“I vomited on a carousel once.”
The gaudy display rotated with aching deliberation. A music box medley lilted over the riders and animals alike. Unicorns reared, multicolored hair slicked back against their curved necks. Lions bared their teeth frozen in a silent roar. Horses extended their heads, mouths with waxy teeth pasted open in a painful grin. Predators and prey forever stuck beside each other. Impaled with faux gold.
“Ew.” Ben squinted against the sun that held no sympathy for the cotton candy in his hand, the carousel, or carnival despite it’s slowly dying light. It shone orange over sticky children and sunk its rays into asphalt. “Why?”
Ben’s eyes crinkled at the edges. He wrinkled the bridge of his nose and his mouth scrunched in slight discontent. The residue of obnoxiously dyed candy was smeared on the corner of his lips. The sun made his eyes shine slightly gold.
I shrugged and turned back to the gently turning carousel.
It had been years ago. It was a similar day to today with the same sun-kissed concrete. The sun glinted off the millions of reflective surfaces of the carnival, blinding no matter how you turned. The blinking lights that screamed at passersby were dimmed by its blanket of yellow and gold.
The world spun around me. Swimming and spinning and bright. My mouth tasted pink. The aftertaste of cotton candy tinged the back of my tongue. A sweet reminder of the pink and blue cotton I had eaten much too quickly. Heat coaxed sweat to the back of my neck. Hot and sticky droplets clung to my hair and dripped down the collar of my shirt. The sun glared at me. Placing me in a spotlight of humidity and and warmth that sunk between the hair on my arms and wrapped around my bones. My hands tightened on the bar in front of me. Grasping at the stability that kept my horse to the ground.
A clown came into view as I spun. He made faces as he pumped air into purple balloons. They expanded into an elongated form. Their latex thinned to a soft pastel. The clown twisted and tucked. The balloons screeched as they were deformed and turned into something that resembled a kind of animal. I had to turn my head to see ears and what could be a snout. I couldn’t hear the identifying noise he made over the soundtrack of the carousel.
I always preferred flowers. They were more predictable.
The carousel whisked me away and the clown was moved to my peripheral until he blinked out of my sight. The things before me blurred as we spun. It twirled and twisted and turned. It’s carriages blended together in a messy mass of red. Spinning strawberries. A disaster in disguise. Meant to dizzy and obfuscate until there is no difference between up and down and what’s real and what’s not and you don’t know if the world is spinning or if that’s just your brain being blended behind your eyes.
The strawberries danced as they were taken just as the clown had been. I blinked, expecting to see something replace then but my eyelids weighed me down. Something pounded in the velvet darkness behind my eyes. The floor swam and pulsed. Tiny waves under moving floorboards.
I pushed a sticky breath past my lips. The metal bar pressed against my cheek. The ridges scraped my cheekbone and jutted against my chin. Sweat dripped down my neck. Much too tired of holding the weight of my head. My palms smeared sweat onto my horse’s slick paint. It’s neck painfully extended. It’s teeth must be aching. I grasped at the smooth surface. Almost soft against my aching fingertips. The aftertaste of cotton candy filled my mouth. Spit stuck to the inside of my lips. My head drooped. I wanted to lie down against the burning asphalt and make the world stop spinning. I just needed a moment for my ribs to unwind from their constricting position around my lungs so my chest didn’t feel so tight.
The clown bobbed into view again. Playing with a balloon animal. He teased a little girl with it. Butterfly clips in butterscotch hair. She reached for it. Little legs bouncing as her hands grabbed for the animal. Some kind of dog, or maybe unicorn? What was the difference? She snatched it away from the clown. He mimed surprise. The red of his bean shaped mouth contorting into a perfect “o”. The makeup he had pasted on his face was blinding. It shone, untouched by sweat or sun. Patches of red glared out from his cheeks. His nose was red too. Bulbous and bright. He couldn’t be comfortable.
Me met my sagging eyes and didn’t give my courtesy of privacy. He stared at me. All shapes and exaggerated expressions from his triangle eyes and protruding red nose. He looked hot. And bright.
The world spun. My teeth ached. The asphalt burned a sulphur smell.
A mess laid on the ground below my horse. My chest rose and fell as I breathed in the smell of sulphur and candy and vomit. The clown stared at me as he was whisked away again.
Ben was still staring at me, cotton candy in hand. He tilted the pink stained cloud toward me. I shook my head.
“I’m good.” I declined the food and turned away from the carousel. The eyes of the mermaids and unicorns and animals, impaled with faux gold followed me as I led Ben away. “Let’s go on the ferris wheel.”
Ben followed close behind me as we wove through screaming lights and blinding colors. Cotton candy in hand and pink smeared on the corner of his lips.
I wrote this piece after watching the Harriton One Acts, specifically the One Act "Circus Freaks". I wanted to capture a specific feeling and aura, and I ended up pretty happy with it :)