Chapter Text
She had expected the walk into the big top circus tent to be a brief one, but quickly discovered that her legs didn’t appear to have any joints or muscles. Not that they had been removed in some sort of freak kneecap-scalping-and-muscle-havesting incident related to her apparent fantastical kidnapping, but rather her legs just didn’t bend at a joint; they bent at every part of her leg. It reminded her of a doll she used to have as a young girl, one that she could stretch and mold the limbs of with just a bit of force. She remembered stretching the doll until it broke, and crying about it for days. She kept the pieces of it until her parents made her throw the trash away.
Falling down once again (and frankly sick of the Sun mocking her newfound inability to walk), she took some time to actually examine her legs. Impossibly thin and inhumanely white in color, her legs appeared to be some sort of rubbery material. She would go based on feel, but a strong tug of her gloves informed her that on top of everything else going on, her gloves were stuck on her hands. She would have to worry about that later, then. Cautiously, she tried gently pulling on the part of her leg that was roughly where she remembered the kneecap to be, and felt the pulling sensation as the limb folded slightly and bent. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but felt like a mild case of pins-and-needles, like when her foot would fall asleep when her cat on her lap for too long. She thought that it really was a lot like when you bend the limb of a moldable action figure of some kind.
“Ew, that was gross! Whatever it is you are doing, don’t do that again.”
She had forgotten the Sun was still going on about something above her. She stood up, shakily, and tried to focus on that sensation of stretching out her leg. She began ‘stepping’ around, but it was more so that she was throwing her body weight onto one leg to stretch it and desperately swinging the other one to catch herself.
“Haha, maybe you can stay, actually. This is pretty great.”
One thing was for sure, she did not want to stay and continue being ridiculed by a large, cartoony smiling Sun in the corner of the sky. Maybe she had been drugged, that would make a lot of sense. With nothing left to lose, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to ask the Sun.
“Do you… know what happened to me?”
The Sun frowned at the question, taking a second to look the thing in front of her up and down.
“Oh, I can only guess. But you’re here now! And hey, how about some advice? Why not enjoy the day while it’s long?”
“What does that mean?”
The Sun huffed loudly. Odd, overly fluffy white clouds rolled in from what were otherwise completely blue skies and began to cover the Sun slowly as she spoke.
“You humans never do have any taste for allegory. Oh well! As the great Aristotle used to say, ‘You can’t fix stupid. There’s not a pill you can take; there’s not a class…’”
The Sun trailed off behind the cloud cover, any conversation continued on lost through the density. Alone, she looked down at her legs once more, trying her best to ignore the ridiculous jester-style shoes she was wearing (complete with little bells, to her dismay). She thought whoever had brought her here clearly had an interesting sense of humor, and some incredible drugs. Or, did she come here herself? If these were her drugs, she must be doing something right. Or something really, really wrong? Her mind continued to race a fuzzy recollection of possibilities as she staggered onwards towards the gentle melody coming from the circus tent.
The incredible swirls of color opened to a small, unattended entrance. The ticketbooth had no writing on it, and no cash register inside. In fact, she found that there was nothing inside the booth next to the door at all, it was just an empty box.
She walked through the small door, and found herself emerging into a large, round indoor circus. The inside of the tent smelt like a cacophony of every public space she had ever been to. Food, sweat, people, something sweet, the distant scent of animal… it really had it all. She could still hear the music, but it was somehow quieter now, and she couldn’t identify exactly which directly it was coming from. When she turned left, it went right. When she followed it, it sounded like it was right behind her. When she turned behind her, she was facing the door she came through again, even though that shouldn’t have been right.
