Tag: bats

Violet arrived at the elephant pen very early in the morning. It was already hot and damp, and her hair was beginning to fray out of the curled lock she’d set it to. She climbed under the fence and into the pen. She had come prepared with a rucksack and a wooden box. She placed the wooden box to the side and took some jars of jam out of her rucksack.

She’d been giving the elephants jam from the hurled samples she had received from Marrionetta, along with a few other morsels she had pilfered from the mess hall. She fed the elephants without connection to their circus work. Once before practice and once after. Just to say, “you’re nice elephants.” It made the dancing lessons go smoother.

The elephants were slumbering in a heap but quickly roused once they perceived Violet’s small, crushing footsteps in the sand. They lined up for jam, occasionally slapping each other in the head with their trunks to gain advantage.

Augromme was always there during morning rehearsals but slept through them. He was usually nestled into the recessed corner of the elephant barn, tucked into the buggy, grimy hay. He labored under a shade of nightmares that Violet dared not consider. He was a thick sleeper.

Violet whistled a syncopated tune and clapped an intricate signal of beats. The elephants lined up and began to rotate their heads, adagio as you please. Their ears furled out like great sails and began to ripple. They traded a great billowing wave among themselves, bobbing their heads up and down. They were — convincingly– a grey ocean.

“Very good!” Violet cheered. One of the elephants snorted, proud. “Now we’re going to add more.” She clasped the wooden box on the ground and opened it. It was a compact gramophone with a disc inside. She revved the crank and a mildly interesting shanty piped out.

“Alright,” Violet clapped and signaled with the beat. The elephants were more accustomed to dancing over the accompanying music as opposed to working within it. It would be no small task to help them recognize the fall drops instead of focusing on her for directions. Still, a combination of dependency would probably be sufficient, at least for their upcoming performance at the end of the month. Her very own showcase!

The shanty hit a high note. Suddenly, Augromme thrashed inside the barn. Violet gasped and teetered backwards. The other elephants too bugged back from the barn.

Augromme rolled over and rose sharply. Violet tried to make her way back out of the pen but tripped over her rucksack. She became tangled in her thighs and fell over. Augromme stalked towards her and gained in an instant. He seemed just about to trample her when one of the sows stood over Violet’s body and protectively reached her trunk between them. The sow puffed at Augromme and whurtled her enormous flanks. Augromme hesitated, ambivalent.

Slyly, his nose found Violet’s foot. He yanked her ankle, dragging her a few feet forward. She cried out, afraid now. Both sows started puffing at Augromme. The shanty kept playing, alarmingly out of place.

Violet coughed in the upkicked dust and felt her heart pounding in her chest. Augromme let go of her ankle. Deftly, he removed her ballet slipper and started smelling the palm of her foot. The sows seemed to feel this was acceptable and stopped puffing.

There was a reverberative CLANG. All of the elephants and Violet looked over to see Ungulen with a feeding bucket standing at the fence.

Ungulen appraised the situation carefully. “Everything alright?”

“No,” said Violet.

Ungulen ducked under the fence and approached Augromme.

“What did we talk about, mate?” He took a commanding tone with the maladaptive giant. Augromme rasped loudly.

Ungulen picked up the food bucket and slowly backed into an adjoining pen. Augromme tossed his head with attitude, hissing at Ungulen. The elephant headed straight for the food bucket and Ungulen locked his friend inside.

The sows helped Violet to her feet.

“May’s be,” Ungulen drawled, embarrassed, “we need some better arrangement?”

Violet dusted herself off and heaved a sigh of relief.

Lorelei climbed through the reverse traffic of carnies and performers in the basement of the big top. A few fixed him with disapproving looks or curious expressions. His unbelonging was evident to all.

At last, he reached a door marked with a yellow triangle. Instinctively, he opened it.

In the small abode, Marrionetta was influcking her hair to create a wild decree of angles. Lorelei’s entrance surprised her. Like a cat, she burst from her plush footstool and gloamed monumental on the ceiling.

“I’ll roast your guts crisp, you wandering grease pig!” She had a knife.

Lorelei smiled. He pulled out his own knife and showed it to her. Then he put his knife down on her polished mahogany vanity. She — however — remained on the ceiling, a dark cloud verving around her.

