The mystic was left alone, staring into the morning sun. The ringmaster had set out on another crime. His objective was obvious: to dispose of me and rid of the threat of justice coming to the circus. I was off meddling, and while I knew I had to be cautious as I snuck off to meet the circus troupe, I did not know the predator was already on my trail. However, he had a plan other than confronting me while I met with the circus troupe. He knew that if I had somehow convinced them to join against him, he could not risk being surrounded. Instead, his plot once again involved abusing his mysterious gift: the silver pocket watch.

     He would create yet another version of himself with the pure intent of assigning me an assassin. The ringmaster would mutilate their face and burn their prints, creating an unidentifiable culprit who it would not be worrisome if the police managed to catch. If his slave managed to escape without raising suspicion, he would dispose of him like a used-up tool, as he had done with many men before him.

     The plan was hasty and confused, but he had not the time to idle. He had to act before I did. That is when I appeared, back in the story, as I had stopped to rest before reaching the troupe, wondering what I could possibly say that would appeal to them, and noticed him approaching in the distance. I rushed to conceal myself and await his next move. As he walked towards where I was hiding, he turned the dial upon his watch. Now aware of the importance of this action, I screamed in outrage and jumped at him, grabbing hold of his elegant jacket collar.

     It was as if we were thrown through time. My knocking into him had halted his winding, and thus we stopped a minute earlier than his past excursions. When we arrived back on that fateful day, it was before the showrunner had drawn his whip and before the ringmaster’s many copies had entered history. We had been thrown apart as the traveling stopped, and I found myself momentarily disoriented. The ringmaster had forgotten me and thought only to finish his mission before anything could stop him.

     He went up to the showrunner from behind and wrapped his fists around him. Stealing the whip from the brute’s pocket, he began wrapping it around his neck, as he had so many times before. That was when the mold was broken. I had recovered and broken into the past, as well, with a shout. As my protests and pleas rang out, every ear could hear them. I saw the showrunner’s head bob towards me as the cord began to tighten around his neck. Before I could run over and yank the ringmaster off him myself, I saw the whip fall from the murderer’s hand.

     The ringmaster’s face washed with sudden shock. He fell backwards as if by a blow. For in turning to look at me, the man yelling from the shadows, the ringmaster caught sight of his treacherous tormentor’s face for the very first time. Two sets of gray eyes reflected back at each other. Startled faces, spitting images of one another, met as if separated by a pane of glass.

     The ringmaster finally understood the comparisons the old troupe members had made. But the showrunner had never been his father… but rather himself. He was one and the same with the very man he had strangled, over and over. He was one and the same with the man who had made him who he was, who had tortured him and beat him and treated him as a slave. He had been his own monster all along. The ringmaster let out a strangled sob.

     “No! No, it can’t be!” he bawled. He had fallen back off his feet and was now cowering away, his hands held up to block the disturbing sight of the showrunner. The pocket watch, which he had thrown aside amidst strangling his old master, had stopped ticking. Its face began to crack, and the hands halted. I could do nothing but watch in awe and uncertainty, stricken in place. Then the scene reached its climax.

     The showrunner and the sniffling boy began to draw like a shadow into the crumpled ringmaster. We were brought back into the present, but more shadows were drawn from nowhere and vanished within the thrashing form before me. I watched as the animal tamer’s mutilated face masked the ringmaster’s own. The brute let out a tortured cry of pain and grasped at his eye, feeling the sear of the cuts before they were suddenly healed. Apparitions of bowling pins fell about the ringmaster, and he was taken by the pain of hands around his neck, choking on the ground before me, until the juggler too had passed. This went on until he had taken on the beatings and the experiences of every one of his slaves, until all his other versions had vanished within him, like parts of his soul joining within his shaking body.

     He felt the sting of all he had done and realized he had only been harming himself in becoming his own fear. He felt it all, the mutilation of the freak’s face, the harsh and dangerous training he forced the tightrope walker to endure, and worst of all: his own hate for himself. As his child self had looked upon him with fear when he had strangled his master for the very first time, now he felt the terror and detest of his whole troupe. As he was left to himself, rocking back and forth on the floor, I listened to his doddering sobs.

     “W-what have I done, oh what have I done?” As he wept, his face clasped in his hands and his body curled on its side, I finally broke from my spell. An unexpected wave of sympathy washed over me for the poor creature, now writhing in his own self-inflicted pain and fear. All his regrets and revelations. While the ringmaster had once looked upon me as an enemy who threatened to destroy him, now his teary eyes held only sufferance.

     It was the ringmaster who had undone himself, and he now saw that it was a necessary defeat. His cruel tyranny had ended. His sins had been repaid. Though to be truly forgiven, he would have to forgive himself, and that he would never do. As the morning brightened everything around us and the echoing of his cries filled the abandoned tent, I sat down beside him. I rested my arm around his shoulders like an old friend and comforted him as his sobs dispersed like a final applause. The One-Man Circus had given its final show.