Circus Freaks

The wool of sleep could not veil my urgent need to shit. The bubbling acid woke me so angrily I had no time to think how I was on the train again. In a disoriented scramble for the nest of straw, I hooked my fingers through the air holes in the steel siding and heaved my weight into my knuckles, moving against the mission of the train.

I leaned back on the wooden siding, opposite the steel to assess the tender puckering below. And as usual, I watched the colors streak past through the holes punctured in a starry finality. Blues, browns, sudden yellows, and patches of white. My body was weak, as it always happens after the humans inject you. Mostly the larger of us, making the majority of their menagerie. Larger, more threatening, worthy of their fearsome affections.

Blues, browns, summer yellows. Reds from dirt of the foreign land, streaking by. The coal was sour as I felt the wheels on the tracks speak, clakeyd, clakeyd, clickety clack.

It took me several moments before I could say what it was out of this standard traverse that unsettled me. We passed a checkpoint. Red lights flashing, the chime of the bells piercing out. But they had no effect on our speed. We crossed over the tracks with the station manager running feebly along, waving their arms, hats in hand, their voices silent under the rumbling of our rig. Running, until we left them.

I lifted to my knuckles, walking uneasily to look through the holes. Small houses, some with yards, some with broken fences, flickered by without introductions. Our speed kept up. The horn blew, loud and heavy.

+++

The yell of the horn woke me. I had been enjoying the warm breeze, dreaming of sand and Bindweed. Often on trips, older camels described the desert to me, story telling where we come from. For this, I never minded the train and free of the human’s prodding and pulling.

Even after I’d woken, the horn was still blowing. As if the train had no conductor and was in distress. Or having taken itself back, free and on the run. I looked at the others, gauging their responses. Some laid their heads back down, their long necks stretching in front of them, ears pressed back on their skulls. Others spat and stood. Stretching to look through the slits, their double humps wavered with unsteadiness.

I waited. The few of the herd who had stood to see, hurled back, lobbing into each other. They groaned, heads flinging about as they cracked against the walls. I stumbled to see what they were running from. Out the slits, sparks shot up. Bright orange and hissing, beautiful and threatening.

+++

As with most nights, I stayed awake to see dawn. To watch how the trees became new trees, different trees, as we went higher. So much changes overnight. The river increased its curves, and flowers withered and bloomed. As I’ve known it, they have never taken us up to not come down. And the descent is often as beautiful as the climb.

It was soon after we had gone over the midpoint of the mountain when I began to smell rusted blood. Slowly at first. But more and more as the locomotive gained speed with the weight of the back cars brooding down on the engine. As the burning ferment began to overwhelm my trunk, I heard a human call out about a hot axle bearing about to buckle.

+++

I am what they refer to as priority cargo. I am loaded first, and unloaded first, always on the first car closest to the engine. My crate is painted gold and red with the Title of The Show.

Lovely as it is, I am left in a great billow of smoke. Thus, my enclosure has cracks too small to see a clear picture of what waxes and wanes by. Accustomed to the timbers of burning, I could on this day especially, smell the life of our ancestors– the memory of a Saber-toothed tiger now coating the skies, reorganizing the stars the way new death does.

The train heaved forward. Shaved metal sprung out with the compensation of weight as we rounded a curve. Screeching. Such horrible screeching. A humongous snap rang through my dark compartment and we clanked hard on the railing. My ears ached with the explosion.

+++

The train gave a loud shout and partially collapsed under the pressure of our going, tossing me hard against the wall. The straw tumbled overhead like a golden snowfall. I was grateful for my strong silverback to take the brunt of the impact. A second shake reverberated through the train, flinging my door open. Sparks spurted out of the train like tears, dragging my door along the rails. I felt the freedom of vulnerability as I faced the vortex of trees and rocks flashing past. The wind dry in my eyes and nose.

+++

The car swayed, the wheels threatening to jump their fragile path. I heard Lion roar from the car in front of me. Something about Gorilla. Gorilla in the end car. The horn blew several times, disorienting my thoughts further. What could he mean?

