Most agree that the contortionists took their act too far when the troupe clung to each other’s waists, bending their limbs, tucking in their chins to form a swastika from the arrangement of their lithe, leotarded bodies. Their execution was immaculate (albeit offensive, given the very nature of the symbol they contorted to display). Without shame, they proceeded to writhe into another shape, a pentagram, and chanted in backwards Latin. A clown with a painted sad face entered the room, waddling in comically large shoes and outrageous trousers held up by rainbow suspenders. She—yes, beneath the many layers of makeup, it was a woman, despite her beard—translated the backwards Latin into forward French Canadian, and finally into plain English: “On Walpurgis Night, each witch is initiated into the Sabbath by her horned lover, indulging in loathsome fornication.” Then, as an afterthought: “Welcome to Le Cirque des Délices Infernaux—the circus of infernal delights.”
A vendor walking the aisles between the seated crowd shouted, “Donuts! Get your donuts!” at the exact moment the room fell silent. He blushed, his face the color of clown lips, red as a clown’s nose, or as one of the many bright balloons that were trapped in clusters in the rafters. Sifting through chocolate, sprinkled, or glazed, he whispered the offerings of his wares.
The contortionists formed an upside-down cross. A chimpanzee wearing a diaper and a Hawaiian shirt crossed himself. In the bleachers, someone dropped their donuts.
What came next began as a lemniscate, the symbol for infinity, but as bodies conjoined, stretched, and unfolded, their image developed into the Leviathan Cross, a terrific display of gymnastic mastery, sullied somewhat by its flesh formation of the alchemical symbol for sulfur. The bearded lady, moonlighting as a clown, honked her nose and chuckled, tripping over her overlarge footwear.
Behind the curtain, peering through a gap in the blood-red velour, the strongman watched his lover with tears in his eyes. He might be able to lift a car, or balance a bear in one arm, or bend bars from a cage that is submerged in a tank. He might be the strongman—the strongest man—but he is a sensitive soul.
Concealed in the dark heart of the big top, a bear moaned from a cage repurposed from a shipping container. Like steel bars under tremendous pressure, the strongman bends, and then he breaks.
James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. His 2nd collection, Fish Out of Water, is forthcoming from Anxiety Press.