Holding My Breath

by greerian

Summary:

The Greatest Showman: a collection of one-shots from my tumblr.

Notes:

One-shots will be added as written. Unless marked, none are connected.

Chapter 1: Weather

Notes:

After the film's end. An epilogue of sorts.

Barnum left, again.

He had the decency to set them up in the tent down by the docks, that allowed them to change their acts every show. But he left. Mid-show, to give the audience a thrill, no doubt. And to keep them all from getting to say goodbye. That man was all about the dramatic and grand and provocative and emotional, especially when it came to himself. He couldn’t do the right thing, the standard thing. He couldn’t dare show anyone they meant anything to him, either.

And so the freaks, the oddities, the coloreds and the dwarfs and the alcoholics gained the circus. P. T. Barnum got the life he wanted. The rest of them got the spotlight, and, for a while, it was enough.

They heard no more of Jenny Lind, and were glad of it. They heard no more of Mr. or Mrs. Barnum, and were less glad. The Barnum girls were darling, Charity lived up to her name in kindness, and Barnum… Barnum gave them a home.

He built it, burned it, ruined it, and rebuilt it, disappearing once he had what he wanted. The circus, under Phillip’s direction, kept his name and did good by his legacy.

Better than. Phillip Carlyle didn’t make all his plays successful based on connections and merit alone. He had a good head on his shoulders, even drowned in liquor, and he made good on his investments many times over. More than that, he gave Lettie, Anne, W.D., Charles, O’Malley, and the Biggest Man on Earth shares in the show. Not much—five for Lettie, three for the others—but enough to make them richer than they had ever imagined. There was good money in humbug, and show-business, and spectacle.

And dreams. A little money greased the palm of a county clerk, and within the year Anne W. D. Wheeler became Anne Wisteria Davis Carlyle. It helped that Lettie knew her way around a tin of paints, and Anne was almost fair-skinned enough to pass as a white working woman.

“I tried enough as a laundress,” Lettie chuckled, neatly highlighting the top of Anne’s nose, the elegance of her brow, and darkening the features that caused people to scowl when they saw her on the street. “I used to cake this stuff on, trying to hide the stubble. But there’s only so much you can do.”

Anne smiled, sympathetic. Anne had it hard, mulatto as she was, but Lettie, with her big voice and big chest and big beard and big, colored-woman’s nose, had it ten times worse. Anne had a handsome, privileged man in love with her. Lettie had herself.

The circus all had each other. They knew that from the beginning, from the time they all lined up to audition, met each others eyes, and realized no one else was flinching away. Friendship, for the first time. It was forbidden fruit, and suddenly, in a burst of spotlights and sawdust, they could eat their fill.

That was what kept them going. When the glitter faded, they saw the show for what it was: a way to profit off of the way others feared them. People didn’t stop gawking now they had a name to pin to the face.

“The Bearded Lady!”

“That’s Dog Boy!”

“The Irish Giant! I heard he can’t even sleep in a house; they put him in a barn!”

“Speaking of barn, take a look at that pig. Over seven hundred and fifty pounds, they say!”

When the lights went down. When the crowds filed out. When the admirers dissipated like flies off a horse’s rump. That’s when being the Oddities became a burden again. That’s when they remembered that the normal ones would always leave them behind.

“You know,” W. D. said one day, “I don’t know that anyone’s normal.”

The circus went quiet, or as quiet as it ever got. Two hours until the Tuesday night show. No one was in costume yet. It was cold enough that being in the tent, together, was better than waiting in their shanties or flats. They sat huddled around a few big fires, watching W. D. Usually so taciturn, his brow was furrowed in determination.

“What d’you mean?” Charlie asked, jerking a thumb towards the tent’s outside. “They’re normal, we’re not.”

“I don’t know about that,” W. D. replied. “Look at Carlyle.”

Never a fan of their ringmaster, W. D. Wheeler. Lettie looked out for Phillip, for Anne’s sake, but he was nowhere to be seen. Likely in his office, a little wooden shack he had set up to store tickets and bankrolls in.