“Have dinner with me,” said Lorelei.

Marrionetta hovered for a few more moments and then sank back down into her seat. She tarnished him with a frowning once-over. Then she made a show of cleaning all her frontmost teeth with her tongue. Lorelei’s face twitched.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

Marrionetta found this approach interesting. She picked up his knife.

“This looks expensive,” she said.

“It was,” he confirmed.

Violet presumed to seat herself on an overstuffed ottoman in the corner of Marrionetta’s dressing room. The room, cramped for starters, was brimming with patterned furniture. Marrionetta appeared to be very fond of reds this year. Red roses, red geometrics, red perfume bottles, a few tapestries in crimson and blue, and a spilling theme of silver accents.

In the opposite corner was a raised platform that nearly reached the ceiling. Violet concluded that Marrionetta was now living and sleeping in her dressing room since her eviction from The Emerald House.

“Prancing elephants” Marrionetta scoffed. “Why not have toothpicks dig trenches?”

“I know,” said Violet. “It’s hard to know how to balance their size within the movement. To do anything interesting with it anyway.”

Marrionetta paced a small trail through the furniture as if it were a landscaped English garden. She nodded thoughtfully.

“If it’s going to be anything, it’s either got to be tremendous or mouselike. Middling doesn’t converse in this case.” Marrionetta began to pace faster. “Odd extremities. How far do their ears stick out?”

“Oh ummm,” Violet guessed with her hands.

“Fans.” Marrionetta concluded.

“Sorry?”

Marrionetta huffed. “Fans! Their ears are like fans! Use that.” She threw a raspberry at Violet for being slow witted.

“Thank you,” Violet suppressed the instinct to throw the raspberry right back. But the fans idea was — in fact — interesting. She wondered how much intrinsic musculature the elephants had and in what parts of their ears. She could coordinate a row of fanning ears, like flags or like billowing scarves. It would be very different from anything the elephants had been tasked with before.

Marrionetta palmed a mouthful of raspberries. She was still thinking about the elephants.

“Miss Mary, I wondered…” Violet cautioned, “the elephants are a sad lot. I wanted to make them a gift.”

Marrionetta frowned at Violet and then frowned at a different part of the room. “What?”

“Do you have any jam I could take to them? I’d pay you of course.”

Marrionetta stalled. Her eyes started burning that awful orange of her passions. She invected the bowl of raspberries into the floor where it exploded.

“What mercenary, foaming maggot told you I like jam!?” She raged toward Violet like a rattling sheath of swords.

“No one,” Violet whispered. “Nobody. I swear it. I just thought you might have some and it could lift their spirits.”

“Elephants?! Jam!?” Marrionetta shook with agitated vigor. “Yes! That’s right!” she said hysterically. “Good enough for dusty elephants! Jam! PLEUGH!” She swirled over to a locked cabinet. She threw open its doors revealing a trove of secret jam. She began snatching jar upon jar and hurling them at Violet.

“Here you go! Dirty jam for dirty elephants! Take all you want! What the skindigging eel mites do I care!” She started screaming wordless things and shuddering the cabinet.

Violet palmed a few jars of jam and leapt for the door.

“Thank you, Miss Mary! You’re a true original!” Violet ran down the hall.

Marrionetta inculcated her jam cabinet with a few more punishing body slams. Then she caught herself and remained still. She looked around the room and saw that Violet had left. Then she noticed her overturned and broken bowl of raspberries.

She slid onto the floor and took a breath that was centuries deep.

Violet knocked on the door with the yellow triangle. She cleared her throat, nervous. Under the doorway, Violet could see and hear Marrionetta’s slender wooden feet as they cluttered and cast a multifaceted shadow.

Violet was very familiar with Marrionetta’s bodywork. As a dancer, Violet was sensitive to the physicalities of others. Naturally, she had seen Marrionetta — the star of the circus — perform many times. Like the audience members, Violet too was entranced by the otherworldly tenses of Marrionetta’s physique. However, Violet had also seen Marrionetta in her personal routines and unconscious browsings around the circus. Violet was always struck by the continuities between the star’s stage art and her private rhythms. Most of the other circus performers hated Marrionetta as she was hostile and erratic. But Violet understood something about Marrionetta. She was a performer and performers are trapped in the demanding stage play of their own lives. Perfectionists striving to make every moment something beautiful and significant.

