Jeff- ... — Pale Carnations -ch. 4 Update 4- -mutt

I didn’t move.

“Your little blonde,” Jeff continued, tapping the photograph with a yellowed nail, “she crawled. Fastest I’ve ever seen. Didn’t even make her beg. She just… folded. Like a paper hat in the rain.” His eyes flicked up to mine, and for a moment, the showman’s mask slipped. Beneath it was something hollow. Hungry. “That’s the part they never put in the contracts. The folding.” Pale Carnations -Ch. 4 Update 4- -Mutt Jeff- ...

“That’s Mister Jeff to you, boy,” he growled, not looking up. He was shuffling a deck of cards with hands that were all knuckle and gristle—the hands of a man who’d broken bones for sport and then nursed the same bones back wrong. “Or ‘Sir.’ Your old man always remembered ‘Sir.’” I didn’t move

“She’s asking about the fourth round,” I said. “The private exhibition. The one not on the club’s books.” Didn’t even make her beg

I reached out, slow, and drew from the middle. The Queen of Hearts. Her painted smile was the same as the girl’s in the photograph. The same hollow fold.