“He’s a pretty boy from a rich family, but here he is, standing up with us. And he’s close to us.”

“How?” Someone called. “He’s not a freak.”

“Ever seen him without a bottle?” W. D. retorted.

That brought silence. In it, the elephants rustled the straw in their cages. Fire crackled and warmed the performers’ numb fingers.

“That’s not normal,” W. D. said quietly.

“What about Barnum?”

“What about him?” Charlie demanded. “If you think he’s normal, you don’t know-“

“He’s trying to be,” Anne said. W. D. turned around to smile at her, dressing-gown clad and standing apart from the rest. Once she married, she became a little different from the rest. Not as much as a freak. It was harder for her to be one with the rest of them, on the colder, harder nights. “Why else you think he left?”

“What about the rest of ‘em?” Dog-Boy piped up, rubbing his hands together. He looked more like an animal in the light of the fire. Maybe Phillip could work that into the show. “Those upper-class folks who can’t give us the time o’ day, what about them?”

W. D. shrugged. Anne came up to put a hand on his shoulder. Lettie saw the soft curve of Anne's robe at the middle and looked away.

“Everyone’s got something mean in them,” she declared. “But everyone’s got something good, too. Our good and bad is on the outside. For them, it’s buried deep down so nobody can see it. We don’t get to hide.”

Her eyes met a sea of downcast faces.

“And that’s good,” she said; pleaded. “We are good. We’re better than they’re ever going to be. Don’t the good Lord say ‘those who hide in the darkness will be cast into the light’?”

“We hide in the dark,” someone muttered.

“But we face the light,” she replied.

No one answered.

But they relied on each other. They always would, no matter who left or who came. They were the Barnum Circus, home of the Oddities. They were themselves, in the best, flashiest, most sensational way they could be. Together, they could almost be happy.

Chapter 2: Respiration

Summary:

Phillip doesn't want to, but his body must heal.

There are words people say, meaning something universal and strong. Words that everyone uses, and everyone understands. “Crave.” “Vision.” “Healed.” These words hang in the air, glistening, and everyone knows what they mean. 

Phillip doesn’t.

He has fallen in love. He has seen a new world through the blaze of a fire and known he couldn’t live in it. He has stood on the brink of death and returned. He craves. He has seen. He is healed.

But it’s not right. It’s not the same. The magic everyone else seems to see in those words, it isn’t there for him. His love—that’s what it is, isn’t it? That’s what it has to be—isn’t grand. His vision wasn’t clear; it was a moment of terror and motion and no! It didn’t feel the way everyone said it should. It felt… off.

He is, according to doctors, healed. As fully well as can be expected. He has been discharged from the New York Hospital with a clean bill of health.

He had to take a cab to get home. He has to take cabs everywhere. He can’t walk. He can hardly breathe. It’s terrible, painful, difficult. To do something he’s done from his first moment in the world, it takes from Phillip a strength he didn’t know he had. Sometimes it’s all he can do to sit up in an armchair and draw breath.

He sits for hours, breathing, watching the light change around him. It often goes dark before he can drag himself to his feet for sustenance. He does not light candles or lamps. He does not have help to kindle the fire. It’s cold and dark, but Phillip has to breathe.

Sitting so still, his thoughts often wander to Anne. She waited at his bedside. She looked… more beautiful than he had ever seen her, but he never wanted to see her that way again. Her eyes, red from weeping. Over him.

“Anne,” he whispers into the darkness.

He is not sure he loves her. He’s not sure he can. He wants her, of course; who wouldn’t? She’s beautiful and good and blinding; meeting her eyes changed his world. But is it love? His feelings appeared so suddenly. If Phillip knows anything, it’s that you can’t pin all your hopes on fleeting happiness. When a man and a woman become one, as God intended, they-

It hurts to think about it. But it’s necessary. Phillip needs to think of such things now. His earnings have been good, but the cost of care for this condition will drain them quickly. He is weak. He can hardly speak. Caring for him is a job best suited for a servant.

