Day 459

They were always found near the old circus and were unofficially called the ScalpTown Balloons.
The cause of death was always the same too, blood loss and trauma.
Each body was missing their limbs and the skin from the shoulders up - just left to bleed to death.
So far the skins hadn't been found and the blame lay on an alleged cannibal cult.

The whole area had been scoured bar the old circus.
Nobody even thought to check it - nobody could figure out how to!
The last owner was a big fan of riddles and puzzles to the point where he'd rebuilt the circus in
concrete and sealed it with a series of increasingly complex locks and forgot how to open them.

It was found soon after that several members of the circus had been shut inside the concrete tent.
The average human can survive up to 3 weeks without food and 8 days without water.
No word came from inside the tent so they were presumed dead.
All efforts to break down the circus were met with refusal from the owner, it was his masterpiece.

I wonder if the performers appreciated this as they contemplated starvation or cannibalism.
The local papers have started wondering too.
Stories from "anonymous sources" claim that their spirits are vengeful, reliving a distorted version
of their lives, making balloons from the skins of passersby for their bloody show.

Of course this caught on quickly and the tasteless name "ScalpTown Balloons" came about.
Still officially the police had no legitimate source to go by until the latest body was found.
The child was propped up against the circus tent and a trail of blood led from the building's top
down in a gradual slope to where the little boy lay.

It was almost like he'd been pushed down a slide and it finally prompted the police to break in.
At first they tried demolishing the concrete, not suspecting that it was just a cover for thick, steel
walls that made it damn near impossible to enter.
Their next option was to crack the equally impossible lock system.

At this point it was a coin-toss with no end in sight until, unexpectedly, both wall and lock broke.
The police went in through both entrances armed, trained and prepared for the worst.
None of them came out alive, nobody dared to send in a second team after hearing their screams.
They all turned up sooner or later, limbless and skinned and propped up by the open entrances.

It was a tragedy, the police called for military action to back them up.
They still had no idea what they were dealing with, what they had let out after so long.
It was the day before the planned second strike (with military backing) when the balloons came.
All those faces (some fresh and bleeding, others shrivelled) filled with helium and gently floating up.