Suddenly, the child began to fade, and the tent began to darken. The young man nearly swooned but caught himself. The lifeless form of the showrunner vanished last, and soon he was sitting back in the present. Once again alone and in the shadows, watch in hand ticking ever in reverse. He let himself collapse on the floor. His face was deathly white, itself like a fallen star in the tent. He breathed rapidly, half-stricken to death from the excitement.

     He closed his eyes for a minute, and when he opened them once more, they were those of another man. No longer did he lay in his ragged street clothes his master had spared him, covered in scars and bruises from abuse and slavery. As he raised himself from the ground, a top hat fell from his head. He brushed the dust from a fancy jacket. He felt his face and hair, smooth and groomed. He stood in his master’s place.

     Had he actually traveled back in time and killed the old showrunner? Manipulated the present? His now gloved hands quickly stashed the pocket watch away as he heard the steps of someone approaching. He found a familiar face emerging from the shadows. The newly made ringmaster blinked in astonishment. It was he who stood yet again before himself, but now it was his grown version, still wearing his tattered clothes.

     After a time, the ringmaster found that the watch had done more than show him the past. He had truly altered it. He had indeed taken the showrunner’s place in killing him and now ran the circus. Yet his old self remained, now under his own management, as if he had created an alternate reality where he eventually became ringmaster and merged the old past with the new. Thus, two versions of himself now existed, the one he was now, and the one he once was.

     One day in his new life, the ringmaster let himself be excused from his recently acquired duties as head of the circus. As his troupe practiced their acts, he found the mystic's booth, still there, despite all that had changed. He talked to her for the first time since he had returned from the past. As her green eyes met him, it all hit in.

     He removed the hat from his head and twisted the brim in his hands. His eyes suddenly filled with tears and his mind with terror. He cried to her. He asked in a quivering voice for an explanation. What exactly had he done? How did this happen? What, indeed, was the object ticking in his pocket? The mystic knew it all.

     She was aware that he had killed his old master and how his world had changed. Yet in explanation, all she could give him was what he had already figured out. The watch was more than a simple trinket. Like most of her oddities, it had a magical element to it. It held a mysterious power that could not be understood. In messing with the dial, he had thrown himself back into the past. He had made his move, killing his master, and his actions had consequences.

     In theory, he had never truly left that moment. He had not been transported back into the present but had morphed to take his master’s place. The child had unaffectedly grown to fill his. Yet the watch had a way of ticking away that time. The effect of the watch prevented him from aging further, as if he had lived as showrunner in the past perpetually the same until the present. While it became his history, his memories, he could not remember living through it.

     Now he had thrown himself into this new reality, and the mystic cradled him as he quivered in her arms. At last, he freed himself from her calming grip and accepted his fate. His fortune had come true. He now ran the circus. For the first time, he stood up straight and tall. His submissive self vanished as he travelled back to the big top, no longer taking orders but rather the one giving them.

     The man that filled his old place was identical to him in looks. However, the ringmaster soon realized he had created this version of himself. The man did not have the same memories of the late showrunner’s cruel torment. He became the new ringmaster’s servant, beginning the day the old showrunner was killed. The circus continued running under the young man’s new rule, but with time it would be greatly changed.

     With the watch still in his possession, the ringmaster had a new vision in mind. He knew what the device could do and intended to use it to create the best circus this world has ever seen. A crazy gimmick popped into his head. If he could use it to go back in time and bring to life a second version of himself, filling in as both the ringmaster and his own servant, could he travel back once more and bring another version of him into the past? Could he instead become a juggler, or a tightrope walker? Could he create a whole circus troupe with only himself?

     He set to work on this proposal. He studied all he could of the watch and its abilities. How it merged realities, halted age, and could manipulate time. He asked the mystic for her help, but she wanted no part in his scheme. She feared this was indeed the future she had seen in her crystal ball and knew it could not end well. Despite her refusal to help him, the ringmaster continued with his plan. At last, it was time to turn it into reality.

     He returned to the tent at night, the same time he had the first time he turned the watch’s dial. This time, when he found himself standing in the past, there were two other versions of him. As he stood in the clothes of the showrunner, he watched the old him strangling his old master. He looked over to the child who watched in terror. This time, when it was all over, he explained to them. He assigned them each a role and made them each feel a part of his plan for their future. The child would spend his days practicing his acrobatics and become a new trapeze artist. The young man who had killed the showrunner would remain a servant, but this time to him, the new ringmaster.

     When the young man faded back into his own time, history had once again been altered and he had yet another identical-looking servant, this time with the skills of a trapeze artist who had spent his whole life training for the ring. He continued this practice until he had replaced the whole circus troupe with different versions of himself, created by repeatedly returning to his own past. The mysterious “One-Man Circus” was born, bringing spectators from all around the globe to enjoy its unique gimmick and magical show. The whole lot of them shared a face, giving what was accepted as an ingenious illusion of one man running the entire event.

     Each troupe member was perfectly fit for their act, having been given orders to spend their days perfecting their craft. They had literally been born for their role in the circus. Yet in the show’s growing fame, the ringmaster became an infamous ruler. With each new slave he created, he began to forget they were anything more. He created them to fill his own selfish needs and began seeing them as properties rather than people. In sharing his face and being born of him, they were simply mimics, not fellow men. He began to treat them with less and less humanity.

     It was easy to replace them. If one died from hypothermia and another from falling off the tightrope, he would have new versions to replace them within the day. They became expendable, and if a new act was unpopular, he would end them as if they had never been given life. If they stepped out of line or disobeyed his orders, he would slaughter them down and throw their bodies in a river. He could have created his own graveyard, filled with only versions of himself, and he would never see what he had become: a murderer and a slavedriver.

     In every way, he had become the master who had once tortured him, if not an even worse tyrant. He even went as far to travel back and mutilate the child’s face (one of his own) so as to create a freak for the show. This disfigured version of him was locked in a cage and fed to the voracious circusgoers as “the Twisted Man,” the horrible creature I had witnessed and pitied when I attended the show.

     As I was once again met by the form of that poor fellow, even if this time it was only a reflection in the mystic’s glass globe, I was overcome with emotion. As the narrative faded around me, my eyes remained locked with the creature’s in the cage. Gray eyes filled with unrelinquished tears. A pain deeper than the darkness of his pinprick pupils. The mystic grew quiet, and I was once again sitting before her stand.