Read Black Treacle Magazine (March/April 2013, Issue 2) for Free Online Page B

they glowed with a glassy stare that
sent chills through Taylor’s veins.
    A sick nausea
entered Taylor’s stomach as the music slowed down and changed to a
vaudevillian style.
    The barker now
stood on a small platform stage with stripped silver curtains
suspended behind him. Taylor could see the Ferris wheel turn above,
its lights changing the image of the barker from bright to dull and
back again. Then from behind the curtain two females who looked
like they just stepped out of the Miss America Beauty Pageant of
1973, wearing bathing suits and pink sashes with the words (in
white lettering) We Love Taylor sprawled across them, stepped out
and joined the barker, one stood on his left side the other on his
right.
    At that point
Taylor had almost given up looking for rational explanations. He
told himself he was too in it, and what if it was possible? What if
he could change his past, wipe his slate clean?
    Then the
barker held a cane in his hand tapped it on the floor of the stage
and he and the pageant girls began to tap dance a soft shoe. Their
eyes stared at Taylor sending more chills through him. Everything
about the strange performers seemed too exaggerated; their
smiles--too broad, their gestures--too forced, and their
stares--too intense.
    The old
fashioned music changed from pleasant sounding to a deranged
version of itself, the notes bent, the rhythm sputtered. The lady
on the right side of the barker lifted a bottle of whiskey in the
air, and said in a Kewpie doll voice, still tapping her feet to the
strained beat, “We should drink a toast to you, Taylor, to wish you
success on your mission," and she puckered her lips.
    Then the girl
on the left side of the barker held four glasses in her hand and in
the same saccharin voice eked out, “Yes! I have a glass for each of
us, you too, Taylor.” She puckered her lips too.
    The barker
grinned and said in a mocking tone, “But if Taylor drinks he’ll get
drunk and run that boy down again.”
    The two girls
sighed loudly, swooned and moused out in the same mocking tones as
the barker, “Poor Taylor, poor, poor Taylor.”
    The notes of
the music became more bent, more dissonant. The barker and the
pageant girl’s grins increased in exaggerated intensity growing
insanely surreal like a Fellini film gone mad.
    Terrified,
Taylor covered his ears, and he screeched out, “It was an accident
I swear!”
    “No it wasn’t,
but we love you anyway, Taylor.” They sang too sweetly, smiling too
broadly, still tapping to the swirling sickening refrain.
    Taylor
screamed out, “Stop the music! I can’t take it anymore!”
    Sweat beaded
on his forehead, his shaking hands tried to wipe it away. If he
could wipe everything away. He kept telling himself this wasn’t
happening, but he knew it was, somehow it was. Suddenly, he found
himself longing for death row.
    He should try
and make another run for it but inside he knew there was nowhere to
run. Wherever he ran he would wind up right back in the strange
park that existed everywhere and nowhere. How could this desperate
place possibly give him the chance he needed? How could this
wretched dance change that day? He stepped away from the stage and
began to walk in the direction of a tent that seemed to be calling
him.
    Strangely
drawn, not knowing why, he made his way to the tent just a few
yards away from the stage. His steps were slow. He didn’t want to
set the barker off, but he had to see what was in that tent.
    As he neared
the entrance and pulled the white burlap back, he heard the barker
call, “it’s okay, Taylor go see what that tent has to offer. We’ll
all still be here waiting for ya.”
    The barker
sadistically grinned in Taylor’s direction and puckered his lips,
just like one of the beauty pageant girls. They all stared at
Taylor, lips puckered, blowing kisses, as he made his way into the
tent.
    The toy music
sped up again.
    A few bare
bulbs hanging by wire from the wood frame ceiling of the tent gave
off