On the Many Deaths of Amanda Palmer Read Online Free PDF Page B

decision ultimately fell to Sandra-Lyne Jones , aged nine, daughter of our Chief Catering Manager, who has asked to be identified as the Picture Editor.
    We at the APT are particularly happy with the final choice of celebrated up-and-coming West Coast artist Karli Young, whose work was chosen, in Sandra-Lynne ’s own words, because “it’s cute, and a little bit scary” – both qualities we feel could have been equally applied to Miss Palmer herself.
    F RANKLIN D AVEY

 
TEXT NUMBER ONE
On the Dancing Death of Amanda Palmer
    When Amanda Palmer ran away from the circus she knew that that would not be the end of it. Indeed it was the wrong circus to run away from. But then again, it was the wrong circus to be brought up by, though that hadn’t really been her choice. She had been stolen from her family when she was only four, and could remember nothing of her previous life except her name. Nor would they tell her anything, not even which town she had been taken from. What she didn’t know was that she had been the youngest of twelve children, to a very poor family, and when her parents had eventually noticed she was missing they saw it as something of a relief. No, she was a circus girl, and that was the end of it. And so it might have been had she not grown up. For though they had bullied and beaten her almost every day of her life, she had become used to that, even found it oddly comforting. It wasn’t until her budding womanhood began to show through her shirt that the real problems began.
    Silas Monger’s Travelling Circus was a family troupe that had toured the northern states for seven generations. Indeed they had utilised the careful management of “in-breeding” very much to their advantage over the centuries. Not that they were freaks, well, not really. But they were the weirdest looking circus you were ever likely to come across. The clowns, who were all dwarfs, andcousins come to that, were of generally normal proportions for such diminutive folk, but had the most enormous ears and noses, giving them something of the look of baby elephants, particularly when crawling on all fours; the strong man, who was, as might be imagined, immensely strong, had such elongated arms that he could almost pick up his weights without bending; and the stilt-walkers were exceptionally tall, a good foot taller than any among the crowds even without their stilts. But despite this dedication towards the blood purity of the circus line, as they called it, the past two generations had seen a steady decline in their prosperity, and for the last twenty years they had been reduced to playing highway services and the occasional small town.
    It was for this reason that Silas Monger VIII had declared that they must break with tradition and bring in some new blood, and hence they had stolen Amanda. However, little thought had been given, or at least little discussion been had, as to who else’s blood might be going into the mix. Silas assumed that it would be his, but many among the troupe had other ideas, all of them male, fertile, without wives, and, truth to be told, in most cases diseased as a result of various sordid liaisons with the less salubrious professionals that shared the same passing trade. Naturally Amanda was oblivious to all this for many years. She was more concerned with keeping her head down and ensuring her chores were done to avoid a thorough beating. But then, as she approached her thirteenth year, the rising self-consciousness of impending adulthood began to turn her thoughts, and almost overnight she started noticing the way that they looked at her. Though she didn’t understand quite why, it made her flesh creep, of that much she was sure. And then there were the cold and savage glances sent her way by the women of the troupe, particularly Evelyn and Evelyn, the singing conjoined twins (their father had given them the same name so as to avoid confusion) and so she kept