She turned to face the circus again. Rows and rows of seats stacked up impossibly high, varying from dingy wooden benches to luxurious theater seating depending on where you looked. There were even nosebleeds and upper balconies that she had to strain her neck to look at. She also discovered, while looking straight up at the never ending spirals of the sides of the circus tent, that she was a little top-heavy. Falling back into the dirt floor, she expected to hear anything other than the glass like ‘tink’ that sounded when her head hit the ground. She reached her hands up to check for any damage, and found none, but that her head was hard and firm and entirely too smooth in certain spots. She also found she was wearing a rather large hat that jingled when she touched it, which was the most absurd thing yet. She hated hats, and certainly wouldn’t be wearing one with bells on it. Tugging on it proved as fruitless as tugging on the gloves, and the jingling of the bells made her hesitant to really try and get it off without being sure if she was in a safe space to be making herself a jingling target.
The rest of the circular circus was completely empty. No lions in cages, no acrobats, no knife throwers, and no ringmaster. She looked around, getting to her feet and pushing past the thought that she inexplicably felt that she had been standing shorter than she was used to. Much like the doorway she just came through, there were dozens of doorways littered all across the circus in the gaps between the large rows of seats. She could see some sort of signage up above or around each one, all she was too far away to read. Some in fancy letters on plaques, some written on chalkboards with sketches of flowers and bees next to the words, a few with signs scrawled hastily on post-it notes, and a handful of them with caution tape covering the entrance and the large words “KEEP OUT!” painted directly on the door or the wall. Looking closer, it seemed each of those had a sign with smaller words too.
She traveled hesitantly along the side of the circus, skirting the edge to the next doorway to hopefully avoid any unseen trouble. The more she moved, the more doorways and passages she saw, the entire circus twisting and turning with every step she took. It made her too dizzy to look at the walls while walking, so she tried to keep her eyes on the ground in front of her and scan the area every few steps (which isn’t hard when you’re still figuring out how to walk with cooked noodle legs). The more she moved, the closer she looked at the center of the circus floor. At first, it was a large beam, or maybe pipe, laying on the ground that caught her eye. And then she noticed that it seemed to be attached to something, and that there was an odd patch in the middle of the floor that was a different color from the rest of the dirt flooring. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was seeing there, but it looked wooden, maybe. If she listened closely, and ignored the confusing sound of the music, it sounded like there were things moving around down there. She pondered if maybe that’s where they kept the lions and bears and things, and decided that she’d rather not find out.
Finally arriving at the next door, she took a second to read the signage. This one had one of those fancy, older styled plaques that read:
BILLIARDS ROOM
A smaller, paper sign hung underneath the plaque, only attached with a few pieces of tape. That one read:
(out of commission- Sorry!)
A small, cartoon style drawing of a circle with eyes, sharp teeth, and a construction hat was drawn on the corner of the sign in a black marker.
She reached forward hesitantly and knocked on the door. The music in the circus stopped suddenly, causing her last knock to echo out, but there was no reply. She reached forward to try the doorknob, expecting it to be locked. To her surprise, the doorknob turned and the door swung open, but when she looked in, she couldn’t fully understand what she was seeing. It was as if the doorway led to absolutely nothing, like looking at an error screen on a computer. Vibrant electronic hues jolted around the space behind the door, spasming and recollecting themselves sporadically.
She closed the door in a panic, backing away from it a few paces. It was all becoming entirely too weird for her. Rushing backwards, she began to stumble towards the outside of the dirt-filled circus floor, and stopped in her tracks. Standing on the complete opposite side of the interior of the circus from her, what must have been at least a football field and a half away, was a person. Or something that stood on two legs, at least. She knew those stupid bells were making too much noise. Even worse, it looks like the thing had begun to move closer to her. Slowly, it was walking across the circus. The closer it got, the less it looked like a person. A long snout protruded out of its face, large ears on either side. The eyes certainly didn’t look human.
She stumbled back, no use in trying to be quiet if you’ve already been spotted. She didn’t know what was going on, or where she was, or what was happening, or why was happening. She didn’t know what was coming towards her, or why it felt so threatening. She didn’t know what had happened to her body and her clothes, why all of her memories felt like she was watching them on an old tv filled with static. She wasn’t sure how much more of all of this she could take, she just wished there was some way out. She couldn’t go forward, she couldn’t go back into that room, there had to be another way.
