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The air around the Freak Circus of Horrors was a thick, cloying tapestry of contradictions. It was a perfume of profound wrongness, a signature that announced the troupe’s presence long before their garish wagons, tents, and flickering lights came into view on the city’s grimy outskirts. It was a smell you knew intimately, one that had imprinted itself onto your memory a week after their arrival and had refused to leave. The sweet, sticky rot of cotton candy spun in machines that never seemed quite clean. The earthy aroma of fresh sawdust, scattered to soak up spills of uncaring attendants. And underpinning it all, a coppery sharp tang that prickled the back of one’s throat, the metallic tang of old pennies, of a bitten tongue, of something far less innocent and carefree. Though you suspected you were the only one who noticed.
This miasma clung to everything: to the battered and striped canvas of the tents, to the costumes of the performers, to the very soil they trod upon. But it clung, most persistently and potently, to Pierrot and the other circus performers.
You’d known it from the very first moment, a week ago, when his black-gloved fingers had given you his ticket. Replacing the vibrant, almost unnatural pink, ticket you’d gotten by random chance, with a crimson one matching his own costume. Insisting that you use it upon your visit to the circus. The contact was a spark of awareness of something inhuman, a silent scream against your sharp nerves. A sound like dry leaves skittering across stone, a silent, rasping breath, had escaped the perpetually grinning, painted black smile on his stark white face. His eyes, visible through the upturned holes of his mask, were not eyes at all. They were voids of absolute blackness, windows into a starless midnight, each centered with a single, terrifying blot of firefly gold. They didn’t just look at you; they saw you. His stare felt like a physical pressure, peeling back the layers of your own careful human disguise, scraping against the real you hiding beneath. He wouldn’t often speak, as his role of the pierrot demanded, but he would speak to you in that hushed tone when you were alone.
His rival, Harlequin, noticed your bizarre effect on Pierrot almost immediately. Where Pierrot was a study in near silent intensity, Harlequin was a trickster’s whirlwind of emerald and black, his motley a pattern of playful, almost sinister hearts. He’d swooped in as a suave contrast, his voice a smooth, melodic baritone designed to fluster, charm and thrill. His eyes, vibrant jade-green lights floating in the same impossible pool of absolute blackness, twinkled with a knowing, predatory mischief. He had given you a gift: a pendant of a green heart, its enamel gleaming. “To keep my heart near yours, my lady,” he’d said with an impossible wink that played on his mask of a face. You decided to wear it on your collar, for despite their strangeness they interested you.
Pierrot, seeing the heart of his rival upon you, seemed to be incensed by the sight, and quickly produced an enamel pendant of his own. One of a yellow star that matched the pattern on his hat. He’d pinned it so close to the heart that it overlapped it with two of its points. It was clear from then on you’d landed yourself at the center of a rivalry that was older than the span of multiple human lives.
You were a novelty to them, you quickly realized, a fascinating puzzle. A human who didn’t flinch or look away, who returned their unsettling gazes with a steady one of your own, who accepted their strange, ominous gifts without a tremor of fear. They circled you, these two ancient, feuding predators, intrigued by the calm little field mouse that did not run from the hawk right in front of it. They thought you didn’t run because you were too oblivious or naive to see the predator in them. When in truth, you saw it clear as the autumn rain dancing against the coffee shop window. You were just a better, more practiced pretender and a monster in your own right, so you feared nothing from them.
Your entire human life was a carefully constructed diorama of normalcy. A small, bland apartment that perpetually smelled of overpowering bergamot perfume, which was a desperate attempt to mask your own natural, earthy scent. Something more important than ever with other monsters prowling about now. A monotonous job as a barista at a quiet café was where you worked. There you served lattes and smiled with polite vacancy and manufactured simplicity. Your true nature hidden behind a face you had consciously chosen to be average, plain, and utterly forgettable.
But at night, you hunted. The city’s grim underbelly provided. You sought out the bad men who lurked in rain-slicked alleyways, the ones who saw a lone woman and thought only of easy prey. They learned, too late, that the hierarchy of predator and prey was not what they believed it to be. Your code was strict, criminals only. You would only claim the lives of the lowest scum of the earth, the people no one would miss. And in this city of near lawlessness, there was a never-ending abundance that would last you a lifetime. Really, it didn’t surprise you at all to see that other monsters like you would make the same discovery of this den of cutthroats and thugs.
