Now it’s just growing a boatload of worms.A Story by Peter Joseph Swanson an excerpt This is an excerpt from my published novel BY THE LIGHT OF THE CARNIVAL (a word has been censored for the internet, ha ha). It is a ghost story:
“And what else is going to be your shtick this week?” Joe looked around. “My what?” “Your way of making money when you’re not making money. Catch my drift?” Ken winked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Where’s the boss right now? Where is Mrs. Ta … Ta … Lawn?” “Toulon. It’s French. But she ain’t French. American. Just a fruity name. And it’s Miss even though she was married, they say. Some mob guy who got bumped off. Go figure. Only in America can you just walk around and pretend none of it ever happened.” Joe looked around at the rides, in alarm. “Oh. Really. Wild. Well, do you know where she is right now?” Ken pointed with his toothpick. “She’s usually in that trailer. That’s the office. But at the moment she’s in that tent with all the arcade games. You can’t miss her. She’s the one with the beard.” “Yeah, I’ve met her when I signed on. Is that beard real? It don’t look real.” “At her age, none of her hair is real.” Joe looked confused. Ken chomped on his toothpick. “She dyes it.” Joe nodded. “Oh.” “Good luck. Watch your back. And one more warning, watch out for that glass house. Don’t go in that damned trailer joint at midnight.” He pointed down to the very end of the row. “Why?” “It’s f###ed up.” “How.” “Just stay out.” Joe asked again, “Why?” “They say it’s haunted.” “Haunted? Cool! I thought nothing exciting happened around here.” Ken said, “It ain’t exciting for you if you’re careful, if you don’t tick anybody off around here… or anything. Just the customers need excitement. It’s good for business to have a ghost, and that’s all that matters.” Joe cocked his head in doubt and squinted with one eye. He cracked his knuckles. “A ride is haunted? Really? How?” “It ain’t a damn ride… it’s an attraction. Get it right, boy.” Joe smiled sheepishly. “Sure. Though it doesn’t really matter what you call what, huh.” “Nope. It don’t. It’s all the same. Call anything what you want. Call yourself a rock star, if you want. It’s a free country.” Ken used his toothpick to point at the attractions again. “Look around this place. Look! It don’t look right this time.” Joe looked but he didn’t know what he was looking for. “What?” “It’s all wrong.” “Yuck!” Joe finally noticed the ground had changed. “God, there’s a lot of drowned worms laying around. I’ve never seen more dead worms washed up in my life. Yikes.” Ken said, “No. Not down there. Look up there. And there. Look. Everything looks crooked. Can’t you see it?” “Where.” “That
Ferris wheel started out straight, and then it went crooked. Now it
looks pretty damn straight again. It’s like the ground is breathing.” Joe dragged his foot across the dirt. “The soil here looks pretty weak. That’s why it isn’t growing any corn, I bet. Or even hay. Now it’s just growing a boatload of worms. But… breathing?” Ken nodded insistently. “That’s what it looks like. One minute things look straight up and down and then the next they look like they’re slanting and now it all seems okay again.” “Maybe the ground is just settling under the weight of everything. Some of this stuff is pretty heavy. No?” Ken frowned. “I like the ground to be solid under my feet.” “On my farm I once drove a tractor along an erosion ditch and all of a sudden it tipped and almost fell all the way in and I could have been crushed. The ground just gave away where it looked solid enough to drive on. It really freaked me out.” Ken looked at Joe with annoyance. “Did it now.” Joe realized nobody wanted to hear his life stories. “Well. I’d better go find the boss.” “Miss Toulon,” Ken scoffed. “She’s a real bat.” “A bat? How. Because she’s a bearded lady?” “You should see her when she sets up this place. She walks around the empty lot, whether it’s a blacktop or a place like this out here, and she walks around with this dumb blue canoe paddle. She walks around but acts like she’s paddling her fat a*s around and says she’s feeling something. And that tells her where to put everything. It’s quite a sight. It draws a crowd sometimes.” He twirled his finger around his ear. “It looks nuts.”
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© 2011 Peter Joseph SwansonReviews
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