that monster there...

     Slim and Angel didn't discuss much at all until they reached Tylor Texas. Then they briefly discussed  the worrisome pains Angel was experiencing in her back, her hips, and deep down inside.      "... And every time I go to pee, there's a little blood," she said in a trembling voice.      "What's it mean, Angel?" asked Slim. "Is it unusual?"     "I don't know, Slim. We better get me to a doctor once we reach Louisiana."     That was about it. The two were busy with their own thoughts, drawing worried pictures of reality in the clarity of the bright southern skies. It was hot. The vinyl in the car blistered and filled the thick air with burning urgency.       Angel tried to fix her thoughts on what she might find familiar in Louisiana, with a baby, looking for work as the Family Gus. She chewed on her lip, rubbed her belly and listens to Slim grind the gears of the old ford. She pictured herself up on the wire, perfectly ...

Angel walked out of the crumbling toilet at Buckbone's Gas & Feed Station with her hair rough-hewn, close to her ears. The little stuff left was left dyed bubblegum pink. Below a vengeful, sloping brow Angel's steady eyes measured the landscape that surrounded her. Fury curled the corners of her razor-thin smile.             Buckbone himself got a split-second view of the inside of that poor wreck of a room between the time the door flew open and when it slammed shut again.             "Seems like," Buckbone sneered, "that lady owes me some money for setting off some kind of girlie-bomb in our public toilet."               Four dusty men sitting on a plank of lumber beside him nodded quietly, squinting at the shock of pink bird strutting toward the broken down vehicle rattling restlessly in the unpaved lot.    ...

Leaving, grieving, grinding, lost...      They'd barely noticed what was happening.      Months passed and the circuit  went from warm to hot to cool and the whole show nearly dried up and died in a Carolina swamp and Angel and slim barely noticed. It wasn't until they passed through Spokane again that they came too, saw the mess the troupe was in and decided to make their own way.       "Oh say goodby, Thelma! Don't be that way!" Reesa the Serpent Lady ground her knuckles into her hip. Stomped her foot.       Thelma refused.       Angel winced as she watched Thelma's bulk pressing against the canvas from the inside, saw it jibbering as she heard the bearded woman quietly sobbing from within.       "We love you all, but it's time for us to make our own way, own show," said Angel.     "...and our own family," said Slim with a smile as he lay a hand gently on Angel's tummy.      A quiet flutter rolled through he troupe. Mixed ...

     "Thelma's unhappy."      "She loves you, Slim."      Angel and slim were married in June. They'd borrowed the camp pick-up outside Spokane, and found a preacher with papers. Few attended, none they knew. A stranger with half a beard and possibly fleas, gave Angel away. The town hall featured lime-green wainscoting that had been roughly trundled across a coffee-stained brown wall with the chuckling pattern of coffee cup stains mysteriously imprinted upon its surface. The motto on the far wall was painted by hand in a similar brown: "near nature, near perfect" all in lower case. This made Angel smile, but she didn't know why.      It didn't take long after that.      Thelma.      A broken hearted bearded lady: Three-hundred and sixty five pounds of coarse-haired blubbering blubber. It doesn't sell.  Bad draw spreads from tent to tent. Drindle The Vampire B...

     He juggled chainsaws, she walked the tightrope.      She was impressed that he still had fingers after practicing in the dark. He watched longingly each time she gave up her weight above hushed air.      Like every Gus - or Carnie, as many like to say, Slim and Angel were both fugitives of time. They'd joined the troupe, each using their own unique deceptions, both owing their lives to them, both satisfied with the breaks that circus life had offered.      Slim and Angel honed their skills. They towed perfection in tight spirals by taunting singularities, courting attraction at a distance, seducing gravity and the chameleons of desire. They distilled fine shadows of themselves.      A real Gus finds the dark in the bright-hot spotlight. That's how you sparkle. Thats how you put what needs to be seen in front of the effort. That's what effortless is. The darkness hi...