Jerome Valeska: Circus Love

Jerome Valeska: Circus Love Chapter 7

Chapter 7- The Narrows

Jerome's fifteenth birthday went by unnoticed, not that he cared about that, but his birthday did indicate the Circus's imminent annual visit to Gotham, something that Jerome had learnt to look forward to each year. The obvious break from his mother as she disappeared into the city to party was always welcome but each year had brought another gift from the dank city. The Circus had kept a PO box with the Gotham Mail room for decades, each year the Ringmaster would retrieve a sack of backlogged mail for the members of the Circus something of no interest to Jerome until the Gotham stay after his eleventh birthday.

The day after their arrival to Gotham just after his eleventh birthday Mary Lloyd, Sadie's cousin had found Jerome with a pink envelope addressed to him, he had recognised the hand writing immediately, inside had been a handmade birthday card with a drawn picture of a clown with an arrow gruesomely impaling it's head. Sadie had inscribed a short letter in multicoloured pens, vague, no details of her whereabouts or clues just inconsequential information about TV shows she had watched, books she had read and music she had heard but Jerome read that card a hundred times. Each year since a single handmade birthday card with a similar picture of some sort of comical clown death and letter update had arrived much to Jerome's delight.

Now fifteen Jerome was doing his usual set up for the Gotham run, securing the animal pens and stocking up the feed stores, he worked fast as he had watched the Ringmaster lug the mail sack into his trailer earlier that day and was eagerly awaiting his annual card from Sadie.

Mary appears through the curtain leading out to the ring, she is already dressed in her clown costume ready for the first afternoon performance, Jerome pretends not to notice her but secretly he has already seen that she has no card in her hands and his stomach starts to fill with disappointment. The older pretty teenager comes to lean against a post near where Jerome moves hay with a pitchfork.

"I saw you the other night you know? I came back for my prop bag and I saw you." Jerome ignores her accusing tones continuing to move large chunks of hay into the elephant food trough, "You're bloody good you know, is it just the knives you do? You are an amazing shot, much better than that poor excuse for a magician they've been paying."

"Knives, axe, tried some shitty magic tricks but mostly boring apart from the escape stuff, think that might come in useful one day ya know?" Jerome gives Mary a cheeky wink.

"Oh yeah? You expecting to be locked up at some point? Well I thought you were good, you should audition for a spot in the show." Mary un tucks an envelope from the back of her waist band handing it to Jerome, he stops shovelling and moves a little too close to Mary his face just inches away from hers as he clutches one side of the envelope.

"Not in it for the spotlight....Mary.....not yet anyway, so maybe keep my hobbies to yourself yeah?" Jerome's manner is strangely threatening even with the Cheshire cat grin he is beaming at Mary, he snaps the card from her grip making her jump back with a squeak.

"Whatever Jerome, who am I going to tell anyway, do what you want." Mary shuffles out swiftly, Jerome remains static holding his card until she has completely disappeared. Only then does he run to his usual corner under the lamp sitting himself cross legged on the floor, he tears away the envelope and laughs loudly at the very artistic illustration of a fat clown being set alight with gasoline on the from a hose held by a skinny clown, Sadie's drawings have become very skilful and increasingly sadistic over the years, something Jerome alone would appreciate.

Inside is the usual multicoloured letter, this year it seems Sadie had been mostly into death metal and obscure electro and her fondness for horror films had continued. Jerome absorbs the information as he reads it through a few more times but something sets a bad taste in his mouth, something is wrong. Jerome looks at the page, it screams back at him, something is different, firstly there are three spelling mistakes, Sadie was smart, almost as smart as him and she never made mistakes, not in four years of letters had there been one grammatical error. Also the page just looked wrong, it reminded Jerome of one of Jeremiah's mazes for some reason, like something was out of place.