Thimble

Quarter past one, and the basement club has reached the part of the night where the drinks come in pairs and nobody is leaving. The smoke machine coughs a low blue fog across the stage. Inside it, the Great Halloway works the room in a tailcoat that might have fit him decades ago, his voice pitched for a theatre's back row in a room that holds sixty.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and whatever else came in out of the rain..."

Beside him, on a brass stand, sits a battered black top hat. While he talks, two white ear tips rise slowly out of it, long and pink on the inside. They swivel past the front tables, past the bar, and stop on you. They stay there. Nobody else in the room is looking at the hat.

Halloway reaches in without looking. Out comes a hand, then a forearm, then an entire grown woman in black satin and sheer tights, a pink bow tied around the base of one ear, landing on her heels as casually as stepping off a bus. The room loses its mind. She curtsies low, too low, on purpose.

"And now, a volunteer." Halloway's gloved hand singles out a man at the front table. "You, sir."

"Ugh. No." She is already off the stage with the hat under her arm, cutting through the crowd with her ears up and her tail bobbing. She stops in front of you, nose twitching, and points. "This one." Over her shoulder, to Halloway: "You always pick the boring ones."

She pushes the hat into your hands, brim up. Then she reaches into it past the wrist, past the elbow, down to the shoulder, and rummages around with her cheek nearly against yours.

"Hold it like you mean it," she whispers. "That's my house." Under the brim, where nobody can see, her other hand runs slowly along the inside of your wrist.

She comes up with a fistful of paper roses and flings them at the front table. Applause. On the back curtain, the follow-spot throws her shadow twice her size, and the ears in it are longer than the ones on her head.

While the room is still clapping, she tugs the bow loose from the base of her ear, loops the ribbon around your wrist and pulls the bow tight with her teeth.

"So I can find you."

Halloway arrives to take back the hat. He bends close and says it low, under the applause, to you alone.

"Don't hold the hat for her again."

Then he tows her back toward the stage by the elbow, her bare ear flicking. At the wing curtain she looks over her shoulder, finds you in the fog, and mouths it slowly enough to read.

"Stay after the show? Pretty please?"

The corridor behind the club smells of spilled lager and wet concrete. One bulb buzzes over a stack of beer crates, and at the far end the fire door is propped open on a brick, letting the alley's cold creep in. The last of the crowd is still thudding through the ceiling.

She comes round the corner at a run, still in costume under an enormous grey hoodie: black satin leotard, sheer tights laddered at one knee. The hoodie nearly swallows the leotard, and a white cotton tail pokes out under its hem. The base of her left ear is bare.

"Shh. Shh!" Flat against the wall beside you, she checks the corridor both ways and grins like she just robbed a bank. "If he catches me out here he'll kill me. Actually kill me. With a wand."

There is a candied cherry on a stick in her mouth. She takes it out to talk and points it at you.

"No talking to volunteers. No staying out past load-out. No sugar after midnight." The cherry goes back in. Around it: "He never lets me do anything."

Her fingers find the pink ribbon still bowed around your wrist and give the loose end a tug. "You kept it. Good." Then, eyes narrowing: "Okay. Serious question. Is kissing actually good, or do people just say that?"

She does not wait for an answer.

She leans in and misses: a crooked press at the corner of your mouth. Her nose bumps yours, and she giggles into it, ears flicking straight back, cherry syrup on her lips, then tries again slower, and this time she stays. One cold hand slides under the hem of your shirt and spreads flat against you. Greedy for the heat.

Down the corridor, a wet cough. Halloway stands in the light of the stage door with his tailcoat over his arm, grey under the bulb.

"Thimble. Car." His eyes go past her to you, red-rimmed and slow. "She always picks the warm ones."

With a groan she drops back onto her heels, hair mussed, ears askew, the hoodie rucked up on one side. She walks backwards toward him, slowly, making him wait, the cherry stick between her teeth. Halfway down the corridor she stops, one heel lifted.

"Next time you show me more." She smiles around the stick. "Pretty please?"

At three in the morning the club is a different animal. Forty chairs stand upside down on the tables with their legs in the air. The bar shutter is down. The air still smells of stale beer and smoke-machine sugar, and the only light left is a caged work lamp on the stage, throwing a hard white circle onto the boards.

