It's All Part Of The Show 'The Carnival Of Glass'

Chapter III🎪Nineteen Forty-Four

  I knew what life of horrors Rainey-Madison was living daily outside of this tent...Far beyond my Carnival's walls of a sanctuary.

She had been away too long. Yes, there was the matter of the cane, but it would do nothing. R- Madison, now impervious to the very thing that kept her and her soul off The Reaper's Archive Of Death. She was incredibly vulnerable and this could spell disaster and quick and not painless death.

In an empty gravel-covered lot off the main city road, situated in Tipp City, Ohio, peculiar people were scattered about.

They were all wearing comparable blue jumpsuits -Each one like the next. They only differed by the series of numbers painted in white on their backs with numbers like 10, 6, 40, 34, 22, 71, and 89. Some of them I recognized from before: 61, 11, 15, 26, 49, 39, and number 34 was trudging along like she hadn't had enough sleep. She had a brown sack slung over her right shoulder, clasped with both hands and her face was covered in dirt. Her brown hair was like an untamed creature –Wild.

As the dried, dead Fall leaves swirled in the wind, the strange people walked like zombies. Though they seemed to have very little desire to gnaw out your brains and more desire to act like mute demons -who seem at first glance completely harmless.

Harmless -Well, that is an interesting word.

*Flashback to 1944*-

My name is Marcus Cochran.

-Please

Remember

Me

And

What

I've

Done!

A reporter spoke:

"Mr. Cochran! Mr. Cochran! All of Omaha is talking about the subject of your Circus. The town has a high anticipation of the opening night of your Carnival!"

Followed by another:

"Mr.Cochran! What inspired you to pursue the show business?"

Madison sat fairly still on my lap in the midst of all this. -Just beneath the bottom edge of the wooden table.

'My inspiration for my Carnival -My father had one dream, that I would succeed where he could not. See, my father had the worst luck. Life dealt him a bum hand, no matter how hard he tried, things never seemed to go his way. And when I was very young, he got sick, and then he died. Poor and destitute. He left behind only one possession, a gold coin... This one here. I came to this country with one goal, to become the man, my father knew I could be. I wanted to grab the American dream with both hands and never let it go! And then I remembered a story my father told me, about his one good memory as a child... the day the carnival came to town." I did Jazz-hands all while wiggling my fingers as I pulled my left and right hand away from one another. "And I knew then, what would lie ahead for me. -What I would dedicate all of my time, talent, and resources to!" I jabbed my index finger into the top of the table.

"I would dedicate it to bringing the very show, that you will see this evening. It is the end result of all of my labor."

"Mr. Cochran! What would you say to reports that your Carnival may not be ready in time for the opening? That your rides may not be ready for paying customers?"

A reporter shouter at me with the lights of cameras still going off in all directions. Flash after flash and shudder after shudder.

I held Madison so she wouldn't tumble off my lap.

'This Carnival is very very important! It is a legacy: The end of a rare breed of showman and yet, the begging of my next and last generation. And I would not jeopardize my good name, but putting people in danger!'

I looked down at Madison thinking about the words I had just spoken- thinking of her and the legacy... our legacy!

*End of flashback* -

PRESENT-DAY

–It was my legacy... The Carnival.

The night following my opening night, I had brought my Carnival to a small town in Ohio: Argento, Ohio.

That same night, the child escaped -to try and forget about her unsafe life at home as she watched me from the wooden bleachers once more. However, I could tell she was more focused on her troubles behind her than my marvelous show right in front of her eyes. I tried to subtly draw her focus back to me in the center of the ring to ease her nerves, but each time I had her focus, It slipped away twice as fast as it had come.

'Tonight, I sware I'd sell my soul to be a hero for you.'

(748 words)