really French, with a smattering of Gypsy, as her mother used to say, a mother who was blonde and blue eyed, nothing like her daughter. She had always been able to produce the liquid from her skin. This liquid was unlike sweat, more like a sweet water that seemed to exude from some hidden interior resource. She could induce it through nervousness or pain, but occasionally it happened spontaneously of it's own accord. It was a physical affliction that had caused her to lead a very sheltered life. In her town, the other children had avoided her, as if she was diseased. Their taunts had left her untrustful, timid and alone.
As she was seated inside one day, she had heard the sounds of the carnival. She waited until it was getting dark, and then had hid her face with a black cloth. She was amazed by all the colour, the lights and the tricks of the performers. However, during the freak show, one of the local boys had recognised her and pulled the cloth from her head. The surprise gave her such a shock, that the liquid began to drench her clothing. She ran from the tent, leaving a trail behind her.
The ringmaster jumped down and ran after her. Her called out to her, “ Where are you going my beauty??” She was so surprised to hear someone calling her beautiful, that she stopped in her tracks. He caught up with her and flattered her greatly. He caught her hand, and held it, rubbing his thumb over her soft palm. Having never been touched by a stranger, she felt elated and dizzy.
The ringmaster asked her how she came to be so wet, as the night was so dry. She explained the nature of her affliction, and her pushed up her sleeve to wonder at the droplets forming on her skin.
Being a man of business, he could see at once that he could market her as ' The Amazing Liquid Girl'. He asked her to come, and she began to nod her head in consent, but then caught a strange glint in his eye. She felt an wariness, that had been pushed back by the pleasurable sensations of the touch of another, not being to take hold of her. He was persistent, and she asked to leave using the need to get permission from her mother as an excuse. However he saw through her and he signalled to his assistant waiting in the shadows, who grabbed her and locked her up in a caravan. The cheerful exterior of the caravan, was unmatched by the interior, which was only a hard pile of straw and a broken mirror resting on a dressing table covered with all manner of perfumes and cosmetics. The sound of the carnival outside continued, and so her cries were not heard, and the circus left town the next day with her as their prize.
For her first few shows, she was shackled like an animal, but as she got further and further away from her home town, she realised she had no choice but to remain with the circus.
As her performances continued, she began to get used to the stares and the lights, which had brought the liquid on at once. The amount of liquid began to lessen each night, until it was just a single droplet, beading on her skin. The ringmaster was very angry with her, and as she had no place in the outside world, she was forced to tell him how she could continue. Pain. But it could not be self inflicted, as it did not produce such good results. Also she could not be whipped or cut in any way, as her blood would mix with the liquid, tainting it, so that it could not be sold. Finally the ringmaster called the tattooed woman to him, and asked her to prick the flesh of the liquid girl. At once the liquid began to flow steadily. As only a small part of her skin was being worked on at a time, the tattooed woman could wipe away the liquid and any other contamination from her skin. Thus it was decided. The show was now changed to incorporate the tattooed woman, who the ringmaster claimed was drawing a map on the skin of the liquid girl, so that she would be able to find her way back home to the spring.
As the circus passed through the towns, as the curtain lifted or swung shut, the tattoo continued to grow. The Liquid Girl produced even more liquid than before, and soon the tattoo covered her entire body. The design was intricate, all in blue, like the interior of a seashell, and so delicate that it seemed part of her, without being overwhelming.
Once it was complete, it seemed that it had become a shell, a second skin, and she was able to produce the liquid on command, without need for pain any more. She became famous and the healing powers of the liquid were known throughout the world. People began to clamour for it as soon as the circus arrived in town, and so the ringmaster pushed her into more performances to collect more of it. He started to 'milk' her off the stage twice daily, the precious liquid 'like gold' he said.
Finally during one performance, the liquid stopped. The reservoir was dry. The ringmaster was angry, he closed the curtains on the crowd and ordered to have her whipped. But even the strokes on her back could not restart what was now dry.
She began to feel thirsty, the like of which she had never felt before. The thirst consumed her, yet no amount of water was enough. Her skin began to crack and peel, it became like scales, flaking off when she moved. The ringmaster now exhibited her as the “ Famous Lizard Woman, who had fallen under a curse when she kissed a man, other than her husband. The cheering crowds were now replaced with boos and hisses, and young wives were brought before her as a warning of their own marriages. As she lay on-stage, she would become surrounded by little flakes of a light blue, as her skin took on the colour from her tattoo. At night she would wake thirstily, her throat dry and parched, and all over her bed would be the flakes, like a powder of blue.