But while much of this place was inhabited by unsavory characters. There were still those sparks of light that shone through with true goodness in their hearts. One such human was Carol, who belonged so purely to the world of sunlit normalcy. Carol, with her laugh that sounded like carefree wind chimes and her stubborn, relentless insistence on bringing you a blueberry muffin every single Saturday after her shift because you’d once mentioned being short on money to buy one for yourself. She was kindness incarnate, a soul of such genuine brightness it sometimes hurt to look at her. She didn’t see in you a quiet, plain barista with secrets, she saw a person she worried was too lonely. In the grey, exhausting monotony of your façade, she was a splash of pure, undiluted color.
And now you discovered she was gone. The world had now gone silent and empty, the echo of that silence louder than any scream. The scent of sawdust and candy floss and copper that surrounded you now smelled only of promise, a promise of reckoning.
The police weren’t interested. Another missing person in a city full of so many. But you knew. You’d caught a fading trace of her perfume, lilac and vanilla, mingled with the unmistakable, coppery-sharp scent of the circus on the edge of the park where she’d last been seen.
So you went to the circus. You had to, even if you dreaded what you might find. What you might learn.
The big top was a cavity of roaring laughter and gasps. You sat in the front row, your senses screaming. Harlequin’s puppet show was a masterpiece of macabre comedy. His marionettes, too lifelike, danced and died with gruesome precision, their painted eyes seeming to plead with the audience. He winked at you as a puppet’s head popped clean off, strings severed by his sharp, gloved fingers in a way that had everyone cheering with morbid delight.
Then came Pierrot who worked like a knife-throwing poet. He was silent, a study in graceful despair as he hurled silver blades at a rotating target, each THUNK a punctuation mark in a poem only he understood. His partner, a woman passed off as simply a limp doll, a dummy used to sell the image of a grotesque performance where the point was not to miss the target pinned to the board, but to hit them dead center.
And Pierrot’s final throw sent a dagger slicing through her head. The crowd erupted. Pierrot didn’t acknowledge them because you were there. His black-and-gold eyes found you, and he offered a deep, sweeping bow, one hand over his heart, his fingers tapping his collar where the star pendant was pinned on your own. The crowd of sheep, none the wiser to the silent exchange of the wolves in their midst, believed the body to be a mannequin. They likely saw the blood gushing forth as a prop to sell a gruesome image fitting the circus of horrors, but you could smell the copper, the viscera, the offal… it was all unmistakably human and real.
So you had been right, they were leading humans here to use as sustenance that conveniently played an added role of serving as free props in their shows.
When Pierrot’s performance ended. The crowd filtered out to the next attraction that caught their gaze, buzzing with delighted horror of sights they would never truly comprehend. You didn’t move, Pierrot came to you immediately as you expected. He asked your opinion of his show and was delighted to hear you enjoyed it. You said nothing of the corpse you knew decorated the floor, you smiled at him and nodded politely, treating Pierrot no different than a patron at the coffee shop. Once a respectable amount of time elapsed, and it was clear Pierrot wouldn’t let you leave his sight. You made a soft excuse about needing to use the restroom. He let you go then, and you slipped into the shadows behind the bleachers, into the off-limits labyrinth of wagons and storage tents. Far beyond where you knew the bathrooms were.
The air back here was different. The candy-floss smell was gone, replaced by the raw, meaty odor of a slaughterhouse, poorly disguised with hay and sickly sweet fragrances that were poor imitations of candy and flowers. But there, beneath it all, a faint, fading trace of something sharply recognizable was found, a mix of lilac and vanilla.
Your heart hammered against your ribs, a frantic, human rhythm that put your hidden teeth on edge. You followed the scent, a thread of light in a world of deepening dark. It led you to a small, isolated tent, its flap tied shut with a thick rope. The smell from within was a nauseating cocktail of fear, sweat, blood, and Carol.
You sliced the rope with a claw-tipped finger you allowed to show for just a second. The interior was pitch black, but your eyes adjusted instantly. She was there, in the corner, slumped against a crate. Unconscious, pale, but alive. A thin trickle of blood dried on her temple. Relief and fury warred within you.
