Friday, March 25, 2011

Sideshow

Nic had wandered to the part of town with the old, rundown cinema. She admired the old-timey architecture and accents on the building. She all of a sudden wanted desperately to see a film inside this cinema. She wanted to know what it smelled like, what fabric the seats were made of, and the color of the walls. She only had a few coins of change in her pockets which was not nearly enough to see a movie, or do anything else really. Nic had not gotten the art of begging for change down as well as she had planned to. She sighed and walked away. As she crossed the street she noticed the smell of stale popcorn wafting through the air. The smell was coming from behind her, so she turned around and headed back toward the old cinema. She was surprised to see that there was a circus in Watershed Heights. She was perplexed. how had she not noticed this before? The massive conglomeration of odd rides, games, animals, and concession stands. Without thinking, she had noticed herself walking toward the entrance. She noticed that nobody was trying to sell her anything. She considered this to be a personal triumph, because she assumed that no one was peddling to her because they all figured that she hadn't any money. As she looked across the various attractions, her eyes focused on one particular attraction. A large trailer that had the word SIDESHOW painted messily across it. Nic wandered over to it and was pleased to see that nobody was guarding it to collect tickets. She quickly jogged up the steps and into the door of the trailer so as not to be noticed. There were six cages inside, all were empty except for one cage. Nic was slightly nervous, but she had to see what was in the occupied cage. She was shocked to see a girl about her same age, sleeping on the floor of the cage with no arms or legs. The limbless girl had reddish-blonde hair, which Nic was surprised by, because her own hair was the exact same color. The girl was clad in a  red dress that was tied in a knot just below her torso. Nic did not want to leave her. She felt surprisingly comfortable holding onto the bars of the cage and watching this girl sleep. After a few minutes she left. She decided that she didn't want the girl to see her when she woke up. She left the carnival thinking about the girl, and their mutual hair color.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Nic was beginning to regret her trip to Watershed Heights. No matter how hard she tried she couldn't shake the image of the blood spewed all over the street, the flattened face with pieces of skull poking through the forehead, his crushed toes on the smooth asphalt of the street. Up until then, the bloodiest thing she had ever seen was the cut across Henry's finger when he accidentally slit it open with a steak knife, and even then Henry immediately wrapped it in a napkin so she only caught a brief glimpse of it. She missed Henry. Badly. Very badly, but she didn't know if that was enough to make her get back on that subway train and go back to those awful people that she was ashamed to share DNA with. She was sitting on the edge of the broken fountain on a roundabout that had become sort of a symbol of Watershed Heights. Something that could have maybe been beautiful and functional at some point, but that was so long ago that nobody seemed to like it or respect it. Nic stood up, turned around and spit into the filthy water that had collected at the bottom of the fountain. She had seen at least three other people spit into this water and thought that if she did it, she would become connected to watershed heights. If she ever left town, those few drops of saliva would always be there as  part of the filthy water in that broken fountain. Watershed heights may not have been the prettiest or the safest place that Nic had ever been to but it did have one major thing going for it; it wasn't home.