One day she failed to rise from her caravan. The ringmaster was sent for and he banged loudly at her door, but no sound came from within. Finally he got the strong man to break down the door. Inside there was blue powder everywhere. It covered the floor, the bed still made of straw, the dressing table and the floor. But the girl was nowhere to be seen. But how could she disapear? The ringmaster was unsure whether she could have become just a pile of powder. He sat on the stoop and pondered, feeling angry to loose so great an attraction. He put his chin in his hand and looked about him.
Suddenly he noticed a soft blue trail leading away from the caravan. With a roar, he leapt up and followed it away from the circus, and into the forest at the edge of the field. He was already thinking of the beating she was going to receive for escaping, and he vowed to shackle her down at night from now on. As the trees became thicker, the trail seemed almost luminous against the dark ground, but he had no time to wonder about such things. Instead he half stumbled, half ran along beside the trail.
It led deeper and deeper into the forest, the trees above seemed to press their leafy tops against one another to form a seamless whole, blocking out the light. Still the little flakes were enough to guide the ringmaster, and so he followed, gleefully, curiously, angrily, greedily, winding around tree trunks, over moss, under thick branches, hunting, hunting.
The trail led to a dark little spring, and there, at the top was a little pile of salt. The Ringmaster pounced on this and looked around wildly. Sure enough, the trail continued, now following the path that the little spring had made. Soon the spring became an stream, then the stream became a river, and the river gained strength and rushed over rocks, or stole backwards in backwaters with little dancing insects. Still the ringmaster was not interested in observing such intricacies and delicacies of nature, as his thought were only bent on recapture and punishment.
All at once the river widened into a series of deep pools, connected by little waterfalls. The trail stopped. The ringmaster was beside himself with anger, her kicked stones at the waters edge and thrashed the tree branches. He did not notice the gentle splashing behind him, until it was accompanied by a shower of water. There in the centre of the pool was the liquid girl. She looked younger, shining and new like a baby, like a stone under clear water. But instead of legs, she had a beautiful glistening tail. It was this tail that she had used to splash the ringmaster. She did so again as she saw him drop to his knees with an imploring look in his eye. However this time she knew that behind that look, he was calculating how he could market her, how her could make money out of her new radiance.
As he cleared his eyes of the water, he saw she had come closer. She was now close enough for him to lunge out and grab her, and as his brain calculated how he could carry her back, she caught his eyes with hers. “ I have known pain and suffering, the like which you could never bear” those eyes seemed to say. " You have taken me away from my home, my one place of peace and shelter in a world full of hate. I have broken through misery and I curse you to your lonely existance. I know more now than ever before and I am free." And she turned and dived, swimming away from him, and then diving gracefully over the waterfall and away. The last he saw of her was a glint of her green tail. A tail so green, greener than emeralds, greener than the leaves when the light turns yellow before a storm, greener than the eyes of the wife he had lost. That green seemed to shine so deeply, that all the foliage of the forest paled in comparison.
The ringmaster sat and contemplated that green for a long time. Then he sighed and turned to go back, but he had lost the trail, having not paid much attention to it in the first place. He wandered around the forest for several days, his head full of green moons and shining drops. He was finally found by a stroke of luck by the fortune teller, who was off collecting juniper to brew the drink she took to induce herself before each performance. The ringmaster tried to go back to work, but he would find himself trailing off mid spiel with details he saw in the distance. The glint of the firelight in the eyes of a stranger, the movement of the trees in a light breeze, the sound of the rain on the circus tent. Eventually the circus had to choose a new leader, and he spent the rest of his days mucking out the elephant stable.
The liquid girl was lost, freed to the water, healed and whole. No-one ever saw her again.
P.s: No-one?
Well it is said that on certain nights when the sea glows green at sunset, you can catch a flash of her magnificent tail. And if you're very lucky, perhaps if you walk down the beach early the following day, it might be possible to find some treasure that she has left for you. Some greeny stone or scale that will shine out of the sand to remind you that she is there.
