Eating breakfast with the troop was a little awkward for me. I was so used to eating my meals in terrified silence, trying not to bring my dad’s wrath down on me for the slightest reason. I had never had a meal where everyone seemed to really love each other. Abigail made sure I sat next to her while she handed me a plate stacked full of pancakes and syrup. Nikolai and Santiago sat across from me, too entertained with each other’s company to notice me. The twins sat further along the giant table more than content to be by themselves. Tony meanwhile sat at the head of the table and was one of the messiest eaters I’d ever seen in my life.
“You’ll have to excuse him, dear,” Abigail told me as she offered me a glass of milk from a pitcher. “Antonio doesn’t have the best table manners I’m afraid.” I didn’t want to be rude and stare at him, but it was hard not to as he seemingly ate like an animal that was starved and half-crazy.
“The best table manners? He has no table manners.” Nikolai snorted as we all turned to watch Garibaldi eat. Nikolai’s comment sent Santiago into a fit of giggles and soon the two of them were back to talking to each other. After having my fill I sat awkwardly in my chair not exactly sure what I was supposed to do now. I was now part of the freakshow thanks to the little shapeshifter but I still didn’t feel like I belonged here. And the strange encounter I had overheard between Antonio and the former animal tamer still lingered in the back of my mind.
The shapeshifter was in a raven form again today and he perched on my shoulder like a parrot. I’d offered him some pancakes but he didn’t seem too interested in it. So the two of us just sat there silently at the table while everyone around us chatted and talked to each other.
“Benny! I’ve got another amazing surprise for you!” Tony suddenly broke my awkward quietness and pulled everyone’s attention over to him. Despite having eaten like a wild animal, his face was surprisingly free of stains He stood up excitedly from his chair and hurried over to me. “Come along, I want to show it to you!” He offered me his hand, and with a slight bit of hesitation, I took it and allowed him to lead me to this mysterious surprise he had for me.
He led me to the troop tent where everyone had their rooms. I was expecting him to have given me the same spare room I’d slept in the night before but was surprised when he led me to a different room and opened the door for me. Stepping inside I was floored to see that it was almost an exact copy of my room at home. But unlike my room at home which was sparsely decorated and simplistic, this room was filled with toys that I’d never owned, an entire bookshelf that wasn’t in my old room before, and a desk filled with several different kinds of art supplies.
“T-this is amazing!” I said with so much excitement that my voice gave out a little squeak and running into the room to get a good look at everything. Tony smiled as he leaned against the door frame and watched as I inspected the whole room. The raven flapped off my shoulder and landed on my new art desk, also content to watch me run around and point at every little new thing that was here for me now. “This is my room?” I asked him as I grabbed a teddy bear from my bed and gave it a hard squeeze.
“Of course it is! I wanted you to feel welcome here in your new home. And between shows, you’ll have quite a bit of downtime. So I figured I might as well get you some things to keep you entertained!” He entered my room, his hands behind his back as he approached me. I looked up into his colorful eyes, again feeling like I was being sucked into them.
“Thank you, sir. This is everything I’ve ever wanted.” I told him with a smile, and he smiled back at me. I looked over at the raven and saw him picking at the desk with his beak. I turned my head up to look at the beautiful lights that hung up from the ceiling and was more than happy to see that they flickered between different colors.
“I have one last thing for you.” He told me, pulling his hands from behind his back and revealing a costume: short orange suspenders and a frilly greenish shirt. I looked at it and then up at him, he smiled a big toothy grin and practically shoved it onto me. “Well go ahead! Try it!” He stood up and turned around to leave, quickly shutting the door behind him.
I looked down at the combination of clothes and figured that if I was part of the freakshow then I would have to look the part. Shedding my clothes I started putting the new ones on and to my surprise, found that they fit me perfectly. I walked over to the door and opened it up to show Garibaldi that the uniform fit.
“Oh, you look stupendous! You’ll knock it out of the park with tonight’s performance!” he said with excitement, which got a jaw-dropping reaction from me.
“T-tonight?! B-but I’ve never done anything like this before! D-don’t I need practice or something?!” I said in a panic, suddenly realizing that I had to perform in front of people. Garibaldi snickered and kneeled so he was on my level.
“Don’t you worry, Benny. He’ll be doing most of the work.” He motioned over to the shapeshifter. “All you have to do is name an animal and he’ll transform into it for you. No matter what it is, he can turn into it. For now, practice in here with him. I’ll come by later and let you practice in the big top before the show,” he said with a smile and a tussle of my hair before standing up and giving my room one last look over.
