Gertha did the same to the second and third bars, each of which was thicker than the first. When it came to the fourth, the thickest of the lot, she chewed it to pieces like a chocolate bar.
Next, two of the blue-hooded assistants brought out a large radiator and she bit holes in it! Then they gave her a bike and she gnashed it up into a little ball, tyres and all! I don’t think there was anything in the world Gertha Teeth couldn’t chew her way through if she set her mind to it.
She called more volunteers up on stage. She gave one a sledgehammer and a large chisel, one a hammer and smaller chisel, and the other an electric saw. She lay flat on her back and put the large chisel in her mouth. She nodded at the first volunteer to swing the sledgehammer at the chisel.
The man raised the sledgehammer high above his head and brought it down. I thought he was going to smash her face open and so did lots of others, judging by the gasps and people covering their hands with their eyes.
But Gertha was no fool. She swung out of the way and the sledgehammer slammed into the floor. She sat up and spat the chisel out of her mouth. “Hah!” she snorted. “How crazy do you think I am?”
One of the blue-hoods came out and took the sledgehammer from the man. “I only called you up to show the sledgehammer is real!” she told him. “Now,” she said to those of us in the audience, “watch!”
She lay back again and stuck the chisel in her mouth. The blue-hood waited a moment, then raised the sledgehammer high and swung it down, faster and harder than the man had. It struck the top of the chisel and there was a fierce noise.
Gertha sat up. I expected to see teeth falling out of her mouth, but when she opened it and removed the chisel, there wasn’t as much as a crack to be seen! She laughed and said: “Hah! You thought I had bitten off more than I could chew!”
She let the second volunteer go to work, the one with the smaller hammer and chisel. She warned him to be careful of her gums, then let him position the chisel on her teeth and whack away at them. He nearly hammered his arm off, but he wasn’t able to harm them.
The third volunteer tried sawing them off with the electric saw. He ran the saw from one side of her mouth to the other, and sparks were flying everywhere, but when he put it down and the dust cleared, Gertha’s teeth were as white, gleaming and solid as ever.
The Twisting twins, Sive and Seersa, came on after her. They were identical twins and they were contortionists like Alexander Ribs. Their act involved twisting their bodies around each other so they looked like one person with two fronts instead of a back, or two upper bodies and no legs. They were skilful and it was pretty interesting, but dull compared to the rest of the performers.
When Sive and Seersa were finished, Mr Tall came out and thanked us for coming. I thought the freaks would come out again and line up in a row, but they didn’t. Instead, Mr Tall said we could buy more stuff at the back of the hall on our way out. He asked us to mention the show to our friends. Then he thanked us again for coming and said that the show was over.
I was a bit disappointed that it had ended so weakly, but it was late and I suppose the freaks were tired. I got to my feet, picked up the stuff I’d bought, and turned to say something to Steve.
He was looking behind me, up at the balcony, his eyes wide. I turned to see what he was looking at, and as I did, people behind us began to scream. When I looked up, I saw why.
There was a huge snake up on the balcony, one of the longest I had ever seen, and it was sliding down one of the poles towards the people at the bottom!
THE SNAKE’S tongue flicked in and out of its mouth and it seemed mighty hungry. It wasn’t very colourful – dark green, with a few flecks of brighter colours here and there – but it looked deadly.
The people beneath the balcony ran back towards their seats. They were screaming and dropping stuff as they ran. A few people fainted and some fell and were crushed. Steve and me were lucky to be near the front: we were the smallest people in the theatre and would have been trampled to dust if we’d been caught in the rush.
The snake was about to slither onto the floor when a strong light fixed itself to the snake’s face. The reptile froze and stared into the light without blinking. People stopped running and the panic died down. Those who had fallen pulled themselves back to their feet, and fortunately nobody appeared to be badly hurt.
There was a sound behind us. I turned to look back at the stage. A boy was up there. He was about fourteen or fifteen, very thin, with long yellowy-green hair. His eyes were oddly shaped, narrow like the snake’s. He was dressed in a long white robe.
The boy made a hissing noise and raised his arms above his head. The robe fell away and everybody who was watching him let out a loud gasp of surprise. His body was covered in scales!
From head to toe he sparkled, green and gold and yellow and blue. He was wearing a pair of shorts but nothing else. He turned around so we could see his back, and that was the same as the front, except a few shades darker.
When he faced us again, he lay down on his belly and slid off the stage, just like a snake. It was then that I remembered the snake-boy on the flyer and put two and two together.
He stood when he reached the floor and walked towards the back of the theatre. I saw, as he passed, that he had strange hands and feet: his fingers and toes were joined to each other by thin sheets of skin. He looked a bit like that monster I saw in an old horror film, the one who lived in the black lagoon.
He stopped a few metres away from the pillar and crouched down. The light which had been blinding the snake snapped off and it began to move again, sliding down the last stretch of pole. The boy made another hissing noise and the snake paused. I recalled reading somewhere once that snakes can’t hear, but can feel sounds.
The snake-boy shuffled a short bit to his left, then his right. The snake’s head followed him but didn’t lunge. The boy crept closer to the snake, until he was within its range. I expected it to strike and kill him, and I wanted to scream at him to run.
But the snake-boy knew what he was doing. When he was close enough he reached out and tickled the snake beneath its chin with his odd webbed fingers. Then he bent forward and kissed it on the nose!
The snake wrapped itself around the boy’s neck. It coiled about him a couple of times, leaving its tail draped over his shoulder and down his back like a scarf.
The boy stroked the snake and smiled. I thought he was going to walk through the crowd, letting the rest of us rub it, but he didn’t. Instead he walked over to the side of the theatre, away from the path to the door. He unwrapped the snake and put it down on the floor, then tickled it under its chin once more.
The mouth opened wide this time, and I saw its fangs. The snake-boy lay down on his back a short bit away from the snake, then began wriggling towards it!
“No,” I said softly to myself. “Surely he’s not going to …”
But yes, he stuck his head in the snake’s wide-open mouth!
The snake-boy stayed inside the mouth for a few more seconds, then slowly eased out. He wrapped the snake about him once more, then rolled around and around until the snake covered him completely, except for his face. He managed to hop to his feet and grin. He looked like a rolled-up carpet!
“And that, ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr Tall from the stage behind us, “really is the end.” He smiled and leapt from the stage, vanishing in midair in a puff of smoke. When it cleared, I saw him by the back of the theatre, holding the exit curtains open.
The pretty ladies and mysterious blue-hooded people were standing to his left and right, their arms loaded with trays full of goodies. I was sorry I hadn’t saved some of my money.
Steve said nothing while we were