She focused on the ground, on the odd shadow cast by her hands in the otherwise dark hallway. She noticed the green hue on her legs and arms, and looked up to see a green sign that read simply:
EXIT
A green arrow pointed directly downwards, to an entranceway through the bottom of the wooden bleachers she must have walked right past the first time. It didn’t even look entirely like a doorway, but like someone had ripped off the wooden beams in this one spot. If it wasn’t for the glowing sign above it, she likely would have ran by it again without giving it a second thought. Could this really lead to an exit of some kind? It seemed unlikely, entirely too convenient, and like a trap of some kind. She looked left at the closed doorway, and right at the steadily approaching figure. Whatever it is had begun to move faster, coming into her view more clearly. It didn’t help her identify what she saw, some sort of yellow blob with eyes on two legs that clearly wasn’t human. She looked up again at the sign, then walked through the opening in the panels.
The walk under the bleachers had started exactly how she had imagined it would, dark and cramped. She expected to be able to hear her heart beating in her ears like she normally did in stressful situations, but couldn’t seem to hear it at all. It didn’t seem like she was being pursued down the bend underneath the bleachers. She wasn’t even sure if it was going to open up to another part, or if she was just going to hide here for a bit, get her wits about her. Then, something odd began to happen. As she walked, the pathway slowly began to straighten out, green arrows urging her onwards. The circus was completely circular, she had seen that herself both inside and out, but now she walked in a completely straight line. The light from the circus had begun to dim, as well. While her path had been lit by the sun streaming in through the colorful circus top, she could see it getting dimmer and dimmer the more she walked. She was beginning to grow more nervous, and the exit signs grew more numerous. No turns or twists presented themselves but the arrows began pointing in contradicting directions, lefts and right and some that seemed to exist in a fourth dimension that hurt her head to look at for too long. Not after long she began running into the darkness, too afraid of what might await her if she stopped but not entirely sure what it was that she was running from. The signs were all over now, some reading “Exit”, some pointed to nonexistent bathrooms or elevators that weren’t there, some looked like large menu lists. One read “No escape”, or so she thought. She didn’t look at that one for too long. She kept up at this pace until she ran directly into a wall she didn’t see, sending herself back reeling with a large glassy ringing.
Trying to slow her hyperventilation, she looked up at the signs posted on the wall. One was the green arrow, pointing to the exit. The other was an old, tattered white arrow with no sign attached, pointing the opposite way. She couldn’t see anything down the path that the green exit arrow pointed towards, the kind of dark that seems to expand forever. The path following the white arrow seemed… uncomfortable, she decided. There was some sort of light at the end, she could tell, but that only revealed a long hallway with many series of doors. Her last experience with the doors here was not all so friendly, and she wasn’t eager to replicate that all again. But it wasn’t as bad as complete, utter darkness and unknown. How sure was she that these exit signs were real, anyways? How sure was she that any of this was real? She stood, warrily, looking between the two pathways. She thought back again to the figure she saw in the dirt arena, the one with the weird hatch in the middle. She wasn’t sure why she was so scared of whatever it was, but even the memory sent a chill down her back. Maybe it was the walking pattern, the way it shambled and stumbled towards her. Maybe it was how it had straightened as she had run under the bleachers, how she wondered if maybe she had heard it laugh. She wonders if she can still hear it laughing.
She began walking towards the white arrow’s hallway, away from the exit. The only explanation she could give was that she didn’t want to be alone in the dark anymore. Or worse, that she only thought she was alone in the dark. The further she walked, the further away the light seemed to be, but her conviction that the hallway would end became stronger. She began to subconsciously trail her hand against the wall for added support as she experimented with stretching her legs across larger distances while walking, to change her approach entirely. When her hand brushed against a doorknob, she was so startled she nearly yelped. The light had gradually been filling the hallway enough that she could see the things around her more clearly, and she examined the door she had grabbed with much curiosity. A large, red ‘X’ was painted over the door, and primarily over a drawing of what appeared to be a frog with a red bow and a top hat. Looking around, she confirmed that this was the first door in the hallway. The others, that she had to strain to see, also appeared to have that bright red ‘X’ on them, although it was too dim to see what they were all covering. They were fairly spread out, no two doors facing each other directly, the pattern going left - right - left. She couldn’t imagine anyone actually staying all the way back here, and if they did, they would need a flashlight to tell which room was theirs. Maybe the ‘X’ meant they were empty? She mused about what could’ve happened to the frog that’s picture was crossed out on the door.