Violet made a point to angle at chances to speak with Marrionetta privately. She wanted to round out her education with a bit of Marrionetta’s interior approaches. Rarely had Violet found sufficient reason to bother her until the elephants had provided her with just such a case.

The door opened. Marrionetta was dressed in a casually decadent robe and eating raspberries out of a bowl. Violet smiled. “Hello, Miss Mary.”

Marrionetta felt neutral towards Violet which was high honors for anybody. She had no expression on her face when she saw the inconsequential dancer in her doorway. She refrained from insulting Violet which was an invitation for Violet to continue speaking.

“Sorry to interrupt your relaxation after the show. I wanted to ask your advice on something. As a dancer.”

Marrionetta crossed her arms while still holding the bowl of raspberries aloft. It was that highly concentrated, furrowed crossing that is only capable among wooden toys. Her angled joints, fashioned purposefully to hinge and crease, were perfectly oiled and haughty.

“Drutherstone’s asked me to train the elephants and I need to come up with an interesting routine.”

Marrionetta arched a wiry eyebrow. Then, almost from nowhere, a laugh squeezed itself out of her lungs. This startled Violet who poised herself to leave immediately.

“Drutherstone” the named rolled around in the puppetress’s mouth. “Such an imbecile.” Marrionetta wafted away from the door, an implicit invitation for Violet to enter, which she did.

“So all’s you do is clap three times like this,” Ungulen explained. After he clapped, the three depressed elephants obediently stood in a line.

“And now, one clap two clap three clap four,” he demonstrated the pattern and the elephants began a lackluster two step in amazing syncopation.

“Where’s the insane one?” asked Violet.

“At pasture so you can rehearse in peace. I’ll bring him back later,” said Ungulen.

Violet turned her attention back to her elephant pupils who were still rolling along in a miserable two step.

“They look sad,” she said.

“Well wouldn’t you be? Cooped up all day in a pen, dancing for treats, nothing but a bunch of strangers around ya?”

Violet, a veteran dancer of the circus, didn’t know how to answer that. Instead she clapped a new pattern which the elephants picked up right away. They began a sweet little shimmy back and forth.

“Huh,” Violet said.

“Look at you. A real natural. I’ll leave you to it then.” And with that, Ungulen took off to attend to something different.

Violet whistled for the elephants to stop. They came to a stulting halt, bumping one another in mild confusion. Violet stepped towards the pen and reached out a friendly palm towards them. One of the sows locked her arm in a nose-hug.

“Well hello. I’m Violet. What are your names?” The elephants crowded her.

“I’ll bet,” she waggled her eyebrows, “you’d all like some jam.”

Beautiful, pansexual Janus Tewditch was sprawled out in the seersucker sheets of his day bed. It was oppressively hot and fanged sunshine lit up the corridor where he slept. He slept in the corridor mostly in order to catch the fabled Arabian nighttime breeze but the strategy always besmirched him by nine the next morning. Janus was sweating both from the heat and from his feverish illness.

His current wife, Priva, was quietly preparing coffee in the shadowy kitchen down the hall. He heard her unstick the ice box open. Next, the thud of an ice brick on the counter. Then, the single sharding crack as she hit the brick with a hammer. It was the enamel hammer he’d bought for her a year earlier. The one with the inlaid design of parakeets.

Herod, an athletic, bronze man shuffled quietly up the hallway. He wore a roomy shirt and was barefoot. The skins of his feet softly percussed along the flooring. He looked at Janus in a friendly way and cocked his head to the side. Did Janus need anything? He seemed to say. Janus lifted a weak hand to indicate that he had no present need. Herod continued into the kitchen. Janus heard him and Priva kissing one another. He heard their low voices discussing their morning tasks, a soft murmur like a shady brook. Janus closed his eyes.

