For Specters and Spirits
By C. C. Rayne
WANTED: Living humans with a strong constitution. Oh, bless your heart, we don’t mean physically, although acrobats and athletes are most certainly in demand!
No—here at The Chilling Cirque for Specters and Spirits, we search for those whose sense of self can weather one vital, earthshaking truth: Ghosts are real, and they are dying for good entertainment.
Oh, you’re still reading? You want to know more?
All right, then. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Imagine that your life has ended. You’ve kicked the bucket. You’ve passed away. But instead of being done with the world, instead of being pulled into the deep undertow of all-consuming death...you just so happened to die with Unfinished Business up your sleeve. No no no, not regular old unfinished business! Everyone has that with them when they die. We mean real, true Unfinished Business—the type that leaves you restless and roaming and supremely unsettled. The type strong enough to tether your soul to this mortal coil, like a fishhook lodged in the flesh of an especially juicy catch.
And there you have it! That’s how ghosts came to be. They’ve got vendettas; they’ve got agendas; they’ve got schemes; they’ve got obsessions. They have it all, folks. Some of them have bloody spikes in place of fingers. Some of them are wreathed in thorns and moldy flowers. Some of them are made of nothing more than smoke and cinders. When you step onto the stage of our round-top tent, you will look out into the audience and a throng of undead souls will fill the seats.
Oh, they will watch you. They will judge you. They will see you, and the fragile, paper-thin soul that beats between your ribs will shudder, frozen with total and annihilating fear.
But don’t worry. Stage fright is a natural part of the theatrical experience. At The Chilling Cirque for Specters and Spirits, we host dedicated seminars for our performers on how to fight nerves and uncover your truest, most confident self. As a union-compliant employer, we pride ourselves on prioritizing mental health at all times.
Why should you apply to work for us? It’s simple. We need you. And more importantly, they need you: to distract and delight them, to entertain and enthrall them. It takes living folks to cut lumber and raise tents and purchase permits. It takes living folks to juggle fire and climb the aerial silks. Ghosts can’t do any of these things, you see. They have no strength left to take up tools, no tongues left with which to speak, but their souls ache for something new. When you’re dead, days turn to months to years to centuries. Apathy curdles and overflows. Unfinished Business becomes a purposeless burn, an empty need. The spirits find themselves wandering, endlessly searching for some way to touch life again.
We have seen it, on occasion—the remnants of the humans unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Skulls pierced with long spikes, throats choked by itching vines, eyes scorched to voids of ash when a ghost unveiled its face.
None of this injury is malicious. It is naught but specters seeking to feel something real. These acts are done with the same innocent curiosity as a child that reaches out a hand, hoping for someone to hold.
But the bodies still bleed, and the ghosts stay unsatisfied.
There is no way to remove these spirits from the world. This we know. They are filled with yawning hungers that cannot be slaked, canyons of thirst that can never be filled. Everywhere they go, they kill all those they touch. These specters may glide slow, but they are unstoppable. They will wander the earth, restless and roaming, until humanity is naught but dust and bones. And then they will keep wandering, until the sun is old and red and big enough to eclipse the sky.
All we can do is distract them for a while.
Thus, the circus! At The Chilling Cirque for Specters and Spirits, you will be part of something greater than yourself. Our employees report an overwhelming sense of job satisfaction because they know they are contributing to a selfless, humanitarian mission: the saving of human lives.
While inside the many tents and covered avenues of the Cirque, we are proud to report that no ghost has yet harmed a living person. Their desire for connection and vivacity seems to be sated by the simple joys they find within these walls. Actors recite tearful monologues on makeshift stages. Sword-swallowers ingest whole armories without a wince. Ringmasters open their arms wide and toss their top hats in the air.
And from the seats, we all feel the eyes of the ghosts trained on us, these terrible ghosts who watch and judge and see. We are frightened, but they stay docile and quiet—dead silent, in fact. A perfect audience. They are content to observe; they are content not to participate. For a moment, they are distracted.
Or for a moment, they have found peace.
We exist together in that space, the living and the dead, spared from our respective fates. We balance together without quite touching, like an acrobat on the highest, thinnest wire. And as long as the circus runs, we will not look down.
Would you like to join us?
C. C. Rayne is a writer, actor, and musician based on the East Coast of the USA. A lover of all things weird and discontented, C.C.’s work seeks to blend the magical with the mundane. You can find more of C.C’s work (current and upcoming) in Grim & Gilded, Wyldblood Press, Tales from the Moonlit Path, Soft Star Magazine, bloodbathhate magazine, Eye to the Telescope and Word West Revue.