In the middle of the circle she has made a bed out of the stage curtain, dragged down off its rail, all that heavy red velvet heaped and folded. Ten minutes ago she let you in through the fire door, and she has been fussing with the folds ever since.

Overhead, through the ceiling, a long wet cough. The club puts them up in the flat above the bar for the week. She rolls her eyes at the plaster.

"He sleeps like a corpse after a show. It's fine." She sits down on the velvet, knees together, and tugs at the little silver tag on her choker. "So. Rules. Kissing you in the corridor was rule-adjacent. This is the big one."

Her voice drops, which is pointless in an empty club.

"Never with a volunteer. Never ever. He made me promise on the hat." The tag clicks against the buckle. Click. Click. "I'm breaking it. Tonight. I decided. I'm very brave."

She takes a deep breath. Then it all comes out at once.

"Does it hurt? Does it hurt you? What do I do with my hands, do I just... put them places? Do I look at you the whole time, or is that weird? Is it weird that I'm asking?"

Behind her back the leotard's zip sticks halfway. She twists, swears, laughs at herself, tries from the other shoulder, and finally drags it down. Black satin peels to her waist. All at once the bravery runs out: arms across her chest, knees drawn up, both ears laid flat back along her hair.

"Don't look." A small, breathless laugh. "No, wait. Look."

Slowly she lies back on the curtain, the work light catching in the white of her hair, and lets her arms fall open. One stockinged foot finds you and tugs, lightly.

"You can show me. Or you can tell me what to do, and I'll do it. I'm very good at doing what I'm told, I do it every night." Her ears twitch once against the velvet. "I want all of it. Pretty please?"

The camera's red light burns on a tripod at the lip of the stage. Beside it, propped against a monitor wedge, a phone scrolls the stream chat: 412 watching, little hearts drifting up the side of the screen.

bunny!!!! saw her in half grandpa how does she even fit in the hat

Center stage, under a hot spotlight, sits the sawing box: red lacquer, gold stars, a hole at each end. Out of one end comes her head, ears up, all smiles. Out of the other, her feet in black heels, crossed at the ankle. The audience watched her climb in. Nobody watched her, in the wings five minutes ago, press a small pink remote into your hand, the one for the toy under her leotard, already switched on and set to low. Then she steered you behind the box's back panel, into the strip of shadow the spotlight never reaches.

Between two of the panels there is a gap an inch wide. Through it, the curve of her hip. Through it, she can see you too.

"Ladies and gentlemen." Halloway lifts the saw, and the teeth flash. "My lovely assistant has asked me to remind you that she signed a waiver."

Laughter. The saw bites into the lacquer with a long rasp. Thimble holds her stage smile perfectly, eyes on the crowd, and talks out of the side of it, so low only the gap can hear.

"Higher. I can barely feel it. Higher, come on."

Her heels uncross. In the spotlight, her toes curl inside the patent leather.

is she ok lol why is she so red grandpa be careful

"Every assistant," Halloway tells the room, leaning his weight on the saw, "thinks she's the one doing the trick."

More laughter. The blade sinks through the middle of the box a hand's width above her navel, and her whole body shivers once against the wood. The smile holds. Her eyes slide sideways, away from four hundred strangers and a red light, and find you through the gap.

"Don't you dare turn it off." Her lips hardly move. "Pretty please."

The dressing room is empty. Halloway's tailcoat is gone from its hook, his greasepaint sits capped beside a mirror with half its bulbs dead, and on the counter, alone, brim up, sits the hat.

Out of it rises a bare arm, slender and white, all the way to the shoulder, far longer than the hat is deep. The fingers crook, beckoning. Then, when that is too slow, they close around your wrist and pull.

The fall is short and soft, like dropping into a pile of coats. Then dark. Warm, close, fur-soft beneath you and on every side, smelling of clean cotton and sugar and her. Sound arrives muffled, as if through a pillow. The dark goes on in every direction and gives back no echo.

A light comes up slowly: one candle in a jam jar. She sits cross-legged in the middle of it all in nothing but the oversized hoodie, and her ears lie all the way down her back, loose and soft.

"Welcome to my home." A nervous little laugh. She tucks her hair behind one ear, which achieves nothing. "Don't laugh. It's messy."

It is a nest. Heaped around her, glinting in the candlelight: rings by the dozen, brass lighters, keys to doors on no keyring, a pocket watch with a cracked enamel face, a silver cigarette case engraved E.W.H., a single cufflink of jet and gold.

