'When the Circus Left Town' by Tara Campbell

When the circus left town, they left behind their tent, deflated swaths of parachute cloth wriggling. At first we thought it was just the wind bringing the black-and-white fabric to life, but when the wind died, the tent didn’t. Things moved beneath the remains of the big top, bulges roving from side to side, shapes shifting, leaping, inflating and deflating.

Muttering and growling things.

We called the circus organizers. 

“What do you want?” boomed a man’s voice over the phone. “Were you not entertained?”

“Oh, yes, yes, we were entertained,” we stammered. “But you left some things behind.”

“Impossible,” he barked.

“Oh, but it’s true,” we said. “There’s something underneath the cloth. Are you, by chance, missing any monkeys?”

“Ridiculous,” he scoffed. 

“Any sword swallowers?”

“No.”

“Any storytellers? Llamas? Elephants?”

“No, no, and no.”

We swallowed. “Any lions or tigers?”

“I’m telling you, no. We had to get rid of our tent, but every other part of our circus is with us right now.”

“But it isn’t,” we insisted. “There’s something alive under that tent.” 

“Perhaps…” We could have sworn we heard someone else whispering behind him, could have sworn we heard the word “curse.”

“Have you looked underneath?” he asked.

We wrung our hands. “No,” we said. “We’re afraid to.”

“Well…” he began. For a moment all we heard was the click clack click clack of the train carrying him farther and farther away from us. “You should be,” he said.

Then he hung up.

And the circus tent roared.

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Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse. She received her MFA from American University. Previous publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, Booth, Strange Horizons, and CRAFT Literary, as well as two novels and four collections of fiction and poetry.