Hello, dear readers! Welcome back to the circus! So far, our hero has made it out of two tents alive (yay, hero!) and for those of us who suck at math, that means there’s only one place left to go.
Happy Halloween! Do you have any special plans for the holiday? I’m hoping to enjoy The Nightmare Before Christmas, and try very hard not to sing along so that my husband can actually enjoy the music. :)
Be safe out there, ghosts and ghouls!
<3 Olivia
In the last chapter, our brave adventurer tried to get some information out of the Gypsy fortune-teller, but the clown had other ideas. After being sent out of the tent (and wondering what happened to the Gypsy), our hero starts the inevitable march towards the Big Top…
The walk between this tent and the next one feels like hours. I assumed we were going to the menagerie tent - that's the only other small one in this area - but when we step outside into the evening air, my thespian guide raises his hands towards the Big Top. Palms up, all eleven fingers spread, as if in wonder at such an incredible place. Then he turns to me again.
I had a good look at him before. Cracking makeup, little rivers of blood pooling around his giant shoes. This time, though, something seems different. It takes a few seconds for me to put my finger on what, exactly, it is.
His makeup is fading. Not wiped off, like at the end of the day, but like he's worn it too long. A worn-out banner, a sun-bleached billboard. The blue eyeshadow and red smile that beamed at me in the beginning have started to turn dull and lose their vibrancy. So, I notice, has his enthusiasm. In the tent with the Gypsy, he was serious. Now, standing before the biggest tent of all, he acts subdued. No more hop-skip-and-jump antics, just arms lifted and fingers pointing. He's losing energy, little by little.
Part of me thrills at this realization. He's going to lose control. Soon he won't be able to manipulate me like a puppet in some kind of convoluted children's show. I'll be able to walk away from him, just take off into the night like I'd believed so long ago.
The night. It's nearly sundown. Definitely not the time to be here.
The idea of running nags at me. I could make it, I could almost get away. The thought circles my head like a vulture getting ready to drop on its next meal. I could be free. Walk away from it all. Save my mom and myself. Start life anew.
Or, counters the voice in the back of my head, You could get more content for your film.
It'll certainly be easier to care for Mom with a pocketful of cash. Red carpet affairs, jetting around the country, accepting awards, doing meet-and-greets and speaking for universities. That last one puts even more money in the bank, and the awards would look great on the mantle. Or a shelf in a high-rise office, surrounded by glass windows and leather meeting chairs, looking terribly official and important.
Yes. It'll suck, but it's worth it. For Mom.
A sudden movement catches my eye. It's the small capuchin monkey from the small acts tent. One of them ran out the door as we were headed in, and I might have seen another one in the crowd, but I can't remember. Everything got a bit fuzzy after meeting the Fat Lady. Maybe there were more than two, and I just stopped paying attention.
This one seems on edge. It's following us a few feet behind, glancing from me to the clown and back to me again. Every now and then it chitters softly, like a human would say psst and try to get someone's attention. I'm pretty sure it's trying to be secretive, so I don't answer it out loud. Instead I nod, and hope that it understands.
It doesn't. After following us for a few more steps, and giving me a complicated set of hand signals that make no sense, it disappears into the menagerie tent.
Huh. Yet another weird thing to add to my list.
For a second, I wish I would've taken its picture. Pics or it didn't happen. Nobody's going to believe in the monkey if I can't show it. Then again, there's a lot of unbelievable stuff going on here. Who's to say there wasn't a monkey after all?
My grisly guide starts towards the Big Top, but I don't follow, distracted by an overwhelming urge to find out where the monkey went. Maybe there's something in there I can take photos of. A tiger, or a lion, or the baby elephant I saw advertised way back at the ticket booth. They might even be holding another human hostage in there so the elephant can practice disemboweling somebody. At this point, I wouldn't even care. All I want are the pictures, and then we can go on with the show.
I clear my throat, and the clown turns. Lifting my camera in one hand, I point to the menagerie tent, asking permission. If I don't, he'll probably just walk me to the Big Top and that'll be that. Honestly, he'll probably do it anyway, so it's better to just ask and be mimed No.
To my surprise, he shrugs. Sticking his hands in oversized stained pockets, he scuffs his feet towards me, shoulders shrugged against an imaginary wind as he staggers towards the tent. He passes me, leaving a whiff of popcorn and peanuts in his wake, and strikes a pose beside the menagerie tent's door.
I slow-clap applause, and his smile brightens a little bit. For a second, it's like we're almost friends again. Like we're in this together, making the best out of nothing. Taking something terrible and making it wonderful again. Mining shit to turn into diamonds. That's what I'm going to do with this nightmare: turn it into a fantasy. And this bozo is going to help me.
