The Clown’s Final Fencing Match

Reunion is a word for lovers in movies. For me, it was a car crash in slow motion.

It was New Years Eve. The circus tent smelled of sawdust, cheap popcorn, and the stale sweat of a thousand strangers. I was mid-act, balancing on a unicycle, the clown makeup itching against my skin, when the ghost of a career-ending injury screamed back to life. My left legthe one held together by spite and bad memoriesgave way.

I hit the stage hard. The impact sent my oversized plastic mask skittering across the boards, exposing my face to the harsh spotlight.

The audience roared with laughter. To them, it was part of the show. But in the front-row VIP section, the laughter died in one womans throat. Hedy Lennon stood up, her face draining of color until she looked like a marble statue in her silk Dior coat. She didnt just walk; she stormed the stage.

She stared down at my mangled left leg, her voice a shrill, jagged thing that pierced through the muffled music. "Trace? Silas Trace? The world-class fencer? What the hell happened to you?"

"The day you got out of prison, I was standing at the front gates in a wedding dress," she screamed, her confusion turning into a volatile brand of rage. "I waited for hours. Why did you sneak out the back like a coward?"

Her best friend, a woman whose name Id buried years ago, stepped up behind her, sneering at my tattered costume. "Hedy spent seven years tearing this city apart looking for you, Trace. And all this time, youve been hiding in the dirt, playing the fool? Youre pathetic. You dont deserve her."

Deserve her? The word tasted like copper in my mouth.

I looked at Hedythe woman I once thought was my North Starand felt a wave of nausea. Seven years ago, her "soulmate" and childhood best friend, Patrick, lost the national fencing finals to me. In a fit of psychopathic pique, he set the arena on fire. People died. Lives were incinerated.

And Hedy? She knelt at my feet and begged me to take the fall. Patrick is fragile, Trace. Prison will kill him. Youre strong. Youre a hero. Just help him this once.

What she didn't knowwhat she never cared to find outwas that on my very first night in that cell, the guards Patrick had bribed broke my leg with a lead pipe. They didn't just break the bone; they pulverized my future.

Hedy grabbed my collar, her knuckles white, and hauled me upward.

The movement was violent, jarring the old nerves in my hip. I broke into a cold sweat, my body trembling with a rhythmic, uncontrollable tremor.

"Let go," I wheezed, pushing feebly at her expensive sleeves. "I dont know who you think I am. Get off me."

My defiance was a match tossed into a pool of gasoline. Hedys hand flasheda sharp, stinging crack against my cheek. My head snapped to the side.

"Don't know me?" she hissed, her eyes wild. "Look at me, Trace. Say that again. Youd rather live like a stray dog than be with me? Youd rather be a literal clown than face your life?"

The irony was a physical weight. She was mourning my "fall" while forgetting she was the one who pushed me off the cliff.

"Hedy, darling, please. Everyone is watching. Lets give the man some dignity."

The voice was smooth, like expensive bourbon poured over glass. Patrick approached, draped in a bespoke charcoal suit that probably cost more than the circus tent. He looked radiant, healthy, and entirely untouched by the fire hed started.

"Trace. Its been a long time. Look at you what a tragedy."

He spoke with the feigned sympathy of a saint, but as he leaned in, the heel of his polished Italian loafer ground down onto my fingers where they braced against the floor. I felt the skin break, the small bones of my hand groaning under his weight.

"Get away!" I gasped, the pain lancing up my arm. I shoved him with everything I had left.

It wasn't much of a push, but Patrick played his part perfectly. He gasped, clutching his chest, and stumbled back into the velvet curtains.

"Trace your strength its still so much" he wheezed, sliding to the floor.

Hedys face transformed instantly. The fury she had for me turned into a desperate, frantic terror for him. She dropped me like trash and lunged for Patrick.

"Patrick! Oh my god, breathe. Is it your heart?" She fumbled in her clutch for a pill bottle, her eyes darting back to me with pure, unadulterated loathing. "Trace, you monster! Patrick has had a heart condition ever since the stress of that fire. Didn't you know? Youve been gone for years and youre still trying to hurt him!"

I wanted to laugh. Heart condition? The man had run like a gold-medalist sprinter the night he lit the match.

Patrick and I were once the "Golden Pair" of the fencing world. Partners. Brothers. And he had dismantled my life piece by piece, only to have the woman I loved hand him the tools.

The circus owner, seeing the wealthy Lennon heiress in a state of distress, rushed over to wash his hands of me. "Miss Lennon, I am so sorry! This cripple is just a temp worker. If hes laid a hand on your friend, hes fired. Do whatever you want with him!"

"What did you call him?" Hedy snapped, rounding on the owner. "You don't get to insult what belongs to me."

The owner paled, stammering an apology.