You knelt, gathering her in your arms. She was light, fragile. You lifted her effortlessly, your true strength, the strength that could rend steel, making her feel like a doll. You turned and fled, bursting out of the tent and into the cool night air, heading for the tree line that bordered the circus grounds. Safety. Home. You could protect her there.
You were swift and silent, a ghost among the trees. But they were native to this darkness as much as you were.
A twig snapped to your left. Another to your right. Then another. Shapes detached themselves from the shadows, moving with an unnatural, liquid grace. You were surrounded.
You stopped, holding Carol tighter against your chest. They emerged into a small moonlit clearing, flanking you and cutting off your escape in every direction. Pierrot, his white face a grim mask of anguish. Harlequin, his usual smirk replaced by a tight line of concern. The self-assured Jester, who looked quite irritated over this entire mess. The tall, gaunt figure they called the Doctor, his long fingers twitching. And the Ticket Taker, who looked the calmest of them all, standing still with an assessing gaze like an immovable object.
“My star,” Pierrot’s voice was a raw, pained whisper that cut through the silence. “Please. Put her down. Let us explain.”
Harlequin stepped forward, his hands spread in a placating gesture. “You don’t understand, love. It’s not what you think. It’s merely… sustenance. Survival. We have no choice but to pick what we can from your numbers, we would die otherwise.” His words sounded rehearsed, careful, and softly disarming. You wondered if he’d been planning to discuss this with you already, or at least considering it. “We take only the forgotten, the ones who won’t be missed. We are careful.”
But that comment just set you off.
“She’s not one of the forgotten!” you snarled, your voice trembling with a rage you let them mistake for mere human terror. “She is my friend! You had no right!”
“Right?” Jester scoffed, his voice was an uncomposed mess. “We’re hungry. That’s the only right that matters in the dark.” He took an elegant but menacing step forward. “I’m tired of talking. Let’s just take them both and be done with it.”
“No!” Pierrot and Harlequin said in unison, shooting him a venomous look.
A tremor of profound sorrow shook Pierrot’s voice, stripping it of its usual jovial rasp. “We don’t wish to hurt you,” he pleaded, the words a soft, desperate incantation. His expressive, golden eyes, usually sparkling with mischief, were wide with genuine, terrified anguish. “You are… different. A spark in the grey. My lady, please,” he implored, the honorific he and Harlequin insisted on using felt so wrong to you now. “Do not make us do this. The choice is still yours. Just give her to us, and you can walk away untouched.”
Jester’s eyes widened when he said this, clearly he didn’t agree.
Pierrot continued. “We will forget this ever happened.” His eyes looked to his companions, pleading silently with them to accept his compromise. “You can still come to the circus, watch our shows, and laugh with us.” The promise reminded you of the bloody flower he’d gifted you. Pretty at first glance, but poisonous once you knew the truth of it.
So Pierrot’s words landed not as a plea, but as a physical blow to the gut. The air left your lungs in a quiet rush.
Harlequin nodded in somber agreement, his usual sharp grin absent in this rare moment. “He’s right, for once,” he murmured, his voice a low, coaxing thrum. “We care for you, little heart, truly. Don’t throw your entire, precious self, on the pyre for one so unworthy. Whatever care or companionship she gives can be replaced. But you,” he smiled.” You are one that’s not so easy to come by.”
Their reasoning felt like a loving gambit designed to make you betray your own moral code. But while the three of you were locked in an anguished debate. The Doctor, with a sigh that was pure unadulterated exasperation, broke the stalemate.
He was terrifying in the efficiency of his motion. One moment he was a silent, hulking shadow; the next, he was a blur of calculated, massive movement. He didn’t go for Carol, cradled against your side. He went for you. His long arm, possessing a medical precision that was more chilling than any wild swing, snaked out. His target was not to maim, but to neutralize: a precise, paralyzing blow aimed for the cluster of nerves at the side of your neck. It was the cold, dispassionate strike of a hunter who had felled a thousand prey, a perfect equation of force and calculation.
It was the mistake they all made. They saw the costume, not the creature within. They saw a human woman, a fragile thing of bone and soft flesh. Someone to be reasoned with, placated, or, failing all that easily subdued and disposed of.
The blow landed. It connected with a solid, shocking impact that should have sent lightning bolts of numbness through your system. It should have severed the connection between your mind and your body, sent your knees buckling, and crumpled you into an inert heap on the cold ground. It should have ended the confrontation then and there.