Anne is a woman who is whole, in and of herself. She stands, tall and proud, and does not need him. Wants him, perhaps. Craves. But does not require.

And he doesn’t require her, he thinks. He could live on if she could. It would be easy to strengthen the wall between them.

Love is a sacred, holy thing. Love is what fathers and mothers feel for their children, love is what lovers think they feel for each other, love is what the Lord above grants those who follow Him.

Anne isn’t tainted by love.

What Phillip feels for her isn’t sacred at all. It’s a desire to see her smile, to watch her dance. He wants to see her in his home, making herself at home. He wants to see her. Touch her. Kiss her again.

Still, it doesn’t feel right.

Phillip sits in his chair and forces air through his charred throat, down to his aching lungs. His thoughts swirl like smoke in the air, when a candle is lit. Nothing catches in his head. He can’t ponder anything further. It just feels wrong. Off. Something doesn’t fit, and he can’t see beyond a foot in front of his face.

He has a headache.

It takes him a good five minutes to get down to the door when someone knocks. 

He doesn’t live in a tenement, thank God. Before his disinheritance, he bought himself a nice, small, painfully vertical little flat off Broadway. But he has since dismissed the help, sold off some of the more gaudy decorations, and now has to struggle down to the street level to see who on earth has come, uninvited, to see him at eight o’clock in the evening.

It’s Anne.

“What…?” he starts.

“P. T. sent me to check on you,” she says, trying to hide how her eyes widened at his pitiful state. He’s dressed, but barely. He hasn’t shaved in… since… and his stomach growls as Anne pushes her way inside his home.

“Anne- no,” he rasps. “People will think we- you’re-“

“The only person who cares about my virtue is W. D., and you’re too weak to stand.”

Phillip realizes he’s learning against the door frame and scowls.

“P. T. didn’t send you,” he says. “He… sent me a note. Told him I would be back… wh- when I could. Be.”

Anne stops. “That was days ago.”

“What?”

“Phillip, are you… okay?”

He hasn’t shut the door; it’s cold for March, and the chill cuts through him. Phillip shivers. The resulting pain screams through his chest and sends coughs racking through him.

Anne says something. She sounds worried. Phillip holds up a hand to tell her he’s fine, he’s all right, he’ll- His hand is shaking.When Anne reaches out, he falls into her arms. 

Chapter 3: Ruby-Red

Summary:

Anne's thoughts wander when the world stills.

Notes:

NSFW

A hot hand on her hip. A man’s breath against her mouth. The slightest press of lips against her skin before she is yanked away.

Anne does not speak. She flies, out of his grip and into the smoky, dust-filled air. All is silent, but his eyes are not. They cry out–they scream for something she does not have.

I’m sorry, she thinks. But she does not speak.

Her hand begins to burn from her weight. The rough rope she grips pricks her palm. She looks at it, and she is bleeding. She is falling. She let go. Anne let go, and now she is falling, and those eyes chase her into darkness.

Blue eyes.

“God!” she gasps, jolting awake. It’s dark. Anne can’t see the ceiling above, if there is one. She turns her head, scrambling for breath. The coals of a dying fire crackles. They look like rubies on black velvet cloth. Beneath her stiffened spine, there is an answering rustle: straw. A straw pallet keeps her off the ground. 

It’s the tenement she and W. D. share.

A deep breath fills Anne’s lungs. She draws it in, breathes in full, arches her back to capture as much as possible. She lets it flow from her lungs in a gush, but the taut bowstring of her body doesn’t slacken.

Another one of those dreams.

W. D. snores lightly from the other side of the small room. He never used to sleep so soundly, before the circus. Anne lets a smile touch her face as she turns on her side to face him. Face the fire–the room–the door, with silence beyond. It’s as quiet as this building ever gets.

From that, she knows it can’t be later than three in the morning.

She won’t sleep again tonight.

