The Ringmaster

 As he walked down the street, Joe didn’t notice the sun shifting through the leaves above him and scattering luminous shapes at his feet. He was oblivious when a girl cycled past, and threw a second glance in his direction. And he didn’t hear the music that rolled on the air from a nearby open car window. 

Scuttling litter danced in his wake as he made his way towards the coffee shop - the same one that he went to every Saturday morning. It was something to do, something to look forward to. 

When he pushed open the door, the barista looked up from behind the counter and recognised the tall, lumbering figure with unkempt, silver-streaked hair. ‘Mornin’!’ he called. 

Joe bounced an eyebrow in response. As dust sparkled in the light that streamed in through the widow behind him, the chatter from other customers burbled on. He walked across to the counter, his footsteps heavy on the wooden floor. 

‘The usual?’ 

‘Yes.’ Joe slid his hands into his pockets as he stood waiting amid the sound of clattering dishes and the hiss of steaming milk, and didn’t look around. 

‘There you go.’ The barista placed a paper cup filled with coffee on the countertop. A perfect cocoa-powder face smiled up from the foam. 

‘Aww,’ said the barista’s colleague, her voice shiny and bright. ‘The magic touch!’ 

Joe’s smirk was surly and dark. As he pressed a plastic lid onto his cup he muttered, ‘magic? It’s just coffee.’ As he turned away, the girl’s face fell, and the barista, bemused, shook his head. 

Joe walked back outside, and paused on the doorstep to take a sip of coffee while the brass door-bell still jangled behind him. He was about to set off again when something caught his eye. A wink of gold in the sunny dust of the kerb. It looked like a ticket. Just trash, muttered the voice in his head, but something about the way that gold was gleaming, made him look again. He stepped over and stooped to pick it up. Turning it over, he saw that it was a ticket for a circus show that very evening. He peered up the street, and then back down the other way, but no one seemed to be looking for it. He glanced back through the glass door of the coffee shop but again, apparently no one was missing it. He fingered the ticket, his thumb running over the embossed foil. 

He’d never been to the circus. Always wanted to go as a boy, but… there had always been something less frivolous to do. He double checked the time and the date on the ticket. Yes - yes, it really was for today. A real circus show. And there was no-one to stop him from going. 

A quiet glow of excitement bloomed in Joe’s chest. He carefully tucked the ticket into his shirt pocket, and walked away with it. 

Later that evening, and not without some trepidation, he found himself inside a striped circus tent, pitched in a moonlit park on the edge of town. His backside was planted in a hard, uncomfortable plastic seat, the colour of a candy apple. The air was stifling and close, thick with the smell of sugary sweet popcorn and sticky soda. The audience around him was buzzing and chattering, their voices rising up and bouncing off the high, dark canvas roof as they snapped photos of each other on their phones. 

Joe stole a few anxious glances at the faces around him, and then pinned his gaze on the flattened grass beneath his feet. He was surreptitiously wiping his palms on his trousers when, with a sudden swoop, the house lights dropped down and the tent was plunged into shadows. The back of his neck prickled as the atmosphere quickly grew sharp with anticipation, and whoops and shouts pierced the darkness. 

Then, there was music. It roared in Joe’s ears and shook through all of his bones. His eyes widened as the seat rattled beneath him and his heart pounded in his chest. The noise from the crowd was now deafening. 

A spotlight sliced through the blackness like a knife, momentarily blinding Joe before it flared on a red top hat. Amid uproarious cheers and a cloud of smoke, a Ringmaster rose up through the floor of the stage. With his arms folded across his chest, his richly tattooed shoulder was turned out towards the light. He tucked his chin down into a crisp, white ruff and his eyes – dark and fiery –glared out from beneath the shadow of his hat brim. A brief, bewitching moment stretched like an elastic band between the Ringmaster and the audience. He had them effortlessly captured, enraptured, breathless in the palm of his hand.

The whistles and shrieks were climbing to a fever pitch. Straining hands reached for the electric stars that glittered above the stage. Then, in a sudden movement that was as clean and strong as a stag, the Ringmaster leapt into the air. His legs kicked out and light blazed on his white shoes as his coat tails sailed behind him. Dazzled, Joe was riveted in his seat. 

The Ringmaster landed, and as he curled into a deft forward-roll, his hand flashed out to grab something. In the next moment he was up on his feet again, nimble and quick. But this time, he was whirling something about his head. A whip. Snake-like and glittering, it swung through the air in mesmerising, slow, wide arcs. And then, reality warped as Joe realised, in the same way that consciousness rises from a dream, that it was heading straight for him. He froze, not even daring to look left or right - and then it had grabbed him. He heard gasps as the whip lashed around him, wrapping itself around and around his waist. 

With a frighteningly powerful yank, he was snatched from his seat. As he flew upwards, his stomach lurched with a sickening, plunging sensation. He glimpsed a sea of half-lit, upturned faces rushing past beneath him as he hurtled across the tent. And then, with a crash, he had landed in a heap on the stage, coughing and blinking in a cloud of sawdust, held fast in the grip of white-hot shock. In the glare of the lights, all he could see was the Ringmaster’s shoes. The audience had disappeared, bleached to blackness – a yawning, dark void of noise. 

There was no time to register that the floor had given way beneath him before he was falling, dropping like a stone. A square of light from the trapdoor spun high above him as the noise from the crowd swirled into the distance like water down a drain, and Joe’s shriek was swallowed by darkness. His arms and legs thrashed, but there was nothing to catch him. A shock burst through him when, in a flash, the Ringmaster’s face swung past in front of him. Was that a smile, or a leer? He was beckoning with his fingers, his eyes disappearing into shadow as he nodded. Lights were flying around him, searing across Joe’s eyeballs and then were gone again. 

