Circus of Silence

Tattered Tendons

~*~

You have regrets, don't you?

That's why people come here

to forget

~*~

            Whisper aged fifty-five years in the span of a night, and yet the days and years coming after still put up a fight. It was as if the carousel of time had rusted. The colourful horses who'd once whinied and neighed now creaked a braying laugh.

Outside, times changed. Fashions changed. Children grew big and grandparents grew old, withering and stooping and wrinkling.

Thanks to Rosalind's sinister song, Whisper could too. One night, she'd wear the skin of a child still in short-pants. The next, she'd hobble arm in arm with the Witch of the Circus Everlasting herself, or make herself the Circus psychic's twin. Past tents, she'd walk, with their fabric thin. She'd inject herself into a crowd from Berlin. She'd experience the carnival in an outsider's shoes.

But that still didn't mean she'd enjoy it.

Though Whisper's body changed, her mind still stayed the same. Whisper remained the girl who had snuck into the old Witch's circus before opening hours- remained the girl who had covered her brother's body with her own and whispered 'witch' before her sound had been stolen forever. And every time she asked herself if watching the same thing happening over and over again at Rosalind's side would stop bothering her, the answer was, and always would be never.

She'd seen teeth replaced with eyes. Seen a human doll with woolen hair and china skin that clinked when it tapped. She'd stood by as man became pig and pig became butterfly on stage in front of dozens. She'd seen it again and again. It never got easier. It never got better. The Circus Everlasting never closed, and neither did the gaping hole within her heart.

It had been that way for twenty years now, and Whisper doubted it would ever heal just as she would never squeal.

~*~

Your heart protests

But mind and body agree

Why not take this life, offered to you for free?

~*~