Sideshow
Alicia Kitten was heartbroken to learn that Tom Cat had been catting about around town, stepping out on her and even siring a few litters of kittens with some of the uptown felines. One day she confronted him about it, looking at him with her enormous sad anime-style eyes.
"You'll never get to heaven if you break my heart," said Alicia to Tom. "So be very careful not to!"
"Relax, Babe!," reassured the unrepentant cat. "There's plenty of me to go around! Just kinda spreadin' the wealth around, don't 'ya know?," he elaborated. "Yeah, that's the ticket! It's the trickle-down economics thing! Let the power of free enterprise take off! You don't want to keep me from creating jobs, do 'ya?"
"You mean, creating mothers, don't you, Tom?," countered Alicia, unconvinced. "And all those unwanted kittens?--Do you have any idea where some of them wind up? It isn't pretty, I tell you..."
"Whoa, Babe!," countered Tom, extending a foreleg in Alicia's direction. "Talk to the paw! 'Cause the face is getting tired of you!," chuckled Tom, amused at his own cleverness.
Alicia was crying by this point, tears pattering down from her enormous soulful eyes. "You...bastard!," she hissed at him. "Look into my eyes and tell me that you don't care!"
"Look, Babe, we had some good times," Tom offered dismissively, trying to smooth the weeping feline over. "The yiffing was_sweet!_ But I guess it's time to move on to other things!" As if to reassure Alicia, Tom moved closer and stared into her eyes...
...a circus lynch mob stared back, complete with clowns, midgets, and sideshow freaks. They were all carrying torches, bats, and pitchforks, and they were headed directly at him! Tom backpedaled away as the kitten's tears continued to rain down, beginning to hiss and smoke as they made contact with the ground.
The kitten spoke through her tears. "I've learned a lot about you, Tom," she said, her voice quavering, "but there's something that you don't know about me," she added.
"What's that?," asked Tom, still with a touch of arrogance in his voice. The bitch was crazy...
The hint of a smile passed briefly over the kitten's face. "I'm a magick lady," she said evenly as vapors began to grow and forms took shape from her copious tears that continued to be shed onto the ground. The shapes began to solidify and assume substance, growing in size and revealing themselves to be the circus lynch mob that Tom had seen suggested in the depths of the kitten's eyes.
"I'm out of here!," declared Tom Cat, heading away but finding his path blocked by a circus fire eater, who put a flaming firebrand to his mouth and spouted a plume of flame at the hapless cat that almost singed his fur. Tom headed in another direction, almost running into a three-legged man whose cojoined twin's leg protruded disconcertingly from his mid-torso.
"You ain't goin' nowhere, buddy," advised the freak as Tom gasped, wheeled about, and was immediately belly-butted to the ground by an obese bearded lady. He gasped and sprang to his feet but found himself pinned from behind by the circus strongman, who wore a leopard skin and sported a handlebar moustache. Tom struggled against the powerful arms which held him, but was helpless against their python-like grip.
A circus calliope had somehow materialized with the lynch mob, and a midget sprang to the bench seat of it, beginning to play 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians.
Damn, that guy is good!, thought Kitten as the midget continued to play, the music swelling as the small man got into the theme. The signature organ licks of the piece were especially well done, she thought.
"I told you you'd never get to heaven if you broke my heart, Tom." Kitten reminded the cat, "but I sure can send you to Hell!," she snarled, breaking into maniacal laughter.
By this time the strongman had pinned Tom Cat roughly to a wooden chair while other members of the mob ripped his pants off. Filled with foreboding and not wishing for his shortcomings to be made public, Tom demanded to be released. His only response came in the form of a heavily and grotesquely tattooed circus geek who jammed a wooden board he held under Tom's bare and exposed testicles.
"We like you!," said the geek. "We want to make you one of us!"
Grinning darkly, the geek or blockhead then proceded to pull the first of several large nails from where it was lodged deep within his nostril. He held a hammer and the very unsanitary nail before Tom's face for his inspection, at which point the cat totally lost the remainder of his composure, suspecting what was to come...
...and the screams of Tom Cat joined the strains of 96 Tears in the night sky as the first of the nails pierced his scrotum...