I was lost. I'd been out for an eveningwalk with my friend Sadie. We went a different way than usual, down a long alley behind the big new estate. Sadie wanted to go that way so she could meet her aunt at thetrain station. She was going to stay with her aunt during the weekend. We said our short goodbyes andSadie got onto the train with her aunt. I decided to walk back the way we'd got to the train station. I went back along the alley. After a few minutes of walking, I started noticing things that I didn't see before. I'd gone the wrong way, but I didn't want to turn back after I'd got that far. I kept going.
It was 8:47 on my watch when I realised I was lost. I should have turned back. But I didn't. And I'll always regret that. I kept walking along the seemingly neverending alley. I noticed a piece of paper, a flyer, on the ground. I picked it up. At the top was a picture of a wolf's head and at the botom were pictures of a snake and a spider. The flyer read:
CIRQUE DU FREAK
FOR ONE WEEK ONLY - CIRQUE DU FREAK!
SEE:
SIVE AND SEERSA - THE TWISTING TWINS!
THE SNAKE-BOY! THE WOLF MAN! GERTHA TEETH!
LARTEN CREPSLEY AND HIS PERFORMING SPIDER - MADAM OCTA!
ALEXANDER RIBS! THE BEARDED LADY! HANS HANDS!
RHAMUS TWOBELLIES - WORLD'S FATTEST MAN!
Under that was an address where you could buy tickets and find out where the show would be. It warned that the Cirque Du Freak was not for the faint hearted.
"Weird," I muttered to myself.
It looked like the Cirque was some sort of freak show, but I always thoughtthey didn't exist anymore. It seemed some sort of joke. I wondered if I should take a look. Both my parents earned a lot of money, but I'm not the sort of person whospends her money on anything she likes the look of. That meant that my pocket money at the time was around four hundred pounds, so it wouldn't go to waste if I spent it on a ticket for the show. The tickets were fifteen pounds each.I had twenty pounds with me.
I stuffed the flyer into the pocket of my jeans and carried onwalking down the alley. When the alley eventually ended it was nine o'clock. I wasn't lost anymore and I realised I was near where the tickets were being sold.
I decided I would get a ticket. I turned around the corner of some houses and saw a ticket booth. There was a tiny man in it, wering a long cloak which completely covered him. I showed him the flyer, he took it and held out two tickets. I gave him my twenty pound note, he put it in a little box, put one of the tickets back and gave me five pounds change.
"Thanks," I said, and the little person gestured me to go.
