Poison Princess

Chapter Five: Come Fly With Me

Chapter Five: Come Fly With Me

High above the grand chapiteau, I stood perched on the trapeze swing, swaying back and forth over the stage and the gazing onlookers. Cold wind rushed through my scarlet hair. I wondered how I had gotten up here to begin with.

I didn't recall performing the trapeze swings today. I hadn't even done it for a live audience yet.

But...something was wrong. The audience I swung over was a horde of jeering phantoms, black masses arranged roughly in human shape with no true faces. Only a single wide, unblinking eye and a jagged, toothy grin. They cackled amongst one another, the uproar almost deafening. Their laughter echoed loudly in my ears. My sweaty hands began to rattle.

The ropes holding up the swing I stood on suddenly morphed into thin, brittle straw. It quickly snapped under my weight, and my stomach lurched into my throat as I dropped. I just barely managed to cling to the thin metal bar of the swing, which dangled above the stage by merely a few threads. I hung on with all my strength, but my arms were growing sorer and weaker by the second. My muscles burned with pain. I kicked at the air, crying out for help, toxic tears streaking down my face, but the only response I got were the echoing cackles of the phantoms in the stands below. The brittle straw threads snapped one by one, unable to hold my weight, each broken thread hurling me closer toward death, until-

The lethal snap came suddenly, and there was nothing left to hold me up. My insides lurched, and I gained a feeling of weightlessness for a short moment- only to quickly realize I was falling. I screamed out as I plummeted to the bottom, seconds away from reaching certain death...

I awoke in a cold sweat, and a shriek escaped my lips, which quickly lowered into a weak croak. My throat was torn and ragged from screaming so loudly. I glanced over to see Ophelia's upside-down face peeking at me from the upper bunk. "That must have been a hell of a nightmare, huh?" she asked. "You alright?"

My bedsheets were soaked in sweat, and my skin tightened with chills. I forced my tongue to move. "Y-yes...I'm fine."

By this time, it had reached the middle of July, and the blazing summer was in full swing. For someone like me, who had to always wear long clothes that covered every part of my body all year round, the summer heat was punishing. There was no escape from it, except for air conditioning. Which thankfully the dorms and the big top did have, because I supposed Mr. Fleur wasn't a total psychopath, but I couldn't always stay inside. I had to go out into the park to do chores, head into town and go shopping, you get the idea.

The heat seeped into every part of my body, and my clothes would become drenched in poisonous sweat. I always had to be careful while washing my own clothes and sheets, I even had to clean my own costumes because they couldn't go into the laundry with everyone else's garments. Granted, they were minor inconveniences, but it was another reminder of how singled out I felt. No matter what I did, my life would never be easy.

But today was different. Today was a very special day. Not too long ago, Mr. Fleur had assigned Ophelia and I to our very first pair act- a trapeze swing duo. The trapeze was a classic act, it's normally one of the first acts a person thinks of when the circus arts come to mind. But the trapeze swing duo was a different affair. Two acrobats would swing on their own trapezes side by side, moving together and performing intricate spins and manouvers in perfect sync with the music in the background- and each other.

It was simple in concept, but incredibly difficult in practice. It required precise movements, rhythm, and timing, which Ophelia and I quickly realized when we began practicing the week before our debut of the performance in the circus. I had been practicing on the trapeze swings for a while, and by that point I had gotten good at most of the manouvers, I wasn't falling anymore at least. But I soon figured out that pulling off the act with someone else was a much different beast.