A Shudder of
Secrets|

I n 2016, a shudder of clowns appeared outside of Meridith’s house. Clown appearances in pre-2016 simply caused a few raised eyebrows, but 2016 marked the height of the Great Clown Panic. Meridith simply thought those newsworthy clowns were fake news and staged, but the three clowns on the other side of her front door begged to differ.

Instead of knocking as humans do, the tallest clown honked its bright red nose for a solid minute. Annoyed, she cracked the door open just a tad and winced at the small shudder of clowns. They had white, red, and green makeup caked and congealed onto their faces, humanity having been covered like tarred cracks in some pavement. Odd, too-wide smiles were painted onto their faces. Their clothing looked odd and thrifted, with giant green-brown scarfs tight around their necks. At their feet rested an oversized, dull bag as large as a small woman. The tallest clown beamed at Meridith and reached into its pocket. Horror ricocheted through her like a bullet.

“I have my phone set to call 911,” Meridith said. On the other side of the door, her hand held no phone, not even a weapon. Her hand simply shook like a newborn kitten. “I’m not scared of you,” she added.

The second tallest clown grinned as if this was wonderful news, poking the smallest one in the side. The smallest of the shudder reached into the oversized bag at its feet and held a clipboard in front of the small opening in the door. The shudder was trying to distract her.

“Get,” she said, “get the fuck away!”

The small clown frowned and lowered the clipboard, its head sharply contorting to the side as if its neck was snapped; the noose-scarf hung, limply, around its neck. Its brow bunched together and water started to form in its eyes.

Meridith fell to her most basic, human desire: curiosity. It looked as if all — clown and human alike — had misread the situation. She glanced down at the clipboard in the smaller clown’s hands. The clipboard contained a survey of two questions, and Meridith surveyed the shudder of clowns, noticing that the second tallest pulled out an absurdly small notepad and pen from the oversize bag. She glanced back at the clipboard.

The first question was: On a scale of one to ten, how appealing to the eye is our makeup? She glanced at the shudder and shuddered. The tallest of the clowns beamed at her, hand still tucked into its pocket. It tilted its head slightly to the side as its smile unnaturally grew. A piece of the caked white paste cracked and fell onto its oversized feet.

“An easy eight,” she squeaked out. “Still room for improvement, but getting there.” The second tallest nodded and dramatically scratched onto the page.

She continued to the second question. What do you think we are doing? She raised an eyebrow and glanced back to the shudder. A small, involuntary chuckle escaped Meridith’s lips. She sounded so human. She sounded so scared. The clowns made no noise. They simply blinked at her. The clowns had eyes like John Wayne Gacy.

Meridith gulped. “You’re clowns, of course,” she said, her heart beating so crazy that her voice shook. “Kind of bold. Might say crazy,” she added.

The shudder looked at one another, and the largest of the clowns boldly pulled its hands out of the pocket, a crumpled sheet of paper in its fist. A lump formed in Meridith’s throat. What was inside the paper? A death threat? Anthrax? An invitation to join the clowns? The smallest clown backed away, the clipboard falling away from the gap in the door. The largest clown stepped forward, lifted its hand, and opened its fist. The paper dropped to the porch like a bomb.

She slammed the door closed, locking it.

An hour later, she reopened the door, a baseball bat in hand. While the shudder of clowns had disappeared, much to her horror, the piece of paper had not. Using the bat as an extension of herself, she flattened the page out. A crudely drawn circus Big Top filled the page. Ugly browns, and dull greens, and flat oranges blended and looked like vomit. In child-like handwriting, words covered the very top of the page: You are invited to see our new-and-improved circus! In the very front were small drawings of figures, all indistinguishable except for a clump of three.

A shudder ran down her spine.

W hile waiting to see the elephants, Daddy tells you to stay away from the smaller tent. His eyes rapidly rake over the sign, a frown as deep as when Momma left him forming on his lips. You stare at the cracked wood: Marnie the Carnie’s Abominations.

“Daddy,” you say, tugging on his hand, “what’s that word?” He clicks his tongue and shakes his head. He doesn’t say anything except pull you towards the smell of dung and rotten food.

“What’s in the tent? What is it?”

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” he says. His voice sounds strained, and his brow knits together. His grip on your palm tightens for a moment before loosening. “Will you tell Mommy about our weekend?” You glance back at the smaller tent.

The larger tent, made out of orange and green fabric, looms over the smaller, decrepit tent. The smaller tent, made out of brown frayed fabric, sinks crooked in the mushy, muddy fairgrounds. The front flap of the smaller tent starkly stands out against the rest of the structure, a greenish-brown paint on the fabric. The front flap opens and a cluster of teenage boys exit. One of the boys points at that word – Abomination – and says words you can’t hear.

