Cirque des Anges
Revelations
The first night she dreamed of monster with claws of fire and teeth sharper than anything known to man that tore at the mangles corpses of a thousand bodies thrown in a heap in the middle of a city, pollution from factories mixing in the air with the stench of the rotting flesh. She woke screaming, tangled in her bed sheets, still in the clothes that she had worn to the circus last night. The rain had drowned out her voice; no one had heard a word.
The second night she dreamed of three small skeletons, still with patches of dirty, rotten flesh clinging to the bones, hanging from a tree that had sprouted out of blackness and was reaching up to a sky of more blackness. The same monsters as the night before, only larger, clawed at the bodies and tore them limb from limb, growing ravenous in their thirst for blood.
The third night she dreamed of the children; three bodies sprawled across each other on top of a mound of rubbish in a dumpster behind a bar, flies picking at what skin clung to the bones, giant black birds pecking at the multi-colored eyes. And then the birds and insects crawling in and around the bodies scattered as if pushed aside by someone, some unseen force. A cold wind rushed down the alley, newspapers and empty takeout boxes rode the air currents past the dumpster where a loving hand caressed the cheek of one child and the thin arm of another. And then was gone, melted into the smog above the city.
***
It was the same trek as three nights before, same oversized sunglasses, same hoodie wrapped around the same thin shoulders, same small feet hitting the same sidewalk in the same rhythm, same downcast grey eyes, same raining thundering on, even. It was the same everything. If nothing had changed, only time past, then why did this feel so different? There was repine now, a longing for something. For what? For answers? For some conclusion to three nights ago? Some reassurance that the kids, whatever they were, were safe and out of harms reach? Especially Charlotte, the blond angel, forced to grow up before her time.
In one pocket, crinkled four crumpled up bills; all she had. They were for the children. But she would not think about that, only the last block left to walk before arriving at the circus gates. The noise and lights, and overall aura, of the circus was absent, gone. In it’s place was a gaping black hole between where one fence ended and another began. Except for the few light poles and leftover gates, it was empty. The circus had picked up and moved but left a single flyer where they would be next taped to the solitary working lamp post.
Under the artificial glow of the lamp, Isabella’s eyes stung. A lump rose in her throat and stole her breath, and she had to gasp to get oxygen into her lungs. It was her fault, she’d waited too long. She wiped at a tear that had escaped from under her eye with a long, spindly finger and took a deep lungful of air into her body. She had barely stepped forward until she could just make out the writing on the parchment, when the light flickered and died.
Caught again with the brackish taste of resentment in the back of her mouth, she reached up and grabbed a corner of the wind and rain battered sheet. She folded it carefully in the dark and slipped it into a back pocket and turned to leave. She made it to the sidewalk before a cold finger of wind brushed across her shoulder and chilled her core through her shirt and sweater. The face of a grinning joker exploded in her mind, stretched white skin with red lips pulled back across two rows of even whiter teeth and eyes that glowed red chased her all the way home.
***
Trembling she sat up in bed, had it all really just been another dream?
The second night she dreamed of three small skeletons, still with patches of dirty, rotten flesh clinging to the bones, hanging from a tree that had sprouted out of blackness and was reaching up to a sky of more blackness. The same monsters as the night before, only larger, clawed at the bodies and tore them limb from limb, growing ravenous in their thirst for blood.
The third night she dreamed of the children; three bodies sprawled across each other on top of a mound of rubbish in a dumpster behind a bar, flies picking at what skin clung to the bones, giant black birds pecking at the multi-colored eyes. And then the birds and insects crawling in and around the bodies scattered as if pushed aside by someone, some unseen force. A cold wind rushed down the alley, newspapers and empty takeout boxes rode the air currents past the dumpster where a loving hand caressed the cheek of one child and the thin arm of another. And then was gone, melted into the smog above the city.
***
It was the same trek as three nights before, same oversized sunglasses, same hoodie wrapped around the same thin shoulders, same small feet hitting the same sidewalk in the same rhythm, same downcast grey eyes, same raining thundering on, even. It was the same everything. If nothing had changed, only time past, then why did this feel so different? There was repine now, a longing for something. For what? For answers? For some conclusion to three nights ago? Some reassurance that the kids, whatever they were, were safe and out of harms reach? Especially Charlotte, the blond angel, forced to grow up before her time.
In one pocket, crinkled four crumpled up bills; all she had. They were for the children. But she would not think about that, only the last block left to walk before arriving at the circus gates. The noise and lights, and overall aura, of the circus was absent, gone. In it’s place was a gaping black hole between where one fence ended and another began. Except for the few light poles and leftover gates, it was empty. The circus had picked up and moved but left a single flyer where they would be next taped to the solitary working lamp post.
Under the artificial glow of the lamp, Isabella’s eyes stung. A lump rose in her throat and stole her breath, and she had to gasp to get oxygen into her lungs. It was her fault, she’d waited too long. She wiped at a tear that had escaped from under her eye with a long, spindly finger and took a deep lungful of air into her body. She had barely stepped forward until she could just make out the writing on the parchment, when the light flickered and died.
Caught again with the brackish taste of resentment in the back of her mouth, she reached up and grabbed a corner of the wind and rain battered sheet. She folded it carefully in the dark and slipped it into a back pocket and turned to leave. She made it to the sidewalk before a cold finger of wind brushed across her shoulder and chilled her core through her shirt and sweater. The face of a grinning joker exploded in her mind, stretched white skin with red lips pulled back across two rows of even whiter teeth and eyes that glowed red chased her all the way home.
***
Trembling she sat up in bed, had it all really just been another dream?