I wordlessly nodded as he turned to leave my room. My mind was zooming over a million miles an hour as I tried to mentally plan out in my head how I was supposed to do all of this. I must have been standing there for a long while because I soon received a knock on my door. Getting pulled out of my panicked zoning out I opened my room door to see Santiago and Abigail standing out in the hall.
“Hello, dear. We decided to come and check on you. See how you’re holding up.” Abigail said to me with a smile. Santiago meanwhile pushed passed me and pigeon-toed his way into my room to get a good look at everything with wide-eyed excitement.
“I’m…scared. For my performance.” I told her, walking over to her and planting my face into her soft embrace. She nodded knowingly and wrapped her arms around me, softly stroking my head as I let my stress out in a great big groan into her.
“You’ve got an amazing room, Benny!” Santiago said with excitement, picking up some of my stuffed animals and tossing them in the air. I looked over at him and couldn’t help but smile at his carefree nature. They were the best people who could’ve shown up here to cheer me up. Before they left, Santiago offered to help me put on the makeup I would have to wear for my performance. I was hesitant at first but when he said please over and over for almost a minute I caved and let him do it. He did only some red cheeks and a red nose for me, while Abigail finished it off with a few colorful dots on my face.
The two of them showed themselves out and I was left in my new room with my shadowy shapeshifter. I sat at my desk and looked at him as he hopped around on my desk and pecked at it without a care in the world. I’d seen his different forms for myself, the dog that led me here, the snake, and the raven.
“Can you…turn into a turtle please?” I asked him. Not wanting to be rude and just order him around. He looked at me for a moment before his form melted into a puddle on my desk. Scaring me for a brief second before he reformed into the shape of a turtle. I stared at him in amazement before carefully picking him up and examining him. He pulled his head into his shell when I brought him up to my face and couldn’t help but smile in excitement at all the possibilities I could come up with.
However, my moment of thinking was interrupted by the loud blaring of a train whistle. This caught me completely off guard and I accidentally dropped my turtle friend from the fear and startling that I had just gone through. Realizing what I’d just done I quickly dropped to the floor and picked him up.
“Are you okay?” I asked him with concern before he poked his head out at me and gave me a little nod. I let out a sigh of relief before setting him on the table and quickly heading to the door to go out and see what that noise was. Before I got out into the hallway I was greeted by a pair of boots waiting for me at the door. They were knee-high and had yellow smiley faces as the buckles. They also had a note attached to them. I picked the note up and quickly read it.
‘Boots make the man’ Love, Tony.
Looking down at my sneakers I figured that they didn’t fit my outfit. So I walked back into my room and kicked them off, pulling the boots on and making sure that I fit in them. It was only at this moment that I started to question how it was that Antonio knew my measurements and shoe size. And how he knew what my room looked like. That line of questioning was blown away once I again heard the loud blaring of a train whistle.
I quickly pulled my boots on and had the shapeshifter turn back into a raven so he could follow me toward the source of the train. We didn’t have far to run as when we exited the troop tent I was shocked to discover that an entire steam train had somehow appeared in the middle of the woods. It was truly a confusing thing for me to understand. We were in the middle of this woods, with no train tracks anywhere to be seen. Garibaldi had said that his freakshow usually traveled across Europe. How was this train here now?
Before my brain completely turned to mush trying to figure it out, Santiago came tip-toeing over to me with excitement. He threw his giant sleeves around me and excitedly pointed at the train.
“Benny! Benny Benny Benny Benny, there’s someone I want you to meet!” He pulled me along toward the train and I was amazed by the colors that the train possessed. Along with that it also had several flags attached to each car and stars painted all across it. Santiago eagerly hobbled us over to one of the carts and knocked on the side entrance. Waiting a moment the door slowly slid open and a black woman stepped out.
“Santiago with feet like pigeons you come here with a boy who walks along with a shadow not his own,” she greeted us with a thick African accent. She wore a short orange halter top that wrapped around her body, a navy blue skirt with a celestial pattern, a green striped scarf around her waist with coins along the rim, and an orange bandana on her forehead. But the thing that pulled my attention to her was her bandaged face. It covered her left eye and left only the right one able to see anything.
“Hi, Izara!” Santiago happily waved his oversized sleeve at her and quickly pushed me over to her. “This is Benny! He’s joining the group!” I awkwardly rubbed my arm and tried my best to make it look like I wasn’t only focused on the fact that she only had one eye.
“Benny. An unfamiliar child, with a familiar story.” I looked over at Santiago with confusion but he just smiled at me and waved.
