Chapter XI: How Far Is Too Far?

There are acts beneath the Big Top that make people laugh. Others make them gasp, cover their eyes, or question whether what they just witnessed was even possible. My act usually does all four.

They call me Stretch, although that wasn't always my name. Like most carnival names, I earned it long before I decided whether I liked it.

I've always been different. As a boy, I discovered my body could move in ways other people's couldn't. My shoulders slipped from their sockets with little resistance. My arms folded behind my back at impossible angles, and my legs could twist until my feet faced directions they had no business facing. What made other people wince never seemed particularly strange to me.

My mother hated it. She would watch me twist myself into some impossible position and tell me, "People aren't supposed to bend that way." She was probably right, but I've never had much interest in what people are supposed to do.

I learned early that something frightening becomes fascinating the moment you put it on a stage. Hide your differences and people whisper about you. Charge admission and suddenly they applaud.

The carnival understood that better than anywhere else.

I found my way beneath the Big Top years ago, when The Beard Master watched me perform for the first time. He barely reacted as I folded myself backward, twisted one arm behind my shoulders, and slipped through a wooden frame barely large enough to fit a child.

When I finished, he looked at me and asked, "Is that as far as you can go?"

I smiled.

"No."

He hired me immediately.

Since then, I've spent years discovering exactly what that word means. Every season brings a new challenge: smaller boxes, tighter restraints, more complicated positions. The audience doesn't want to see what they've already seen. They want impossible to become more impossible.

So I give it to them.

My favorite part of the performance begins with long strips of leather. The assistants wrap them tightly around my arms, chest, and legs until there appears to be absolutely no possibility of escape. The straps stretch and groan as they're pulled tighter, filling the air with the unmistakable scent of stretched leather.

Then the cabinet arrives.

It's an old wooden box decorated with evergreen branches and carved fruit, a tradition left over from some carnival I visited so many years ago that I've forgotten its name. Apples, pears, dark berries, and evergreen sprigs decorate the stage around it, their fresh aroma cutting through the warmth of the Big Top.

The doors close, and the audience waits.

Inside, there is barely enough room to breathe. I feel the leather tighten as I move. A shoulder slips free, then another. My spine bends. My ribs compress. My legs fold beneath me until the body inside that cabinet bears very little resemblance to the man who walked into it.

People sometimes ask whether it hurts.

Of course it hurts.

That's part of the experience.

The audience hears the cabinet creak and the leather strain. Occasionally, they hear something from inside me make a sound it probably shouldn't.

Then the doors open.

I'm gone.

A moment later, I appear somewhere else beneath the Big Top, casually enjoying a spoonful of the silken sweet cream served at the confection stand beside my stage.

They never figure out how I do it.

I hope they never do.

Boron has always been particularly enthusiastic about my performances. The people here don't merely watch the carnival—they surrender themselves to it. They laugh louder, applaud longer, and seem genuinely willing to believe the impossible for a few hours.

This season has been no different.

Tonight, every seat is filled. The Beard Master introduces me, and I step beneath the lights as the familiar leather restraints are brought forward. The straps wrap around me again and again, each pull making the leather groan.

The audience watches carefully.

Then they bring out the cabinet.

I've performed this escape hundreds of times, but tonight The Beard Master has added something new.

The cabinet is smaller.

Much smaller.

I stare at it, then toward him.

He raises an eyebrow.

The crowd begins to cheer.

I should refuse. There are limits, after all—boundaries established through years of learning exactly how far bone, muscle, and flesh can be persuaded before persuasion becomes something else entirely.

I walk toward the cabinet anyway.

The door closes behind me, and darkness takes over.

I begin to move. The leather tightens. My shoulder releases. My spine bends. Something pops, then something else.

Outside, the audience grows silent.

Inside, the smells of the season somehow find their way through the cracks in the cabinet. Evergreen branches. Ripe autumn fruit. Warm sweet cream drifting from the confectioner's stand.

Stretched leather. Evergreen fruits. Silken sweet cream.

Funny what the mind notices when the body is somewhere it shouldn't be.

I twist farther. The cabinet groans, and so do I.

For the first time in years, I find myself thinking about the question The Beard Master asked me the day we met.

"Is that as far as you can go?"

Another turn.

Another pop.

Then I'm free.

Seconds later, I emerge across the Big Top.

The audience erupts.

I take my bow beneath the lights while The Beard Master watches from the edge of the ring with a satisfied smile. Another impossible thing made possible. Another boundary crossed. Another story for the people of Boron to tell tomorrow.

I straighten myself as best I can and listen to the applause.

That's the problem with discovering how far you can stretch.

Eventually, someone always asks you to go a little farther.