Welcome to the Underground Circus

The Labyrinth

 

Even with Paul’s small frame it was a tight squeeze to get himself beneath the stage and down into the circus’s underworld. It was a maze of bars and tunnels and ladders. He wondered how any of the performers ever found their way around. Climbing deeper into the labyrinthine tunnels, Paul heard the faint echoes of the growls and the snarls of the tigers he was chasing. Paul prayed that someone from the circus had already found her and had rescued her from the paws of the dancing tigers.

As he stumbled his way deeper into the earth on unsure feet, dread began to coil around his chest like a serpent. He wondered exactly how big this circus was and how deep it went. And how could no one else notice this girl being dragged away? To Paul it felt as if a bomb was about to explode and he needed to move before the eventual total destruction. His chest hurt from his pounding heart and his lungs cried as he pushed his body ahead.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He shook his head like he wanted to stop but his body wasn’t listening. He slipped down what he could only describe as a wormhole and came out in a relatively open space. “Why am I doing this?”

Out from underneath the stage, and Paul assumed at least thirty feet farther down, was a room with dimly lit hallways going off in every direction. There were multiple ways to get up to the stage. Signs and arrows pointed the way, none of which were written in English. Props and clothing were scattered about. It was pure chaos. Paul had no clue where to go next until he spotted a spreading blood stain trailing from one of the stage doors and down the hallway to his right.

“Hello?” he called out, as loudly as he dared. “Is – is there anybody here?”

Nothing.

“Everyone must be at the next performance.” Where I should be, he thought but didn’t say. He rubbed his hands over his flushed face, uncaring of whether or not he ruined his makeup. “Can I do this?”

He looked down at the dark crimson trail and then down at his muddy tennis shoes. They had gotten Paul out of all sorts of trouble. They had helped him run from Doug that one time he had eaten the last microwave burrito. They had helped him at the baseball field when those older guys had been picking on him. And, his shoes had been extremely helpful at school, running from class to class. They could cut a corner like diamond. Paul could run and he had worn his lucky shoes, the only lucky thing he’d ever had, but could he outrun a pack of tigers?

Another sob spurred him on. And then he thought of the card reader’s words: Move your feet. A chill spread over him. It was as if she knew this was going to happen.

He took in a deep breath and nodded to his black and white tennis shoes. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

 

 

 

 

It didn’t take long to find the end of the trail. And what a gruesome end.

Paul gasped – thought fast enough to cover his mouth before too much sound escaped – then froze.

He was hearing things he didn’t want to hear. Chomping. Crunching. Slurping. Noises he was used to hearing at the dinner table, noises that used to spur his own appetite, were now menacing. Paul didn’t want to look – he didn’t want to see what was happening in that room that smelled of hay and iron – but his feet decided for him that he would look. His thin body rattled violently as his shoes stepped as quietly as they were able. The last thing he wanted was the voracious tigers coming after him. This was a long hall with multiple options for running or hiding, but Paul had no way of knowing if they came to a dead end. Because if he was found…

Paul couldn’t think about that right now.

He neared the door where hand prints were swiped across the floor. “She tried,” he said under his breath.

Paul was there. All he had to do was slip across the doorway and look in. He moved as fast as he could, glancing in as he swept across. It was a flash, but it was enough to make the bile rise from his stomach and burn his throat. There was blood. So much blood. And somewhere beneath the gore were tatters of the blue flowered dress that she had been wearing. Paul had been miserable at trying to save her, and the shame of failing this girl was so strong that he wasn’t nearly as afraid as he had been. He was angry. Angry at the circus people for allowing these cats – these monsters – to roam free and do whatever they want. They were wild animals! It didn’t matter how much training they had gone through, they were still going to do as they pleased whenever they wanted.

He took a deep breath and shook his limbs to wake them up. He needed to go and find help. Somebody. Anybody! Paul stepped away from the door, preparing to run as fast as he’d ever run in his life, when his feet slipped in the blood and he let out a shriek.

“Oh, no,” he breathed. His shoulders tensed and his body seized up.

A nose popped out of the doorway, followed by a blood-soaked muzzle and the satisfied stare of the large, striped beast as it laid eyes on Paul. It roared from only a few feet away. It was big enough to swallow Paul whole and it had basically screamed at him. Paul wouldn’t be surprised to feel warm liquid running down his leg at that moment. Somehow he managed to hold it in.

When Paul didn’t move or make a noise, the tiger turned its attention to the blood covering the cement floor. Its long tongue sopped up the stains and a few other tigers came out to see what the fuss was about. They looked to the larger tiger and since he seemed okay with Paul’s presence, the other tiger’s let him be.

“Are you too full to eat me?” he choked out. Just saying those words – and thinking about what was digesting in their stomachs – made Paul sick. “Oh, my God.” He nearly hurled all over his favorite shoes. The tigers took little notice.

“Okay, I’ll just… ” he said as he started to back away, hands raised like the tigers had a gun pointed in his direction.

The big tiger roared at him again, showing off his yellowed fangs, but Paul kept moving his feet. All he could think about was putting some distance between himself and the tigers.

“I don’t know why you didn’t pounce on me when you saw me,” he said, with a wobbly voice, “but thanks.”

Paul stopped when he had made it three-quarters of the way down the hall. He put his hands down and bounced on his toes. Then he turned and ran, hearing the pounding of the tiger’s paws behind him.