My name's Kat Jackson! (No, not really.) I've had a few crazy adventures with my friends, but this is one of the..freakiest. (Enough with the pun-things.) It all started on a sunny, happy peppy school day. My feelings were exactly opposite of the surroundings. This girl had really annoyed me in math...but that doesn't matter. My best friend, Skye, ran over to me.
"Guess what?!" He yelled over the other people yelling.
"What?" I replied.
"Guess!!"
"Just spit it out!" I hissed. It was really annoying when someone actually expected you to guess. Skye waved a green piece of paper in the air. I snatched it out of his hand and read the text.
"Cirque Du Freak? A freak show ad? Where'd you find this?!" I looked at him, then back at the flier. A wolf-man, snake-boy, bearded woman, and all sorts of crazy stuff.
"A random hobo was giving them out!" He grinned like an idiot. I facepalmed myself.
"I thought I told you not to take stuff from random hobos!" I shook the flier in his face. Skye hung his head, then laughed.
"It says the show is at 10 PM, and there's one on Saturday." He glanced at the piece of paper.
"But isn't that Halloween?" I looked at him, then we both grinned.
"Yeah! Isn't that awesome! We can go right after Trick-Or-Treating!"
"But my parents would kill me.." I sighed.
"You can sneak out!" He exclaimed. "Just say you're letting a cat outside, and don't come back inside!"
"Perfect!" We did a weird little dance thing. The days flew by, until it was 9:30 pm on Saturday. I arranged stuffed animals under my sheets to look like me, then went downstairs and opened the door. My parents, upstairs on the couches, barely even noticed. I padded silently outside and shut the door. I met Skye at a gas station, then we ran down to the Community Center where the show was being held.
We paid for our tickets, then went inside. An extremely tall man met us by the door.
"Welcome, Skye, Kat." He greeted us, somehow knowing our names. "and don't worry, Kat, most of the freaks don't bite." I waved to him as we went and got some seats near the front. A few minutes later, the show began. First up was the Wolf-Man. I had a feeling that he was one of the freaks that did bite. He looked savage, and ready to tear any of us to pieces. After him was an assortment of the strange, funny, and cool. The show ended after some guy named Mr. Crepsley performed with his exotic, extremely poisonous spider. Skye glanced around.
"Didn't the flier say something about-" I couldn't catch the rest of his sentence, because some people started screaming. I looked around, then found myself face to face with a gigantic snake! I stood, paralyzed with fear. Someone in the crowd yelled for me to run, but I stayed put. One thing I DID know was that sudden movements made them strike. Suddenly, a bright light was shone into the snake's face. It flinched and stopped moving. A boy, a year or two older than me came on stage. He was wearing a white cloak, but he took it off, revealing green, blue, and yellow scales! The snake boy! He had shoulder-length yellow-green hair, and yellow eyes, resembling those of a snake. My girlish instinct recognized him as cute.
The boy hissed to the snake, slowly moving towards it. Then he tickled it under the chin and kissed it on the nose! I stifled a giggle. Then he took the snake and slithered away on his belly, just like a real snake.
"And that," Mr. Tall said, "Is really the end of our show."
I ended up buying two rubber snakes, some spiderweb candy, and a key-chain. I intended on giving one of the snakes to my cats, who loved to play with those things.
"That was awesome!" Skye and I bounced down the street.
"I know! That guy with the snake was weird," He laughed.
"Yeah. But he was cute," I ate a piece of spiderweb candy.
"I guess he was," We chattered mindlessly about the Cirque until we got back to our houses.
"Bye!" I whispered, then slipped back inside. My parents were asleep by then, so it was easy to get back into bed.
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The next day I went over to Skye's house. On the way home from the Cirque that night, we had both agreed to go back and poke around the next day.
"We're going to Dustin's house, grandmother," Skye called to his grandma, then we walked out the door. There were a few vans parked behind the community center, with Cirque Du Freak painted on the sides. We walked inside the center, looking around cautiously. No one was in the room with the stage, so we peeked through the windows on doors at the other rooms. In one room there was..a coffin? And a boy sleeping next to it. We were about to leave, when someone yawned.
"Hey- Wait! What're you doing here?" The snake boy exclaimed.
"I-um," Skye started to make up an explanation, but I grabbed his arm.
"Run!" I yelled and pulled him out the door. The snake boy started towards us, but the door slammed in his face.
Skye and I were in the library, pawing through the manga rack.
"That was really close," He said, flipping through an book.
"Yeah..I wonder what they would've done to us," I shuddered. "maybe they would've set the wolf-man loose on us!"
"Nah, then they'd have a big mess to clean up..." Skye was right, as he usually was about murder.
"Should we go back? I think we hurt that guy's face!" I laughed, but was actually pretty concerned.
"You can." He put up the book. "I'm not taking any chances."
"Fine." I glared at him. Sometimes my best friend was a cold-hearted jerk. I carefully opened the door. "Um, hey snake dude, you okay?" I poked my head inside. The scaled boy had a plastic bag full of ice covering his face.
"Yeah.." He replied, his voice muffled slightly. "Why'd... I mean, why did you have to slam the door in my face?I understand about the running..." I blushed and came all the way inside.
"S-Sorry, I didn't mean to...And I probably shouldn't have been snooping around anyway.." I apologized.
"No problem," He took the bag off his face. "I would've been curious, too. My name's Evra Von." Evra introduced himself.
"Just Von?"
"Yep, just Von. Most people ask 'Von what?' Honestly, it gets annoying."
"Eh. My name's Kat Jackson..I know what you mean. Most people assume that my name's Katlin, but it's Katherine." I shrugged. "So, you're in the freak show, right?" Evra nodded. "What's it like?" I asked. "It doesn't seem like they mistreat you or anything.." This makes me sound like a bad person, but that kind of stuff really interested me.
"They don't," He grinned, a little awkwardly. "We're all like a big family!"
"That's cool! I..." I sighed. I had almost said, 'I wish I could join!'