Part 1
"Mr. Incomparable, stopped the train derailment earlier this morning, saving the lives of the hundreds travelling on board," the radio blasted on the nightstand.
Claudia moaned softly in bed. She brushed her shaggy black hair from her eyes and slammed her fist down on the alarm clock.
"I'm up, you bastard," she grumbled, thinking out loud as she often did, sloughing off the lavender sheets.
She rolled onto her right side and snatched up the pack of cigarettes resting beside her alarm. She eagerly drew a cigarette and placed it between her lips. The tip began to glow a bright red and she inhaled deeply. She turned onto her back and stretched out in the middle of her bed, exhaling the smoke from her pursed lips.
With a light moan she slid to the edge of the bed and sat up, then rose to her feet. She lifted her arms above her head and stretched again before padding sluggishly across the warped wooden floors of her tiny bedroom and into the living room of her small apartment.
It wasn't quite the sort of place she had wanted to call her home. The floors were warped and worn, the walls were thin and full of holes. The water from the faucets initially came out brown before turning yellow, then finally clear. Even still it had a chemical taste. Turning on one light meant that something else somewhere in the apartment would turn off and there was seemingly no hot water heater in the entire building.
Unfortunately it was all that she could afford.
Claudia scratched her stomach as she pulled open the refrigerator door and peered inside to gaze at the shelves bare save for an expired carton of milk and a bottle of mustard.
"So much for breakfast," she murmured as she tapped ashes from her cigarette into the kitchen sink.
"Maybe today I'll make a assload . . . somehow," she mumbled to herself as she wandered back to the bedroom. "Those fuckers better not be in my spot. I swear there's something wrong with them. How do you live to be that old and not develop a fucking sense of shame? That old bitch should be in a home or something."
She snatched up a gray t-shirt with black sleeves from the floor and lifted it to her nose, inhaling deeply.
She shrugged, "Good enough."
With a quick tug she pulled off her white tank top and casually dropped it to the floor.
"And the guy, what the shit?" She said to herself as she pulled the t-shirt down over her head. "Who wants to fuck an octogenarian? They've got to be fucking. He's like what, 40 at best? She could be HIS grandma! Well . . . if she were black. Or if she had some weird recessive genes. Maybe she's an albino! No . . . plus that'd make it even worse. Somehow. Wait, aren't albinos sterile?"
Claudia stepped into a pair of black jeans lying on the floor, her belt still laced through the loops and pulled them up to her hips. She fastened the small brass button and buckled her belt.
"I swear if they're there I'm gonna kick them in the legs like Bruce Lee and piss all over both of them. Maybe then somebody might give me some notice. I mean fuck," she said as she snatched her black derby hat from the hook on the closet door.
"You'd think a fire-eater would get more attention."
Hours later as Claudia shuffled down the boardwalk she found her usual performance spot across from Manuel, who sold velvet paintings of Jesus, was now occupied.
Set up in her spot was a Casio keyboard and sitting behind it pounding on its keys was an elderly woman whose frame resembled a sack of potatoes. She was clad in a black, one-piece bathing suit with bright green polka-dots. On her feet were matching lime green flip-flops and most of her face was obscured by comically large sunglasses with green frames.
At her side was a well-built black man in his forties with a neatly-trimmed beard and short black hair. His hairy chest exposed as he stood proudly, wearing green swimming trunks, flip-flops and green-framed glasses to match his lover who, in comparison, strongly resembled a shari pei.
Upon seeing them Claudia's small hands curled into fists and she seethed with rage.
"My vagina, please treat it nice!" The old woman sang out as she hammered the keys. "My vagina, you won't think twice!"
"Those motherfuckers!" She growled under her breath as she glared at them.
She removed her hat and sat it at her feet as she stood to their left, in their typical place of performance ever since Claudia had began performing on the boardwalk. Up until today, that is.
She turned towards the beach, gazing at the families lying out on the sand and young, tanned people playing volleyball. The surfers far out in the water on their boards waiting for the next wave and the children splashing around in the tide. In the tower were the lifeguards talking amongst themselves occasionally glancing out at the ocean for signs of trouble.
Claudia took a deep, shuddering breath of the salty air and shuffled her backpack from her shoulders. She swung it around to her front and carefully set it on the concrete at her feet.
She unzipped her black backpack and reached inside, drawing out a red, rectangular, metal box. With her small, delicate hands she flipped open the latches on the box and snatched the two torches from inside. The torches the were little more than thin steel rods with a white wick at one end.
She placed the torches between her teeth, holding them with her mouth as she closed the box and returned it to her backpack. Her fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle of grain alcohol hidden inside and she pulled it out and twisted off the black plastic cap. Holding the cap in her hand, she drew one of the torches from her lips and dropped the wick end of the torch into the bottle.
Beside her the old woman pounded away at the keys of her keyboard clumsily, playing music that sounded closer to ragtime than any other sort of popular music genre. Her voice was a raspy, off-key wail and none of the lines she sang came anywhere near rhyming. To her credit nearly every line did somehow involve a reference to her vagina.
Her aging Nubian lover seemed to be a mute or was perhaps simply unallowed to speak, possibly a throwback to his partner's younger years living on the family plantation, nevertheless he kept himself occupied by dancing by way of rhythmic pelvic thrusts and gyrations.
