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Under the dark cover of night, Marlene stepped into the large red striped tent. Her eyes scanned the empty seats where hours before almost all the residents of Piffling gasped and applauded at the feats of her cherished performers. All except the one she had wanted the most, her absence punctuated every act with a heavy blow from her whip, as if each sound would command her back to her.
She stepped to the middle of the ring where crimson aerialist silk swung slightly under the golden glow of a spotlight that the hired hands had forgotten to turn off. Tugging the loop of fabric at her eye level, she grasped the sides and climbed up, placing her foot onto the loop bottom. She swung herself back and forth absently, closing her eyes, pretending that she was as talented as the people she found so beautiful and bright. The ringmistress was quite good at pretending, pretending to be royalty, pretending that someone could ever love her in return. The fabric twisted, world revolving around her until her balance was lost, and she fell onto the ground.
Something clattered alongside her, the ringmistress looked down to see that her golden crown pin had fallen from her lapel. She stared at it with her brows furrowed as she picked it up, she searched for the metal backing. Groaning, she knocked her top hat from her head, digging her fingers in her hair in an attempt to gather herself.
Picking up her top hat as she stumbled up, she took hold of the long stretch of fabric, eyes drawn to the tightrope walkers platform. Silk still in hand, she climbed up the tall ladder, careful with her foot placement as she reached the towering platform. Her heart pounded against her rib cage as she formed a knot around the loop, placing it around her neck. Her breath was ragged, her shoulders hunched as she took deep breaths. Body trembling, she stood up, taking a step forward closer to the edge.
Her heart had been made of nails and broken glass, only one person had been able to remove them; she had not removed them carefully, but rather in the way the ringmistress deserved. She closed her eyes, almost absently moving her arms to and fro as if presenting an act. In her own mind the blurry forms of her circus contained the audience made up of her performers. Behold, the marvelous Marlene Magdalena, tyrant of the Piffling Traveling Circus, watch her as she liberates them from her iron grasp. When they struck up the band, and struck up the matches, the fanfare would be not a celebration of her life but of her death, the end of a tyrannical era. An erruption of imaginary applause, a melancholic smile tugging on her lips.
It was time for her to take her final bow.
It was so simple the way she fell. Render her tears, a mortician's cold hands pushed her from the platform.
Antigone pressed herself into the darkest corner of the mortuary, refusing to believe it was true. Her eyes locked on her rusty embalming table, the form hidden under the stained white sheet beckoned her. Obligation and curiosity pulled her to the table, carefully pulling back the sheet.
In life Marlene was almost always scowling. On the rare occasion she did smile, it was the most charming one Antigone had ever seen. Though her eyes are closed she did not have the appearance of sleep, she plainly looked like any other corpse she had embalmed. Even so, Antigone felt a sense of dread she had not felt in years, the kind that stains your skin, haunting your childhood home.
She studied Marlene’s face, brushing an eyelash off her bitter cheek. She tucked Marlene’s blonde hair behind her ear before taking a step back, addled by her action. Never in her life did she ever desire to see the ringmistress in this state, never imagining someone who seemed to her to be immortal would be laying on her table. Most of all, it never occurred to her that darkness could surround Marlene, as she always stood so proudly under the shimmer of the lights. She wondered if she ended the show with a good-night or a good-bye, perhaps both fit well. Did she ever reach out to anyone, did the ringmistress even have anyone to reach out to at all?
Though she had no frame of reference, no letter outlining how to undertake her funeral, Antigone promised herself she would do the best she could, even in death she did not want to disappoint her.
Taking up her needle injector, she anchored the ringmistress’s mouth in place, skillfully manipulating it to a softer frown, as a smile seemed so disingenuous. Pulling the sheet off of her a bit more, her eyes locked on a tattoo of a rose stem on her collarbone, she gently ran her fingers over it before shaking her head. Taking a step back, she pressed her hands to her temples, growing disturbed by her admiration. It was too late for her to be thinking of her in such a way.
With a shaking hand she cut an incision near her clavicle, letting the blood flow out of her. As it did, she stared. What a waste of a life. She could have been so much more, and now she was nothing, her body would eventually rot away even if embalmed. There would be nothing except a gravestone etched with her name and her cold rotting body beneath the earth. The day that Marlene Magdalena stopped existing, the world should have ended right then and there, at precisely the time her heart stopped beating and yet still it went on.
She turned to her dusty shelves lined neatly with scented embalming fluid. Ranging from flowers to the scent of a new book, her fingers lingered on one that smelled of fairy floss, it seemed too gauche. Coffee seemed better, coffee was popular in Slovakia she knew for certain, it would linger fine with the rancid stench of cigarette smoke that stained Marlene’s skin.
Gently setting the machinery into place, she took a deep breath before switching on her machine. She closed her eyes as she massaged her arms and legs to ensure the fluid flowed evenly throughout, unable to bring herself to look at her any longer.
Once she was done, she took up the clothes the strongman had given her, not the same crimson jacket she was found in, but rather a black tailcoat made of silk, accented in gold. The rest was the same.
Usually she would force Rudyard to help her dress the body, when Georgie came she would be the one. She felt that it was her job alone now, as she heard a muffled argument from above between her brother and Chapman, and the banging of Georgie’s hammer echoed through the house as she built Marlene’s coffin.
Sighing, she could not avoid this task any longer. With a few struggles in lifting her dead weight, it all went on without much of a hitch. It was buttoning her shirt that began to bother her, she tried to remember the ringmistress who hated her for breaking a promise; not the one who fell to her knees for her, telling her she loved her.
She closed the gold chain clasps of her jacket, unsure of what to do with Marlene’s top hat. The chipped red nail polish on her fingers drew her attention. Taking a cotton ball, she gently rubbed off the old paint with alcohol. Holding her cold, now embalmed hand, Antigone carefully painted each of her nails, ensuring no polish stained her skin. Even once she was finished, she held onto Marlene's hand for longer than professionalism would have allowed.
Georgie’s distinct knock told her that all was ready, and they carefully moved the ringmistress into the red wood stained coffin. Antigone looped her whip around, closing Marlene’s fingers around it before they closed the coffin.
Circus performers milled around Funn Funerals, unease fogged everyone’s minds. Never could they have imagined the day their circus would not have their ringmistress. As harsh as she was, they never wanted her gone. The change they hoped for in her manifested in such a way that there was not one among them that did not cast an eye behind in the hope that the ringmistress would return to her own kind. Where had their ringmistress had gone, they could not fathom. The performers hung from the open jagged maw of grief where no one could be spared.
Antigone stood away from everyone, eyes locked on the coffin. Something glittered under the lights, she approached it, bending down to find a crown pin made of gold. Though the backing was lost, she gently stuck in on Marlene’s lapel. She did not believe in such things as souls and ghosts, but for Marlene’s sake she hoped she was in a kingdom all for her own, surrounded by people who adored her with no fear in their hearts.
The aerialist's silks now cut from their framework, draped over the ringmistress's coffin. Antigone took a step forward, placing Marlene’s top hat on the lid in place of a bouquet.