Two-Headed Lamb

Peter skipped among dead leaves and rubbish. He hummed along to the static in the air.

Carnival debris swirled, dust devil scrap in the wind. Torn ticket stubs, sweets wrappers, hand-drawn posters: Two-headed lamb! Rides! Dr. Zafieri the hypnotist! All the wonders of the great wide world, here, in Peter’s little nowhere town.

And he’d missed it.

He’d wanted to bring Annie. But they’d had a fight, and now the carnival was gone, kicking up dust on its way to the next little nowhere town.

It’s alright, Peter thought, and he smiled. He swung his pocket watch at his side - his lucky pocket watch, the one Annie gave him. I’ll bring her flowers, a soda, I’ll buy her a new perfume. We’ll make up and go to the movies, we’ll watch the sunset, I’ll kiss her and all will be well again.

He whistled and mused at the town’s silence as he strolled into the market square. He sensed a communal hangover, a village exhausted by last night’s carnival frivolity.

***

The shops on Main weren’t open yet, though the sun had been up for hours. Bloomwell’s Bouquets was actually shuttered; Peter tilted his head, confused at the boarded-up windows, the dusty stoop, the broken sign.

That’s okay. I’ll pick Annie some wildflowers from the roadside. Daisies and marigolds, tied with a ribbon.

“Hey, you!”

Peter turned toward the voice and tripped, a twinge in his knee making him stumble.

“Good morning,” he said to the approaching man.

“What you got on you?”

The man’s voice was mischievous, disbelieving; he seemed so happy to see Peter, eager for a fellow with whom to make merriment.

“On me? Sir, I-”

The man leapt at Peter.

Dirty hands scrabbled at him, spidery in his pockets. The man grunted in Peter’s face with breath foul and smoky. Peter stepped backwards, surprised; he tripped over the curb and fell, the man still upon him. He gripped his pocket watch, hiding it, and waited for the mugging to end.

The man soon realized that Peter had nothing of value. He snarled and scurried away, muttering about the impolite have-nothingness of this street-stroller; such brazenly meatless prey!

Peter sat in the dirt, dumbfounded and a little embarrassed.

A vagrant from the carnival, he thought. He pitied the man.

He picked himself up, ignoring the pain in his knee, forgetting the cause of it.

Wildflowers. Soda. Perfume. Annie.

He yanked some dandelions from a crack in the path and walked on.

***

The soda shop was gone.

Rubble and rust. The stores next to it, too: imploded and looted, abandoned—unrecognizable as his own distorted reflection in a broken window.

How wild was this carnival?

Peter gaped at the ruins.

No soda, then.

He limped toward the perfumery.

***

The rock narrowly missed his head.

A gang of miscreant children had him surrounded. They hid in burrows and scampered under thorny bushes, screaming nonsense ululations to each other. Grease painted, bare-chested beanpoles in formation like a wartime military.

Peter had stumbled into their kingdom.

They marched him to their palace: a smoking pile of tires. They shoved him to the ground at the feet of the Orphan King.

“Trespasser!”

Peter didn’t know how to appease the children. He didn’t have any of his own yet, but he relished the idea of raising a family with Annie. This would be good practice, playing this silly game of theirs.

A little girl approached him with blunt scissors.

She sheared him violently, unskillfully. His hair fell to the ground, grayer than he thought it would be.

The children snatched up the hair and squirreled it away somewhere in their tire-castle. “Nest, nest!” they shouted as they disappeared. “If you come back, we take the rest!”

He found his way back to the road. His scalp bled into his eyes.

He worried about seeing Annie in such a state. But his leg hurt quite a lot now; he couldn’t walk home to clean himself up first. He had to get this over with.

He checked his pocket watch. The hands didn’t move, but that was okay. It was still lucky.

***

Peter entered the perfumery, relieved to find it open. But instead of dried flowers and lovely phials of fragrant oil, the dusty shelves held acrid salves and bowls of soaking nettle.

The perfumer appeared from under a counter, brandishing his pestle like a weapon. His eyes widened when he saw Peter, and he set the instrument down. He looked so old. The carnival festivities sure had taken their toll!

“Hello, old chap,” Peter said. “I need something for my girl.”

The perfumer's eyes narrowed. “Who's that, now?” he rasped, suspicious.

“Annie,” Peter said slowly. “Same girl as always.”

The perfumer's expression softened. He placed a tiny phial into Peter’s palm.

Peter sniffed. Jasmine, cotton, cleanliness, nostalgia. She’ll love it.

“Sprinkle it on her and say hello for me,” the perfumer said.

Peter thanked him, bemused. He straightened his dandelions and headed to Annie’s house.

***

He let himself in. He was always welcome here.

His footsteps echoed through the empty foyer, the empty parlor. The grandfather clock in the drawing room ticked out the time to no one.

“Hello?” he called. “Annie?”

Tick-tick-tick.

The clock’s pendulum oscillated beyond the blood in his eyes.

Peter raised his pocket watch and swung it to match the metronome. He watched it sway—and remembered.

***

The traveling carnival's shabby glamour is the only thing anyone who’s left in this town can look forward to. Peter drags himself out of his hovel to go. He pays the hypnotist with a coin he found in the sewer. He’s been saving it for this.

Tick-tick-tick.

Dr. Zafieri swings the pocket watch. The lucky pocket watch, a gift from a girl long gone. Candlelight flickers on the purple curtains of the hypnotists’ tent.

“Watch. Sleep. Forget, old man. Then wake.

"See the world with young eyes. No pain, only promise.

"I can’t turn back time, but I can take it away—for awhile.”