“This is the best carnival that money can buy,” Daddy says, pulling you towards the elephant pens. “At least, they were when I was a kid,” he mumbles.

You stare back at the tent. A porta-potty sits right next to it. “I need to go to the restroom, Daddy,” you whine, your voice wobbling.

He hesitates and looks down at you before back at the smaller tent and the porta-potty. Daddy’s grip on your hand loosens, and he looks down at you. His dark eyes stare into your own, but you can’t read the emotion behind his eyes.

“I’ll be right back,” you say, a small smile on your lips. You turn and dash towards the small tent, barreling through the few patrons the carnival still has.

“Children shouldn’t be in here,” a gruff voice says.

You now stand in the narrow entryway of the small tent a few feet away from a young man covered in burns sitting on a rotten desk. You step towards him. He slowly smiles, and golden teeth twinkle beneath his chapped and bleeding lips. He leans forward and tilts his head, greasy hair falling from beneath a torn and frayed beanie. He licks his lips, taking a dribble of falling blood back into his body.

“Where’re your folks, girl?” he asks. His voice sounds like he swallows crackling fire.

“Divorced,” you say. The man tilts his head and scrutinizes you. You quickly add: “Momma is home. I’m here for the weekend with my Daddy. Why are you here?”

He smiles and outstretches his hands. His hands are a scaled, sickly yellow as if he’d drawn over every scar with a marker.

“Are you scared?” he asks. His eyes twinkle. He has no eyelashes.

“No,” you say automatically. You're scared of mothers screaming, and throwing plates, telling you she wishes you were not alive; not boys who look like a lizard that you could find in your backyard.

He hums, and it sounds like the rumble of a manual mower. “No,” he says, “I guess you aren’t.” His shoulders start to shake uncontrollably, and a cackle escapes his broken lips. Another dribble of blood starts to form, and it drips down onto his chin. His chuckles subside. He smiles while he thumbs the oozing blood. He then reaches forward and presses the blood onto your cheek. It feels like a scalding brand of honor.

“Get back to your Daddy,” he says. “There’s only room for one freak here.”

W e resided in the fairgrounds longer than expected. Two forces, like a strong man’s arms, held us down in this forgotten, muddy landscape. That fairground tried to bury us every day. We dared not join it.

Every morning started the same. After living with others for a long time, creatures consolidated. We woke up as one with the rising sun. If the sun did not rise that day, the crying birds told us to instead. We arose from our cots, reaching up towards the cloth ceiling. One cot laid empty. Our hearts lay empty. The tent came to life with our breath while we dressed for the day. Outfits of dark brown, rancid green, and burnt orange filled the dark and musty tent.

One of the funambulists strolled into the tent, reading the town’s newspaper. Unlike the rest of us and the rest of the funambulists, he was a timid boy. He was the youngest of us. His brow seemed permanently upward and in shock. It was like he was a puppet on a wire, not a boy who walked across a wire.

“The dead are rising,” the funambulist said. His voice shook like when he dangled hundreds of feet up in the air. “I think I will report Caleb’s death to the local health department.”

We surged towards the boy. Hands grappled arms and shoulders to press towards where the funambulist stood, shaking, at the mouth of the tent.

“No,” we said, sounding like a deranged Greek chorus.

The boy jolted, startled by our hivemind, and he glanced down at the page.

“No. The town will find out,” we said.

“We made the front page,” the boy softly said. He folded the pages, ripping the edges. He cleared his throat and read to us. “‘Carnies stuck in fairgrounds,’ it says.”

Disgusted, we grabbed the boy and the papers.

“We don’t get stuck,” we said.

Our growls filled the tent as we tore the newspaper’s pages. The funambulist flinched as if we had torn him. We collectively recoiled from the boy, afraid to harm him.

"We’re safe here,” we whispered. Our voices sounded like the low rumble that a cat makes to calm a child."

“We don’t think otherwise,” we said.

The boy nodded, his head quaking up and down. Tears formed on the edges of his eyes, and he seemed so young. He was not like us.

“I want to go home,” he said, his voice cracking as teenagers do. He sobbed, “I need to go home!”

He collapsed onto the soggy, soiled mud and cried for his mother and father. The fairground was trying to bury him.

“Mommy,” he whimpered, “Mommy.”

We surged forward and engulfed the boy, lifting him into our mass of arms. We were like the sea anemone; the funambulist was the clownfish. The police would not allow us, much less the boy, to drive during the state of national emergency; we could only park and live as a unit. The funambulist clung to our arms, our faces, and his tears touched our faces.

“We’ll protect you,” we said. “We’ll protect you.”

W e resided in the fairgrounds longer than expected. Two forces, like a strong man’s arms, held us down in this forgotten, muddy landscape. That fairground tried to bury us every day. We dared not join it.

Caleb heard about my future before I did.