Instead of the dull thud of flesh meeting flesh, there was a sound that was utterly, terrifyingly wrong: a sharp, percussive crack like a rock striking solid granite.
The Doctor’s eyes, visible for a fraction of a second in the shadow of his hood, widened not with pain, but with pure, unadulterated shock. His clinical detachment shattered, replaced by the primal, gut-level terror of a predator who has just discovered it is, in fact, the prey. That infinitesimal moment of his understanding was all the warning there was before your own transformation erupted from you. It was not a conscious choice; it was a visceral, automatic response buried deep in your cells, a defense mechanism as innate as a hand jerking from a flame.
Your human form shattered. It didn’t fade or melt, it exploded.
Your skin hardened instantaneously to a glossy, obsidian chitin that seemed to reflect nothing. Containing naught but a pitiless, dark void. The single arm that held Carol became two, then three, then four. They multiplied and reconfigured, cradling her protectively against a torso that was now a formidable, armored core. Your face elongated, your jaw unhinging to reveal a maw of profound darkness lined with rows of needle-like, glistening fangs. From your scalp, the last remnant of your disguise, long, silken threads of your true hair shined in a pure, impossible white. It spilled forth like a waterfall made of the finest spider silk, delicate, yet each strand stirred with a sentient life of its own. And finally, four pairs of gleaming, compound white eyes opened across the upper expanse of your face.
They saw the change happen all at once. Pierrot’s face frozen in awe, Harlequin’s unsure step back, the Doctor’s paralyzed disbelief. Each calculating every minute twitch, every shift, every potential threat.
You didn’t roar. Didn’t taunt or gloat. You simply acted. One of your free upper arms, a limb of terrifying power and speed, shot out. It closed around the Doctor’s throat not with a crush, but with an inescapable, vice-like precision. You lifted the massive man off his feet as if he were weightless, a doll made of straw and cloth. With a scornful flick of impossible strength, you threw him.
He became a projectile, crashing into the thick, unforgiving trunk of an oak tree ten feet away. The impact was a sickening, woody crunch that spoke of shattered bones and dislocated joints. He slid down the bark, leaving a dark smear, and moved only enough to lift his head and show the others he wasn’t dead.
The silence that fell was absolute, profound.
You stood revealed in the moonlit clearing, a nightmarish matryoshka doll. The quiet, polite barista is gone, replaced by the ancient horror within. Carol slept on, blissfully unconscious, in the cage of your protective limbs.
The circus troupe stared, a tableau of shock and reluctant fear.
It was Jester who moved first. With a roar of fury at the attack made against one of his own, he too began to change. His purple and black motley strained and tore as his body swelled, becoming a hulking mound of grey-purple flesh. His face split into a wide maw lined with jagged, uneven tusks, as his claws tore through his gloves, revealing dagger-like appendages.
“How dare you!” He bellowed, his voice a guttural avalanche. He charged, a tidal wave of rage aimed directly at you.
But he never reached you.
“Jester, no!” The cry came from two voices at once. Pierrot and Harlequin moved in a blur of motion, their own transformations swift and terrifying. Pierrot’s slender form became leaner, sharper, like a razor-edged shadow. The red and black costume tore away to reveal sleek, dark fur. His face elongated into a canine muzzle, his black eyes with their golden irises now glowing with a feral light. His hands were wickedly clawed.
Harlequin’s change was smoother, more sinuous. His green and black attire seemed to melt into iridescent green scales that shimmered even in the weak moonlight. He grew taller, more lithe, a serpentine predator uncoiling. A long, forked tongue flicked out from between his own rows of needle teeth, and his green-irised eyes held a cold, calculating intelligence.
For once they moved as one, intercepting Jester’s mad charge. Pierrot latched onto one thick arm, sinking his claws deep into the grey flesh, while Harlequin wrapped his long, scaly body around Jester’s legs, trying to trip the behemoth.
“Stop this, you fool!” Harlequin hissed, his voice a sibilant whisper. “Look at her! She is one of us!”
“She lied to us!” Jester roared, thrashing against their hold as he gradually lost more ground.
“You will not touch her!” Pierrot snarled, his usually silent, poetic voice now a raw, bestial growl. His golden eyes, burning with a possessiveness that bordered on madness, flicked to you.
