The Circus is Coming!

When all the children in town had finally gathered around the bloody poster that hung in the town square, they were overjoyed. And every adult that stood away from them felt an old, familiar terror. Powerless, they watched as their sons and daughters took turns placing a finger to the thick paper and drawing it down into the streams of deep red that slicked its yellowed papyrus. They loved its smell, and even more, its taste. So good, sweeter than any treat made in the town bakery, more succulent than any fruit grown in the gardens that surrounded the homes and farms. One by one, the children put their fingers to their mouths to taste the blood and cheered as the mixture of metal and salt made contact with their taste buds. The pact had been made. They didn’t even need to see the garish picture nor its old-time script to know what it all mean, and yet they waited, regretting that none of them saw the poster first, so it could be torn down and destroyed in a cleansing fire. Now it was far too late.

As if silently instructed, the children with bloodied fingers and lips ran off to prepare for the circus’s arrival. All the adults could do was watch, all of them feeling the hopelessness and futility their own parents must have felt when they saw their own children’s gaiety at the ancient parchment nailed to the pillar in the town center. Ashamed, they turned away and walked slowly towards their homes, the inevitable upon their minds. Once the children had gone, some of the adults approached the poster, hung with a single sharpened finger bone. Although slick with dark, rich arterial blood, the image and underneath it was unmistakable. It was the same as they all remembered. The black tent was in the background, bulbous and infected like a pustule. In front of it stood its members in all their perverse glory: The Clown Trio, Strongman, Ringmaster, and most hateful of all, Dickhead. They and rest whose names were all curses grinned back at them with overly intense glee. And below the menagerie were the words that made them all want to scream, The Circus Is Coming!

Tommy was a good boy. He always minded his manners. He did his chores without a hint of complaint. He never neglected to finish his lessons after supper, just as he was told to do. Tommy was such a good boy. He just knew his parents would take him to see The Circus when he asked them. But before he did, there were things to do to make sure The Circus knew their visit was going to be very much appreciated. And because he was the best of all of them in this generation, Tommy was the one chosen to be in charge of seeing to it that such a thing was to happen.

The boys and girls gathered around him, all with expectant stares as he looked back with an authoritative glare that was not entirely his own. Onto each child he bestowed a task, one that must be completed before the first magnificent trumpet sounded off in the distance, announcing the arrival of the circus. Once each child knew his or her duty, he or she ran off, ever so eager to please.

After the last child sped off into the distance, Tommy turned away and went into his parents’ house. There he saw his mother and father, both waiting for him, apprehension in their eyes and movements. Tommy wanted to know where his dog was, that Mommy and Daddy couldn’t hide him forever. Mommy and Daddy reluctantly moved aside and walked out the door, not really knowing where they were going.

Tommy found Pal in his parents’ bedroom sitting on the bed playing with his favorite toy. When Pal looked up at Tommy, his large brown eyes lit up and his tongue lolled around in unabashed, innocent pleasure. Pal was a wonderful dog, always happy to see his best friend in the whole world. Tommy petted the dog’s head ever so gently while his took the hammer out of his pants. While stroking Pal’s head one more time, he took aim and brought the tool down his beloved pet’s head. There was a wet crack and a yelp. Fear and pain immediately replaced adoration. Pal looked up at his best friend with incomprehension in his beautiful eyes when the second hammer blow knocked one of them out and his skull caved in.

All over town, similar betrayals took place. Lucy had drawn her new kitten to the floor and slowly crushed its head with one of her brand new Mary Janes. Michael suffocated his old hound he’d known since birth with a plastic bag tied around his neck. The twins, Jerry and Terry, both removed their two respective goldfish from their ovoid bowl and let them flop on their bedroom floor until their mouths ceased gulping. Many more dogs, cats, birds and other animals met with other manners of cruelty, all with similar results. The walls of the town echoed with last yelps and screeches of extinguished lives.

Some of the children, those without pets, had a more difficult time securing their gifts. These boys and girls went into the farmers’ fields with implements for destruction. One boy impaled a mole with a screwdriver. Another more daring youth knocked down a hornet’s nest and endured many stings until the last wasp was crushed under his hand. And there were some children who, no matter their efforts, were simply not hunters. Empty handed and dejected, these children exited the fields and with heads hung low, and returned home in shame.

That evening, those children who had succeeded brought the corpses back to the town center and spread them up and down the adjacent main street so that no two bodies touched one another. When they were finished, the children looked at their handiwork and were very pleased. Tomorrow, The Circus was coming. And they would be very pleased as well. The children who had not made the necessary kill simply curled up on the ground and slipped into hopeless dreams. The rest of them, too excited to sleep, danced and sang among the bloodied remains until dawn.

With the arrival of the first rays of sunlight came a cold wind. And carried upon it was the first trumpet. It was like the deep, resonant bellow of an immense beast wracked with pain. To the ears of the children, it was the loveliest of music. They ran into the main street, and lined up on either side in an orderly fashion with a speed they had never displayed in school, even under the watchful eye of the sternest teacher.

The jubilee brought the other children, the ones who had not brought gifts for the Circus, to wakefulness and remembered failure. Soon after, the adult population, the majority still in their nightclothes, stepped into the town center. They took great pains to avoid the strewn bodies of beloved pets, many of which were still recognizable as being from their own family. A few mothers and fathers openly wept openly as they laid eyes upon the carnage. Most wore slack expressions; seemingly numb to events or trying hard to conceal their horror. They followed the children and took their place alongside sons and daughters. There were no exchanged greetings, no discernible acknowledgment of the other’s existence. All eyes were trained on the edge of town, waiting. The wait was not a long one.