She sighs. The moment she closes her eyes, another set will appear in her mind. Blue, red-rimmed, intoxicated eyes. Open, unmasked, sympathetic eyes. Those eyes never hide anything. They never smile, except in surprise when she caught him in midair, when her hands didn’t push him away.

Blue eyes.

Phillip Carlyle fills her waking hours with fantasies, and her nights with dreams. Anne can’t escape him. No matter how hard she pushes herself during the day, he’s there. She works until her hands bleed and her legs cramp. She tries more and more daring feats. She lets go of her safety, the bar more familiar under her fingers than her own hair, and falls into the arms of strangers. Hardest of all, she avoids him and hopes it will purge her thoughts of him.

But she can’t run from what’s in her head. Running only makes the dreams more vivid.

Sleep is hard to catch.

Anne has had dreams like these all her life. Not this subject, about this man, but with this intensity. She’s woken up screaming more times than in peace. The circus was not a novelty for her. She saw things ten times more wondrous in her head.

She has tricks to avoid them, of course. At twenty years of age, Anne Wheeler has tried every cure known to man. Prayer, hypnosis, exercises, herbal teas, hysteria treatments, and laudanum all failed her, but trapeze works wonders on her mind, most days.

Most, not all.

And the haunting image of Phillip watching her from the circus floor tends to overstay its welcome.

A tingle flows through her body like ice water down her throat. She can’t forget that night he tried to take her to the theater. She can’t remember what the show would have been, but she remembered the look in his eyes at the ticket window. Scared. Hopeful. He faced his parents with her on his arm. When she ran, he followed. He, Phillip Carlyle, once the darling of New York’s high society. He had given up so much to… to join the circus. And he was prepared to give up even more for her.

A blush heats Anne’s cheeks. The tingle hasn’t gone away, and it finds a welcome home between her legs.

But Phillip doesn’t know what he truly wants. He doesn’t know what it’s like to be looked at the way his parents looked at her. Their revulsion would increased tenfold were he to take Anne as his lover.

Phillip would take her, though. She could let him. She could kiss him, and let him kiss her, and let him ruin her. She could open her arms to him and let him into her bed. He would stay for a while.

Then some pretty girl with golden curls and porcelain skin would catch his eyes, blue as a dawn sky. Anne would be left behind.

She would have a piece of him forever, she thinks. She grits her teeth against the thought. It is only times like these, between early and late, that she wonders, would it be so bad to be ruined by Phillip Carlyle?

He would love her, at least for a time. He could love her.

Tendrils of her dream return to tug at her mind, sinuous but strong. Anne slips a hand beneath her bed cover. She tugs up her nightgown.

W. D. still snores and their building is still quiet when Anne brings her hand to her thatch to find the special place beneath.

It is only at times like this that she gives into such weakness. Her clothes, her occupation, her race may mark her as a woman without virtue, but Anne- she tries. She is a good woman, a moral one. She does not lie or cheat or steal. She does not use profane words. She lets the world see her legs at night, but she stays covered by day. She is not perfect, but she is good.

Except at times like these.

When blue eyes haunt her, and strong hands bring torment. Whisky-soaked breath whispers across her skin. The width of his hips beneath hers when they both hit the floor is seared into her bones. 

Anne’s memories and dreams swirl into impossible fantasies, at times like these. What if Phillip had not let her go, that night at the circus? What if he, instead, had torn away her flimsy practice clothes, his expensive shirt and trousers? 

What could have happened, had he taken her mouth in a kiss as intense as any words he used to negotiate, placate, or persuade. If he had scratched her breast with sawdust and had apologized. If she had only brought him down to kiss her again. If she had woven her hands into his hair as he pushed aside the only real barriers between them.

If he had taken her as his, forever.

He let her go, but Anne tries to forget that. She bites down on her coarse sheet to muffle her breathing, the faint whines she can’t hold back. Her tongue tastes dirt and old sweat. Her thoughts fly to him and how he might taste. Were she to buss his shoulder, his chest, could she find the flavor of alcohol on him? Could she taste the noble restraint he wore? Could she find the truth of him on his skin, or would it be just dirt and sweat?