I tried to crawl away, my ruined leg dragging behind me like a dead weight. But Hedys security team moved faster. Two men in black suits pinned my shoulders to the mud-slicked ground, shoving my face into the grime.

Hedy walked over, looking down at me. Her expression was a terrifying blend of tenderness and psychosis.

"It doesn't matter what youve become, Trace," she whispered. "Youre mine. Im taking you home. The Lennon estate can afford to keep a pet."

"Let me go! Im not going anywhere with you!"

My protests were muffled by the dirt. They hauled me up like a carcass and threw me into the back of a black limousine. As the privacy glass slid up, I saw Patrick standing behind Hedy. The "weakness" was gone. He offered me a slow, predatory grin and ran a thumb across his throat.

The Lennon estate was exactly as I remembered itmonumental, cold, and dripping with old-money arrogance. Seven years ago, I walked through these doors as an honored guest. Now, I was cargo.

"He reeks," Hedy said, wrinkling her nose as she gestured toward the fountain in the center of the courtyard. "He smells like animals and failure. Clean him before you bring him inside."

The guards didn't hesitate. They stripped the tattered clown suit off me, leaving me shivering and exposed in the freezing midnight air. My left leg, twisted and scarred, was laid bare under the floodlights. The shame was a sharper blade than the cold.

"Turn it on," one of the guards muttered.

A high-pressure hose hit me with the force of a physical blow. The water was near freezing, laced with bits of ice that stung like buckshot. I gritted my teeth, refusing to give them the satisfaction of a scream.

As the grime washed away, the map of my imprisonment was revealed: the jagged scars across my back, the cigarette burns on my ribs, the legacy of Patricks paid thugs.

"You really did go to hell, didn't you?" Hedy stared at the scars, her eyes flickering with something like confusion. "How many prison brawls did it take to ruin you like this? Where is the man I used to know? The one who was gentle, the one who was strong? Youve turned into something ugly, Trace."

I didn't answer. I couldn't tell her that her "soulmate" had ordered those scars. To her, I was just a fallen idol who had chosen to be broken.

After thirty minutes of freezing torment, when my lips were blue and my heart felt like a dying bird, she signaled them to stop. They tossed me a set of clothes and a long wooden box.

"Patrick went out of his way to have a custom prosthetic made for you," Hedy said, her voice softening. "Hes so forgiving. After everything youve done to him, he still wants you to walk again. Stop being so ungrateful."

Patrick doing something out of the goodness of his heart? Id sooner believe in ghosts.

"I won't wear it," I rasped. "It won't fit."

"Youll do what youre told," Hedy snapped.

The guards pinned me down, forcing my stump into the prosthetic.

"AGH!"

The scream ripped out of me before I could stop it. The interior of the socket wasn't padded. It was lined with hard, sharp ridgesit wasn't a medical device; it was an iron maiden for a leg. Every inch of it ground into my sensitive nerves.

Hedy flinched at the sound, but she didn't stop them. "Stop being dramatic. Youre just not used to it. You used to be so graceful, Trace. Now you walk like a monster. Fix it. Walk for me."

"Guards, take him around the courtyard. A hundred laps. Don't let him stop."

The next hour was a blur of agony. Blood began to seep from the edges of the prosthetic, staining my pants. I was shaking so hard I could barely see.

Hedy watched from the porch, her brow furrowed as she noticed the red trail I was leaving. "Patrick? Is that supposed to happen? It looks wrong."

Patrick stepped out, wrapping a cashmere throw around her shoulders, blocking her view of my blood. "Its a high-performance athletic model, Hedy. It requires a 'break-in' period. Like new shoes, but more intense. The skin has to toughen up. Once the scar tissue forms, hell be back on the fencing strip in no time. Im doing this for him, honey. I want my friend back."

Hedy sighed, leaning into him. "Youre too good to him, Patrick. Truly."

She looked at me, her voice cold again. "Keep going, Trace. Don't waste Patricks kindness."

I collapsed on lap sixty.

When I came to, I was lying on a Persian rug in the formal dining room. My leg had been crudely bandaged, and the metallic prosthetic sat like a dead limb beside me. Hedy and Patrick were finishing a steak dinner.

"Oh, hes awake," Patrick said, setting down his wine. "Perfect timing. Why don't you join us, Trace? Hedy, maybe he can help serve the soup? Itll help with his balance."

Hedy didn't even look up from her plate. "Good idea. Trace, go to the kitchen. Bring out the tureen of tomato bisque."

I hauled myself up, using a chair for leverage. Every movement felt like a hot knife twisting in my hip. I took the heavy ceramic tureen from the chef, my hands trembling. I walked toward the table, one agonizing step at a time.

As I reached Patrick, I looked into his smug, beautiful face. And I flipped my wrists.

CRASH.

The scalding red soup poured directly over Patricks head, soaking his white shirt and burning into his skin.

