DON’T GO TO THE FLEA CIRCUS

The Flea Circus used to be an old flourmill before the river that ran through here grew to a trickle and then to a puddle and then to nothing at all. The wheels and gears of the grain mill were rusted together and the wooden structure had rotted to a sagging skeleton, but the stone structure remained mostly intact.

Candlelight wobbled as Mr Henry and I stepped inside; the shadows took a moment to settle back into the sunken eyes of the men and women who hunched in silence. The place reminded me of the opium dens I once read about in Victorian stories of London, Bangkok and Burma. In the corner, a lady was quietly shushing a baby, the tired hint of a lullaby on her breath. She pulled from her cardigans a breast, floppy and empty. She put it to the child’s lips and tried to wring out the last drips of milk. No one spoke. Mr Henry patted the seat next to him.

Before The Starve, Jonah and I used to go to the Flea Circus after school. We’d save our lunch money to buy the Madame’s honeycomb and chocolate covered raisins. Some people said she used dead flies instead of raisins, but I could never tell. She would wind up an ancient pipe organ and, on the millstone-stage, command her fleas to perform their tricks. They would walk across a tight rope, score goals with tiny footballs, pull chariots through a maze. Once, I saw a flea pedalling a tiny Penny-farthing. I had once tried painting what I had witnessed at the Flea Circus, but I always found it difficult to draw from memory, and Mumma never liked those paintings. She said there was something sinister in the fleas that scared her. Mr Henry said he liked the way I pulled a darkness out of primary colours. I gave one of my paintings to the Madame once, hoping she would display it in the auditorium. I never saw it again.

A dust sh