Anne’s fingers move faster, slick and hot. Would Phillip touch her to ease the way?

He is a kind man, for all his melancholy. She is sure somehow he would do anything to make her feel as wonderful as he. Were they to join this way a hundred times or one, he would kiss her like she held all the light of the sun beneath her skin.

But he would take. She would push him to it, and he would push into her. In her body he’d find depths neither of them had dreamed of. He would cry and she would shake from the glory of it. He would meet her eyes and kiss her, even as she gave him the gift meant for her wedded husband. He would thank her for it.

Anne, he would say. Anne.

And she would open to him. She would let him give her every inch of himself. She would take anything he wanted to give.

Her breath comes hot and fast. The sheet in her mouth is soaked, and so is her nightgown. Anne can’t stop. Her fingers can’t find purchase but she presses harder, needing more. She needs more than the memory of Phillip’s body against hers.

His lips. They brushed hers for only a moment, on the night of the theater. They would brush hers again were he to find completion in the warmth of her body. He would break them apart to breathe, but that touch would mean more to her than any honeyed words he whispered afterwards. He would kiss her, and-

Anne, god, Anne. I love you.

A sound escapes Anne’s clenched teeth. A paroxysm hits her like fear, like a thrill. Her pulse beats in her hand, her breast, between her legs. She can think of nothing but the heat of it. Even Phillip’s voice leaves her ears.

An unwanted mercy.

“Anne?” W. D. mumbles. “Wha’s wrong?”

Anne stills.

“Nothing,” she whispers. “Go back to sleep.”

The sound of shifting straw greets her. A minute more, and his breathing slows.

Anne’s fingers are wet when she brings them out from under the sheet.

Anne, Phillip’s voice taunts her. Anne.

But she can’t have him. She bears a hole that only he can fill, and her dreams make a poor substitute. Anne is left to her dampened gown and cold bed, alone.

Chapter 4: Sing, Sweet Nightingale

Summary:

A story of Jenny Lind.

Notes:

This is short, but it's just meant to retell Jenny as I saw her. She did not seem kind, despite her "heart of an angel." I saw something wilder in her, at least in the film. I hope you enjoy.

Jennifer Lind was born a squalling child like every other, on a cold December morning. A normal infant; a perfect child. After her first cries, her mother said she became like the ice that crusted on the snow without. The swirled patterns of frost on glass panes mirrored the waves of her hair. Her eyes matched the snow-clouded sky. Her skin was more perfect than the surface of a frozen lake. She had the manners of a woman three times her age at the tender age of ten. Little Jenny had the decorum of a duchess.

At her first formal lesson on etiquette, she looked her governess in the eye and said "Your posture isn't right. Perhaps you should practice before trying to demonstrate for others." 

In her presence, people fell silent in awe, like robins at winter's first frost.

Jenny Lind could freeze the world with a look.

With her voice, she thawed it. Most believed her voice was more true than her mannerisms, but Jenny Lind was sculpted winter. Winter could hold beauty as well as devastation.

Winter meant shelter, protection, for those in its clutches. They huddled and hid from the fierceness of wicked winds and blistering cold. Winter did not mean daring, and winter did not mean joy.

So Jenny did not reach for attention. She used her voice to draw people's eyes towards her causes, her looks, her virtue. She was ice, pure and clear. She had no secrets, and showed no shame. Her reputation was never impugned. She wore white whenever possible, and no man dared take more than her hand.

“The Swedish Nightingale.”

She found no fault with the title. The world found no fault with her. It was no lie, her prowess and her charity. She found no need of wealth. In winter's grip, the less fortunate needed it more than she.

She only began to wonder if life lurked beneath her ice when she met P. T. Barnum.

Phineas Taylor Barnum had no scruples. He was the antithesis of all she had ever been. He clutched the wealth and fame he had to his chest while reaching for more. He looked at her and wanted--in a way no man had wanted before. He valued her. He lusted for her, and her chill did not put him off.