Their struggle was a whirlwind of fur, scale, and immense muscle. You saw your opening. With a speed that was pure instinct, your four lower arms shot out. Two grabbed Jester’s flailing limbs, your chitinous fingers digging in with unyielding strength. The other two slammed into his chest. With a grunt of effort fueled by panic and a deep, primal power, you shoved the monstrous Jester back and right into Pierrot and Harlequin.
The three of them went down in a tangled, snarling heap of monster limbs. Behind them, the Ticket Taker, who had remained in his deceptively mild human form, was helping the dazed Doctor to his feet, whose head lolled at a slant, a trickle of blackish blood oozing from a cut on his temple. His human eyes, blinking rapidly, were wide with pain and confusion.
The brief scuffle had given you a moment. A precious, fleeting moment. You backed away, putting distance between yourself and the recovering troupe. A low, chittering screech ripped from your throat, an alien and terrifying sound, a promise of aggression. From the flowing abundance of your hair, threads of stark-white silk shot out, not aimed at the other monsters, but at the environment around you. Your silk wove a frantic, shimmering barrier between the trees closest to you. Forming a warning fence, all of it glistening with a mild paralytic venom.
“Stay back,” you warned, your voice a distorted rasp, layered with clicks and hisses. “The next thread won’t be a warning.”
The group hesitated. Jester was clambering to his feet, still enraged but now wary of the silken web. Pierrot and Harlequin stood tall in a protective stature, though who they were protecting was suddenly a question with a very conflicting answer. Their monstrous forms were poised, tense. The Ticket Taker held the Doctor steady, his expression unreadable.
Jester went to surge forwards again but halted at the sizzle of a warning thread that brushed his feet. “I should have known you were suspicious from Pierrot and Harlequin’s accounts,” he spat, his tusked mouth adding a unique depth to the form of his words. “All this time, did you know what we are?”
Your multiple eyes scanned them, this macabre family of predators. You saw Pierrot’s wild, golden eyes full of desperate, confused longing. You saw Harlequin’s calculating green stare. You saw the visceral focus in Jester’s expression and the cold observation in the Ticket Taker’s.
“Yes,” you answered, the truth simple and stark. “I knew. I’ve always known. Your forms may be hidden, but my senses are keen.”
“Why didn’t you say so, my lady?” The tone of Pierrot’s voice was a menagerie filled with pain, joy, excitement, and fear. “Had we known, we would not have hurt you.”
“We would not have hurt you anyway.” Harlequin shifted, his back bending in a regal curve. “If you hadn’t taken our prey. Are you short on food, my heart? Or, don’t tell me, you have something against us monsters culling the humans for sustenance?”
You allowed a hint of disdain to color your rasping voice. “I didn’t care. Why would I? Hunt your cattle. Live your lives. Another monster’s existence is none of my business. I would have left you to it. I would have never given you a second thought more than what you forced on me each day you came around.”
Your voice dropped, becoming a venomous drip that all but oozed with your disdain. It made even Jester take a half-step back. “That is, if you hadn’t touched one of mine. One of my friends, then we wouldn’t be here, but we are because you’ve tried to take her from me.”
The accusation hung in the air, thicker than the sickly-sweet scent of your venom-laced silk. You were an outsider judging their laws, and the injustice of it burned them, most of all Pierrot and Harlequin, but your truth was pure to your own heart.
It was Jester who broke first, a guttural laugh erupting from his tusked maw. “Yours? You defend a human?” He took another measured step forward, and another thread of silk, faster than the eye could follow, snapped from your hair and embedded itself in the ground between his feet, the soil around it turning a faint, ominous grey. He froze, his bravado momentarily choked by the display of lethal precision, then hissed in frustration.
“Friends…” Pierrot whispered the word as if it were a sacred, terrifying thing. His low, raspy voice was thick with an agony that seemed to physically pain him. “My lady, my star, you call them friends? These… these fragile, fleeting things? They are sustenance. They are prey. They scream and bleed and break. They are not… they cannot be…”
Pierrot’s voice broke, and the raw confusion in it was more disarming than Jester’s anger. He took a half-step toward your barrier, not in aggression, but in a desperate, pleading motion. One black-gloved hand rose, as if to reach through the silken threads for you, but he stopped short, knowing the cost. “We are your kind. We are the same. We are the things that hunt in the dark. They are the light we snuff out. It is the way of the world.”
