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Description

They called themselves The Circus, and they tumbled out through our fireplace one Monday morning during breakfast– more cinder than smiles. But my God were there smiles, and plastic white teeth to boot. The Cheshire grins stretched out across the centre of their faces, the smile lines, the rosy cheeks – it was straight out of one of my worst nightmares. No one said a word. That was the worst part.
My brother, Bobby, stood over the breakfast table, his cereal spoon frozen in mid air, his neck stretched out slightly; mouth hanging open teeth first as if they were just about to unhinge and snap up the soggy Fruit Loops paused just out of reach. He looked like the father of that cartoon turtle. Frankford, I think it was. I don’t know why my brother always stood when he ate.
And my father looked amused, the morning’s paper stretched open at the Sports’ section; left leg crossed over the right so that the left knee was perpendicular to the right foot; one eyebrow slightly raised.
My mother, for once in her life, was speechless. She had somehow fluttered to hide behind the back of my father’s chair; the spatula she had been cooking with was leaking pancake batter onto the kitchen tiles. And then there was me.
Well, I was more annoyed than anything. There I stood, a foot deep in black chimney crap, inches away from these sooty, potbellied, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” styled Circus Freaks, with a letter, indistinguishable thanks to the aforementioned soot, of acceptance into Harvard clutched in my soot drenched hand. I was a furious. My cheeks were beetroot, but of course no one could tell because of all the freaking black!
The silence stretched on but the guests’ smiles had begun to dwindle. The occasional look passed between them. There was also the occasional fidget. The chimney dust irritated my nose, and I felt an inappropriately timed sneeze forming in the mucus filled caves of my nostrils. It was my sneeze that brought everyone back to life. I sneezed, a strand of hair flew forward, and suddenly my mother was moving with swift, robotic gestures back to the stove. Her spatula swung back into the bowl of batter and she began rapidly stirring it in an anti-clockwise direction. At the same time this was happening, my father’s leg swung back down, and his right foot swung up, onto his left knee, and then hurriedly it dropped and he was up, his paper closing, his body turning to face the chair he had been sitting on and then, in the most peculiar fashion, he began to walk backwards out of the room. And my brother! He was shovelling food right back out of his mouth. Grinded Fruit Loop paste shot past his lips in the wrong direction and regenerated into its store bought, undigested equivalent. Milk splashed back onto the spoon, the spoon returned time and time again to the bowl to empty its contents; it was the most peculiar thing...
And then there was me. I stood transfixed. I looked down at my own hands, my own legs, my own position on this ever changing planet we call earth and wondered why my arms weren’t failing in the wrong direction, why I wasn’t jumping down and up for joy, why I wasn’t shooting back out to the mailbox to shove my letter of acceptance back inside just to then clatter, backwards, in through the front door. Or would it be the backdoor? Why? Why, when everyone else around me was spinning in the reverse, was I not moving? It was like I was standing on the last patch of “Present” in a universe where Time was speedily winding back in on itself. And then it stopped. The catastrophic collision of Order and Time came to a complete stand still. And then everything resumed; in forward motion.
I blinked. “What t-t-the...? Mum, Dad! Did you SEE that?!” I screeched, but no one answered. None of my family even looked at me. An embarrassed coughing near the left side of my waist reminded me of the strange looking Circus folk. I turned towards the sound and almost shot out of my skin. He was leaning in closely, grinning sheepishly. The others behind him had disappeared, but I distinctly heard banging sounds coming from the pantry. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said, his voice tinged with regret.
At his words I sprang forward but was pulled roughly back. Fear ate at my insides, causing them to constrict and my stomach to churn. No one so much as looked at me as I swept up the chimney chute. As the blackness consumed my body for the second time that day, I thought, “Shit.”

Description

They called themselves The Circus, and they tumbled out through our fireplace one Monday morning during breakfast– more cinder than smiles. But my God were there smiles, and plastic white teeth to boot. The Cheshire grins stretched out across the centre of their faces, the smile lines, the rosy cheeks – it was straight out of one of my worst nightmares. No one said a word. That was the worst part.
My brother, Bobby, stood over the breakfast table, his cereal spoon frozen in mid air, his neck stretched out slightly; mouth hanging open teeth first as if they were just about to unhinge and snap up the soggy Fruit Loops paused just out of reach. He looked like the father of that cartoon turtle. Frankford, I think it was. I don’t know why my brother always stood when he ate.
And my father looked amused, the morning’s paper stretched open at the Sports’ section; left leg crossed over the right so that the left knee was perpendicular to the right foot; one eyebrow slightly raised.
My mother, for once in her life, was speechless. She had somehow fluttered to hide behind the back of my father’s chair; the spatula she had been cooking with was leaking pancake batter onto the kitchen tiles. And then there was me.
Well, I was more annoyed than anything. There I stood, a foot deep in black chimney crap, inches away from these sooty, potbellied, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” styled Circus Freaks, with a letter, indistinguishable thanks to the aforementioned soot, of acceptance into Harvard clutched in my soot drenched hand. I was a furious. My cheeks were beetroot, but of course no one could tell because of all the freaking black!
The silence stretched on but the guests’ smiles had begun to dwindle. The occasional look passed between them. There was also the occasional fidget. The chimney dust irritated my nose, and I felt an inappropriately timed sneeze forming in the mucus filled caves of my nostrils. It was my sneeze that brought everyone back to life. I sneezed, a strand of hair flew forward, and suddenly my mother was moving with swift, robotic gestures back to the stove. Her spatula swung back into the bowl of batter and she began rapidly stirring it in an anti-clockwise direction. At the same time this was happening, my father’s leg swung back down, and his right foot swung up, onto his left knee, and then hurriedly it dropped and he was up, his paper closing, his body turning to face the chair he had been sitting on and then, in the most peculiar fashion, he began to walk backwards out of the room. And my brother! He was shovelling food right back out of his mouth. Grinded Fruit Loop paste shot past his lips in the wrong direction and regenerated into its store bought, undigested equivalent. Milk splashed back onto the spoon, the spoon returned time and time again to the bowl to empty its contents; it was the most peculiar thing...
And then there was me. I stood transfixed. I looked down at my own hands, my own legs, my own position on this ever changing planet we call earth and wondered why my arms weren’t failing in the wrong direction, why I wasn’t jumping down and up for joy, why I wasn’t shooting back out to the mailbox to shove my letter of acceptance back inside just to then clatter, backwards, in through the front door. Or would it be the backdoor? Why? Why, when everyone else around me was spinning in the reverse, was I not moving? It was like I was standing on the last patch of “Present” in a universe where Time was speedily winding back in on itself. And then it stopped. The catastrophic collision of Order and Time came to a complete stand still. And then everything resumed; in forward motion.
I blinked. “What t-t-the...? Mum, Dad! Did you SEE that?!” I screeched, but no one answered. None of my family even looked at me. An embarrassed coughing near the left side of my waist reminded me of the strange looking Circus folk. I turned towards the sound and almost shot out of my skin. He was leaning in closely, grinning sheepishly. The others behind him had disappeared, but I distinctly heard banging sounds coming from the pantry. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said, his voice tinged with regret.
At his words I sprang forward but was pulled roughly back. Fear ate at my insides, causing them to constrict and my stomach to churn. No one so much as looked at me as I swept up the chimney chute. As the blackness consumed my body for the second time that day, I thought, “Shit.”