Sideshow Hearts chapter 1

 

"Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself."
― Groucho Marx


Somewhere east of Eden, there is a lake of black glittering with stars, and a smiling moon seems to watch over the hills on the way to the graveyard. The dead trees of the season leafless in the cold. The headstones of the forgotten or barely remembered. Zip was carrying a shovel on his shoulder that was twice as long as him. The twelve-year-old looked closer to nine in age—Lankey and thin but not tall.

"Adelinda, how much farther do we have to go?" said Zip

With her blue skin and red eyes, she didn't turn back; she seemed like she was trying to ignore the child. So he responded the way he always did, with persistence.

"Adelinda? I am tired and hungry. You said we would have supper tonight, not like the three nights all hungry and hurting but food. Adelinda, I know you can hear me?" Said Zip.

Adelinda looked over her shoulder, still walking forward, and said, "we are going to get food, something delicious."

Zip did not like the sound of that; he started thinking we are heading to the old village's graveyard. I have a shovel. My mistress is a witch. Oh no. But then he told himself no; she wouldn't...we couldn't. Then he was trying her diplomatically with the design that people don't eat rotten old corpses, so he said.

"Adelinda, I sure am glad to have you as a master. You never cruel and so so sweet." as Zip spoke, she looked over her shoulder and looked down at him. "and" he continued, "you have raised me like I was your own."

Adelinda said, "don't worry, child, I will season the stew so that you will not mind that the meat is grizzled and rotten. besides," she smiled over her shoulder at him, "it's a right of passage."

Zip swallowed a nervous gulp and, with eyes wide open like saucers, and said. "Oh God, I never wanted to be a cannibal."

Adelinda smiled, dressed in her red dress with a black cape and pointy hat; no one would have mistaken her for anything but a child of the devil.



2



Thick iron bars surrounded the hill; the gate was large enough to let a wagon through. There are moonlight and silhouettes of tall grass and headstones with that old white face shining down from the heavens.

The forest surrounded the hill. The lifeless trees are reaching out over the fence as if to join the dead. Voices in the wind whispered through echoes that chilled your ears, and the child Zip lay panting on the ground. It had taken him almost two hours to dig up the shallow grave of weather-worn headstone shaved smooth by time. Covered in dirt, he had climbed out terrified by the smell of rot and soil. Wide-eyed and not thinking, he had the shovel at one side as Adelinde jumped forward, saying some magic that caused the coffin to rise out of the earth (levitating). Floating over to and landing next to Zip, who shuffled off terrified and excited.

The coffin's nails pulled out of their own accord and landed in the grass to either side of the box. Yet with that strange tung, Adelinda sang, and the box begins to shake. Zip hid behind a headstone as the lid came off, showing the rot and decay of decades of skin and flesh falling off of popping bones. Eyes opening, looking around not knowing and scared. The corpse shambled out with dirt, shaking loose from its clothes. Grey hair loosely like cobwebs in the wind danced on its rotten head. An out of fashion suit from decades ago, shaking the loose dirt away like a wet dog with water. He stood there staring.

"Why did you bring him back from the dead?" Said Zip.

"I needed a new assistant." Said Adelinda.

In his overreacting shocked way, Zip started to cry, then said, "you're going to kill me!"

"No, Zip. But I am sending you away." She said.

Zip sat down crying, then whispered, "that is so much worse."

"Come here, child." and she picked him up, then kissed his forehead and said, "I am going away, where you can't follow. There is no food to be found here, and the places I am going will need someone who can raise the dead. I am sending you to an asylum called the Sideshow Hearts. You will be taken care of there." then, sitting him inside the coffin, she whispered something in his ears, and he started to drift off to sleep.

He whispered to her as a goodbye, "Will I ever see you again?"

and before she said the spell that would nail the coffin back up, she said, "I doubt it." The lid closed, and he drifted off into the abyss of dreams, a reverie of sleep.

The coffin lifted off the ground and flew off to the sideshow hearts. It was only swaying with the rare light gust of wind. Over lakes and fields, it carried him through the clouds. Till at last, he rests in the blue sky of the morning on a cobblestone veranda. In the center of a building that takes up most of the island.


Black bricks with unnatural precision made the supernatural foundations of the prison walls of the sideshow hearts. There were no windows, and the windowless walls surrounded Zip; he could neither see anything but for those walls and a grey sky ready to birth rain like a pool directly above him.

"It must be a hundred stories high, maybe more." He thought, looking up, almost getting dizzy from thinking how it would look from the roof.
The coffin was open when he had woke, the lid beside him as he stood up and the world overwhelmed by him. His innocence was and is incongruent with the reality at hand. His dreamlike wonder at the prison as unnatural as the walls. Black dull bricks as smooth as steel. He spun around, looking up till he saw him out of the corner of his eye.

