Victor Slammenstein was upset. He had been a member of the Jungefrauzen Family Circus for over twenty years — marrying into the family when he was a youth of 16 years. The circus was his life — his wife never shaved her face weekdays or on Saturday. He’d given up a promising career as a hamburglar to marry Uza and hit the road without so much as a honeymoon.

When he sat in the trailer — as he did now — he often wondered how his twelve brothers and one sister were getting along. Were they happy? Did they have children? Would he ever see them again?

He gazed down at his tiny fists lumped onto the end of great lumberjack arms — opening and closing them…blinking. Uza pulled the door off its hinges and sauntered in wearing her full costume: a torn black leather biker jacket, red and yellow plaid skirt, wooly legs and face. She glared at him as he continued to sulk in the corner atop a foot stool. It was a stare that harkened back many bearded amazonian bowhunting generations. It said, on your feet at once.

Victor stood up and cracked his back one vertebrae at a time. The hollow pop disgusted Uza’s face — her lower lip jutted forth like a baracuda.

“YOU’RE LATE FOR THE BENDING!”

Victor’s head dropped. He opened his mouth — showing long jagged teeth stained grey. A groan stuttered forth from his bowels and he loped out into the light of the dusty afternoon.

He was weary. Weary from bending steel with his cavernous mouth. Weary from wrestling grizzly bears with fists naturally selected to steal sausage. Still, he slogged on toward the big tent where a crowd awaited him. Another week, another welfare Disneyland.

Ringermaster cracked his whip moustache and the lions snapped back into their cages. The stage was his. Victor vaulted his lovely bride into the air with one arm — her precariously tiny feet filling the palm of his dainty hand. His blonde flowing chest hair cast a glare onto the awe-filled audience. She belted out a soprano wail as the walls of the tent ruffled clack, clack, clack. No lyrics, but a full fledged wail for the sake of split ends. She held the note loud and full — her meaty throat engaged in physical combat with the stale air encircling.

Victor’s boulder shoulders could have heaved her from the center of the ring and into the stands, but his hands shook violently under her considerable weight — wrist tendons bouncing and jostling nerve pain. He tried to think of anything else: the poratable cow industry in the redlight district and it’s retroactive effects on tourism, rage at the ringmaster’s smug tight pants demeanor, healthy happy fat children innocently chewing frankfurters — but it was inevitable: Uza fell.

Victor’s Slammenstein genes gave way — a wrist crumpling that left his hand limp, useless. She slammed head-first onto the straw lined mud floor. A silent audience heard the soul shattering snap. Victor ran.

He chugged out the flap and into the cool evening as a rumbling murmur erupted into pandamonium back within. Still, he didn’t look back and headed down the hill toward the train tracks. Victor couldn’t tell time, but lucky for him: the 6:05 was right on time.

Hurtling toward the boxcar, he felt lighter…light as a bird’s impact with a screen door. Laying mangled on the track, he saw flashes of bright light, happy faces cheering, and all the meat a young boy could eat.