A sound from far further down the hallway caused her to pause her musing, and run to crouch down by an outrageously conveniently placed side table a few doorways down the hall in a fright. She looked up at the door and saw a furry cyclopes-thing, crossed out with the same ‘X’. The sound seemed like a door being closed very quickly, like someone slammed it in a rush. She strained to listen for any footsteps, but heard none. Instead, she heard what sounded like a long, exacerbated sigh.
“What am I doing wrong…”
The voice sounded like a man, and a very defeated one at that.
“Maybe they just hate it here!”
A second voice? She was confused, she hadn’t heard any footsteps but two distinctly different voices spoke to each other up ahead. This second voice was higher in pitch, and had a unique quality to it she couldn’t quite place. The inflection seemed all wrong, like a computer program trying to read a story and stressing the wrong vowels and syllables. The tone was entirely too cheery for the topic.
“Do you hate it here, Bubble?”
Bubble. Was that supposed to be a name? She remembered the sketch of the bubble with a face and a hardhat she saw earlier. The hallway was quiet up ahead, and Bubble, who she had warranted a guess was the higher-pitched voice, fell silent. She warranted a peak from behind her protective table, and found that the hallway up ahead was far too bright for her eyes to adjust enough to see anything in a quick peak. She could see that the doorways continued down, and a very concrete line seemed to be made from darkness to light.
“Bubble? You don’t have to answer right now-”
“I’m thinking.”
Silence again. Maybe if she could get closer, she could find another spot to duck behind and let her eyes adjust to the light. Were these the people that kidnapped her?
“Wait, you’re… thinking? Do you mean processing?”
“What do you do, Caine? Do you think, or do you process?”
Caine. Interesting. The name felt familiar to her somehow, did she know this person? Or maybe it was a common name. She couldn’t tell, and trying to recall brought upon the same sensation that looking into the unfinished doorway brought: electric tingling and deep discomfort. She quickly pushed the thought away. Now she definitely had to get closer, these two might be able to tell her about what was going on. She began to creep forward on her hands and knees, a sensation she found remarkably painless. She stretched an arm forward, then the other, and pulled her legs alongside her. She thought she must’ve looked straight out of a horror movie, but it got the job done.
“I don’t… I mean, I think. I think that I think, at least. Or maybe I… process that I think?”
“Then do you like it here? Do you think you like it here?”
She continued crawling forward, eyes adjusting enough to see two shapes that appeared to be floating off of the ground. She initially shrugged it off as an explanation for no footsteps, then quickly realized her error. Were they both flying? In fact, she was getting less and less sure that there actually was two people there after all. She could almost make out the first person now, the deeper voiced troubled one who seemed to be pacing around nervously mid-air. Her eyes must have still been playing tricks on her, since his head looked… all wrong. She wasn’t entirely sure what it looked like, but from there it looked like a large blob of red and white. He was wearing a tall hat, she could tell, and his clothes were the same colors as the circus tent. The other person, however, didn’t seem to be around at all. The only other thing she could see was some sort of sphere, suspended in the air not far from the man. It bounced around, occasionally orbiting the man’s head like the Moon orbits the Earth before bouncing off again.
“Of course I like it here! What kind of a question even is that… I wonder, sometimes, if maybe there could be something else out there, but I know better than to think it’s for me, Bubble. I’m not a little code-ling anymore, I don’t have such childish fantasies. I mean, maybe I just wish…”
He trailed off thoughtfully, looking back towards the dark hallway with the rows of marked out doors. She stopped, gasping a little at what she saw when he turned his head towards her. From the chest down he looked like a normal person, wearing a brightly colored tailcoat and suit combo, with his Sunday best shoes on. He held a cane in his hands like a baseball bat, but clearly had no intention of swinging it like one. Instead, he grasped and twisted the stick in his hands, nervously holding it to his chest. And the face… she tried not to look at the face but couldn’t pull her eyes away. She always hated those chattering teeth toys, ever since she was little she was terrified of the things. Large, continuously chomping, and moving at random. And that was the only way she could describe what sat on this man’s soldiers: a giant pair of chattering teeth that seemed to float above the rest of the body. If she focused, she could see the gap between the body and the head where a neck normally would have been.
