Sideshow Passage of the Day

[Daisy]

Circus Sideshow [or Parade de Cirque] (1887-88), by Georges Seurat

[G. S. Carnivals]

"Almost as horrible as the corpse on the ground were the men and women who clustered in a wavering, horror-struck circle beneath the tiger cage, their faces white and drawn in the diffuse illumination which streamed outward from the focused beam of the little electric torch.

They were not normal men and women. I shall never forget the awful picture they presented as they stood there, staring and gibbering and moaning in the half-light.

Freaks are seldom normal mentally. In moments of great stress and horror they never behave like ordinary men and women. As I stared about that grotesque circle, I recognized friends of long standing who had gone completely haywire.

There was Gudo, the lion-faced man, whose lips were writhing repellently beneath his distended, hairy cheeks, and whose glaring dark eyes were horribly like those of the jungle lord whose expression he aped.

There was the hunchbacked dwarf, Simon Crisp, whose face bore an expression of devilish malice impossible to convey. There was the skeleton woman, wild-eyed and teetering on the verge of hysteria, and the microcephalic idiot, Prince Charles, whose little, tapering head bobbed loathsomely up and down.

Faces bestial and hairy, wild-eyed and obscene glared at me and Gibbs as we stood looking down at poor Fred Hunter's broken body. They seemed to resent our normality, as though we had eavesdropped unbidden on a spectacle suitable to their perverse and distorted natures alone.

In the presence of gruesome death all that was sinister and abnormal in them surged shockingly to the surface. Some were obviously not to be trusted alone with that poor, broken thing on the ground. They would have lifted and examined it, have pawed it gloatingly, eliminating all clues."

Frank Belknap Long - "Carnival of Crawling Doom"

[G. S. Carnivals]

"Naturally he didn't have nerve enough to ask Magda to go through the funhouse with him. With incredible nerve and to everyone's surprise he invited Magda, quietly and politely, to go through the funhouse with him. 'I warn you, I've never been through it before,' he added, laughing easily; 'but I reckon we can manage somehow. The important thing to remember, after all, is that it's meant to be a funhouse; that is, a place of amusement. If people really got lost or injured or too badly frightened in it, the owner'd go out of business. There'd even be lawsuits. No character in a work of fiction can make a speech this long without interruption or acknowledgment from the other characters.'"

John Barth - "Lost in the Funhouse"

[Daisy]

From “The Next Sideshow” (1981), by Ramsey Campbell

Underfoot the path felt less like concrete than mud. Had the gardeners been moving earth, or had he missed his way? He stumbled onward, blinking; rain poured down his forehead into his eyes. Was that a shelter ahead, among the streaming trees? But there was no such building on his route home. Then he heard rain scuttling on metal. The dark shape was a caravan.

There were several, huddled like beasts beneath the trees. Raindrops traced veins through the dirt on their dim windows. Had the caravans any right to be there? They were robbing him of shelter. As he trudged past they rattled like maracas.

One pair of curtains was untidily parted. Beneath it, light slumped on the drowned twitching grass, and illuminated a section of a notice. Gray made out a few words: MAZE, FREAK SHOW, WELCOME. The letters squirmed under trickles of rain. Had the notice been laid there for passersby to read? It looked more as though it had fallen into the mud.

If the sideshows were open, perhaps he should take refuge there—but he’d never seen a freak show, and didn’t intend to start now. He knew deformity existed; that was no reason to become involved in its exploitation.

As he picked his way along the squelching path, he started. Why? It had only been a glimpse of a face peering between curtains. He hadn’t had time to distinguish it properly. It must have been his thoughts of freaks that had made the impression seem so unnatural.

The curtains had drooped shut now. Next to their caravan stood a low construction without wheels. Was it the freak show? No, he could just make out the sign that dangled slightly askew in the entrance: MIRROR MAZE.

The entrance was unlit. Within it, to the left, the cramped barred aperture of the paybox yawned, a cowl full of darkness. Sagging tendrils of his hair trained rain down his neck; his clothes and his eyebrows were sodden. He heard a new onslaught of rain rushing across the lake. Shivering, he dodged into the entrance.

Beside him a voice said, “Nowhere to go?”

[Bleak&Icy]

Spot might enjoy this one:




Vicente March y Marco (1859-1914)
Circus Performers At Rest
Oil on canvas
22 1/8 x 31 5/8 inches (56.5 x 80.6 cm)

[hopfrog]

There is nothing as silent as a sideshow at closing. The last of the hooting throngs, the laughing woman and crying babes, are gone. The group of children who suffer from physical ailments, their lame bodies twisted, their limbs so unruly, have limped away. I remember the child, his frame so twisted, who has such trouble holding onto his horse, and as my foot stays on the peddle that moves the carousel I tremble with fear that he will fall from his puppet-horse. But his smile! His wide and laughing mouth! I watch as the horses slow and stop, as the child's special friend helps his bent and twisted form down to the metal floor. I watch as he is placed into the cart in which, unable to walk, he is pulled by his fellows. I wave to him as he holds his spasmodic hand toward the horses and myself.

The lights of the wheel die out, and the distant coaster stops its mechanical roar. I unfasten the straps and roll down the flaps of tarp that shield my beasts at nightfall. I stand on the footrest of the horse on which the crippled child had smiled and unleash the final tarp, and I sit on that horse in the eerie darkness, surrounded by the frozen silhouettes of horses, these bestial mannequins. I sit, dreaming, while other operators have gone away to turn in their ticket boxes. There is a rustling outside the tarp, and as I return to wakefulness I see the form that slides beneath the heavy faded oilskin. A shaft of moonlight sneaks through the top of my ride, at the tarpaulin's small opening above me. It shines on the shape that creeps nearer, on the pale flesh that so resembles the substance of the tarp that encloses me within this place of shadow. It limps, this shape, to one particular horse, the one that has lost a foot, and which we are too poor to repair. It snuggles into the painted saddle and raises its monstrous hand unto the peek-a-boo moon. A noise comes from somewhere within the ride's mechanics -- an eerie musical sound that is unearthly; and as I cling to the frozen mane of my trembling horse, the ride begins to move.

The squat thing turns to look at me with jesting yellow eyes. It's wide mouth curls in bestial mirth as it points its talons particularly to me and waves.

[G. S. Carnivals]

"He wonders: will he become a regular person? Something has gone wrong; his vaccination didn't take; at the Boy-Scout initiation campfire he only pretended to be deeply moved, as he pretends to this hour that it is not so bad after all in the funhouse, and that he has a little limp. How long will it last? He envisions a truly astonishing funhouse, incredibly complex yet utterly controlled from a great central switchboard like the console of a pipe organ. Nobody had enough imagination. He could design such a place himself, wiring and all, and he's only thirteen years old. He would be its operator: panel lights would show what was up in every cranny of its cunning of its multifarious vastness; a switch-flick would ease this fellow's way, complicate that's, to balance things out; if anyone seemed lost or frightened, all the operator had to do was.

He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator - though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed."

John Barth - "Lost in the Funhouse"

[Daisy]

Brighton Pierrots (1915), by Walter Sickert

[Bleak&Icy]

Thomas Couture (1815-1879)
Pierrot on Trial
Oil on canvas, c.1863
12 5/8 x 15 inches (32.2 x 38.1 cm)
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland

[Bleak&Icy]

Thomas Couture (1815-1879)
Pierrot the Politician
Oil on canvas, c.1857
46 3/4 x 61 inches (119 x 155 cm)
Wallace Collection, London