“Dani, I’m back.” I say, chucking my silly elf-shoes away. “Dani?” I call into the chamber separated by a sheet of taut canvas. “C’mon, sister, I’m too tired for tricks today, I was swamped by–” I cut myself off. More like my throat was squeezed shut. More like all the oxygen in my body was replaced with lead. More like the air was vacuumed out of my lungs and I was frozen there, gaping like a corpse.

“Daniella!” I cried, stumbling over and cradled her cold, red-stained hand to my chest. Her facepaint was still on, her hair still braided. And I cried, wept for my sister who was just taken from me. Hollow. There was a knife wound. I would kill the sicko that did this even if I died in the process, they would meet justice for letting her bleed out. 

I ran out of the tent, tears on my face. Only the Circus’s employees were allowed back here, where the animals were kept. 

“Help! Anybody, m-my sister, she–”

“Whoa, Dona!” Naveen patted my head, “Are you alright? Manny just told us all not to make a commotion because of the earlier spook. Tell me what’s up.” He pinched my cheek like I was a baby. My face was puffy and red enough as it is. I swat his hand away and with shaking fists, pull away the canvas door. My eyes squinted at my feet, I couldn’t look at her, a broken dove. Warring emotions fought for dominance on Naveen’s face, unrecognizable and alien. He finally settled on cold indifference.

“We should tell Manny,” I squeaked.

The smell of peppermint water, salted peanuts, and buttered skewers was almost enough to make me faint from the shock of viewing so many new things. The people here were dressed in blues, greens, purples, oranges, any color imaginable. Then they put me in a green bodysuit and trained me to swing on bars. Mr. Norris Mortman owned the circus. His son, Manny, was around eighteen when I’d joined but almost two times my weight in muscle. Life was looking up. It had been almost a year since we joined and one day I was introduced to two little girls. from the street. More malnourished than I ever was, thinner than thread. We got on great and they became my second family, like my younger sisters. Everything was good, friends who understood me, rice on the table, not only that, but lentils too. Of course nothing could stay good forever, there was of course, an accident. 

All that I can recall was blood, bone jutting out from places it shouldn’t, the crushing squelch and the agonized scream that escaped my mother before she was buried by the overweight sandbags and the skeleton of the main tent. I tried to fight for her justice, that the man who tangled the sandbags and wove the knots wrong to be punished, but of course, it was Manny. Mortman would never let some slit-boy like me lay a finger on his son, so I took my anger out on him instead.