“What in the good gravy is that?!”
Crap. She was so horrified by what she was seeing in front of her, she had risen a bit from her crouched spot on the floor. She must have looked like some drawn out spider-thing crawling towards him on the ground. The toothed-creature had spotted her, pointed a gloved finger at her, and she felt herself begin to lift into the air as if a giant hand was grabbing her and carrying her in towards him.
“It looks deeeelicious! Bring ‘er over, I don’t have any plans for dinner tonight, anyways.”
“Bubble, you don’t have any plans for dinner tonight? Ugh, that’s enough of you!”
She jolted midair, and stopped. She tried to scream, yell, or do anything, but she felt paralyzed by the terror that had been tracing behind her every footfall all day. She just hung their limply, terrified in mid air. The man turned to the sphere next to him, which she could now see did, in fact, appear to be a bubble with a face. It stuck a long, wet tongue at him, and he jabbed it with the end of his cane. It definitely had to be a bubble, because as soon as he did, a loud POP! wrang out down the hallway and the sphere disappeared.
“And, you! You wouldn’t happen to be an AI running for a prolonged period of time, would you? Because if so, hoy dowdy have I been looking for you!”
She felt herself jolt forward again, being pulled by an invisible force. She wasn’t sure why, but something about watching him pop whatever he called it, Bubble, and then bring her closer towards his sharp maw helped to snap her out of her paralysis. She kicked and yelled and begged the whole way, until she was brought into the light of the hall, suspended a mere few feet in front of the toothed creature, and she fell again into a silent shock. He was talking, she could tell by the odd grinding and sporadic movements the two jaws made as they gnashed and pressed against each other, but she couldn’t bring herself to focus on what he was saying. The teeth looked human, and she couldn’t decide if that was worse or not. She tried desperately to recall the different kinds of teeth different animals had, and then wished she paid more attention in her science courses.
“...NPC’s should know better than to eavesdrop on private conversation, or to… creep down the dark hallway of bitter regret. Really! It’s weird, and I’m fairly certain that…”
He slowly trailed off, and she felt the grasp on her relax as she was placed gently on the floor. He slowly opened his large mouth, and she was sure this was the end, until she saw… two eyes floating inside the mouth. It was unsightly, both glowing electronically and threateningly placed by each of the sharper teeth in his mouth-head. One eye was red, and the other blue, but the hues seemed to shift and flow between either eye in a sort of infinity symbol pattern. She collapsed almost immediately, scooting away from the man in front of her, back pressed against a door with a ragdoll painted on it. The eyes scanned her up and down slowly.
“Are you going to eat me now…?”
The mouth creature straightened at the question, and looked rather taken aback.
“Of course not! I haven’t done that since… Oh goodness, you’re not a rouge AI or an NPC at all, are you? I am SO embarrassed, I have no idea how to even articulate how embarrassed I am right now. I, just… oh my gosh. Let’s start all over, shall we?”
He turned away from her quickly and cleared his throat, floating up above her in the eye a bit higher. He turned with great fanfare, sweeping off his hat with one hand and twirling it in the air. He waved the hat from one side of him to the other, like he was trying to empty something out of it. As he moved, brightly colored letters and shapes began to pour out of it, like a magician in a children's cartoon. The letters danced with each other and swam all around the man.
“Welcome… to the Amazing Digital Circus!!”
