Catastrophe Jones

People went to the field days every year, drawn by brightly coloured rides, games, inexpensive toys won at ridiculous costs, food that was terrible for you, but tasted too good to ignore. The smell of cotton candy, fried dough, candy apples, pizza, lemonade and caramel corn was something you couldn’t ignore. All around, the sights and sounds were cheerful and high-pitched — there were loudspeakers announcing events, tempting gamblers and little children; the grinding squeal of the Ferris wheel lifted high above everything, and everywhere people were being dizzied by an overwhelming rush of every sensation imaginable.

It was the middle of the day, and the festivities would continue through the weekend, as per usual, with the midway closing some time after dark. Many travelling carnivals have lights on the rides and strung throughout the fairgrounds, so that even after sunset, people can come enjoy what it has to offer.

This one, though it was often seen at a number of Field Days, festivals and celebrations, didn’t.

This was because, after dark, when people had finally gone home, knackered and sunburned, far enough away to no longer hear the grind of the rides as they were shutting down, no one, not even the carnies, wanted to see the carousel.

In the middle of the day, it was a brightly painted, well-running machine. A man took tickets or inspected armbands to let on crowds of children and adults, helped them find the right horse or chair and once it was full, rang the bell to let everyone know they’d better hang on. The rides were dizzying and wonderful, full of music and mirrors, prancing steeds and laughing children full of cotton candy and the magic that only a carnival can offer.

Once the sun went down, however, the gates to the carousel were locked, and people gave it as wide a berth as they could. No one wanted to be near the glossy, polished horses with their permanently tossed heads and frozen, silent neighings.

When the last of any of the lights went down, the workers cleaned up as fast as they could and ran like hell for their campers and trailers, cracking open their six-packs and bottles, turning up their radios and locking their doors.

They did this because, once the dark fell, the carousel came alive again. Tinny music played from the little loudspeakers on the ride, and it began to spin; on the crankshaft, the poles rose and fell, and the prancing, running horses began their eternal chase all over again. Hooves came down with a clatter as manes and tails whipped from the wind created by the circle. It was the shriek of the horses the workers wanted to avoid — the screams that lifted high from equine throats as the beasts struggled, impaled, caught in the unfinished throes of a death that wouldn’t end. Huge eyes rolled, nostrils flared and teeth were bared as the animals galloped, forced to follow one another as they had for years and years. Bloodless, helpless, they bucked and snorted, dragged and were dragged, clattering on as the moon rose and the stars came out high above, twinkling down without care or thought to the hellish scene one the edge of a small town.

Night after night, the assembled carousel twirled, and on it, the horses ran a race that had neither beginning, nor end.

Eventually, when the moon descended, and only the stars showed above, the fearsome sight would reach its peak, and more than one of the workers, or their children, would catch a whisper of the screaming, over the blasting radio, and would huddle a little closer to one another, their own laughter forced louder.

When morning comes, and the sun rises, as its first rays strike the fairgrounds, the tinny music sputters and dies, and each horse is caught in its pose, head tossed, teeth bared, legs frozen in a run or leap. Some are held in a pose of something almost like rest, between attempted lunges. Well before the new crowd comes, someone has to make their way over to the carousel, to check it, to polish the horses, to ready it for the masses of smiling, adoring children.

The workers draw straws, none of them brave enough to be near it just yet. No one really slept, in this travelling carnival, too afraid that the carousel would come to pieces in the night, unleashing a stampede of nightmares upon the midway.

By the time the midway is alive again, with families that crawl like ants through the winding displays of food and fun, the carnies are loud-voiced and wide-eyed, all of them shouting their particular pitches, taunting husbands and fathers to win something for the wife and children, and the carousel worker is calling out to invite everyone to ride the painted horses.

Even in the day, with the hot sun beating down, with the sound of laughter and music, the smell of hot food and the sight of colorful rides and prizes… he doesn’t want to be left alone.

When I drink tonight, I’m sure I’ll be tasting copper pennies at some point. Those belong on your eyes. Or maybe under your tongue.

There are lines across the backs of my forearms. I put them there, with a thumbtack, when you weren’t looking. I put them across the back of your cat, too. On my left hand, they crawl up and on to the back of my hand, like little scratches. Small. Red. Pointless.

