The Circus (an attempt at creative writing)

It seemed the clearing had become blanketed in fog. The smell of cigarettes, popcorn, animals and sweat filled the air. The sound of laughing children was carried on the tail of the familiar babble of many voices; mothers called out to their children over raucous conversation between the people caught up in the festive atmosphere. Then there were people all around, bursting forth from the fog as if made from the same material. Ghosts from the past, almost transparent but at the same time colorful and alive glided across the clearing, eager townspeople and circus folk mingling, talking and laughing. Elephants festooned in extravagant decoration rambled past, a bear wearing a ruffled collar and cap followed behind a man dressed in a similar costume. Clowns gamboled through the crowd playing pranks on each other and patrons, pretending to toss pies at one another which would inevitably miss the intended target and land on an unsuspecting bystander or offering a flower for a friend to smell that squirted water into their faces; they were all over the place jumping and falling, doing cartwheels and somersaults, juggling and eating fire.  

A burst of fire shot out with a roar, licking at the air, it rose high above the heads of the people bringing Emily’s eyes upwards where, as the flame vanished, an enormous tent appeared. Giant flaps were pulled back to reveal the entrance. Emily could not see far into its cavernous depths as people surged inside, but as she got closer she saw the sides of the wooden stands seeming to go up forever, flanking the entrance giving it a tunnel-like quality.

 Moving with the crowd Emily entered the tent, her body pressed against the ephemeral bodies of the ghosts that, although appearing insubstantial were surprisingly solid and warm. The crowd dissipated as quickly as it had formed as they spilled into the interior of the tent and flooded the stands. Emily too made her way up the stands, marveling in the enormity of the tent and its contents, positive the tent had not appeared nearly large enough to house such grand structures when she had first seen it.

The tent had two entrances, the one she entered from and another, bigger one to the. The second entrance was much taller and wider than the one Emily passed through, but Emily saw that it too had a tunnel-like quality to it because the stands went up and around it so people could sit above the entrance. In the middle stood a raised circular platform which shined as if made of gold. The platform stood in the center of a larger circle that was partitioned off by red satin.

 On the perimeter of the red circle there were giant bouncy balls painted red, blue and yellow placed haphazardly around a wooden chair and a wooden tub filled with water, looking up past the tub Emily saw a thick wooden pole with metal rungs in its side for the trapeze people to climb, the rungs ended at a ridiculously small looking plank of wood which one would step off onto the thin line that stretched across at a precarious height.