Maybe if he doesn't kill me, I can give him some kind of job on the movie set. If he's still around, that is.
He ducks into the tent, and I follow, careful not to let him out of my sight. My camera, ever at the ready, raises to my eye, and it takes me a second before I realize that taking pictures in here is going to be hard.
Really hard.
It's one thing to photograph a fat woman's buffet table. It's another to catalogue a slaughterhouse.
If the small acts tent was any indication, this should've been a bustling area. Alive and well (or mostly alive and well) with roaring lions, trumpeting elephants, and a bellowing hippo or two. Maybe some decomposing fish in a crate for the cats, and an entire stable of horses with plumed headdresses and bejeweled saddles, waiting for their chance to shine.
It's not that. In fact, it's exactly what I wanted to see in the Big Top the first time.
Streaks of blood paint the walls, the stall doors, the floor. Claw marks rip into the sides of the tent, a detail that somehow escaped me during my last visit. Pools of something dark drip out of the chow bins and feeding troughs. Some of them clearly overflow with it, and others seem to be placed strategically to catch the overflow.
I swallow. Not at all what I anticipated.
The clown wiggles his fingers at me, and I step inside, nearly bumping my head on the body of a dove hanging from the ceiling. Its head is completely wrung off, and a rope twists around each wing, suspending it in mid-flight forever. It, too, has a bucket sitting underneath it, and every now and then a drop plops into the pool.
Without thinking, I lift my camera and take a picture. I missed out on the monkey, but I'm definitely getting proof of this.
Picking my way across the scarlet-stained ground, I notice a pile of furs in the back corner. It's the last stall in the makeshift stable, but the number of different types of skins - horsehair, fur, some black and white blotched leather - make it clear that it's deliberate. In case the rest of the tent wasn't a big enough clue, here it is. This is what happened to the animals. Like the performers, the animals are still here, too. They don't get to come back from the dead, though.
I turn back to the clown, a questioning look on my face. He shrugs, almost bored. Or tired. One hand half-heartedly wobbles back and forth, the extra finger flopping around before dropping by his side. Clearly, he didn't have anything to do with the animals. That makes sense, since his place was probably in the Big Top.
Our next - and final - stop.
My bloody friend doesn't ask me to take more pictures, but I do. Maybe it's the thrill of choosing my own photos this time, instead of being forced to take specific shots. I line up a picture of the furs, trying to capture all the skins at once, then just a few of them. Usually I don't try to get involved in the setting, but everything else has been so hands-on that I find myself digging into the pile of furs, moving one here, one there, rearranging them to suit my tastes. I overlap them, study them, shift them until I have a suitably creepy arrangement. Then I wipe my hands on my shirt and take a couple shots. Add a few more from different angles. Gotta get the right one to make it sell.
I navigate back through the devastation to the dove's body, and immortalize that, too. I wish I could capture the odd angle, how it sits on the rope and yet drags through the air, its blood periodically missing the bucket and dotting the dirt floor. It's horrible, of course, and pathetic and sad, but there's something almost melancholy in the way it swings. A bird with wings that flew on its own, now puppeted around on a rope in death. It's nearly poetic somehow.
I wonder why they're still here. The stories I got from the townsfolk nearby said that the animals were sold, or wandered off, or rehomed to local farmers to fill out their flocks. Granted, nobody probably had a need for a tiger, but why is there horsehair in that pile of fur? Wouldn't horses - and cows, I remind myself, thinking about the black-and-white patch of leather - be the first ones to go? How did they end up dead in an empty tent instead?
The last question ruminates in my mind as I turn back to my host. Hold my hand towards the canvas-flap door, I invite him to walk through first, but he shakes his head. I shrug back at him, mimicking his earlier movement, but he doesn't see anything humorous in the situation. Instead, his painted smile feels wan, even worn-out as we step back into the night air.
It's not until we're halfway to the Big Top that I realize I didn't see the monkey. It ducked into that tent just before us. It should have been squarely front and center. Besides, everything else was dead. Anything else should've stuck out like a sore thumb.
A sudden shout behind us scares the shit out of me. For one terrifying second, I'm afraid the Gypsy's going to pop around a corner and shred the rest of me like her stupid cards did my ears, but my sanity steps in quickly. The voice is too deep, too masculine to be hers. In fact - silly me - it sounds like it almost belongs to a giant.
The clown and I both turn towards each other, then glance over our shoulders towards the pair of smaller tents. My stomach sinks down to my shoes. I was right. It is a giant. The seven-foot-tall dude from the small acts tent, who was hitting on the Gypsy. The one with ink all over his arms and muscles for days.
The Tattooed Man. And he's carrying something.
It looks like a monkey.