Day 767

While Euro Cirque only comes once a year its reputation lasts until its next appearance, refreshed by stories and trinkets that people brought back from their experiences there. Nobody goes there to have a regular family day out, they go there to change and to see the impossible, implausible and downright unbearable - depending on the ride.

Everyone knows that the shoot-a-duck kiosk hands you eggs if you win, sometimes they hatch into regular birds like ducks or hens and sometimes they hatch out a puppy. One time my cousin's managed to hatch theirs only to find a human newborn inside, granted it was only three inches long but it was breathing and crying. Poor thing died an hour or so later but it made for one hell of a tale for them and that's all that matters to most people who go to the circus.

Another well established effect of the Cirque is that the dodgem ride breaks bones, not necessarily yours but whoever you think of most when you're hitting the other carts. They shut it down early last time after one particularly voracious rider had his neck broken by an unnamed third party who was also on that ride and may have been banned since. Nobody knows for sure so that ride will probably be less popular this year. Just in case. I men, it's normal for odd cases of spontaneous broken fingers and toes during the circus' stay but that was the first fatality from this ride.

One of the most dangerous rides Euro Cirque has is the spinning tea-cups. Everyone who goes on there comes out saying they saw people walking in between the  cups as they spun (which is 100% against the employee rules). Now the "people" in question aren't technically there, not as such, but they are very much visible if you're spinning fast enough. They look like wispy human-ish blobs with impossibly elongated limbs that seem to ripple in the breeze made by the spinning cups.

At first it was only once or twice that someone had gotten too close to one of these figures and come away from it with third degree burns all along the touched area. Last year there were twelve deaths, even after people were forewarned that the shadow-folk were drawing closer and closer to the carts and were now quite visible from the queue before the ride.

Nothing deters people in the Euro Cirque. Not the burning shadows, not the broken bones, nor the many limbed clown that is trapped in the chamber of mirrors and constantly seeking an exit that the ride-goers have to seal and remake so as to keep it in and away from them.

Everyone wants a story at the end of it and that's what they get if they live through it.

Even if the live this time, there's always next year.