Vladimir Victor Verney was standing with his hands behind his back. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with a matching bowtie. His top hat tilted off at an angle that's lack of symmetry would drive a man of OCD to a psychotic episode. His handlebar mustache was wet with wax (that was still visible in the building's shade). This image froze into the mind of Zip before the introductions were exchanged. And would stay with the child long after he came to know him by his name. They talked, and Vladimir, in a convoluted way, explained that the Sideshow Hearts was a home for orphans and the spiritually disabled. "A home for those lost, that no one is looking for." was one of several ways he put it.

"well," said Zip, "I should tell you now, I won't be staying. So thank you and all, but I must be going."

"and where will you go? to leave is to go through the Sideshow Hearts. Once inside, there is no way to reject her demands, but you are ready when it decides you are just that, and then you may go." Said, Vladimir.

"So..." He continued, "come with me, and I will show you your escape."

Zip put his dirty hands in tattered pockets and kicking the ground; he whispered, "shit."

"what did you say?" said Vladimir, "I didn't hear you."

"I said shit!" screamed the child spreading his arms like wings as if to add, "what is wrong with you!"

"Oh." said Vladimir "oh, I see."

There was dense fiction, the fiction of seriousness in both of their cadence. The novel said playfully, "do you see? do you see how many times we can do this?" but both stood there looking the other in the eye as if to say, take me seriously, and that only seemed to make it worse. Still, eventually, Vladimir would express the inevitable nature of the proceedings. The nature of reality, the unchanging fact that there was nowhere else to go, not even in this mediated world. In this world of dreams, both original and cliche. It would not be words, no, not words but patience, and so with time, Zip accepted the pressure of circumstance. The stress of a life without control, the resentment. The spirit-breaking bitterness of a sadistic God that gave you the legs to stand proud just they could be knocked out from beneath you. The child with his blue eyes was like a horse that's spirit was in the process of being broken. He was losing the will to change with the whim of the universe. But even at this young age, he felt, if I fight back, the same will come to pass, only I will suffer for it. This innocence of a need for dignity was a candle flame naked to the wind...it was only a matter of time...it was only inevitable.

"Come now," said Vladimir. "you just need some food and rest."

Zip said nothing but lowered his eyes, tears swelling in them but not framed by any expression nor any visible emotion other than these tears. And he nodded once. Vladimir walked over and ruffled the child's hair like he was a shaggy dog. Zip felt a dying light flicker in the wind. And just when he thought it would stay. When he thought it would be ok, He saw the light in front of him in that fragile moment—the only thing separating him from the darkness. Then he saw the face of that wizard Vladimir come out of the darkness and snuff that light. He unceremoniously blew out the candle. What awaited in the abyss was an unknown but Zip grateful that the fragile thing was gone.

The rain had started, everything was grey and cold. And they walked off, Vladimir with a circus man's grift, held open the door for the child with a low bow the arm not holding the door making a v. They were leaving behind the courtyard and the outside world. Adelinda was now just a memory and not one that would be looked back on with fondness. 

3

The inside of the building was worn and rotting—holes in the old drywall. Stairs off to the left from the entryway way leading to ancient mysteries or new nightmares. Floorboards that looked as if they could be centuries old and all were stained with dust.

"well," said Vladimir, "welcome home."

Zip was not amazed. But that changed very quickly when Vladimir closed the door behind them. It disappeared—one moment there, the next gone. Zip ran forward, patting the wall where the door used to be.

"well, what the hell?" Said the child. His eyes as comprehensive as those large lollipops you can get at an old-fashioned candy store.

"You are quite the offensive young man with that profane language." Said, Vladimir. His arms crossed behind his back with a hand holding the other arm's elbows. "but I must tell you, I will be leaving now; I have been here far too long as is."

"wait a minute," Zip was pointing an index finger like it was a loaded pistol. Then he clenched his teeth, they grinding tighter with each step he took. Until he reached the mustached dirtbag, he was about to give a what for. Then he took that index finger and, standing on his tiptoes, jammed it into the low range of the man's chest then said, "you told me there would be food."

"Of course, right this way," said Vladimir, holding a hand out in a bow directing Zip forward to a sizeable dining hall. Zip could see a large cooked bird, gravy, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and an assortment of other foods found on thanksgiving.

"well, now that is more like it," said Zip, "that is my kind of welcoming mat." then zip turned back to look at the mustached man and instead saw a smiling face with a mustache, but there was nothing else, and as it started to fade, it said, "The next time you see me I will let you leave."
and then the smile faded until there were only laughter and a mustache. Then the mustache fell on the ground, and there was silence.