In his day — that is to say, when the days didn’t feel so numbered — Janus was a prolific sex hound. He had tried almost everything in the dominion of the flesh and had even dabbled in a few sexual excursions in the realm of the spiritual. He had authored several guidebooks about his travels across two continents and another two dense volumes of his adventures across the human body. Book sales were up and his lascivious Arabian carnival was a popular destination, bringing in princes, sheiks, and the rabble from both near and far. He was more than amply funded, a master of worldly experience, but now he was steadily waning into the final days of his mortal existence. The finale. It was an ironic blow that he was still trying to reconcile.

Janus was ill for many years before he finally succumbed to the severity of his condition. In his poor health, he married his carnival’s contortionist, Priva who herself was a holdover from the days at Drutherstone’s Circus. Priva was trustworthy and could not only bend over backwards for him but also through stair banisters, around imports officials, and sometimes even through the eyes of needles to procure him the help and comforts that he required in his accelerating state of deterioration. In turn, he planned to die and leave her everything. He had observed that she was rather capable of running the carnival operation he’d built here. And now, she wouldn’t have to do it all on her own. Herod, the bastard son of a dervish who had been brought up in the local acrobatic circuits, was good for her. The two of them, Janus hoped, might do something interesting with the property.

“Three of a kind!” he used to kid her. She never found it funny and lately he didn’t either. He found his mind turning back to the mosaic collection of memorable human encounters. What had it all amounted to in the end?

Over the years Janus had sampled numerous staccatos of flings but also the muscular undertows of a few trusted partnerships. Each phase had had its merits. Still, confronted with his fading vitality, he suddenly found himself curious over which style of living was the more satisfying? He luxuriated in mental comparisons as he ate the steaming, nourishing pilafs Priva prepared for him and continued his reveries long into the night as he suckled on rose water treats that Herod would purchase, three for a penny at the bazaar.

Perhaps it was an idle question. It’s not as if he had time to write one last book on the subject. Regardless of what conclusions he might arrive at, the pursuiting days were definitely over. Now life was all but a steady plod into whatever shrouded follows. “Whatever death consists of,” Janus would tell his young wife and business friends, “I intend to do it prodigiously.”

Priva handed him a chilly cup of coffee. He drank deeply, cooling down his overheated temple of clay. She patted his hand and smiled in a way that immediately made him suspicious.

“What?” he asked.

Priva sighed and crossed her hands in her lap.

“Priva,” Janus looked at her with a smoky expression, a bygone from their exciting days.

“I wrote a letter to Lindsey.”

Janus paused. Then he carefully put the coffee somewhere else. “And why would you do that?”

“Because you’re not well.”

“I’m not not well, String-a-ling. I’m dying. I’m next in line. I’m up. Curtains.” Janus settled down from his flare of character acting. “How many other letters did you write? I’ll not have a parade!”

“Just him. He’s the goodbying type,” said Priva.  

Drutherstone, Ungulen, and Goren Hargus sat around the table, sipping tea made from boiled cigarette butts.

“How dire,” Goren pouted. He washed the awful taste of the tea down with another sip of it. “So Janus is truly going to die?”

“We’re all truly going to die,” said Ungulen. He rotated his tea cup around in circles.

“You know what I mean,” Goren murmured. Then he fixed Drutherstone with a sympathetic look. “It’s good you’re going to see him?”

Drutherstone was chewing the inside of his mouth. There were many travel details to arrange. He gulped an entire cup of the noxious tea without tasting it.

“In my absence,” he began. “You should have no fewer than four shows. We’ll need at least one major, probably two showcases and if you want to do an exhibition on the side, you can put the sinister elephant in a box. Ten cents per viewing. That should keep you all in the black while I’m away. Don’t do anything ambitious while I’m not around. The budgets tend to engorge themselves.”

“When it comes to the coffers, you can count on me,” Goren offered with a smile.

Ungulen rolled his eyes. “If she had her mind on anything fancy, Marrionetta would have you eating out of her hand inside of three days.”

Goren opened his mouth to protest but then stopped to wonder what it might be like to eat something out of Marrionetta’s hand.

“And there you have it,” Ungulen noted. Drutherstone considered the problem more carefully.

