Nightmare Carnival

“It was a good act,” said the professor.

“What happened to it?” I asked.

“I couldn’t get the fleas. You have to be able to loop a very thin gold wire around them to get them to perform. Cat and dog fleas are too small, but human fleas—Pulex irritans—were large enough. I’d harness them to miniature chariots and have them walk a tightrope, carrying a little umbrella. At the end, I’d shoot one out of a cannon and catch it in midair. It’s the cleanliness of the modern world that’s put them in decline. You can’t find them anymore.”

The Maestro said, “I hope you still have some of that gold wire,” uncapped his hand from off his wrist, and brought it up for the professor to see more clearly. “Look at the size of that thing.”

Hibbler nodded, slowly at first, but then with more determination. “I could work with that flea,” he said. “It would be easy.”

“I’ll have the clowns collect as many as they can from the carcass of this worthless pile before I have it burned.”

There came a day in early spring when the caravan finally lurched forward toward the rising sun. To be moving, to be caught up in a day’s work, I found preferable to the purgatory of wintering. After the Dust Demon had been burned down to its bones and Ichbon had retrieved the skull and claws, the aroma lingered in camp till the day we departed. Despite the dust storms, everyone breathed easier on the plains out of reach of the tentacles of that stench.

I brushed up on my act, which beside cheap tricks like inhaling a cigarette with one mouth and expelling the smoke out the other, took the form of an argument with myself. The Maestro always warned me, “Don’t leave the audience for too long with your other face. It’s too strange, too hungry. When it licks its lips, the customers walk away.” I’d only viewed my other face once, in a room of mirrors, but the sight of me struck me unconscious on the spot. I was left with amnesia of the incident, unable to picture me. Whenever I tried, the hair would rise on the backs of my arms and the saliva would leave my mouth. I rewrote the script of the argument so that my other face had half as much dialogue. It meant fewer times I would have to turn completely around to answer myself, and that was fine with me as the act was exhausting.

The Maestro was right: the crowds that March were so dejected, they pretended we were good. By the time we made it to Muskogee, Professor Dunce had shed his graduation gown for a tuxedo and top hat and been reborn as Hibbler, Master of Minions. He sat with me and the Maestro and Maybell one evening. We passed the smoke and the bottle and he explained, “These are no ordinary fleas. They’re disproportionately large with enormous heads. I can see their eyes watching for my commands. Under the jeweler’s loupe I have discovered they don’t have insect limbs, insignificant sticks, but muscular arms and legs with feet and hand-like grippers.”

“But will they perform?” asked Ichbon, taking a toke.

“I daresay they’re smarter than dogs,” said Hibbler. “I don’t even have to bind them and they willingly perform the feats I require.”

“They feed on your blood?” asked the Rubber Lady.

“They don’t touch me. When I doze off at night, they leave the trailer and go hunting. I think they must be into the animals, but I knew it was right to let them find their own diet. How much could they take? There are only six of them.”

“The peacock is looking a little peaked,” said Ichbon.

“When we open in Muskogee and you see the act and the money it brings, you won’t care if they’re feasting on your balls, Maestro.”

“There’s a lady present,” said the face at the back of my head.

I saw the first show of the new flea circus, and Hibbler’s Minions was the hit the old man had promised. Every night after the first, it was packed for his performance in the back left corner of the tent. The crowd could readily see the fleas and were astonished at what they’d been trained to do. Incredible lifting, pulling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, leaping, and all without a harness, all initiated by voice command from Hibbler. Laid out on a board was a three-ring circus, and in each ring a different flea performed a different feat. One lifted a silver cigarette lighter over its head, the next juggled caraway seeds, the third tumbled and leaped high into the air. Above them one crossed on a high wire. All six of them enacted a chariot race with two tiny chariots going around the circumference of the center ring. Word spread far and wide about the minions. And when their act drew to a close the damn things would line up in a row and bow to applause.