“Your world,” you corrected, your voice losing some of its venomous edge, replaced by a weary, ancient coldness. “Not mine. I have seen what my ‘kind’ does. I watched a monster like you tear my mother apart. I watched humans burn my father alive for the crime of loving her. I am the child of that love and that hate. I belong to neither world, so I have made my own. In my world, Carol is my friend. And you tried to take her.”
Harlequin, recovering his wits, let out a low, thoughtful hum. “A fascinating philosophy, little web-weaver. You curate your diet alongside your sentimentality for them.” A sharp-toothed smile played on his lips, devoid of its usual mocking humor. It was a smile of genuine, morbid fascination. “But it is a precarious line to walk. What happens when your ‘friend’ discovers what you bring home from your nightly hunts? What will your Carol think of her protector when she learns the truth of your… dietary preferences? It’s almost funny, for at one point I had to consider such a thought, and now, seeing you as you are, I know that I no longer need to. But you,” his eyes narrowed as his smile widened with morbid intrigue. “Very much need to consider that question.”
And it struck a nerve in you, a deep, buried fear you kept locked away. You offered no answer, because you had none. The silence was admission enough to how gravely it affected you.
The stalemate held, a silent battle of wills between nightmares. Then, a sound, so soft and fragile it was almost swallowed by the tension, cut through the clearing.
A whimper.
Your head snapped toward the source with frightening accuracy and precision. Carol was stirring. Laying there on the cold ground where you’d laid her, she shifted, a faint moan escaping her lips. Her eyelids fluttered. Consciousness was returning, slow and lethargic, but it was returning. And returning at all, now and here, was too fast no matter how slow the pace.
Panic, cold and sharp, bolted through you, far more potent than any fear the circus of monsters could spark. Your human life, your carefully constructed normalcy, your hard-earned peace was now all moments from shattering like a crystal glass on the edge of a table. If Carol woke up now, if she saw you like this, surrounded by these creatures, it would all be over. The apartment, the coffee shop, the day to day that had been your life would all burn to ash.
There was no time to think, only to act. You moved, not as a monster, but as a protector. You were at her side in an instant, your monstrous form crouching over her fragile human one. One of your upper hands, still vaguely human-like in shape though made of hard chitin, gently brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. The other lower arms kept a defensive posture toward the circus troupe.
“Shhh,” you whispered, the sound a distorted imitation of comfort. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”
But her eyes were opening. Her confused, blurry human gaze was focusing. In a second, she would see the darkness where a face should be. She would see the six white eyes.
A solution, cruel and kind in equal measure, presented itself. It was the only way. One of the silken threads from your hair dipped down, its end sharp and needle-like. With a tenderness that belied your form, you pressed it against the side of her neck, just below the jawline. A tiny drop of mild, soothing venom, not a paralytic but a sedative, entered her bloodstream.
Her eyes, which had just begun to widen in dawning horror, fluttered shut again. Her body went limp, her breathing deepening into the rhythms of artificial sleep. She would remember nothing. She would only wake in her bed, believing she’d had a terrible dream.
The action had taken only a second. You looked up from Carol’s peaceful face to the circle of monsters. Their expressions were a mix of understanding, scorn, and continued fury.
You gathered Carol into your arms, all six of them coordinating to lift her with an effortless, gentle strength. You cradled her against the hard plates of your chest, a perverse image of a mother and child.
You turned your multifaceted gaze back to them, a final warning in your stance. “Do not follow,” you rasped, the threat absolute. “Do not seek me out. Do not even look in my direction. The next time I see any of you, I will not be so merciful.”
You didn’t wait for a response. You turned and melted into the shadows of the trees, moving with an unnatural silence that was more terrifying than any thunderous exit. The forest swallowed you and your burden whole.
Back in the clearing, the silence returned, heavier now. The Doctor groaned, shaking his head. Jester let out a frustrated roar that was muffled by the trees. Pierrot took a step toward where you’d vanished, a low whine building in his throat, but Harlequin’s scaly hand fell on his shoulder.
“Let her go, fool,” Harlequin murmured, his serpentine eyes fixed on the empty path. “There are some webs even we should not be eager to touch.”