The Circus.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” Matthew 25:41.

Illuminated by a single spotlight, the tigress stood on her hind-legs in the centre of the ring. Marco Muniz inhaled deeply as he balanced precariously on the small platform, steadying himself on the outstretched arms of his tigress. Moving his body closer, he felt her muscles under her soft fur relax, her heart beat synchronised with his. The faint vibration of drums echoed around the arena. He positioned the tigress’ arms on his shoulders, as if in preparing for a twisted waltz and placed his head inside her mouth, sending the audience into riotous applause. The acrid scent of the digesting steak he had moments ago thrown into her mouth pierced his nostrils as Marco patiently held his breath, waiting for the applause to subside then he could reappear and take his bow.

The tigress tamed, she leapt down from her position leaving Marco, a vision of majesty, on the podium. His red satin jacket was slightly darkened on the shoulder by the tigress’ saliva, a rogue hair had freed itself from his slick black coiffure and was caught in the breeze from the tent flap behind. With a buzz, a surge of electricity coursed its way through the old wires that snaked through the tent poles, raising the house lights to reveal the whole family of performers lining the ring, erupting into movement as they took their final bow.

The boy’s head barely fit through the gap in the canvases, tightly bound by thick elastic, as he strained to watch the infamous spectacle of “Big Walt’s Circus” that had Babbie, Alabama in uproar. Squinting his eyes to escape the light, he watched the long, fishnet-clad legs of Beatrice La Pearl walk down the stairs above his floating head, in time to the band’s brassy accompaniment. She was one of his favourites.

“Matthew!” Two hands grabbed his legs, roughly pulling him through the canvas back into the firm grip of his mother’s rule.

“Boy, I told you not to look in there. That’s where them...them heathens live”. Flora Hatfield grabbed his collar, leading him as they continued their walk home. “Babbie the great has fallen! And is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird! Revelations 18:2. May the Lord help us.” She raised her arms above her head in desperation as she stepped over a group of children, excitedly leapfrogging over one another in the grass.

“But they look like they are having so much fun in there...I only wanted to see the...” Matthew’s protestation was met by a swift slap across his legs.

“May the Lord help you, son. ‘Take heed to thyself that thou be not ensnared to follow them’. Deuteronomy 12:30”.

His mother’s preaching had become a regular feature of their walk home from school, but when Big Walt’s arrived and she was self-elected chair of BATCH (Baptists Against The Circus Heathens) it had only escalated.

As usual, she made him sit on the bench while she ran into the butcher’s to get some meat for the evening’s supper. He sat swinging his legs, looking at the ground when the weight shifted on the bench. A pair of legs had joined him, fishnetted legs. He followed their seam up to their owner who smiled down at him, seeing himself reflected in her azure eyes. Stood next to her was Marco Muniz himself, a cigarette balanced on his lower lip as he searched in his red jacket for a light. The stain from the tiger’s saliva was still there. Matthew’s eyes followed the gold piping around the collar to a the embossed button that was hanging on a loose thread.

Maybe it got caught on the tiger’s teeth...

Beatrice lifted her skirt and produced a small matchbox from her garter. He winked in gratitude then looked to Matthew who hadn’t realised he was still staring at Beatrice.

“Hey mister! That’s mine!” Marco laughed. Matthew caught his emerald green eyes, the same as his tigers, before quickly resuming his perusal of the floor. “Kid, I’m joking”. He slid onto the bench, causing Beatrice to move further along into Matthew. Marco put an arm around her shoulder. “She’s the reason I joined this damn circus”.
They’d met when Marco saw the circus in Budapest, while he was backpacking around Europe after finishing university in Seville, taking a break before he joined his father’s veterinary practice.

That explains why tigers.

But plans changed when he first saw Beatrice, dressed in tassels and a top-hat, swallow her sword to the hilt.

Beatrice pinched his forearm so hard it left a red mark like a kiss.

After Beatrice’s parents died in an accident, she was taken in by her grandparents in Paris where she worked as a dancer in a bar in Montmartre. It was here she met Walt, who would sit on the front table of her show every night until one day he left his card, inviting her to join his circus.

Matthew imagined her emerging from a curtain of smoke, like on her poster.
“And here we are,” she smiled. Matthew sat captivated. “We’d better get going, Marco. It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Matthew”. She gracefully stood up, taking Marco’s hand, and they began to walk away.
“Oh. Before I forget- a little present for you.” Marco passed him a small snow-globe. “Maybe next time you could see the show from the inside, hey Matt?” He winked again and then left.

It was odd. He couldn’t remember telling them his name.

Later that evening, Matthew was sitting in the garden playing with his new snow-globe. The scene inside was an exact replica of Big Walt’s. The canvas doors of the big-top were tied open, revealing the colourful contorted bodies of the aerialistes, attached by fine wires, that would gently swing when he moved it, a row of five elephants sat on each other’s knee, Marco with his tiger draped around his neck like an elaborate scarf, and in the centre, Beatrice, head thrown back and her sword half way down her throat, the falling glitter dusted across her exquisitely poised thighs.

“What do you have in your hands?” His mother said from behind him. As she snatched the snow-globe, Matthew watched the glitter envelop a tiny clown girl. “This is the devil’s toy” she seethed as she threw it into the bin. He was sent to bed early that night.