The sting of them felt good. I was hot and angry and couldn’t scream, so I had my skin do it for me. You’re gone, you know. You’re gone, and I could care less. I’ve never missed you. You were around too much for me to bother.

I keep seeing your face, darling. I’d like to stick the thumbtack in your lazy eye, and pop it. A patch is better than always wondering where the hell you’re looking. It should be at me, anyway.

You made me weak, more than any other person, or maybe that was just me. Maybe it was my obsession. Maybe it was my hobby. Maybe I just enjoyed pleasing you until I realized we were both such stupid liars.

This wasn’t meant to be some soliloquy about you.

I meant to talk about grand things. Or, hell, anything at all except you.

I can still taste you.

I’m going to go throw up now.

Every town has one, you know. The place on the other side of the railroad tracks. The ‘wrong’ side, some say. After dark, for some reason, the streetlights there just don’t shine like they do on the right side. I was walking home, and less than a block before my front stoop, with its slippery front step (the guy who painted for my last landlord didn’t put any sand in the paint. Nice, fresh, gorgeous, glossy grey. When it’s wet, it’s slick as shit and twice as nasty) and the number hanging over the door on the swinging shingle… I heard that squeaking noise again. I hear it almost every night, after the sun’s down and the moon’s up and the world’s gone kind of quiet. My edge of town is blissfully away from fraternity row, where the drunken college boys and girls are packing up–finals week is upon us, pretty ones–and retching up their last spiked punches and dregs of pizza and coughing up their last few crushed cigarettes before moms and dads in SUVs come to take them (and their too-loud music and their allthesame clothes and allthesame faces) back to New York City and whereverthehellelse they came from. So, I hear that squeaking, and somehow, instead of continuing on like I always do, right across the cracked shale sidewalk in front of the house with the scary little black moppetdog, I take a left. I take a goddamn left and I start walking down the dead end street that goes to godknowswhere and I head right for the tracks and I’m already on the right side, so I don’t know what the shit my feet are thinking and for a minute, I almost ask them. I almost ask them out loud as I’m slipping past the last of the houses on this little street what the fuck do they think they’re doing, except when I’m about to speak, I feel like I’m going to cough. But my breath is stuttered and I’m still walking and I hear footsteps behind me. So I don’t cough. I swallow it, because something tells me I shouldn’t cough, right then. Don’t want to attract attention. So I’m hunched over, still fucking walking–shoes, why are you DOING this? I want to say, and I’m looking at them (stupid shoes, betraying me!) and I finally swallow past that cough and then I hear this rush–like steam, you know? And that squeaking is still going on. It isn’t a regular sound, like some swinging thing that needs oil just rusting away as it flaps in the wind, back and forth and back and forth and Squeeeeeeeak-squeek-eek. No, it’s not regular. It comes and goes and just when you’re almost used to it, just when it’s got a pattern, a rhythm, a feel it fucks itself up and it’s like some high-pitched shrieking and then you’re back to where you started, with this eeek-eek-Squeeeeeeeeaking noise almost like you want to reach out and choke it. And I’m still walking. And I can still hear footsteps, following me. I pass beyond the glow of the arc sodium lights that make this nuclear orange haze over everything, black shoes splishing through shallow puddles from the earlier rain. I keep walking, and then I’m crunching in gravel, and now I’m crossing the railroad tracks and picking my way over heaved ties and chunks of stone and pavement and fucking CHRIST, feet, why are we doing this? They’re still not listening to me. Still walking and now I’m walking around these tanker cars, in the dark, shoes splishsplishing through muckpuddles and over gritty gravel and chunks of… something, iron? I don’t know, it’s dark and I’ve gone nightblind, even with my glasses. Around and around these tanker cars, looking for the source of that wretched noise, still walking. Creeping, even. I’m in such shadows that it’s like I’m not even a part of the city anymore. Finally, I make it to a doorway, open wide and inviting in that menacing sort of way. This is the point where I sternly tell my feet, I say Feet! Feet, we’re going home now. I have work to do, and it’s really fucking late and I bet you’d love it if I got you out of those shoes and socks and gave you a nice soak, right? Right feet? Except, well. They weren’t listening, still. And they’d already walked in. So instead of looking down and talking to my feet, I look up. I look up and I look right through another open door and beyond that open door is the source of a different squeaking. It’s higher and longer and louder, accompanied by worse hissings and shrill sounds that remind me of skin being scalded to blistering, if I had any idea of what that sounded like, beyond my poor imagination. Crackling, hissing, scorching noises. And I can’t see through the door, for all the orange-yellow steam that’s boiling just beyond it. That’s when my feet finally decide to listen, but it seems my brain had decided to stop talking. It was caught up in listening to my eyes, screaming. Shapes moved, just a little, beyond that open doorway. Looming, squirming, ominous shapes. My feet decided that, since they got me into this mess, they should get me out, right? So they back up. Without my eyes to guide them, they stumble for a bit, backwards and backwards. Finally my brain manages to tell my lids to shut, just to get my eyes to stop that yelling. I can finally turn and run like the nancy-girl I am, because I’ve just seen a doorway straight to Hell and I think I’d much rather go home and curl up on my couch, instead of peek a little further like I’d almost been thinking of doing. In my haste to leave, I trip over one of the railroad ties and go down, hands against the gravel. My fingers curl around something and take it with me as I run like hell, footsteps echoing behind me, shoes splishsplishing through shallow puddles. It’s a broken iron ring, of some sort. Thick and heavy and rusted and cold. It’ll go in my memory box. When I put it there and I close the lid, because it’s so dark out, so still, so quiet… I can still hear the sound of whatever it is, back there. Squeaking. Back past where the street lights don’t reach and your own footsteps follow you. On the lost end of town.