Joe’s knees buckled painfully as he landed on something solid. The lights roared past him again and when he looked up, he saw that they were gobs of fire, sailing past his ears on the ends of chains. A woman with a sooty face and black lace gloves was watching him as she whirled the blazing orbs around her shoulders. Then she swung them upwards, illuminating a gigantic mirror in a heavy, ornate, gold-gilt frame. 

Cowering on his haunches, Joe was startled to see a painted face looking back at him from the mirror. It was smeared in makeup - thick, white and greasy, with dark rings drawn around the glittering eyes. A daub of rosy pink sat on each cheek. A hat, tall and cone-shaped, was perched at an angle. Something about the face was eerily familiar, but Joe’s reeling mind couldn’t place it. And then, his guts squeezed. He realised that he was looking at himself. 

A sharp tug on his arm hauled him to his feet, and he turned to see a man in a white tailcoat standing before him. With skin as black as pitch, he seemed as tall as a house. Joe’s jaw dropped open but the man touched a finger to his lips. Then he tapped his cheek just below his eye and indicated for Joe to watch him. Joe stared, open-mouthed like a gobsmacked goldfish as the man pulled a pack of white, gold-edged playing cards from his breast pocket with an elegant flourish. He deftly spread them into a neat fan, and held them out beneath Joe’s nose. Joe hesitated. He glanced up into the man’s face, but the stranger only nodded wordless encouragement. When Joe raised a hand to pick a card, his fingers trembled in the light. His eyes razed back and forth across the cards, but each one looked as sharp and glossy as the next. Finally, he reached for one that was in the middle of the fan, and plucked it free. A velvet-smooth smile spread across the stranger’s face as he closed the fan of cards and tucked them back into his pocket. He gestured at the card in Joe’s hand, and, with an uneasy twitch in his stomach, Joe turned it over. His brow jumped when he saw a question printed on the back in ornate, Gothic lettering. 

Do you believe in magic? 

Joe’s head jerked back up. He looked again into the man’s eyes, but the stranger didn’t respond. He merely clasped his hands in front of him and inclined his head, his glance darting from the card in Joe’s hand to his face and back again.  

Joe looked around behind him. The girl was still swinging the fire, and the Ringmaster was squatting low behind her, his chin in his hand, his eyes watchful. The noise from the stage was filtering through the darkness like distant thunder. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Joe wondered if the audience were still waiting for the Ringmaster to return. 

He turned back to the man in white. 

‘Yes,’ he croaked, surprised at the unfamiliar sound of his own voice. 

He leaped as a cannon boomed. Instantly, the air was filled with fluttering confetti, and the sound of cheering and applause exploded all around him. The man in white was clapping too, his giant hands moving with strong, expansive strokes. His face had broken into a broad grin, and he beamed at Joe like a proud parent.

A faltering smile tremored at the corner of Joe’s lips, but he jumped when an arm landed around his shoulders. Joe twisted his head - it was the Ringmaster. He was smiling, but something about the warmth of his smile was at odds with the way he started steering Joe towards a glowing green EXIT sign. The Ringmaster reached out, yanked open a shadowy door and, with a push, shoved Joe through it. 

The door slammed shut behind him with a bang, and Joe staggered into the sudden glare of floodlights. Blinking, he hardly dared to trust his shaking legs to hold him up. As his senses slowly began to realign, he realised he was standing outside the tent, in the park. He looked about, but the place was deserted. He turned back to the door behind him, but was startled to find that it wasn’t there. His eyes scoured the exterior of the tent, but there was absolutely no sign of a door.

‘Can I help you?’ Joe whirled around. An usher had appeared. Gold buttons on her red waistcoat glinted in the light. He noticed that her hair was as light and pretty as cotton-candy. He could see that she was trying hard to look friendly, but suspicious concern was colouring her face as clear as day. 

‘I – uh…’ Joe’s mind raced, but he could only draw a blank. 

‘Are you looking for the restrooms?’ 

‘Yes,’ he blurted. 

‘Just up ahead on the left.’ 

‘Thank you.’ Joe tried to squeeze out a smile, but he couldn’t dissolve the distrust on her face. He walked as quickly and deliberately as his unsteady legs could manage until he spotted a portable toilet cabin. He clambered up the steps and lurched towards the row of sinks inside, grabbing onto the nearest one. He leaned his weight on it, and let his face hang over the drain. He stood there for a few moments, sucking in a few ragged breaths, before he could summon the courage to look up into the mirror. 

He heaved a trembling sigh. There was no makeup - none at all. And no hat. Struggling to gather his thoughts, he stared at his reflection as the distant sound of music waltzed through the night air outside. He considered heading back to his seat in the tent, but then quickly decided that he’d had enough of the circus for one night. He needed to find a place to sit down and have a drink. He must have had a funny turn. Must have eaten something off. Surely it could only have been a daydream – some kind of hallucination. Nothing real. Just a fantasy. I’ll work out what happened – somehow, somewhere along the way, it’ll all make sense, he thought to himself. He exhaled slowly. Calmly. Coolly. Finally, he straightened up and turned to leave. 

Outside in the parking lot, under a blaze of security lights, his car was just where he had left it. He ran a hand down his face, and walked towards the car without turning around to glance back at the tent behind him. He noticed how the night air felt like a gentle kiss on his cheek. How his shoes were kicking up clouds of delicate dandelion parachutes as he walked. How the moon was hanging in the sky like a beautiful, serene ornament. 

He reached into his pocket for his car keys. As he pulled them out, a couple of papery objects fluttered to the ground, and he stopped to pick them up. One was the ticket to the show. The other was a white, gold-edged playing card. Slowly, he turned it over and read the question on the back. 

Do you believe in magic? 

After a moment, Joe nodded. Yes. 

Yes, he did.