Intriguing. Jenny Lind would not thaw so easily. Her ice was centuries in the making. But Phineas Barnum’s charm could work its way under her shell sooner than she thought possible. At his urging, she left Europe. Visiting the queen had taken her off the continent for the first time. From that stepping stone, she passed through into warmth. His warmth.

Barnum glowed. He radiated heat as intense as a furnace. The mild attraction Jenny had felt, seeing him for the first time, sought out every weak spot in her ice.

From untouched snow, she began to melt. Her voice no longer shone a solitary light. Barnum followed like a dog as she reached into spotlights and grasped acclaim, applause, accolades for him. She laid it all at his feet. In return, his flame licked at her close, closer, ever nearer and hotter and more inescapable. Soon she found herself weaving between his legs like a cat, tripping him up, entwining their fingers on stage. Letting him break her down.

Her winter changed to spring.

The frosty virtue that had so protected her exposed the wildness inside her breast. Red-headed, born out of wedlock, and dragged to the spotlight--Jenny Lind found a vixen beneath the frozen crust. She had been born with that vixen. It had stayed hidden for so long, it would not take no for an answer. Through it she craved; she hungered. She had grown, from untouched hibernation into ravenous life.

The vixen wanted one thing.

Phineas Barnum, as hers.

Fidelity meant nothing in the face of such desire. She cared not he had a family, the beginnings of a reputation. She had a reputation as a queen of ice. If she could let him melt it away, she could tear away such petty trappings. After all, he had taken on when he had not known better. Anyone would be drawn to such light. The proof was in his ridiculous show. Why else would the same crowds who flocked to see her stay to gawp at the monstrosities he presented? For him. Always for him.

Barnum's wife would never understand, but Jenny--she knew what it was like. She knew winter, and he, summer's warmth. She and Barnum met each other's eyes and saw untamed nature there. He was heat, war, and blinding golden light. She was bitter cold. Ice, untouchable. Destroyed by his flame. No man would understand her the way Barnum could. And no woman could satisfy his hunger like she.

Together, they made something wildly, indescribably beautiful.

Chapter 5: Hell Fire

Summary:

Phillip tries to light a candle.

Notes:

Canon-compliant, set between the second-to-last scene and the finale half of "The Greatest Show." Nobody actually died. But Phillip has a hard time believing that.

As it turns out, not even P. T. Barnum’s magic tongue and Phillip Carlyle’s lined pockets could resurrect the circus overnight. One month from the fire, they still hovered around an opening date weeks away. Barnum rolled up his sleeves. Carlyle wrote until his eyes burned. They both offered encouraging words to the Oddities, when they stopped by. They came to Barnum’s new tenement home, and Phillip’s flat; neither of them can name a date for payday. None of them can afford to wait so long.

Anne and Lettie have gone to the laundry on 14th. W. D. turned to the docks. Dog Boy was last seen at a livery stable, mucking stalls and whispering to the horses. The Lord of Leeds served well enough as a barkeep at the East Side’s version of Flannery’s. The cast scattered like the ashes of Barnum’s circus, but they would come back. Soon, once Phillip negotiates wages out of the remaining money. Soon, once P. T. smooth-talks his way into a lot and customers willing to go there. Soon, the people would want to see them again.

---

 

One candle sits, flickering, on his buckled desktop. It hadn’t been broken when Phillip had the desk moved in, five years ago. Fresh from Harvard, he had flown the coop of the Carlyle mansion on Long Island. His new nest was in the bustling heart of Manhattan. He believed in its energizing pulse; he thought his academic cynicism would fade, should he live amongst real people. No more stuffshirts, no society gentlemen and their opinions defining his work. Living in the city would bring his writing to life. It would become the art he’d dreamed it could be.

Or, as he found, it could recoil from the grit, the dirt, and the shit reality offered. Manhattan’s streets were filthy. They stank of death and rot. People stared out at them with dead eyes. Talking to them didn’t breathe life into anything. No, it breathed the stench of an opened coffin on him, his writing, his flat.

