FREAK SHOW

Epilogue

Epilogue

~"We have a death pact. I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to by baby. Bury me in my leather jacket, jeans, and motorcycle boots." ~ Sid Vicious

There was a man in the field. He was bent over a tree, cracking down an axe onto the wood. Each swing of the axe splintered the wood, breaking the pieces into smaller logs. He did this an hour each day. For nearly twenty years. If one were to go hiking by or wander off from the Freak Show Fire tourist trap, they would see a man laboring over these logs. Whether it was for survival, to get out frustration, or simply for the joy of chopping wood, it was unknown.

It was an infamous rumor. The rumor that the son of the cruel ringmaster of the freak show was still alive and was the older man in the woods, that he was not in fact deceased and burned up in the ashes of the circus tent. People would come and go to see if the rumors were true. He matched the description after all. A scar over one eye and on his lip. Tall. Dark eyes and hair. Miserable.

But the man would not talk; he simply retreated back to his log cabin each time. He's insane. A cook. That was what the tour guides would warn the tourists. For these reasons, it was prohibited to go into the woods. People did anyways. The man got one or two a month that found him on his property.

After the fire, once investigations started and police cleared the area, facts became unveiled; things that were once hidden were open to the public. The sadistic and horrific background of the show was discovered. The nation was shocked. At first.

Then tourists came. Then the gift shops popped up. Then dramatic reenactments and documentaries were made. Who knew who the man in the forest was? It was fun to speculate. So that was what they did.

Once the man finished chopping up the wood, he carried it to his cabin. His cabin sat in the middle of the open field, right next to a beautiful willow tree. It was a pretty location for a house, isolated and secluded, with a marsh not far away for fun canoeing trips. Nothing bad ever happens when canoeing.

He carried the logs, a limp in his step from a bullet shattering his kneecap a long long time ago, all the way to his house. He got inside, stacked them into a pile next to the fireplace, and sighed. He was handsome when he was younger; he still was perhaps, just more rugged and mean.

Scratching the beard on his jaw, he sat down in front of his desk. This was a desk he slaved over most of the day, besides when he chopped wood. It was where he typed a book. He was nearly finished with the book. It was just hard to write for him. He was nearly forty years old; all he wanted was to be done with it. So he continued to type and write.

It was a long and hard story to write. He had to do it anyways. He promised he would write it.

He was Charlie Aldrich. And he couldn't remember her face.

Even for a person with photographic memory, he had begun to forget her face, and that was what scared him most at night. He spent most of his time before he went to bed shuffling through her old things as if it would help him. After Scarlett's death, he had gone back to the freak show he was trying all his life to leave to collect her old stuff, to make sure it didn't burn up or get taken by the investigations. He had her Alice's Adventures in Wonderland book, her sketchbook, everything she planned to publish to document their time there. He liked looking at her stuff. Then after he took her things away from the freak show, he went back to her cold, frail body and buried her. A willow tree was planted where she died.

Losing someone you love was denial. He kept trying to wake himself up, it was not like other deaths when they are tucked in a hospital bed or taken by a car, no- it was much worse when you were with them, when you were there to protect them, and then a bullet to a vital spot, and they fall. He knew it was too late, he knew, he knew there was nothing he could do. He still held down on the wound and blood gushed through his fingers, and he kept saying that she would be fine, but she still embraced him for the last time. The worse part about love dying was that you don't die with it. Charlie had nightmares about it still.