“She always talks like that.” He told me with a giggle, before quickly tip-toeing away when he heard Nikolai shouting for him. “Time to go practice! Have fun, Benny!” he said as he quickly waddled away. I looked back over at Izara and saw that she was taking her time to examine me.
“Offer your hand to me, child. And I will see what you cannot see.” She offered her hand out to me and with great hesitation I offered her mine. She flipped my hand over so my palm was up. Within moments of doing so, I could tell that something had caught her off guard with her reaction to it.
“W-what’s the matter?” I asked her as she carefully placed her finger on my palm and began tracing it across the lines that crisscrossed across my hand.
“Strange. Your future is clear and yet so unclear. It’s set in stone yet the stone itself may change around it. Yours is a palm which I have never encountered before,” she told me, clearly fascinated with the oddity that she had just discovered. Suddenly in her reading, she came to a dead stop at one point in my hand and quickly looked up at me. “The mantis awaits in the giant flower that you live in,” she told me as she dropped my hand and looked down at me.
“What?” I asked her in confusion, not having understood anything she had told me at all. Besides the vague idea of my future being unclear and clear. But judging by her reaction, something rubbed me the wrong way about all this. She kept her gaze on me before swallowing a lump in her throat and offering me a small smile.
“You shouldn’t worry. What I have seen may not truly happen. But you must be careful, for danger lurks within smiling faces, Benny,” she said to me before bowing slightly and returning to her train car. Having left me completely confused and just a bit nervous, I started walking away from the seemingly magic train and back towards the tent.
“Mein Gott, don’t tell me Tony brought another street rat to the circus.” A slightly German-accented voice stopped me in my tracks. Turning around back to the train I watched as an orange-haired woman stepped off from the train, a look of complete disgust on her face as she looked at me. Following her as she descended the train car was a tanned-skinned man about a whole foot taller than the woman.
“Oh no, that means he’s going to have that fake friendly shtick isn’t it?” He sighed as he hopped down to the floor from the train car and rolled himself into a ball as he landed and rolled right over to me, looking down at me with a sense that he was far superior to me.
“W-what do you mean? Mr. Garibaldi has been nice to me since I got here.” I told him as I stared into his judgemental green eyes. He had long brown hair that was tied up in a ponytail and still managed to reach down to his shoulders. Soon the woman came walking over to join him and she crossed her arms at me, responding to my statement with an angry tsk.
“Look, kid. You shouldn’t even bother being here. Go run off back to whatever sewer pipe Tony dragged you out of. Because joining this circus is going to be the biggest mistake of your life.” She tsked angrily, almost getting me to start crying on the spot with her mean comments.
“Yeesh, Eva,” the man said as he looked over at the woman, who I guessed was named Eva. “You didn’t have to go that far. He looks like he’s about to start crying.” I quickly tried to wipe the few tears from my face to hide the fact that I was already crying.
“Why should I bother pretending to be nice to him just because he’s new? He probably won’t even last a week here. Now common, Jasper. We need to practice so I don’t drop you face-first into the ground.” She walked right past me, bumping into me and sending me staggering backward and my raven fluttering a bit as he caught his footing on my shoulder.
“As if you’re the reason people come to see us. I’m the one with the money maker after all.” Jasper scoffed as he followed after Eva. The two of them seemed to argue the whole way as they walked toward the tent. Left alone with their harsh words and with Izara’s predictions fresh in my mind, I began again to have second thoughts about having joined the freakshow in the first place.
My self-doubt was interrupted by my raven as he pecked at my hair and tugged on it. Pulling me out of the labyrinth of my mind and toward the big top tent. I figured he wanted me to practice with him, so I followed his lead as he flapped off of my shoulder and started to fly toward the tent. I followed after him and wiped the last few tears and snot from my face. I was determined to show those two jerks that I indeed belonged here.
I was amazed by everyone’s performances. Getting to practice with them was like seeing a private show all by myself. With the added fact that I also had to participate in it. I was able to learn everyone’s acts and how they worked. Nikolai and Santiago worked together like I had seen them do when I first entered the freakshow. Nikolai was a skilled knife thrower and Santiago was his target. The clown would occasionally tell jokes but it was at his own risk as his jokes often caused Nikolai to begin laughing and mess up his aim.
Abigail, despite her larger frame, was the tightrope walker. It hadn’t clicked for me when we first met that she had been practicing her tightrope walking. I could tell that she was nervous while doing it. No doubt she had done it plenty of times but she still had an aura of nervousness while she was doing it.
