Animal Prize

Animal Prize
         
         It was a usual fair night. The atmosphere polluted itself with the cacophony of yelling kids and chaos. The sweet familiar whiffs of burning plastics and processed foods flew through the air. Alex was just starting the seventh grade. Her best friend, Jessica, was also there. The two of them picked at a large ball of purple cotton candy as they sat slumped on a random heap of hay in their sudden boredom. They glared at the crate next to the game booth that was filled with the usual goodies, namely tiny yellow chicks and ducklings. The prizes, squealing about with life, were each yet to be carefully placed into a brown bag with breathing holes in it for their lucky winners. Kids left and right were carrying the living merchandise which jumped around and contorted the bags in an awkward fashion. You could almost hear the confused chicks smashing themselves into their paper prison walls.

         On this morning she awoke to that exact memory. It was no big deal. What happened that night stayed in the past, after all, that was ten years ago. Yet for some odd reason Alex had dreamt about it again. Dragging her pregnant body out of bed, her thoughts plagued her.
‘It’s just the whole pregnancy’ she whispered to herself.
In seven months there could be a tiny person clinging to her arms, legs, breasts…like a leach. She didn’t understand why but she suddenly felt the urge to go to the fair that night. There was no need to call up her friends. She would go alone. Trembling, she took the foreign pills and left the house.

         Alex had always loved the fair up to the summer of her twelfth birthday. That was when things began to change. It became a morning ritual to stand in front of the mirror and observe her body. The growth had come without a warning or invitation. Every time her corpse seemed a bit more foreign than it had the day before. Swelling breasts, the bleeding, the hair…she looked in the mirror at her unsteady morphing body.
‘I’m sure the boys will begin to pay some interest!’ Alex overheard her mother and aunt whispering at the coffee table.
         They seemed to be smiling, as if the monstrosity had amused them. Yet it wasn’t the boys who were the first to notice. It was the men who had really begun to notice. These older men would stroll around the fair by themselves. Alex always spotted them without their wives. They would stand together, or sometimes alone, and every time Alex walked by them, they seemed to light up. Not in a discrete way. They would nod their heads at one another, or if standing alone they would just stare at her for minutes at a time. Eventually she began to laugh. Never understanding why she did this; in fact she hated the entire situation. But her laughter was their invitation and so the night progressed to events that were as foreign to Alex as her own body.  The next day she would awake to that mirror again. There was an unbearably strange look in her eyes. The same look she would give the growing mass in her belly ten years later.

         On this evening she tried to clear her head as she drove to the fair.
‘Oh you must be so excited! I remember my first…have you had the shower yet?’ The ticket sales lady lit up as she had already heard the news from a friend. Of course she managed to loose her cheeriness after finding out that Alex was in fact a single mother. A term which evokes the image of a desperate woman crawling on the kitchen floor covered in deadly juice stains. Then again having a husband wouldn’t have made much of a difference. She would have still felt the same.

         Alex hadn’t started to show yet, but she could feel the lump. Staring in front of the mirror in her morning routine she felt it growing. Like a swelling tumor. When acquaintances found out, they immediately touched the mass. She had been touched by so many strangers that the bulge had become the most foreign part of her body. Like it wasn’t even hers anymore. People had been so excited. Her time would come too. Suddenly it was bound the click. The excitement. The joy. That moment of ‘bonding’ or whatever they call it. It didn’t matter because she knew that tonight she’d be going to the fair. There was no escaping the facts. There was no escaping the memory.

         She had won a chick, that night in the seventh grade. It all happened so fast.
‘I want one of those chicks.’ Alex announced.
‘Your mom would kill you!’ Jessica gave her a familiar look.
Before they knew it the two girls were standing behind the booth, getting ready to throw the ring around the cone. The man in charge walked over to Alex and stood behind her, he gave her advice on how to aim. Then he discreetly slid his hand under her shirt.
‘I’ll give you a chick, just keep your mind focused…’ he whispered in her ear, still standing behind her. One, two, three, they all slid over the cone. The man grabbed a chick and dropped it in a worn out paper bag, it was all hers.
‘Now what?’ she thought to herself.

         That night in the seventh grade they waited for (what seemed like) hours in the line at the Ferris wheel. The boys behind them were pushing one another, fooling around. Alex looked in her bag; she could see the tiny chick sitting in it. It didn’t chirp anymore and had nestled itself inside the sack, as if it had come to trust Alex. They were getting rougher, the boys, and managed to cut to the front of the line. Eventually the girls got they’re turn, and sat in their cart as they flew into the sky. They enjoyed the nighttime silence, smiling. Alex felt something wet on her lap. She focused on her jeans and noticed that they were covered in blood. The blood leaked out of her bag.
         ‘The boys…’ she whispered.

         But that was ten years ago. This time it was different, she was grown up, and had moved on. On this night, she walked to the Ferris wheel, and immediately got on. She sat in the cart by herself. Alex smiled just as she had ten years ago and when she looked down, she saw blood.