Johnny looked up from the grotesque goat boy exhibit to see a carnie standing right in front of him. The carnie gave him a creepy smile. “You liking the freakshow?” Johnny was immediately creeped out by the man, “It’s…it’s really cool. You have a lot of attractions.” The carnie chuckled, “We make sure we always have the biggest and best collection of freaks.” Jonathan backed up. “Right…I should get going,” he said. He walked quickly to the entrance, but saw the entrance had been sealed. The carnie walked towards Johnny. He smiled. “How would you like to be a freak? Radar DeBoard lives in Wichita, Kansas and is currently a student of Wichita State University. He writes in his free time as he finds it relaxing and enjoyable. He has had multiple drabbles and short stories published in several different electronic magazines. His only goal with his writing is that someone enjoys his work enough to share it with others.
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He scans the crowd, cursing to himself as he watches carnival-goers passing by his isolated game of skill. It’d been a slow summer and he was worried. “Is that the biggest prize you’ve got?” a young blonde asks, interrupting his thoughts. She’s pointing at the big fluffy bear hanging from the roof. “No, ma’am. I have something bigger inside. Wanna see?” he smiles, looking around the near empty grounds. “Sure!” she beams. She giggles as she follows him inside the tent. He’s quick with his knife as the nearby rollercoaster drowns out her screams. He’s claimed his prize at last. Belinda is passionate about stories and after years of procrastinating, has finally turned her hand to writing them, with a preference for supernatural/thriller themes; both often competing for her attention. She has had several stories published in a variety of publications, both online and in anthologies. Belinda lives in Australia with her family and has been known to enjoy the company of cats over people. I am silent. There is no need to be, not with the screams of the children and the raucous laughs of the adults drowning out other noise, but silent is how I have always been, so it is how I remain. Quiet. Unseen. Ruthless. I dip into buckets of popcorn and cups of mulled wine, leaving behind traces of myself. I slip into the tigers' cages and undo the locks. I tug at an acrobat's ankle, and lodge in the throats of the fire breathers. I loosen bolts on a rollercoaster, and turn off the fire alarm. I am death. K.B. writes for various international anthologies, and her work features in dozens of collections about the mysterious, the magical and the macabre. Her own books of short fantasy novellas with twists, The Empty Sky and Out of the Nowhere, are available on paperback and Kindle now. Check out her website at www.kbelijah.com After Amazon ran out of everything, we kept layers of curtains drawn, like cumulonimbus veils, and bolted chainlink over that. We whispered (even cuss words), wore slippers—noises attracted eaters. They were clowns—probably; they did paint their faces. Spicy odors preceded them, along with incantations that immobilized their prey (us). Wet cement was an effective barrier, but concrete mix had vanished from stores. The Big Deal, read a huge sign outside Menards, where we’d trekked to make sure. From inside a floor-model gazebo, a trumpet segued into “2,000 Light Years from Home,” then the flapping of enormous clown shoes. F. J. Bergmann edits poetry for Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com), and imagines tragedies on or near exoplanets. She has competed at National Poetry Slam as a member of the Madison, WI, Urban Spoken Word team. Her work appears irregularly in Abyss & Apex, Analog, Asimov's SF, and elsewhere in the alphabet. Her dystopian collection of first-contact expedition reports, A Catalogue of the Further Suns, won the 2017 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook contest and the 2018 SFPA Elgin Chapbook Award. |
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