Nightmare Carnival

Mirchland and I were already there, sitting with Ichbon outside his trailer, passing the Old Overholt, when the Miserable Ones delivered Hibbler to our meeting. The Maestro said, “Pass the bottle to Jon,” and I did. Hibbler was in his graduation gown, which, though no longer part of his act, he still wore to bed.

“We need to talk,” said Ichbon.

“Give me a cigarette,” said Hibbler.

I handed him one and he lit it with the silver lighter lifted by the flea in his show. His hands quivered. “Talk about what?” he asked.

“Falling Angel.”

“A tragedy.”

“We think your fleas did him in,” said the Maestro.

“My fleas? You shouldn’t have said that.” Hibbler became indignant and sat up straight in his chair.

“They have to be squashed.”

The old performer shook his head. “Impossible. There are too many of them. They’re listening right now.” The professor’s bravado of recent weeks was gone, and he seemed shakier than he’d been since I’d known him. After a long draw on the bottle, he wiped his mouth, slumped forward, and gazed at the ground.

“I thought you were in charge,” said Ichbon.

“I thought I was too.”

“Let’s burn them,” said Mirchland in a whisper.

“No, you might as well set fire to yourselves and the whole damn caravan,” said the professor. “Before you could light a torch they could be all over you, sucking you drier than no-man’s-land.”

“Well, I’m not going to sit around and wait till I’m on the menu,” said Ichbon. “Call them together for a meeting and we’ll ambush them.”

“Shhh,” said Hibbler. “I told you, they can hear us.”

“Fuck the fleas!” yelled the Maestro.

Mirchland and I stood up and walked slowly away from the meeting.

Ichbon watched our dull escape. “You chickenshits,” he said.

From my back mouth, I warned him, “Caution.”

Two days later, the Maestro blew his brains out in his trailer. Jack Sprat found him, slumped back in his chair, a hole the size of a silver dollar between his eyes. There were also bullet holes in his feet, his shins, his stomach, his rear end, and his thigh. We knew he must have gone mad from the itching and tried to eradicate his persecutors with bullets. Only the Miserable Clowns dared to touch his corpse. They dragged it out to the edge of the field we were set up in, gathered brush, and made a bier. One by one, the members of the caravan came out of hiding to pay their last respects. There was less said at the event than for the burial of the albino skunk, but as his smoke rose, we watched with tears in our eyes, as much for our own fates as his. The minions made a presence, their rank and file by the hundreds kneeled and prayed. When the fire burned down, the clowns retrieved the Maestro’s blackened skull and mounted it on the bumper of the lead truck in the caravan.

* * *

Forgive me if I don’t dwell on the list of my comrades who withered and succumbed to the hunger of the minions. We left a trail of smoldering biers in our wake as we moved inexorably from town to town. By the time we hit St. Joseph, near the Kansas-Missouri border, Jack Sprat, Mr. Electric, the World’s Ugliest Man and his beautiful wife, Ronnie, the Crab Boy, Gaston, the cook, and more had weakened, shriveled, and passed on. No one dared to speak about the horror we were trapped within. To speak out moved you immediately to the top of the menu. Whispers were dangerous. Those of us remaining had to take on more jobs in order to keep the caravan rolling.

Once the itching started your hours were numbered. Most were dragged down in a state of grim and silent acceptance, but there were one or two who raged against it. The latter were far harder to witness, their antics pathetic against the inevitable. As for the performers who survived, the stress of insect servitude, the fact that they were like cattle kept for slaughter, quickly began to undermine their acts. The fortune-teller saw only one future. The knife thrower’s hands fluttered like trapped birds, and his poor assistant was numb with the fear that if the fleas didn’t kill her, he would. The Miserable Clowns lost their sense of humor. As terrible as the rest of the caravan was, at each stop the crowd still showed up to see Hibbler’s Minions. The new grand finale of the act consisted of thousands of fleas coming together to form the figure of a man tipping his flea hat to the audience.