Few among the black-and-white-striped tents are floored by anything more than the earth packed down by the small army of cars, carts, horses, and elephants. Unvarnished, unfinished, and uneven planks form flooring where absolutely necessary for the functionality of the attractions, if not the comfort of the visitors. The one area where no expense or care is spared – the one tent which is not only floored, but carpeted – is the resting place for the Unfair’s hunters.
On this night, as on each night that they are loosed to prowl the grounds with their individual purposes, they return. The black poodle enters to an open floor. Cushions are available but unarranged until the dog drags three into a comfortable circle. Just before it takes its place, the black poodle casts its red eyes sideways and scents the air. The black-and-white monkey might have remained hidden from sight if it could have disguised its smell or resisted the urge to leap down on the dog any better on this night than any other. Betrayed by its sadism, the monkey misses its quarry but lands on its secondary target. Its tail tight around it, the monkey digs its mitts into the purloined cushions it has claimed. In frustration, the poodle circles, its low growl joining with the symphony of disassembling mechanicals and tightening tarps. What signals it to lower to the carpeted floor and fold its paws under its jaws is another sound. Like steam escaping a faulty piston, the hiss presages danger poorly. By the time they hear it, the black dog and black-and-white monkey have no ability to avoid the white snake that slithers in onto the carpet. Though they have slept together every night for an eternity, none could say how long the snake is with precision beyond long enough to encircle them both. As a red-eyed trio, they fall into wary sleep as the sun rises.
When it falls again, they will go out again to fulfill their individual purposes. Their circle never complete, their missions never accomplished, they will continue thus until the sun ceases setting and the Unfair’s tents furl for the last time.
x
Year 10, Day 338
March 3, 2024
The black-and-white tents and denizens of the Unfair appear several times across the years of this project. Nothing good ever follows.
The Unfair
The whole town flocked to the white and black striped tents of the traveling fair when they went up, because the county fair had been moved thirty miles away that year, but Cindy worried that they weren’t seeing it quite as she was. It was as if someone had built the attractions after hearing what a fair contained, but never having experienced one firsthand. The trappings were all there, but there was no soul within.
The exotic animals leapt at the spectators on the other side of their cages’ bars. The clowns danced and juggled fire, but their grins held no mirth, their chuckles no warmth. The bearded woman who doubled as the strongman glared at Cindy and crushed a rock within her fist. Distracted by this, Cindy bumped into someone.
He was a small man, thin and short. Even so his pinstriped white and black suit was too tight and an inch or two too short on his arms and legs. Smoked glasses sat on the front of his head and a small bowler hat atop it. A monkey shrieked from his shoulder, curling its tail around his neck while he twirled his cane.
“Excuse me, young lady,” he said. “It seems we were both caught off guard by Beatrix’s effulgence.”
“I guess. Sorry,” she said, dodging around him.
“Wait here, now,” he said. “I’m Mr. Ten. This is my fair. Let me apologize properly. Tickets for a trip through the mirror maze, perhaps? See things in yourself you didn’t know were there.”
“No, thank you,” she said.
“There must be something you want. That’s what I do,” Mr. Ten said. “Give people what they want. Beatrix here was tired of being small and weak, so I helped her become big and strong.”
“And the beard?” Cindy said.
“You’d be surprised what people are willing to give up for what they want,” he said. The monkey smiled through yellow, pointed teeth.
“I’m alright,” she said.
“When you change your mind, come back and see Mr. Ten,” he said as she walked away. “Everybody wants something.”
Cindy did not return to the fair, and she was happy when its white and black parade left town.
x
Year 1, Day 358
March 28, 2015
RE: The Unfair
The monkey was white and black, like all the tents and flags and trappings of the fair, so no matter how strange a sight it might be in Pampa, Texas, it could go where it liked.
From inside the peak of a concession tent, it stole popcorn while it listened to a woman ask if they had any day-old hot dog buns that they usually threw out, because she wouldn’t mind one of those, and she wouldn’t mind paying, either, because she wasn’t asking for a handout, but she couldn’t see her way to paying fifteen whole cents for a hot dog, either, no matter how much onion came with. The monkey took one more kernel and moved on.
From the side of the striped curtain that separated the outhouses from the promenade of freaks, it picked at the sores under its fur while it listened to a man telling himself that, if Beatrix took so long doing whatever it was women did in the bathroom, the way they were at it half their lives, he might miss the juggling bear, and she’d sure be sorrier than she’d been for burning his eggs last week. The monkey cleaned its fingers on the curtain and moved on.
From beneath the stands, it sorted through dropped cotton candy cones and lipstick tubes while it listened to a child asking its mother why everything was so loud in places like this and how quickly they could go home where there wasn’t all these animals that could gut him just like that and people that looked at him all funny when he put his hands over his ears or eyes or mouth. The monkey pricked the child with a lost pencil and moved on.
On bony shoulders that were clothed in white and black stripes like everything else at the fair, the monkey whispered, and Mr. Ten listened while he scratched notes into a little diary. Within the grounds of the fair, the monkey could go where it liked, though never where it wished. The monkey had no wishes of its own. The monkey had no need to wish when it could collect the wishes of everyone else.
x
Year 10, Day 65
June 4, 2023
Prompt: Use the title of a previous story.
365 TIMES 365 