Finally, I understood. We need Gorilla to stop the train.

+++

So many of us packed into the one car, enough for a full caravan, all panicking, all heads waving and crashing into each other. As they shuffled and kicked up sawdust it became hard to breathe. The sparks grew angry, visible on all sides.

I began to kick at the wall. Divine adrenaline. I kicked and kicked, my soft leather feet bleeding. I kept kicking. One camel, fear on the verge of consuming them, began kicking too. Then another, and another. Soon there were six of us, slamming the wood to splinters.

+++

I called Elephant to reach Gorilla. The conductor had been on the radio with headquarters and they said a crossing was coming in five miles.

The heat from the floorboards was increasing, I could hear the camels honking and crying out. A fire.

+++

I raised my trunk, gathered air, and I trumpeted to Gorilla in the far carriage at the end. My lungs emptied. I went again. The pressure of the mighty sound building in my head. Again. Again until my chest could give no more. The train took another curve, slamming me into the wall and ground. My weight threatening the connection of wheels on their track.

I got back up and ran my weight into the back of the stall. Throwing myself against gravity, hoping for God to move me. My shoulder crackled with the third hit. Back to the front of the car, I ran and threw myself into the opposite end. STOP. With each hit I thought. STOP. Again. STOP. I could feel I had broken the bones in my right shoulder. STOP. Again.

+++

The train’s whistle had ceased, but just under the crackling of the metal, I heard Elephant. She was calling for me. We were flying along, my eyes full of heat.

I could barely understand her. The posts? What did she mean?

Then I saw the land change to accommodate the roads. The crossing was coming. The crossing was coming! Fear struck me. The train had to be stopped.

It was coming up soon. What didn't the humans own of me? “Abnormally strong! Mightiest grip in the world! No other creature has this strength! The capacity of ten machines collectively! The strength of one thousand men in one hand!”

I gripped the railing, steadying myself. Evened my feet on the lip of the downed door, dodging sparks and rocks flying over me. I extended my right arm out, bracing.

+++

First one board split. Then another, then several burst out. Finally there was a hole big enough for us camels. I searched for a moment, before deciding to leap.

The whole train jolted. We tumbled about like milk bottles in a crate. Then another shock. And another. I heard Elephant trumpet out. The train was slowing, but only incrementally.

Without knowing how, I was seeing the sky, then the dirt and grass, then the sky, then nothing.

+++

I timed it perfectly, though it was mostly luck. We had slowed just enough where I could see what was ahead, and I grabbed the foundational support of the operator’s building. My fingers broke into the cement and clasped around the metal inside, smashing it. As the train hurled on, the support buckled and the train whipped.

The pain in my shoulders and chest was so immense I saw nothing. Nothing but the tearing through of my muscles.

+++

The train hurled into the hill, my crate smashing against the rocks. The rubble covered my body, pressing me down into the earth. I tried to scramble out but my body was not responding to my commands. My main was coated in thick blood. More and more pressure, so heavy. The sound of sirens began to fade. So quiet. Until light broke through the rubble. Elephant threw a beam aside and lifted me with their trunk, setting me in the grass away from the wreckage.

I looked, filtering the lights. The train was knotted on the side of the railway. A small fire had broken out near the middle car of the train, and strangers were dousing it with water. Others were wrangling the camels. Some were injured or unable to get up, others seemingly fine.

+++

There was no time to consider the pain. The humans were focused on saving their own. Good, let them. I needed to find Gorilla. He was not at the end of the train. I wasn’t sure where I was expecting to find him, in pieces maybe, but not disappeared.

I called. The camels and the horses had not seen him. Heaving wreckage, part by part, I still could not find him. Whirling around in a frenzy, I saw the railway building five yards off. Moments, seconds, I thought, before collapse.

My strength fading, I lurched towards the building, one step after another. As I reached it, the building fell. And I fell. Dust and debris covered the sky. The last I could see was Gorilla’s bloodied hand from under the rubble.