Pick up the phone. Please, pick up the phone.

I know you’re there; I know you’re listening to it ringing. I know that you never turn it off; you keep saying you will, but I know you haven’t, yet. I know its little chirping ring is the only thing that can pull you out of a muzzy-headed hangover, tear you from the arms of dreaming. I know that even if you’re half suffocated by his body weight and his mouth at your throat, you can hear it ringing.

Pick it up.

It’s cold outside, bitter and frigid and I feel like if I don’t keep blinking that I’ll form ice on my corneas, like the car windshield does, when it’s spectacularly winter. Or on the inside, like the car windshield does, when it’s beyond spectacularly winter, and we’re inside it, huddled and breathing, steam turned to frost etchings, like some sprite of winter is desperately trying to carve messages out of these feathery spikes. Help me, I’m cold. For a good time, call Missy Claus at 967-SNO-BABE. There once was a snowflake from Perth… And so on.

The phone, damn you. The fucking phone. PICK. IT. UP.

It’s been ringing for how long? The operator’s going to come on any second and tell me that it’s obvious I’m not going to get through; maybe you’re not home or you’re busy, and would I like to try again later? No. No I don’t want to try again later. I want you here now. I want you to untie your legs from around his hips and I want you to climb out from under him and I want you to pick up the phone, breathless and maybe even furious because you know damn well who’s calling you at this hour.

I want you to answer me.

Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I heard your voice? Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve touched you? I could be sleeping now, dreaming sweet, curled up in warm, clean sheets, but instead I’m out here where there’s nothing akin to warmth and I’m pretty sure my fingers and toes have gone numb and I need you to just do this one tiny thing for me.

Pick up the phone.

I can hear them getting closer.

In the back, where it’s warm up against the boiler, I can smell the tang of must and mold; if I breathe heavy, it curls up in my mouth and nose, something like a big, dumb, wet dog that I don’t hate but wish would die so that it would just stop pawing at me.

Boots coming down the stairs. Heavy things, clunky soles, shiny material, gleaming buckles. Except there’s no shine, no gleam in the dark. And the thick of their soles don’t pound on the stairs — they float down on frightened feet, half-dancing down creaking, rickety stairs. They want to be quiet.

Basements are the lairs of monsters, you know.

They didn’t turn the upstairs light on, so there aren’t any dancing shadows to point them out, and they didn’t bother with flashlights this time.

Maybe they’re learning.

I can hear their breathing, drawn through pinched nostrils and grim lips. They’re tasting the basement air for the first time, and the big, dumb, wet dog has just leapt to press both paws into their chests, caving them in with the scents of cold and rot.

They’re getting closer.