tiger, tiger coffee bar

The Metallica kid crumpled up when I pulled Changi away.

‘Read the fucken' sign, yer little cunt. Don't feed the cats!' The old boy spat.

I picked the kid up to see if he was okay. Joycey who'd seen it all from the ticket booth, had got there too. Changi went to go on with it with the kid but I told him to fuck off, fuck off and cool down. The kid was shaken and had a bright red mark around his neck where he'd been grabbed.

Fuck.

We'd already had the coppers through the place the day before, asking questions about the little girl that went missing.

Joycey and I looked at each other, then back to the kid. I reached into my moneybelt and pulled out a fistful of notes - mostly fives and tens - and thrust them into the kid's hand.

‘We square?' The kid mumbled something which I took as a yes and I helped him to his feet.

‘Home time, cowboy,' I said with a smile that I hoped was a reassuring one. I just wanted him the fuck outta here before Changi or Mazzoni showed up.

‘You okay,mate?' He had a cold look in his eyes; looking right through me he was. I bet he thinks we're fucken' brutal pricks. I thought about the little girl gone missing and suddenly I wanted a shower, to scrub myself clean of all this madness, of Rosebud, of all the evil grit that works its way into your skin.

*

Changi and I had been tightening up the Laughing Clown's when it all happened. It was a warm night and we had taken advantage of the weather: the boss had complained to Changi that the Clowns weren't rotating quick enough (like P.T.Barnum, Mazzoni didn't believe in givin' any sucker an even chance), so over a six pack of beer we leisurely calibrated the machine. We were laughing about fixing the workings up so tightly so that the Clowns heads would move as quick as Linda Blair's in The Exorcist. We pissed ourselves about the fat wog coming across that: the Clowns rotating into a blur like they were on speed. That's when we heard Joycey screaming from the other end of the reserve.

She had woken just before one-thirty, with mild angina and a hope that a short walk would ease the pain and bring on the sleep that had lately eluded her. But for the pain she didn't mind the walks, passing through the still show with the darkened vans and cheetahs languid in their cage. And it was safe; there was always someone up somewhere in the show: she had seen Changi and I up the other end that night, illuminated in the slice of light thrown off from the Clowns and could hear fragments of our voices floating up to her with the salty breeze.

She thought that the cats were only asleep, until her eyes became accustomed to the half dark and she saw the blood matted upon their coats. And then the smell, sickly and thick, rising with her screams.

In the shock of recognition, she thought it was her screams that brought the police; and not noticing right then - how could we with Joycey screaming and Changi screamin' and the flashing lights - that they seemed to arrive within seconds of Joycey's find. And me crouching over Changi crouching over Queenie and Lady Cocksucker and having to gently pull him away, him a soggy red mess and the cats a soggy red mess and taking him into his van and pouring him a long Bourbon and me a long one too and looking at the Vegemite jars and thinking about the look of cold rage in the Metallica kid's eyes the day before and leaving him there, locking the door behind me, harbouring him from the flashing lights. And the two-way message I overheard, as I helped the police drape the cage with a tarpaulin, that they'd found the little girl's body. The flashing lights illuminating the horror. And me going back to Changi and standing outside and listening to him singing Bird on a Wire, something unreadable in his voice carrying through the thin door.