Circus of the Lost

Circus of the Lost -Chapter 1 part 2

                                                                     Chapter  1

                                                                         Luke

            A black, silk fire, haloing a beautiful face; her hair billows out into the breeze as she glides back and forth on the swing.  A devilish smirk plays on her lips, and her stormy, gray eyes are a tempest of delight.  When his neat, agile fingers come forward to push her, she arches her back against them.  At his touch, she closes her eyes; a perceptible change coming over her face.  I have seen her in his arms enough times to know…..it’s a look of desire.

            His green eyes glimmer from beneath the black hair sweeping into them.  His lean, tall build holds a posture of complete confidence.  The smirk on his face is one of predatory satisfaction.  When his eyes shift in my direction, the message is clear.  She is mine.

            I feel the diffused shards of sunlight on my face before I open my eyes.  The wind is still sifting through the leaves of the maple, whispering the rustling melody that lulled me to sleep in the first place.  My stomach is still aflame with the keen burn of jealousy. I roll up into a sit, resting my forearms on my knees.  In this position my abdomen is compressed; a vain attempt to smother my irrational fire.

            Despite the solitude, I feel my cheeks flush in the face of my incredible idiocy; I am twisted up over a girl who doesn’t belong to me, and quite possibly, does not even exist. 

            The dreams started just before my father died, three months ago.  A cast of vivid and eclectic strangers coming to me every night, including the beautiful Katerina, and of course, my would be rival for her affections, Alexei.  I found myself a riveted voyeur, in a tale where the characters alternately loved and hated each other, traveling around the globe, spanning decades of time.

            My parents were among the headliners of my nocturnal sideshow.  A kindness from the subconscious of an orphaned, isolated farm boy from middle America.  I was a gift to my parents late in their lives, born to them in their early fifties.  My mother contracted bone cancer while she was pregnant with me. Electing to forgo the radiation treatment that would end my existence and prolong hers, she gave me life.  She died before I was three months old.

            So, I grew up with a handful of pictures as I would have known her, had she lived.  My poor father unable to endure the youthful reminders of his lost love, I had only glimpsed one photo of my mother as a young woman; a picture tucked away in a first edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.  My father held the book in his hands from the time he came in from the fields, to the time he lay down to sleep, but only on occasion, could he manage a pained look of longing at the photograph.

            Yet, there she was in my dreams, a vision of youthful splendor, wearing a sparkling costume, in a spotlight on stage. “Ladies and gentleman, please join me in welcoming our resident marksman, whose accuracy with a knife and bow would rival that of Apollo, Greek god of the archers…Mikhail. And his beautiful partner in defying death, the alluring and indestructible, Iliana.”

            I am captivated by the young incarnations of a father I miss desperately, and a mother that I never knew.  Finding myself eager to close my eyes and slip into a fantasy, peopled by loved ones, both real and created, rather than deal with the harsh reality of my current existence.  My father created an isolated utopia for the two of us, and now that I’m alone in it, the perfection is lost.