Jasper and Eva were the acrobats. I watched as the two of them swung from the ceiling like monkeys. Doing amazing flips and twirls. The two of them even jumped off their respective swings, caught each other in their arms, and fell to a much lower swing. During their practice, I could still hear them arguing with each other, with Eva threatening to drop Jasper on more than one occasion.
I learned that the twins and Izara had separate tents set up outside for their respective acts. It made sense since the twins were a spectacle without even having to do much. But the two of them could juggle and do things separate from one another. It wasn’t every day that you could find conjoined twins like the two of them so it was easy to say they had the easiest job. And since Izara was a fortune teller it made sense to set her up with a tent as well.
I was so enamored with everyone’s practice that I didn’t even really do my own very well. The shapeshifter got me to pay attention every once in a while but by the time Garibaldi came in with news that the show would begin in two hours, I had completely wasted my opportunity to practice. Garibaldi called us all over for a group meeting.
“Now as you all know, Benny is new to the freakshow.” He pointed to me and I gave everyone an awkward wave. “That being said, I figured we’d end tonight with his first performance!” he said with an excited smile and quick happy claps. Everyone muttered amongst themselves and looked down at me as I stared down at the floor in horror. I wished I had practiced more than I had.
“It’s okay sweetheart.” Abigail’s soothing voice comforted me. She wrapped her arms around me from behind and gave me a soft and warm hug. Santiago quickly waddled over and tussled my hair, a big smile plastered on his face. I was grateful for their support, but looking over at Jasper and Eva I was met by their icy cold glares. Swallowing a lump in my throat I followed everyone back towards the hall that led to our rooms.
I sat on my bed, nervously picking at the skin on my fingertips as I could hear the sounds of people arriving at the freakshow. The two hours flew by in a blur until at last Garibaldi came to gather me from my room.
“Don’t dwell on it too much, Benny! I’m sure you’ll do amazing!” he said with a hoarse laugh. Placing his top hat on his head and heading out to greet the audience. I followed after him and poked my head out from behind the tent flap and was met with the entire big top filled to the brim with people. My fear was suddenly amped up to 11.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Garibaldi shouted, his voice reverberating through the big top and getting everyone gathered to watch the show to quiet down. “Thank you all so much for coming to my amazing freakshow!” he said with a hint of overwhelming pride. “Tonight you will see things that will amaze you! Frighten you! And maybe even inspire you! Now give it up, for the duo that we love to laugh at, Nikolai and Santiago!” The crowds cheered and clapped as stereotypical carnival music began to blare.
I watched from behind the tent flap as Santiago was tied to a spinning wheel and Nikolai delighted in throwing knife after knife at him. Sometimes with his eyes closed, with his back turned to Santiago. And for the finale, after Santiago had said probably every joke he’d ever thought up, Nikolai pulled an enormous bowie knife from his metal prosthetic leg and tossed it right at Santiago’s head. The knife missed the clown’s scalp by mere inches and impaled his hat to the wheel. The crowd roared with approval as Nikolai turned to bow at all of them and Santiago waved excitedly from his position strapped to the wheel.
The lights soon went out for a brief moment and Garibaldi appeared back in his position in the middle of the tent. “A delightful showing! But now, you’ll see that sometimes to reach for the stars you simply have to swing for it,” he said with a smile as he pointed up towards the ceiling of the tent. The lights dimmed down and spotlights shone up to the sky. Abigail was there already in the middle of the tightrope. She was holding an umbrella in one hand and a mini table in her other hand. I could tell from down here how nervous she was.
Suddenly Jasper came swooping down from a swing and placed a vase full of water and flowers on Abigail’s mini table. He let go of his swing and somersaulted through the air. Eva next swooped in, hanging onto the swing by her legs, and caught Jasper just as he was beginning to fall toward the ground. Abigail was in her own little world, doing her best to just stay focused and complete her part of the set.
The acrobats circled Abigail as she continued to make her way over toward the other side, all the while Jasper and Eva continued to add more things onto the miny table. By the time Abigail reached the other side of the tightrope, the table had a vase, several plates, and a toaster on top of it. The crowd was eating it up, but I was panicking when I realized that my turn was fast approaching.
“It’s your turn, Benny,” Tony said as he wrapped an arm around me from behind and succeeded in getting a scared scream from me. “Don’t worry too much. Like I said, he’ll be doing most of the work,” he told me with a smile and a chuckle. He walked past me and I followed after him, finally, I emerged from behind the tent flap. And as I did so I noticed that the music that was filling the tent had a source. Hidden off to the side was a giant wagon. And inside the wagon was a giant pile of flesh and faces. My heart stopped and I let out a muffled scream as Tony quickly caught me from behind and covered my mouth.
“Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t mind Bandwagon. They may look scary but they’re harmless. They enjoy playing music more than anything.” Tony said it so nonchalantly that under any other circumstance, I would’ve easily believed him. But as he walked off I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the creature. It writhed and jiggled in its wagon. Stray hands played the accordion, some were playing the keyboard, one of the heads blew into a harmonica, and one was blowing into a trumpet with the help of a stray hand.
“And for the finale of tonight! The newest edition to the freakshow! Our brand new animal tamer, Benny!” Garibaldi shouted out. I was so scared by the horrible creature playing music that I almost didn’t hear my name being called. Before the situation got too awkward my shapeshifter friend tapped me on the head with his beak to get my attention.
Walking out into the spotlight I received a few scattered claps. I could tell most people were probably looking forward to something much more interesting than a random 12-year-old with a red-eyed raven sitting on his head. The silence was almost enough to make me start crying again. I could feel a panic attack setting in as I felt my breathing becoming harder and harder to do. But before I could have a meltdown on the circus floor the raven fluttered off my head and suddenly shifted and morphed into a giant dog.
That got people’s attention as they marveled at the sudden appearance of such a large dog. The dog looked back at me with the same deep red eyes it always possessed and flicked its head. It was motioning for me to give it a command. Taking a few deep breaths to regain my composure, I took a few cautious steps toward the giant dog and carefully placed my hand on his muzzle.
“Please, turn into a lion?” I asked him. He looked at me and nodded, backing up and letting out a roar as a full black mane sprouted around his head. The crowd was caught off guard and shocked by the display. I smiled a little and muttered a soft thank you to him. “Can you…turn into a unicorn?” I asked him, thinking of the first mythical creature that popped into my head.
He lowered his head for a moment before his body slimed down and began to grow taller. Soon he’d taken the form of a slender horse and a horn grew on his head. This stunt got everyone’s attention. And they were shouting and cheering for me. It was the first time in my life that I felt that I had done something special. I carefully approached him and held his long face in my hands.
“Can I ride you?” I asked him. He seemed to think about this for a moment before getting down low enough for me to clamber onto his back. Once I was safely on, he began to trot around the circle to the sound of uproarous applause and cheers for the both of us.
When my part of the show was over we all gathered in the middle and got a huge round of applause. Everyone from the freakshow crowded around me after we had all taken a bow and the freakshow was deemed to be over. Santiago and Abigail were the most upfront with how happy and excited they were with my performance.
“I would’ve done it better. But I guess for your first time it was alright.” Nikolai shrugged as he played around with a butterfly knife. It was the first sort of compliment I’d gotten from him so it made me feel a lot better about staying with the freakshow. With the show over we were allowed by Garibaldi to return to our tents with a job well done.
I was on the way to my room when I heard a few voices coming from outside. Thinking that it was a few members of the troop I skipped going to my room and headed outside into the dark to see if I could see the source of the voices. Following the sound trail, I was greeted by a group of drunk guys teasing the twins.
“This is the kind of freakshow I signed up for!” One of them laughed as they tossed an empty beer can at the twins. Allan cowered away from them as they heckled and laughed at him. Edgar meanwhile was stoic and didn’t bother to show them any reaction. Before the drunks could do anything else to the twins, a familiar voice interrupted their heckling.
“Gentlemen!” Garibaldi’s overly excited voice startled not only the men but me. “If it’s something freaky you wish to see, you only have to follow me! I’ll show you something truly freaky,” he said with his characteristic snicker. The drunk men muttered to themselves for a moment before agreeing and following Garibaldi over to one of the side tents. Keeping to the shadows so as not to be seen I followed after them. Garibaldi led them into the tent and closed the flap behind him.
I reached the tent and was greeted by a giant funhouse. Lifting the tent flap, I discovered that it was pitch black inside. My curiosity was big but my fear of total darkness was bigger, so I quickly closed the flap and started making my way back toward my room tent. As I was walking away, I started hearing screams coming from the funhouse and I quickened my pace to get to my room quicker.
The next day there wasn’t a single sign of the drunks. And the freakshow began to pack up and load everything onto the train. I watched with unease as Tony and Nikolai pulled Bandwagon onto the train and its eerie dead faces stared at me. I was worried that some of those faces might have belonged to those drunk men.