“Let’s try not to let the staff know I’m gone right away. Just say I’m in town purchasing all new textiles. Anyone who needs to speak with me urgently can write me a letter care of you.” Drutherstone indicated Ungulen who nodded.

“How long do you expect to be away?” asked Goren.

“At least two months,” Drutherstone’s shoulders piled and he twisted hard in his seat. “The bastard’s all the way in bloody Arabia.” He accidentally overturned his empty tea cup.

Ungulen and Goren exchanged a glance. Ungulen smacked Drutherstone on the arm. “He’ll be happy to see you. I’m sure of it.”

Down below, the tanker boomed with industrial fervor. The languid suck of the lagoon filled the air with a rotten stench. But high above in the demucking tower, Ungulen and Drutherstone enjoyed the strange foggy breeze, a manmade bit of weather that soothed their tired heads. The tarp above them flapped pleasantly and a bluish sky — as opposed to a green one — was nearly discernible if you looked at it the right way.

“I have to go away for a while,” Drutherstone said.

“Don’t tell me we’re bankrupt.”

“No no. It isn’t anything to do with us. It’s Janus Tewditch. He’s in a bad way.”

Ungulen made a perfunctory show of concern. “I see.” But there was something prismatic at the mention of Janus. After some consideration, Ungulen added “Helping him, are you?”

“Yes I’ll be helping him.” There was a pause. “I’m not being sarcastic.”

Ungulen nodded and started to thoughtfully mouth at his lips. Then, he remembered something. “I brought sandwiches. Your favorite.”

From the inside of his shirt, Ungulen produced six mangy olive sandwiches. The bread was stuffed to brimming with seeds. Drutherstone’s face lapsed into a hungry smile.

“I love these.” He took one and immediately dug a delicious mouthful. It was tangy, salty, and full of oiled garlic that Ungulen never failed to add. Poppy seeds lodged themselves between Drutherstone’s teeth like little children clinging to their fathers’ legs.

Ungulen suddenly pointed a finger in the direction of the fairgrounds. Drutherstone looked and saw the body of a lever boy coming over the edge. The boy’s muck-choked screams echoed through the valley. Drutherstone produced a long weave of rope from under his top hat. They descended the Demucking Tower to rescue their small employee from becoming lagooned and entankered.

Lorelei succumbed to the undignified state. He let himself be dragged via rope through the thick, flowing sludge. Occasionally it covered his face and he found himself submerged for unmeasurable amounts of time. He swallowed air when he could and privately cursed god for the rapidly depreciating quality of his morning. Eventually, his strange rescuer hauled him up on dry land.

Lorelei spat and rubbed grass in his face to remove the slime. His rescuer handed him a towel and he de-slimed more effectively with that. Finally, Lorelei got a good look at the man who had pulled him to safety.

Ernt Rauchebaum was as thin as a light post and ganglier still. His eyes had sunk so far back into his head that it gave the impression that he was hiding inside of himself, peering out from an ill-fitting skin suit.

“You must be new,” Ernt said, gesturing to the flowing muck.

“What the devil is happening?” Lorelei esophagated.

“Demucking Day.”

Lorelei nearly exploded with rage at the idiotic repetition of this phrase. Ernt Rauchebaum threw back his head and laughed. It was an awful sight, given the rakish man’s squeebly little shoulders. It seemed like his head might snap off with each guffaw.

“Nobody warned you, I see.” Ernt extended a hand and helped the sociopathic doctor to his feet.

“I’m Ernt. I work here. At least, normally I do. Actually I’m only back in town to give myself a cash advance.” Ernt’s eyes roamed over Lorelei’s suit which, while coated in a layer of revolting mucous, nevertheless denoted wealth and breeding.

“Any chance you could spare a silverback?” Ernt ventured.

By now, Lorelei had put together that Ernt was both a drug addict and bounding itinerant for the sake of his habit. With a dignified sniff, Lorelei reasserted himself as the better of the two men.

Lorelei smiled broadly at Ernt. “Have you any experience with private courier services?”

“What’s that?” Ernt asked, understanding that negotiations had begun.

“The postal service doesn’t come through nearly as often as I’d like. I’m in the market for boutique service. Something customized to my needs.”