Matthew had sneaked through the back of the tent, into the performer’s quarters outside. An old woman with bright white hair was sat on an upturned bucket, struggling to untangle some gold yarn with one hand. In her other, she held a long golden rope. He followed it upwards to discover it attached to the reins of a small boy wearing what appeared to be angel-wings. He was sat in a tree playing with a group of monkeys. He gasped, causing the old woman to look up, she patted the seat next to him. Matthew sat down next to her and began to help untangle. A familiar voice welcomed him and Beatrice sat down.

“I see you’ve met Angel,” she gestured upwards. “Walt found him tied to the guy-ropes of the tent in Peru. They called him, ‘La Flotante’, the floating one. They say his mother couldn’t handle his gift so gave him to someone who could.” Beatrice patted the old woman on the knee, “This is my grandmother, Sylvie”.

Sylvie’s arm jerked upwards in a disjointed waving motion, like a marionette, as Angel leaped to the next tree. The gold rope dug slightly into his dark flesh, as if it were holding him back.

“She’s very quiet, doesn’t she like me being here?” Matthew whispered to Beatrice.
“She’s a mute, love. A long time ago, my grandfather was the tiger tamer here. But one day a man threw a stone at his tigress and she attacked him. Poor Sylvie hasn’t said a word since. Some say she her scream wore her voice out. Others think she simply doesn’t have anything else to say now he’s gone,” Beatrice replied. “So now she just looks after us all”.

A young girl, about Matthew’s age, with a painted face and green wig walked by, limping slightly.

Sylvie stood up, her belly pregnant with the hoard of tiny knitted socks she stored in the front pocket of her cream pinafore. She knit them for Angel. Since his feet had never touched the ground, the skin on the soles was as sensitive as a baby’s so she would make him socks, in every colour, to keep them warm. It could get cold when they visited the mountains.

A ring of two bodies rolled past him as he walked back into the tent. Ahead, as though waiting for him, stood a man in a purple cloak, infused with gold thread. The ends of his gargantuan moustache caressed his collar. Lifting his sleeves, he revealed a small black bag, “I believe you lost this, Matthew”, he said placing the snow-globe in his hands.

The sound of blues played by the band of clowns, echoed around the tent. They’d picked it up after hearing it during a visit to an old slave town in Mississippi. It had captured their mood. He looked down at their plastic counterparts in the snow-globe, their smiles were only faintly painted on.

As the bell rang for the end of school, Matthew grabbed his bag. It seemed heavier, peering through the zip, he saw a glimpse of floating glitter reflecting in the sun. “What the...but mother...” he said aloud. But the stammer in his voice soon shifted to the hummingbird in his chest fighting to break free as he ran out the gates; it was the snow-globe. His mother was at one of her town meetings again tonight so he was to go to Ms Barnum’s after school, but there was only one place he wanted to go.

The flap of the tent was already open, anticipating its late visitor; Matthew climbed the wooden bleachers and sat at the back as a long rope was lowered from the centre of the tent. The climax of the drums had drowned out the sound of the approaching invaders, as the audience sat mesmerised by the aerialistes soaring effortlessly from the trapeze.

Suddenly, he moved his hand off the metal handrail which burned like a cut thumb. He looked down and saw that the dry ground beneath him was on fire.

A woman screamed.

Matthew looked down at the sea of bodies below as the audience entered the stampede of towns people brandishing flaming torches rhythmically chanting one word. Heathens.

Matthew swung from outstretched limbs as he made his way down the stairs towards backstage where the performers were frantically trying to escape.
“Into the eternal fire prepared for thee, accursed ones”, a familiar voice bellowed.
Matthew span around to see his mother set alight the aerialistes’ rope. The smell of burning nylon stung his eyeballs like windblown sand as the rope curled before dropping to the ground, starting a hellish domino game as the flames licked the chiffon curtains that encircled the ring. He saw her eyes, she saw his as he ran outside.

The smoke caught in his throat, tightening when he saw Beatrice emerge from the tent, carrying the clown girl. Her fishnets had ripped, her immaculate face now stained by charcoal.

He looked at the snow-globe in his pocket, so calm and safe, frozen. In the corner of his eye, Matthew saw the flash of a purple and gold cloak. Slowly, he turned the snow-globe upside down.

The ground shook as the performers’ carriage exploded one by one. The Big-Top collapsed, trapping the remaining townspeople underneath, their last breaths rippling through the canvas like waves at sea.

Flora ran behind the tent, her perfectly auburn hair now greyed by fallen ash. She screamed her son’s name, kicking the remains of the circus tent, her chest heaving as she fell to the ground.

“And Babylon....Babbie will become a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, an object of horror and hissing, without inhabitants”. Lying beside her, buried under a pile of feathers and streamers, was the discarded snow-globe. “Jeremiah 51:37”. She shook it slightly. The centre pole of the tent fell down behind her.

Sitting amidst the rubble, she looked closer at the snow-globe and noticed the small figure of a boy inside stood next to a tall man in a purple cloak, playing with a snow-globe. As the ash began to settle around her feet; the glitter inside the devil’s toy settled around her son’s.