Claudia scowled at them and pulled the torch from the bottle of alcohol, replacing it with the dry torch. After a few moments she pulled the second torch from the bottle and replaced the cap, twisting it on firmly before placing it back into her backpack.
She turned her back to the boardwalk and looked out upon the beach itself, again taking in a deep breath of the sea air, something about it seemed to soothe her rage. With a moment of her concentration the torches lit, glowing brightly with orange flame. Her fingers began spinning the torches, slowly at first as she turned her back to the beach. Her dark eyes watched the tourists passing by, rarely casting more than a glance at her. The torches started spinning faster, forming circles of blurred fire.
This reaction was nothing new. Rarely did anyone stop to watch, even rarer was the spectator who actually put their money in her hat. It seemed the abomination going on to her right was far more impressive. Groups gathered to watch and listen to the couple sing and dance to the discordant sound, possibly in morbid curiosity or madness.
Claudia bit her lip and began juggling the torches, determined to pry the notice of the crowd from the old woman playing keyboard. She tossed one of the torches high in the air, watching its rise and descend closely. As it fell back to earth she positioned herself beneath it and caught it with her teeth. She looked to the crowd to the right, nobody had seen it.
She growled and reached into her backpack, seizing a bottle of paraffin. She twisted off the cap and took a swig from the bottle, holding the liquid in her mouth. It wasn't a pleasant feeling to have in her mouth but it was part of the job. With both torches in her hand she spit out the liquid through the flames, creating a massive ball of fire.
A few people looked to her but nearly immediately their attention returned to the old woman and her lover.
She took another swig from the bottle and a stream of flame erupted from her mouth with a roar.
Then she heard a small voice speak, "Mommy! Look, a fire-eater!"
Claudia spotted a young boy, watching her through big brown eyes as his mother dragged him along down the boardwalk.
"Mommy, I wanna watch the lady!" He said, pulling towards Claudia.
"Not now, honey, we need to get souvenirs," the woman said.
The boy argued, "Mommy, please, I wanna watch the fire-eater lady!"
The woman stopped short and turned to her son, kneeling down to face him.
"Jeffery, no! We are not stopping, young man!" She scolded him.
She rose back to her feet and began pulling him along. Claudia growled quietly and opened her mouth to speak.
"Hey!" She shouted at the mother. "You!"
The woman stopped and turned to Claudia with an irritated look on her face.
"Yeah, you bitch!" Claudia shouted. "Fuck you! Thanks a lot for taking food out of my mouth, you fucking cunt!"
The mother stormed over to Claudia, her brows furrowed, "What did you just call me?!"
Claudia stared up into the woman's eyes and said, "Are you deaf or are you retarded, you deaf retard cunt? I called you a fucking cunt. What do you think I do this for fun? If I wanted to risk my life for the fun of it I'd join the fucking army."
Claudia brushed her hair from her face, "This is how it works: Your kid watches, I eat fire. He oohs, he ahhs, you put a buck in the hat for the pleasure and go on your merry way, comprendé?"
The woman scowled, "You know what, how about you go fuck yourself?"
Claudia sneered, "I can't, because you already beat me to it, you stingy whore."
She turned her attention to the boy for a moment and said, "Hey, Jeffery, check this out."
Claudia took a quick swig from the bottle and spit a ball of fire into the mother's face, singing her eyebrows and eyelashes.
The woman let out a shriek as her son laughed wildly. The woman pawed at her face and opened her eyes to scowl at Claudia.
She reached into her purse as her son smiled beside her and pulled out a cell phone and said, "I'm gonna call the police, I hope you have fun in prison, bitch!"
"Oh no, you fucking don't," Claudia said, kicking the phone from the woman's hand.
The cell phone flew up into the air and exploded in flames. Pieces of charred plastic rained down from overhead.
"You little bitch!" The woman shrieked. "Come on, Jeffery, we're gonna get the police. You're gonna pay, you slut!"
The woman stormed off, clutching Jeffery's hand, practically dragging him behind her as she walked away in search for a policeman.
Claudia rolled her eyes and sighed, "Just what I need, cops giving me shit. Fuck it, I'll come back later."
She tilted her head and carefully snuffed out the torches with her mouth. She snatched her hat from the ground and peered into it to find nothing, not so much as a dime. She growled and placed the hat on her head and quickly packed up her supplies, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and slipping her arms through the straps.
As she walked by the couple at their keyboard she saw the opaque one-gallon bucket set up in front of the keyboard. She pushed through the crowd and peered into the bucket, seeing it nearly overflowing with money.
Claudia clenched her teeth, shivering with anger. Her anger at the couple, at the passersby who ignored her, at the woman with her son, at the fact that people were more interested in seeing the couple's obscene display. Her eyes focused on the keyboard and it burst into a roaring flame, the old woman screamed out and leapt from her stool.
The crowd broke out in a panic as the air filled with thick, foul smelling smoke. The keyboard began to melt and the flames climbed higher, catching the old woman's hair on fire. Claudia smirked as the the old woman let out a scream, hurling the wig that covered her head to the ground. Her lover stamped it out as the keyboard melted in half, forming two mounds of burning black plastic.
Claudia moved in quickly as the two were distracted and seized a fistful of money from the bucket before casually strolling off down the boardwalk. At least she would get something to eat today.
"If only it weren't a wig," she muttered under her breath.