Where he lived was not his home. It couldn’t be. Phillip Carlyle was a bachelor, a rich eccentric who focused on elevating his craft over starting a family. No woman’s touch graced the cheerless rooms. Phillip had sent away all his servants at the start of this new venture. So his flat was not home.

He had furniture from home, however. Mahogany, balsam, etched glass. Horsehair chairs, crystal glasses, an ebony bedframe, and a fine oak desk. It was beautiful. At least, until Phillip came home Old Testament drunk and smashed a lantern on its surface. It’s mottled with oil stains, gouged from twisted metal and shards of glass from that night. Another eve found him knocking over a bottle of single malt to spill across the top. The wood buckled. Even now, his pen catches on the edge of blistered boards. Ink puddles on the letter beneath his hand.

Phillip curses. He can’t remember who this one was for. His head is killing him. And every time he straightens up the candle light catches his eyes.

Damn it. It’s almost burned out. Phillip tried to avoid looking up at it, its flickering dance. The lone candle bravely fights to light his dusky office. It casts shadows across panelled walls for another moment or two, but succumbs. It dies with a sputtering, pathetic hiss.

Phillip is left to the darkness.

The floor beneath his feet shakes with the sound of laughter. Barnum’s circus sounded so the night it burnt to the ground. The people who live beneath him chatter; Phillip is sure outside his windows, people walk and street lamps burn. He cannot see them.

He does not want to. Light means flame, and flame means watching his life burn away like this morning’s newspaper. The Oddities, no longer strange or different from the crowd watching, horrified and scared. A huge crowd had come to gawk, while half the folks who had come to see the show had already run. They daren’t be caught on this side of town, at Barnum’s circus.

The building was a torch, a pyre; Phillip heard afterwards the light could be seen for a mile.

Yet, he cannot sit in the dark forever. Not even infants fear a candle. He reaches for one of the half-burned wax stubs he knows stands guard around the periphery of his massive, worthless desk. They’re still good for an hour or two’s worth of light.

Hands still raw with peeling blisters catch on cracked panels of wood, but they do land on a candlestick. Next, to the drawer for matches. He misses the latch thrive—but this time not for drunkenness or lack of sight. He knows the feel of this, how his hands should operate. He has done this since his release from St. Joseph’s hospital. It is not the first night his candle has burned out.

No. His hand shakes from fear. The laudanum Dr. Reeves (of the hospital; not Dr. West, the Carlyle family physician he had seen since childhood) gave him sent his mind reeling. It slipped from his grasp, a swirling mass of flames and screams. He had not been able to taste its relief since. So he has nothing to steady his hands. What should cure his fear only exacerbates it.

To work, to atone, Phillip needs light. For light, he needs steady hands for matches. For matches, he needs to not be so damned afraid. What cowardice. What weakness .

The latch clicks loud as a gunshot. Phillip half-forgot what he had been trying for. But he retrieves the matches well enough, and clicks his jaw shut to quiet his breathing. It’s heavy in the silence of his office, somehow drowning out the city sounds below and around him.

Matches. Candle. Light. Phillip needs light to write the letters. He has matches; he has a candle. Now, it’s just the light.

He has not struck a match since that night.

His grip is weak. The match does not even spark when he drags it across a strip of sandpaper. It slips; his hand is sweating. Phillip tries to curse and feels his jaw click against his teeth, as he shivers like a man in a fever.

What is wrong with him? It is a match, the kind he has lit hundred of times before. What does it matter if it flares up? What matters the blinding light, or singeing heat? He needs light. He has to see.

What matters the embers, the crackling, the collapse of charred wooden beams? It is only a match. Phillip needs light to see.

At last the match head catches. A shower of sparks sprays onto his desk; one falls on his hand. But then a blaze erupts before him, and it drops—the match drops to the desk. No, no - The ink-stained letter, the inkwell, the ink itself, they all land on top of the match, and it is extinguished in an instant.