“Congratulations,” he had said, standing in front of my bed. I was laying in my bedroom, flushed and sweaty from the flu. His eyes traveled all over my sweat-stained body before stopping at my face. A deep red flush was on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. “You are gonna make a great strong-man,” he rasped. He made it sound like a marriage proposal. He was so naive.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. My voice was too dry to speak, and it sounded like I had swallowed sand. I cleared my throat a few times. “There’s no guarantee I’ll do it,” I added.

Caleb nodded, his eyes showing that he hung onto my few words. He shuffled around the side of the bed and grabbed my clammy hand. “You can,” he said. He sounded so sure. In a few years, he would stand before a crowd of thousands, his hands outstretched like his father. And, just like his father and his father’s father, Caleb would expertly show outsiders the grand world of the carnival. He would be the perfect ring leader. “You’ll be my strong man,” he said, his hand tightly gripping my hand.

I wanted to both be his strong man and the strong man. I was not strong enough for him, and I could never be his.

“Look at me,” I whispered. The fever messed with my brain. I then coughed, wheezed, and stared at him with water in my eyes. “When have you seen me fucking practicing, Caleb? Lifting weights? Taking ‘roids? I will never make it in the carnie business.”

“That’s okay,” he said. He bent down and pressed a kiss against my forehead. He lingered there a second too long. My stomach soared up into my throat and my heart sounded so loud like a herd of elephants stampeding inside my soul. I punched him, but he didn’t move; my sickness made it like a swat against his arm. Caleb smiled and his lips moved against my skin: “Well, no matter what, I know you’ll do great things.”

The kitchen was in a makeshift tent across the camp. In the daylight, the carnival lost its sparkle and it lost its ugliness. Carnies walked around wearing sweatpants and t-shirts and did odd tasks such as cleaning the porta-potties (ew), cleaning the animals (less ew), or practicing their chosen profession. My father spent every waking moment worshiping his body. His meals included the perfect amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fat. As a result of his formula, the man was entirely muscle, and, like, no body fat. I was supposed to be entirely muscle, too. When I had the flu for a week, he had announced to the troupe I was following in his footsteps and was to be a strong man. He once told me of his formula for becoming a god and created a meal plan for me. His goal was to make me a little god.

Caleb didn’t care about making me a little god. During our nightly meetups, Caleb brought chocolate-covered raisins and we slowly feasted. These chocolate-covered raisins did not fit in my father’s meal plan, and Caleb did not fit in my father’s relationship binaries. Caleb didn’t care, and it was nighttime. Rules don’t exist in a carnival at night. Once, he leaned forward and placed the chocolate against my lips until I let the fruit and his forefinger dip inside my mouth. It was the only time I sucked the chocolate off of the wrinkly member. His eyes were so dark; they looked beautiful.

The meal plan lasted for a week.

“You’re cheating me,” my father had said one night, his arms shaking and his eyes bulging. “I see the chocolate… I know what you’re doing at night. I’ve seen you.” Out of fear and maybe something more, I resisted and told him that he saw shit. That week marked the first time my father punched me. “The carnival doesn’t like that fucking bullcrap,” he hissed. “You’ll be booted if they catch you. I’ll boot you.”

If my father was the original, in his eyes, I was simply a distorted and malformed copy. I was never going to become the god that he was.

Caleb and I had a sleepover one evening. We roamed around the campsite, claiming that we were looking for hidden secrets, but in reality, we only glanced at each other. He smiled and whispered about how this is the most hidden spot in the world. We were behind the big top, and our bare toes tickled the fabric. Guilt bubbled up from within my soul that was as ugly as the brown and orange tarp.

Caleb laughed, and grabbed one of my hands, saying: “Don’t think so hard.” At that moment, all that existed was Caleb and me. He leaned over and pressed a kiss to my neck. “That’s our secret,” he said, his lips moving from my shivering skin to my burning ears. He nipped at them. “We are adding to this place’s hidden secrets.”

At that campsite, we had many hidden secrets. We became sloppy, and touched each other whenever possible; footsie occurred during the shows, kisses stolen behind trailers, and, once, my hands grazed his hip bones before dipping lower. But, when I arrived back home to the trailer that night, all my stuff was sloppily waiting for me in a trash bag. On top of the bag rested a sticky note and a couple of twenties.

GET OUT, the sticky note said. GET OUT BEFORE I SEE YOU. The handwriting was harsh; it looked like my father's. I grabbed the bag and stuffed the note inside the black bag and the money in my pocket. I left under the moonlight. I stopped by Caleb’s family trailer, and it was locked to me.

Through the door, I saw my father and Caleb talking. “Max decided to go to college,” my father said. “He’s not sticking around.”

Caleb cried. Caleb heard about my future before I did. “Congratulations,” he had said, sobbing. He was so naive. I left him crying with my father and walked towards the bus stop, and never looked back.