"AAAHHHHH!" Patrick shrieked, clutching his face as he fell backward off his chair, writhing on the floor.

"Patrick!" Hedy screamed. She lunged forward, shoving me out of the way to get to him.

I didn't have the balance to catch myself. I hit the floor hard, my bandages tearing open. Blood blossomed across the cream-colored rug.

"You did that on purpose!" Hedy screamed, her eyes red with fury. "He tries to help you, he tries to give you a life, and you try to disfigure him? Youre sick! Youre absolutely vile!"

I lay there in the mess of soup and my own blood, and for the first time in years, I laughed. It was a hollow, jagged sound.

"Yeah," I spat, looking her in the eye. "Im vile. Im a piece of trash. So why keep me? If Im such a lost cause, Hedy, let me go. Let me rot in the street where I belong. Don't let me stain your perfect house any longer."

Something in her expression broke. She looked at me not with pity, but with a terrifying, obsessive ownership.

"You want to leave? You think its that easy?" She took a deep breath, her voice dropping to a whisper. "If you want to act like an animal, Ill treat you like one."

"Security! Put him in the kennel. And don't let him out until I say so."

I was dragged out and shoved into a narrow, rusted iron cage in the back of the estate. Then the Seattle rain begana torrential, freezing downpour. My leg began to swell, the infection throbbing in time with my heartbeat. I curled into a ball, my fever rising until the world started to tilt.

Through the haze, I saw a pair of polished shoes. Patrick stood there with a black umbrella, a bandage over half his face. He signaled the guards to leave.

"Look at you," he hissed. "The champion. The prodigy. Now youre just a dog in a cage."

I looked up, my vision blurring. "Why, Patrick? Why do you hate me this much?"

"I hate you because she looked at you the way she should have looked at me," he snarled. "But don't worry. By the time Im through, you won't even remember your own name. And Trace? In this rain, with that fever lets see if you even make it to morning."

When I opened my eyes again, a cool hand was pressed to my forehead.

I was in a sterile hospital room. Hedy was sitting by the bed, looking exhausted but strangely relieved.

"Trace thank god. Youve been out for two days. You scared me."

She sounded so much like the girl I used to love that for a split second, I forgot. I forgot the cage, the fire, the prison. I thought I was home.

"Hedy I"

"I know," she whispered, stroking my hair. "I shouldn't have put you in the cage. But Trace, you were so stubborn. I only asked you to take the fall because I wanted to break that pride of yours. I wanted you to need me. To stay with me forever."

The sweetness of her voice made my skin crawl. It was the logic of a kidnapper.

"But Patrick is right," she continued. "Your disability has made you bitter. Were going to fix it."

The door clicked open. Patrick walked in, followed by a man in a white lab coat. My blood turned to ice.

Dr. Crane.

He was the same doctor who had "treated" me in the prison infirmary. The one who had purposefully delayed my surgery until the tissue died.

"What is this?" I tried to scramble back, but I was tethered to an IV.

Patrick smiled, a look of pure, saintly concern. "Trace, the infection in your stump was bad. Dr. Crane says the bone is uneven, which is why the prosthetic hurts. Were going to do a revision surgery. We just need to take a few more inches off. Clean up the bone. Then youll be able to wear that 'high-performance' leg I bought you."

They wanted to cut me again. More of me, gone.

"No! Get him away from me!" I screamed. "Hes in your pocket, Patrick! Hes the one who crippled me in the first place! Hedy, listen to metheyre trying to kill me!"

I tried to throw myself off the bed, but Hedys hands were like iron on my shoulders.

"Trace! Stop it!" she yelled. "Patrick flew in the best orthopedic specialist in the country for you! And youre accusing him of murder? Youre delusional!"

"I'm not! Search his records! Look at the prison logs!" I grabbed her wrists, begging. "Hedy, please. Just this once, believe me. Hes lying to you!"

"Enough!" She shoved me back. My head hit the headboard, and the room spun. "The prison has rotted your brain, Trace. Youre not well."

She took the surgical consent form from Dr. Crane. Her pen hovered over the paper.

"No Hedy, don't. Please"

She signed it with a flourish. "Its for your own good. When you wake up, well start over. A clean slate."

She waved her hand. Two orderlies moved in, strapping me down to the gurney with thick leather belts.

"No! Youll regret this! Hedy, I swear to God, youll regret this!"

My screams echoed down the hallway as they wheeled me away. She didn't look back once.

The heavy doors of the OR swung shut. The surgical lights flared to life, blinding me. Dr. Crane began to slowly put on his gloves, humming a tune.

"Don't take it personally, Silas," Crane whispered, leaning over me. "Patrick paid a lot of money for you to 'accidentally' never wake up from this one. A shame, really. You should have picked a different girl."

The surgical saw roared to life, a high-pitched whine that filled my skull.