They so much arrive as appear. No one would claim to know the moment they came into the world, but with the exultant noises The Circus brought with them, everyone knew the moment The Circus saw them. It was when Ringmaster, always the first in the parade line, raised an impossibly long arm and pointed an obscenely long finger straight ahead. Behind him, a mighty horde of skeletal musicians raised grisly instruments and issued forth a cacophony of musical nightmare. And the show began.

Somersaulting and cart wheeling past Ringmaster was The Clown Trio. Animal fat for greasepaint and costumes of eviscerated corpses but that was all the resemblance they had to one another. One was tall and obese, another possessed a ridiculously muscular build, and lastly, was a diminutive, skeletally thin being. They picked up dead animals as they went, throwing corpses to each other. The smallest of the Trio took his handful of collected pets and picked the felines out of the mess. Dropping the rest, he quickly pulled the heads off the kittens and cats with a rapid succession of cracks and pops and, cackling madly, juggled them amid the cheers of the youth and the wails of parents. There was the boom of a cannon and down came streamers of skin like a gentle but horrid snowfall. Small hands were raised to the sky as larger ones covered gray or balding scalps. The cheering escalated. Naked and horrible, Strongman made his way down the street on withered legs. On either side of him, a beautiful nude woman held a crippled arm. As for Strongman, all his efforts seemed to be concentrated on holding up his ridiculously huge, lumpish gourd of a head. The deformed brain could be seen through a nearly transparent skull. As they walked, Strongman spied the body of a large hound and smiled with a mouthful of jagged, broken teeth. He gurgled something unintelligible and each woman held him fast with one hand. With practiced choreography, they used their other hand to simultaneously stroke his rapidly growing penis. Never taking his gaze off the dog, he drooled as the dog’s body floated off the ground. In midair, the dog stiffened and stretched until tendons snapped and popped. Strongman’s member was pulsing under the women’s vigorous stroking. Giving into the psychic power, the dog’s bones burst out of their sockets as the belly ripped open. With one final liquid pop the dog snapped in the two, spraying blood and viscera in all directions. Simultaneously, Strongman’s cock shot ejaculate forward, landing in great bloody red puddles as he made an infantile squeal of pleasure. Flaccid and spent, the women let the penis shrivel away and gently pulled Strongman along. The children’s cheered was deafening. And the show went on, bringing forth more misshapen and perverse performers than the last. Amid these hellish actors, reanimated lions, tigers and elephants danced about. They pulled apart, stamped or simply ate, soon vomiting back up the precious animal gifts they had been given. The dead ate the dead. And the show went on and on until the children’s anticipation of their reward hung in the air like the pungent odor of decay that permeated the town like a dense cloud.

Ringmaster waited until the last circus animal stomped on a little girl’s favorite rabbit and took its place amid the rest of his decaying clan. The noises of twisted musical instruments ceased. The cheers and sobs grew quiet. Some children, too excited to stand still, bounced up and down. Some mothers and fathers, too terrified to contain themselves, mutely wailed into open palms and forearms.

Ringmaster’s ridiculously long countenance of stretched skin and bulbous eyes looked over the crowds on either side of him. Mouthless, he gesticulated to show his intentions using arms and hands far too long for his torso. He methodically pointed at each of the children and motioned them forth. Looking quite pleased and even smug, these children took their places around The Ringmaster. To the remaining children, the ones who had brought no gift for The Circus, he sent into the arms of his misshapen minions. Their saddened expressions betrayed their collective self-disappointment.

With the children in their appointed places, the skeletal band resumed a bizarre, angry rendition of Pomp and Circumstance. Appearing from nothingness but seeming as if he had always been there, was the grand finale, the real star of the show, the one who would bring the good children their reward, was Dickhead. Impeccably dressed in a tuxedo, Dickhead danced his way down the street with his top hat pulled down and cane spinning wildly. He twirled and tapped until he stopped in front of The Ringmaster where he took a bow. The favored children clapped and squealed. The reward was soon upon them.

With a theatrical flourish, the top hat came off and thrown into the crowd. No one bent to pick it up. With the hat gone all could see what had been hidden underneath. The head was the head of a penis, made more horrible as the eyes and nose made their home on the very top; the mouth was most horrible of all. Raising his arms and spreading his legs, Dickhead opened his obscene mouth and issued forth a mighty torrent of brilliant yellow piss that reached a point high in the rapidly darkening sky before raining down to the good children’s open mouths.

Smiles became frowns of confusion and then finally open wails of realization. As sweet as the blood of the poster had been, the flavor of the piss was sour even more. The fantasy pleasure of the blood gave way to the reality of real revulsion of the urine that they began spitting and vomiting out of their mouths. They screamed and called out for their parents who also called to them openly now, telling them over and over again it was not their fault, never their babies’ faults. They saw their beloved pets again with sobered memories and wailed at the sins they had willingly committed.

For the ones who had failed to bring gifts of blood, they became their own gift to The Circus as The Clown Trio, Strongman and the rest accepted these failed hunters as their own gift top The Circus. Blood, saliva and sperm flowed freely. The good children, thoroughly blind with panic, ran from the carnage in all directions. Many of the adults fell to their knees, covered their faces or simply adopted fetal positions. They knew there was nowhere to go. That is, until The Circus had finally had its fill.

The darkening folds of the infected tent enveloped the town, and the darkness was complete.