“Boutique!” Ernt squared himself up. “I think I know a thing or two about that.”

Lorelei arrived at the mess hall at the bottom of the hill but found it had been completely looted. “Nevermind” he thought. “A brisk constitution instead.” He breathed a sigh of relief as the grounds were curiously clear of anybody and he entertained the possibility of a peaceful walk to the valley.

He bore to the east, around the big top, and onward past the elephant pen. “That’s odd,” he noticed. “No elephants.” He concluded they must be grazing.

As he continued to walk he suddenly felt disoriented. The landscape before him seemed to contract. No, it was loose. No it was heat rays. No. What was it? He kept pace as he tried to reconcile the strange oozing principle that had rallied itself on the horizon.

The next thing he knew, he was down on the ground.

“KURST!” The doctor yelled. He tried to push himself up but found that his ankles and his wrists were being yanked back down again. He was still moving. He was sliding! He was in a muck rapid.

The muck’s swell became rapacious. Try as he might, he was being carried along. For every one jerk backwards it was two sucks forward. Up ahead, Lorelei could see the ground falling away. He remembered the cliffed tract of the valleytop and realized with a dash of total certainty that he was destined to go over the edge.

“Ahoy!” A strange voice bugled. Lorelei felt himself hit in the head with something. It was rope.

“Grab the rope, stupid!” said the voice.

Lorelei grabbed the rope.

Lorelei was exasperated. Very early in the morning he had been roused by the belching reports of Ungulen’s motorbike, accompanied by Drutherstone screaming something about “demucking day,” whatever that was. But just as soon as that ruckus had died down and Lorelei thought he might sleep again, another disturbance visited itself upon the doctor. All of a sudden there were tents and small encampments just outside The Emerald House. It was almost as if they had cropped up like mushrooms. Carnies, lever boys, shrill musicians and jugglers strode around the hilltop having loud conversations and practicing their circus tricks. Not to mention the light odor of under-bathing bodies.

Realizing that he was exposed for all to see through the open windows, Lorelei shot up from his cot and peevishly flicked all of the curtains closed. Still outfitted in his pajamas, he stormed around the house, preparing a little coffee and toast. But the ritual brought no comfort and Lorelei remained vexed even as he sat down to his desk, trying to begin a meaningful day of blueprinting.

An hour stretched by like tar. Lorelei could not concentrate on his models. Twice he had accidentally shocked himself while repairing the circuitry of a mincing contraption and had also nearly lost his nose when he — forgetting he had ingeniously amplified the device’s horsepower — turned it on.

Profoundly irritated, Lorelei sought to stretch his legs. He dressed and stepped out the front door of The Emerald House. The rude stench and drivelrous conversation of drunk morning carnies overwhelmed him instantly. He had half a mind to chase them all away with one of his larger knives but realized that still more of them were hiking up the hill to perch on his property.

“What are you all doing here?” Lorelei demanded of a lever boy in moccasins.

“Demucking day, sir.”

“And what — in Christ’s sanctimonium — is that?”

“When they dee the muck away, sir?”

Lorelei nearly kicked the young boy in the head but instead strode down the hill in search of a more satisfying breakfast.

Marrionetta spent Demucking Day the way she always did. She traipsed off into the woods wearing a pair of brand new clogs that Ungulen had carved for her out of imported mahogany. She had her favorite parasol as well and acted every part the lady, gliding through the dappling sunlight and ancient trees.

A scattering of toads throbbed and trembled among the dead rot. They too had sought refuge in the forest from Demucking Day. Marrionetta croaked and chirped back at them, inciting a few to fight among themselves, mistaking her for a potential mate.

Eventually she grew tired of the ladylike stroll. She stashed her clogs and her parasol in a holed out tree and tied up her hair with string.

Glancing from trunk to trunk, she strung herself up from the numerous boughs. Thus suspended, she cracked her neck and arms to make them nimbly extra limber.

Floating in the carve of trees, she raised her toes one at a time. She held her fingers aloft and swayed this way and that until she had a momentum of rhythm. She began to dance. It was her private dancing. Graceful swoons checked by jittery and jolted punctuation. It was nothing like her circus work. It was melancholy trapeze for no one but herself.