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Circus Freak

An Act

By Zane LarkinPublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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Circus Freak
Photo by Zachary Kadolph on Unsplash

The scene was simple enough. Two small children, small even for their tender age of four, were walking along the cracked pavement of a sidewalk. There was nothing else and no one else for miles all around them.

They were a boy and a girl. The girl stood slightly taller than the boy, and her blond hair was cropped short. However the boy was in the lead. He held the girl’s hand and led her forward with purpose. In his hand was clutched the colorful paper of a circus flier. The circus was only in town for this one week, and the boy had promised his sister that they would go see it.

High above them, the sun sat in the sky, scorching the earth below. They were hot, for they had no water and wore two layers of clothing. But they didn’t appear to be bothered, and the circus, with it’s great big red and white tent, was just appearing on the horizon. They weren’t bothered that they didn’t have any money. The boy had been this way earlier in the week (when he had picked up the flier) and he had discovered a tear in the tent just the right size for the two of them to slip through undetected.

The lighting in the tent was dim, despite the brightness of the day outside. All except for the center of the stage was shrouded in darkness. This suited the children just fine, and even with the amount of people crowded into the tent, they had managed to find seats close to the front, so that their view would not be too obstructed.

When the show began it was just the girl who was sitting, legs spread and hands on knees, leaning forward in anticipation. The boy stood on his seat, all the better to see.

The ring-master came on first, a tall, theatrical fellow in a great top hat and long coat-tails. He carried in one hand a black cane with a white ball on the top, and he did as much speaking with his hands as he did with his mouth, introducing his show and his performers with a great amount of pomp. He left the stage to an explosion of wild cheering from the audience greeting the first act.

There was a parade of performances, and each act met with the appropriate applause and wild cheering from the spectators. There were tightrope walkers, the acrobats with their daring feats of mid-air gymnastics, the fire-eater and sword-swallower, the magician and his dazzling assistant, and many more, all designed for maximum amounts of entertainment.

It was after an encore performance by the magician-- in which he sawed his assistant in half and put her back together again to great applause-- that the ringmaster came back on stage.

In addition to his cane, top hat and coat-tails, he now also wore a monocle, thick and gold-rimmed, over his left eye.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried, raising his arms. “Please remain seated, for I have one final act to perform for all of you.”

The crowd, which had been rising to their feet in anticipation of the end of the show, hesitatingly took their seats once again. A hushed murmur went through them as they speculated over what the final act could be. The boy and the girl were the only ones who hadn’t stirred from their seats.

Placing a hand over his right eye, the ringmaster stared out over the audience through his monocle. “I sense that there is one member of our audience tonight, who is very deserving of our attention.” He roved over the audience, looking at each of their faces through his monocle, until finally he lighted upon the face of the boy. With great dramatic flair his arm shot out, singling out the child, and a spotlight fell upon him for the benefit of the onlookers.

“You there, boy. I sense that you have a great trouble weighing upon your soul tonight. Would you not care to ease your burden and share?”

The boy looked at him, but did not say a word. Instead he got up, as though drawn by invisible strings, and came to stand in the main spotlight with the ringmaster. Then he opened his mouth to speak...

He stood there in the center of the stage, his head bobbing up and down and his mouth only able to say “Oh. Oh. Oh.” Over and over again. Finally the man peered down and got a closer look at him.

“What’s wrong with you, boy? Is that your sister over there?” He pointed without looking to the girl, who was rocking backward and forward in her bucket seat, laughing hysterically. “Where are your parents?”

All of a sudden the boy was able to speak. He said: “Mom is asleep. She said she was going to bed, and she hasn’t left.”

“Ah.” The man nodded sagely in understanding. “So she told you to come to the circus, did she, so she could get some peace and quiet.” He was about to turn, satisfied with this answer, when the boy spoke again.

“No. It was my idea to come. I found the flier.” He pulled the wrinkled, colorful paper out from his back pocket and showed it to the man. Then he pulled another, older, more faded sheet from his front pocket. “My mom went to bed three weeks ago.”

The man raised his eyebrows. “Three weeks huh? That’s a long time. Are you sure she’s actually still sleeping?”

“Of course. I just said so, didn’t I?”

“Yes, yes. I’m sure you are not mistaken. But still, that is a long time. What have you been eating for all that time?”

The girl seemed to finally have noticed the man talking to her brother. She stopped her giggling fit and turned to look at them, her thin, pixie-like face drawn and pointed, her bright eyes sparkling with mischief.

The boy had put the circus flier back in his back pocket, but he was fidgeting with the older, dirtier paper he had also taken out. As he folded it and unfolded it in his lap, tearing slightly at the corners, he kept his gaze lowered and intent upon the movements of his fingers. His voice was low, his words almost a murmur, yet he spoke clearly and not at all like a child, almost as if he thought the ringmaster were being stupid.

“Well first there was the food in the fridge, but that didn’t last long.”

The movement of his fingers increased, and the paper twisted into ever more fantastical shapes. The audience around the boy now had all of its attention focused upon him, and most of them were leaning forward, spellbound, wanting to catch every word he said.

“Next we moved on to the food in the pantry.”

His fingers sped up again, and the tears in the paper became deeper, more rough and jagged.

“Then we discovered some food we had overlooked, and so we ate that too.”

Finally, after the paper resembled little more than I crumpled mess, he lifted his eyes and his gaze met the man’s again, colder and harder this time. The ringmaster was unnerved by what he saw there, and tried to back away, but he couldn’t move. The boy’s mouth opened in a devilish grin, and the ringmaster swore that all his little teeth were pointed sharp as knives.

“And now that that food is gone, we’re moving on to you.”

Short Story
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About the Creator

Zane Larkin

I'm not a journalist, but I do publish like one.

Promising dogs, cats, politics and good old-fashioned common sense. Let's keep things civil.

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