His voice was loud, much too loud for the hallway they were in. Fireworks seemed to be going off from somewhere, or maybe an entire brass band was playing from down the hall. It was hard for her to tell for sure. Looking up, the letters must have jumped in line while he was talking, because they now formed the sentence “Amazing Digital Circus”. The letters themselves seemed to all be alive, she could see the letter ‘g’ fighting with the ‘i’’s on either side and all three braying like zoo animals.
She screamed as loud as she could, covering her head with her hands. It was all, entirely, too much. The talking Sun, the incomplete rooms, the emptiness of the whole place, all this talk of AI’s and computers and code… she must be insane. Or maybe she was dead, even. Yes, that must be it! She had been a horrible person in life and clearly was sent down to hell, and in front of her now is the red Satan, her eternal punisher. Or maybe she was locked in a white padded room, screaming at the air in front of her. And this creature, this horrifying monster in front of her was a mental manifestation of every insecurity and traumatic event in her life, preparing to make her suffer for mental eons that weren’t even real.
“Yikes, too strong, too strong!! Sorry about that guys, go ahead and take 5… Ricardo, enough with the fireworks down there! You’re going to blow a hole through my big top, and I just patched one up!”
He waved away the letters with his hat, dispersing them throughout the hallway before they bounded off. The band came to a stop with a dilapidated bwrap, and the man looked down at the shaking pile of jingling terror crumpled in the corner before him. The creature came forwards towards her, arms outstretched, and she braced for the worse. When nothing happened, she slowly uncovered her face with her hands and saw… the teeth man standing on the ground in front of her, offering his hand to help her up.
“W-What… What are you?”
She was sobbing now, absolutely terrified. He frowned a bit, an expression that was rather dramatized by his entire head being his mouth. He pulled his hand back and placed his hat back on his mouth-head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. You humans all tell me that I look like an ‘imperceivable nightmare’ or a ‘slasher movie for the senses’ the first time you see me, but I just get so excited to greet the new member of the circus that I forget each time! Then you all end up a shaking pile of tears… regardless of how quickly I break into song and dance! It wasn’t the band, was it? They were a little pitchy…”
She tried to grapple with all of the information she had just been given. You humans, new member of the circus… and something about the band. The creature in front of her began to feel less and less threatening, and more so like some sort of business owner, or something. She wiped her face, expecting to find normal tears, but found that her cheeks weren’t wet at all.
“Err… you weren’t wandering around for too long, were you? How did you get back there, anyways? Usually new members show up on the front lawn of the big top and the Sun alerts me to come fetch them, or they pop right into the commons area.”
“I-I met the Sun. She, uh… made fun of me and told me to go inside, I think.”
He sighed and furrowed his upper jaw like a brow, which he then pinched with his thumb and pointer finger as if it was. “Of course she did. You can’t count on that Sun for anything, always going on about droughts and prose. Ugh!” He turned back towards her, extending a hand forward again to help her up.
“What happened next, my dear? That hallway back there is… hard to access through other means.”
She hesitantly reached her hand forward, and he quickly took it and pulled her up. She yelped, feeling her arm initially stretch before her body went with it, feeling more and more like she wasn’t operating by the normal laws of gravity.
“Ooh, stretchy limbs, huh? I’m sure that’s fun! I had those for a time, but escalators were far too frustrating- I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.”
He shook her arm fanatically up and down in a handshake as he spoke, shifting his weight between his legs excitedly. It reminded her a bit of when a kid got to have a friend over, and they just spotted them walking up the driveway. Now both standing, the toothed man didn’t seem to be as tall as she had originally taken him for, not counting the floating giant teeth.
“Um…”
“But don’t mind me going on!”
He quickly let go of her hand and began fidgeting with his cane again, twirling it between his fingers as he spoke.
“Tell me more about how you got here. I take it you walked into the commons of the circus and met the other members, right?”
“No, that’s not where the entrance to the circus led. I… walked into this big stage area, with the dirt floors. I tried a door but it was, uh, locked. Then I saw the exit sign, so…”
Something he had said earlier was tugging on her mind. ‘You humans’. Was this guy not a human? She knew he was at least something fantastical, based on the head and the apparent magic powers, but he felt so human. He had been nodding along with her story and checking his nails (through his gloves) while she spoke, but when she mentioned the exit sign, he suddenly straightened and got much closer to her. Looking down she realized his feet were off the ground again, and he only seemed so much closer because he had launched himself in the air and at her.
