Screams penetrate the silence, slicing through the air like a knife. Light pierced my eyes from above, the sun my enemy. Bodies streamed past my frozen shape as a river does around a boulder. In the tight space, the people ran, panting and offering prayers to the Gods. The screams of men, women, and children only grew louder as more people rushed past. My feet moved by themselves, pushing through the crowd in the wrong direction. I had to run! To escape from this suffocating hoard of moving bodies.
A wooden post extended into the sky, the end nowhere in sight. Pegs acted as hand and foot holds and I scaled the beam as quickly as I could, higher and higher and higher, reaching up into the sky. My breath came in great gaps and I stopped on a singular, precarious ledge.
The shrieking of children raised again to a new pitch,until I thought my ears would bleed. The ground fell away and my eyes hazed over with terror. I gripped the rope to my left, looping it through my belt in case I fell. My fingers found the kink in the rope and held onto it tightly. I lifted my head, eyes scanning then found it. It was coming close and much too fast. I couldn't avoid it, there was nothing I could do to escape this. Breathing in one final time... I jumped.
YOU ARE READING
the circus freak and the ringmaster
RomanceWhen ringmaster Chester worries about getting old, he employees his nephew as the companies physician. Anthony unsure of his new environment and his career, clings to anything that holds comfort. One of those things being an African acrobat who has...
