R/Nosleep (Get Spooked)

The Wanderlust Circus Of Curiosities Will No Longer Be Visiting Your Town

By: u/magpie_quill

This is the story of how I killed Stella.

Stella and Luna were the twins of the Wanderlust Circus of Curiosities. I remember how they were painted on the posters: dressed in sparkling midnight-blue gossamer dresses and black lace gloves with golden pins in their hair, standing with the gentle curve of their backs pressed together and their eyes turned up to the sky. The posters were pretty but in real life they were prettier; small and dainty like dancers in a music-box. When we were dressing up for the nightly performance, I would often catch myself staring at them.

Oh, me? My name is Leone. No last name, because no one in the Wanderlust Circus has one. I'm the elephant boy. That means I feed Barb, our big twelve-year-old, and clean her cage-wagon every night. The Ringmaster gave me a whip to train her, but Barb's real gentle and I don't use it most of the time. All she does is make mischief like spraying me with dust when she doesn't want to do the ball routine for the fifth time that day. I sneeze and then I laugh and pat her on the trunk, and then she lets me yell the circus words at her again. When we're done, I lead her back into her cage-wagon that has wooden bars that she could easily break if she wanted to, but she won't because she's very kind.

Being the elephant boy means I'm dusty and grimy all the time. All the time, until it's performance night and the Ringmaster tells me to wash up and get dressed. Then I put on my flowing red suit that makes it look like my arms aren't as skinny as they are, and sit patiently in the Ringmaster's tent as she paints the shining gold makeup onto my face with the tips of her white needle fingers. When she hums and smiles and tells me I'm ready, I go to get Barb, all dressed in red and gold just like me.

In the bright lights flooding the circus ring, it always looks like our audience has no faces. They clap and cheer all the same, but I don't think they get how lonely it is up there on the stage. All I have is Barb, who does the ball routine beautifully, and the other kids in the circus. Benny, who eats fire and blows it out in a long stream of sparkling green mist. Aster, who walks on the edge of a giant steel blade barefoot without drawing a single drop of blood. Fable, who slowly, slowly folds herself knees-bending-backwards and arms-knotted-together until she fits into a glass box the size of my head.

Oh, there are the clowns too, I guess. But they're not very important. Aster sliced the arm of one the other day, and all that came out was cotton and colorful bits of cloth. That confirmed our suspicion that the clowns weren't really human.

My favorite act, of course, was the twins' telepathy routine. The Ringmaster would introduce them like this: And next, the mystical and magical telepathic twins, the children gifted unto us by the goddess of the night, Stella and Luna! The audience would cheer, and the twins would walk onto the sawdust-covered stage in their sparkling blue dresses and take their positions on opposite sides of the ring. Luna carefully tied a blindfold around her head, and the Ringmaster walked up to one of the faceless shapes in the audience and held out a colorful deck of cards. A card was chosen and shown to Stella, who then closed her eyes and clasped her hands together.

I always had to look away at this point, because sometimes Luna twitched or made these sharp little noises that almost made the audience think she was in pain. Her shoulders would tense up, she would bite her lip, and then after half a minute or so, she would finally fall still.

"Blue," she would say, or whichever color it was that the volunteer in the audience picked out. And then, after a short pause, she would perfectly describe the volunteer's attire, the shape of the lapel pin he was wearing, the fact that his hair was sticking up and he should probably comb it down. As if she could see everything.

The audience would be delighted and mystified. The Ringmaster always teased them, asked them if they would like to know the trick. Of course, she never once told them.