“Exit sign? What do you mean?”
“Uh…”
“The circus entrance leads you to a place you want to go. Most people just want to find out where the music is coming from, and that will lead you to the commons. Honestly, ending up somewhere different is not that uncommon- pun very intended. It happens enough that it’s why that stinking Sun was supposed to tell me about newcomers instead of directing them to wile their way into the circus. But, the exit sign? You shouldn’t be seeing that.”
“Oh.”
She wondered why that dirt pit was the place that she wanted to go. What was it that she wanted when she walked in?
“So you… followed this exit sign to the end of this hallway here? Sounds like a digital hallucination to me.”
“I think I followed it here- I don’t know, exactly, it was all really weird.”
She didn’t think it was wise to ask about the mysterious figure now. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to see and what she wasn’t, exactly. Maybe the thing she saw was what he had said, a digital hallucination.
Digital?
“It was weird, huh? And wacky? How are the wackiness levels of the circus so far, would you say? Too much, not enough?”
“I… what?”
He rolled his wrist and pulled out a large notepad and pencil from seemingly thin are, flipping open the notepad and looking at her eagerly.
“Don’t be afraid, I’m always seeking constructive criticism! Although I prefer constructive compliments, really. Or a compliment sandwich, that one is great! Always makes me feel so warm and supported.”
She thought that wackjob was a good way to describe the tooth man in front of her, who was now gently rolling on the balls of his feet midair, and that his personal wackiness levels were completely off the charts. She was puzzling a way to fit that into a compliment sandwich and get all the answers she wanted when a loud crash from the hallway in front of her startled them both. It was hard to locate the exact origin of the sound, but she thought it seemed to either be coming from the door with the clown painted on it or the door with the… triangle-thing painted on it.
“What was that?”
The man had an expression that was hard to place. Maybe she was just still getting used to reading expressions on someone without eyebrows, and with the eyes hidden inside the mouth, but he seemed sad.
“Oh, it’s just the circus settling. It happens after a while, but it’s not something for you to be concerned about.”
He sounded so much more reflective than when he was talking to her before. It sounded more like when he was talking with Bubble, before popping it. His expression turned suddenly, and he was back to a chipper tune like nothing had happened.
“Hm, hey, I have an idea! Why don’t we take a tour of the entire carnival, just you and I?”
“A tour? I don’t…”
“Please, I’d be remiss if I didn’t have a chance to make up for our getting off on the wrong foot. And it’s not like I give just every member of the circus a personalized tour, you know!”
She chuckled nervously and backed away.
“I’m not a member of your circus, I don’t need a tour. I need to go home.”
“Always home with you humans. What does that mean, anyways?”
“What does-”
“And please don’t give me any dictionary definition, or description of walls and a roof, I know all of that already, and I’ve tried! I give you walls and a roof and… it’s not home. What makes a home?”
“It’s… uh… I’m not sure, I guess. Home is… where your heart is?”
His shoulders dropped, and he looked at her with bewilderment.
“You see! What does that mean? I have always been under the impression that the heart is the anatomical organ that stores blood, sorrow, love, and clotting tubes. If I gave you each your own heart, would that work?”
He turned around, muttering to himself about clots and roofs and how they must be correlated somehow. She thought it was odd he didn’t know what it meant to feel at home, did he not have a home? Perhaps he simply didn’t like it there, but she’s felt at home at many places she didn’t like before. She really struggled to picture this guy having anything to do with a kidnapping or great disfigurement scheme- he seemed like a victim of it himself. He turned around abruptly to face her, continuing on his conversation louder now.
“...Ah, I don’t mean to go on about my work. I appreciate it a lot, you’ve given me so much to think about! Now, how about that tour, huh?”
Before she could protest, the tooth-man grabbed her by the hands, and they disappeared from the hallway in a flash of light.