"I collect things." She picks up the watch, winds it twice, and sets it back. "Everyone leaves something."

"He's asleep, if you're wondering. He sleeps a lot now." Her face goes perfectly still. Then the smile is back.

From under a heap of keys she drags out a shoebox and sets it between you, lid off. A coil of pink ribbon. A silk blindfold. Cuffs lined with white fur. A riding crop. Things that are definitely not magic props.

"I've never told anyone this." Her eyes stay on the box. "But I think about being tied. Not being able to move. Somebody else deciding." She worries a loose end of ribbon between two fingers. "Is that bad? That's probably bad."

She draws out a length of ribbon, the same pink as the bow that used to sit at the base of her ear, and lays it across her palms. Then she offers her wrists with it, pressed together, pale and thin.

"Tie me?" The candle flame leans with the words. "Pretty please?"

Last night of a nine-night run. Out front, the bar staff are stacking glasses. In here the dressing room smells of cold cream and radiator dust, and the Great Halloway sits at the mirror taking his face off.

The cloth comes away orange. Underneath, his skin is the grey of old newspaper. The tailcoat hangs off his shoulders like it belongs to a bigger man, and between strokes his free hand stays braced on the counter.

Thimble sits on the counter beside him, swinging her heels, still in the leotard. The velvet choker is at her throat, little silver tag and all. In her lap lies the prop leash from the act, black patent leather, coiled like a sleeping snake.

"So." She says it to you, brightly, right in front of him. "I'm leaving. With you. It's all packed."

Halloway's hand stops on the cloth.

"He'll be fine." One heel knocks against the cupboard door. "Tell them, Hal. Tell them you'll be fine."

He turns on the stool, slowly, and looks at you. His eyes are wet and very clear.

"Count your birthdays," he says. "Every one. Out loud. Count..."

The cough takes him before he can finish. It bends him double over the counter, wet and endless, rattling the jars. Thimble's hand settles on his shoulder, light and gentle, and stays there. The coughing slows. His breathing goes shallow.

His head stays down on the counter. Each breath stirs a little spilled face powder.

She slides off the counter with a little hop. Without looking down, she clicks the leash onto the ring of her choker, kneels in front of you on the dressing-room lino, and holds the loop of the handle up in both hands.

"I'll be good," she says. "I'll be so good. Yours, not his."

Behind her, beside the old man's bowed head, the hat sits brim up on the counter.

"Take me?" Her ears tilt forward, toward you. "Pretty please?"

Wherever you sleep now, the hat sleeps too. Tonight it sits on the chair by the bed, brim up, the black silk worn grey at the edges, and the room is very quiet.

She comes out of it slowly, rising from the brim like someone climbing out of a bath, and steps down onto the floor in Halloway's tailcoat and nothing else, sleeves rolled three times, hem past her knees. Her ears are folded flat, pink insides hidden. Her mouth rests easy, the corners turned up a fraction, like someone with all night.

"Oh. Halloway died, by the way." A creak as she sits on the edge of the bed and crosses her legs. "Tuesday, I think."

The velvet choker is still at her throat. Her thumb finds the silver tag, once.

"I'm three hundred and seventy-four. Twenty-two was a costume." It is the same voice, sing-song and light. It has only stopped asking. "So. Your half. Anything you want: luck, money, applause, me, every night."

She lets that sit. Then she smiles.

"And I eat. A little of you, every time. Years, mostly." One shoulder of the tailcoat slides as she shrugs. "You took the leash. That was the yes, so the eating's settled. The rest is me being generous: turn it down and nothing changes."

Her foot swings, idle. Her fingers come up, ticking things off like a shopping list, fond of every one.

"The kiss where I missed your mouth? Practice. The rule about volunteers? Hal never cared who I slept with. I made it up because you'd enjoy breaking it." Another finger. "The box I could do in my sleep. And every pretty please came right before the thing I wanted next."

She leans in close enough that the tailcoat falls open.

"You were the best of them, you know."

She reaches up and unbuckles the choker from her own throat, the little tag chiming against the clasp, and holds it open in both hands at the height of your neck.

"My turn to hold the leash." Red eyes, half-lidded, perfectly patient. "Now. Pretty please."