09-13-2018, 07:09 PM
The performance was raucous and energetic in a frenzied way. It built upon itself, the humor and ever increasing mockery of Brandon. Almost as if building to a crescendo.
This performer knew what he was doing, Beto realized, as he studied the audience. The howls of laughter, the liberation of fear or weakness by daring to mock one who called himself Ascendancy in such blatant and pointed manner was intoxicating. The laughter that came from fear. In many ways, the audience was the real show, pulled along by a string.
And Beto sensed a trap. The criticism was too sharp, the drawing in of the crowds in too deliberate. He was taking them somewhere, a pied piper merrily leading the unsuspecting.
A smile played over his lips. The spring, when it came, would be explosive. And he wanted to watch the reactions.
It shifted, the darkness increased, the birth of the empire framed as the murder of innocent girls. The laughter took on an exaggerated tone, extreme and warped, as if egging Ass-candy on; as if the audience were now part of the performance, the enablers, the ones who had asked for this, begged for this, the tension growing tauter and tauter, the band stretching and stretching.
Ass-candy climbed over the bodies, the mountain on which he now stood, Ascendant over the world. Standing on the dead he killed. A signal and the simpering Desmond Du Marc led a sheep to the stage.
The smile widened and Beto's eyes looked at hit hungrily, flitting from Du Marc to Ass-candy to the sheep. He realized his heart beat was elevated. He could see, could feel the zenith being approached. He licked his lips, watched the crowd cheer, drunk on the spectacle.
The screams of the sheep were drowned out by the explosion of the crowd. Horror and shock and sweet glorious release of tension they had not realized they'd felt. Emotion, raw and pure, without definition or shape, too big for any label.
And Beto couldn't help the laugh that poured from his mouth. It had been so easily done.
He stood clapping with the others.
He liked this man.
This performer knew what he was doing, Beto realized, as he studied the audience. The howls of laughter, the liberation of fear or weakness by daring to mock one who called himself Ascendancy in such blatant and pointed manner was intoxicating. The laughter that came from fear. In many ways, the audience was the real show, pulled along by a string.
And Beto sensed a trap. The criticism was too sharp, the drawing in of the crowds in too deliberate. He was taking them somewhere, a pied piper merrily leading the unsuspecting.
A smile played over his lips. The spring, when it came, would be explosive. And he wanted to watch the reactions.
It shifted, the darkness increased, the birth of the empire framed as the murder of innocent girls. The laughter took on an exaggerated tone, extreme and warped, as if egging Ass-candy on; as if the audience were now part of the performance, the enablers, the ones who had asked for this, begged for this, the tension growing tauter and tauter, the band stretching and stretching.
Ass-candy climbed over the bodies, the mountain on which he now stood, Ascendant over the world. Standing on the dead he killed. A signal and the simpering Desmond Du Marc led a sheep to the stage.
The smile widened and Beto's eyes looked at hit hungrily, flitting from Du Marc to Ass-candy to the sheep. He realized his heart beat was elevated. He could see, could feel the zenith being approached. He licked his lips, watched the crowd cheer, drunk on the spectacle.
The screams of the sheep were drowned out by the explosion of the crowd. Horror and shock and sweet glorious release of tension they had not realized they'd felt. Emotion, raw and pure, without definition or shape, too big for any label.
And Beto couldn't help the laugh that poured from his mouth. It had been so easily done.
He stood clapping with the others.
He liked this man.