But the flare lit up the room in its first, only breath of life. Phillip saw. He saw his rooms, his desk, his letters lit up in an eerie yellow glow, like the alleys around the circus, like the eyes of the people who stared out of them, drawn to the light like moths. His hand smarts and the feeling spreads; it spreads across the expanse of his skin as fast as flames licked up the wood and brick frame of the museum many called home. The Oddities—the crowds—then P. T. was there watching his life go up in smoke; Charlie, his dreams; Lettie, and her voice. Their strength burned away, and Anne-

Phillip can’t keep his mouth shut anymore. Heavy pants comes out, alongside the cry he held tight in his chest until it ached worse than any muscle in his body ever had. It’s loud, and he hears it, he hears his own breathing. But he also hears everyone’s voices and their names, and where is-? A crackling fire and horses coming too late and wooden beams falling from the heights. He cannot see but he couldn’t in the midst of the flames, either. There it was all light, and gold, and the most beautiful terror. Now there is nothing beautiful, but the fear stays.

He did not think to cover his mouth. He breathed in fire, ash. He screamed out Anne, only Anne, nothing but Anne! He would scream her name until he died because her lithe shape didn’t emerge from the flame and he could not leave without her.

His clothes burned. His hair, his scalp, and he could not see because the heat was melting him like a candle. Anne would burn, though, her skin dark and her limbs strong like an ancient tree. She would burn brave and tall and beautiful while he would melt and never touch her again because he could no longer scream for her and she wasn’t there and it was too late for them now. If only her kiss was the one he was to feel instead of blinding, bleeding embers on his lips. There is nothing but yellow and red and black fire and there is the sky above but even that burns hot in heat like this.

There is no Anne. Phillip has failed. He is dead, and she is dead. P. T. is ruined and the Oddities are cast out and there is nothing left. He cannot see.

He had not seen the murder in the man’s eyes when he asked him to leave, but W. D. had; because of that W. D. punched him and the Oddities led the charge and Phillip brought this on their heads by not escorting the men out when he had the chance; Phillip let them in and Phillip couldn’t fight and Phillip didn’t know people were so cruel and could burn so easily; he didn’t know how much they wanted to destroy. His ignorance, his weakness, faced him in the light of the burning circus that held Anne, the woman who showed him what love was with every breath she took and he killed her. He destroyed everything. Everyone was ruined, W. D. was screaming for his sister, the circus was a column of fire. There was no God here for them.

Phillip had done it all. He killed her. He killed Anne. They were all dead and demolished and dust and ash keeps catching in his eyes, and Phillip can’t see.

It’s all dark. The candle won’t light. The match is gone out. He can’t see.

He is on his hands and knees on the floor. The air he breathes is not enough, but he does breathe. He gasps for it. There is no light. There is no flame. There is the darkness of his empty rooms, and the echo of a streetlamp behind the shuttered windows. There is no fire. There is no heat. There is heat in his face and on his face and his hands burn, his lungs ache, his eyes are wet and hot and dry, but there is no warmth. He starts to shake. In his rooms, it is cold.

Pain sinks into his bones, burns his skin, claws his throat. Phillip pulls himself up, hands braced on his ruined desk. Stumbling feet carry him to his bed. It is too big for a bachelor alone. His teeth clack together as he climbs into it, beneath its covers, fully clothed. He lost his tie hours ago, and has taken to wearing only slippers at home for the comfort of his scorched feet. Dr. Reeves and the nurses had pitied him.

Phillip does not need pity. He would not take it. He took hold of the blankets and pulled them to his chin, only not taking them further because under them his face would burn. His weak lungs would struggle for what little air they could find. His face, wet with tears, faces the darkness and cold. His body is racked with chills. There are letters to write. P. T. and the others trust in him. They shouldn’t, but they do. They don’t know it was Phillip who let it all burn.

A sob wracks him.

“Anne,” he whispers. There is no answer, of course. She is far away with W. D., and she would not be if her life had been up to him. He had let her die. “Please.”

Phillip’s hands release the blanket edge, grasp at his own arms. It is a pathetic embrace.

“Hold me.”