Nightmare Carnival

“Should there be horns?” he asks. “Should there be a pointy tail? What do you want your animal to look like?” The children will tell him. And he’ll wink again, never a smile but he’s always good for a wink, and he’ll reach for his balloons. Dozens of balloons sometimes, it only depends upon the limit of the child’s imagination. He’ll twist the balloons into each other, the balloons stretch and he likes the way that tautness prickles against his fingers. He’ll give them giraffes with humps and claws. He’ll give them elephants with wings and long tails, and tell them they can breathe fire.

He can create anything, so long as the child wants it enough. At times like this he is happy. At times like this he is God.

And then it’s done, and he gives the balloon creature to the child, and for all its complex meshing of limbs it is as light as air.

He shows the child out of the caravan then. Tears long gone, there’s only delight now, and maybe a little pride. “Don’t you forget,” Shelton says. “I’m the one who made it, but you’re the one who invented it, it couldn’t exist without you. So look after it.” He might have been with the child alone as long as half an hour, and the parents outside might have been getting worried. Ruth can only smile reassuringly for so long. But now the parents can see how thrilled their child is, and what a strange and beautiful beast it has for a friend. Maybe the parents will thank Shelton. Maybe they’ll give him money. That’s better still.

Then it’s back to the other children, the ordinary children, the dullards. The ones who’ll come by the caravan, and be happy with just a rabbit or a snake, and that’s fine, it’s fine, if that’s enough to make them happy then that’s all they deserve.

Joshua Shelton is not a member of any circus. He follows the circuses around, and he’ll pitch his caravan on the edge of the common, as far away as he can get whilst still catching their trade. Once in a while people will come and tell him to move on, and they’ll come with sticks, just in case Shelton objects; sometimes it’s the strong man flexing his muscles, sometimes it’s the ringmaster himself. One time it was a group of angry clowns and they were still in their makeup and their white faces cracked beneath their scowls and they did look funny! Shelton never gives them any trouble. If they tell him to go, he’ll go. There’s no need for any violence, there are always other circuses he can feed off.

But most of the time the circus ignores him. The children will go to the big top, they’ll watch the acrobats, they’ll get dizzy on the carousel and lob a few balls at the coconut shy. And on the way out maybe they’ll stop at the little caravan with the balloon animals, and the very lucky ones might cry with disappointment, and get something magical in return.

* * *

Joshua Shelton wakes up in the night needing a piss. He swings his legs over the side of the bunk, he drops to the ground. Quietly, gently — he doesn’t want to disturb Ruth sleeping in the bunk below. Ruth never stirs till morning, he knows that, but he can still be quiet, can’t he? He loves his daughter, he won’t have her disturbed for anything.

He always needs a nighttime piss, it’s regular as clockwork. He didn’t used to, his bladder was once so very well behaved. It must be age. He fancies he still looks fit, but there are grey hairs appearing in his beard. Soon he’ll look like his father, he thinks, and he remembers him only with that shock of white hair, and that suited him, didn’t it, it made him look grander and more mysterious. Maybe it’ll be good to be old. Maybe it’ll suit him too, and suit the act. And there’s Ruth, she’s getting older as well — she’s fifteen now, sixteen? She looks like a woman. And it was only so very recently she was no older than the children for whom he makes the balloon animals. The children used to stare at Ruth in jealous wonder — this girl got to live at the circus with the balloon man! And now they just look at her the way they would at any other grownup. Ruth sleeps on the lower bunk because when she was small he worried she might roll off the edge and fall and hurt herself. She was worried too. She doesn’t worry about such silly stuff any more, and really, if he’s going to wake up every night for a piss it might be more convenient if he took the lower bunk. But he won’t suggest it to her. He’s not quite ready to stop protecting her yet.