My Dearest Aunt Frances,
If you are reading this I am already many miles from town. I know you've seen this day coming long before I did. I saw the look in your eyes when they came to inquire about me the summer before I started school, and again when they came during the drought the year before last. I saw it last week when Mr. Halloway came to tell us they were back in town, and every day since. You know I don't belong here. You know I have to go where I can be with people like me.
Your good velvet church coat that went missing is with me. I took and made it into a fine show outfit. I even used the satin lining to make a matching hat! And don't go looking for your good linen tablecloth - I took it down to the barn and painted it up for my show banner. I also used a ball of your good red sock yarn to make the tassels. It has my likeness on it, with a scroll at the top with my name, and fine gold edges, just like the ones we saw at the parade. Oh, Aunt Frances, you'd be so proud of it if you didn't know what it was painted on!
I've been saving my earnings from helping Mr. Cooger at the tavern, so I left some money on the mantle to pay you back for what I took. After that I have just enough to get me by until I can start earning my keep. But don't worry, Aunt Frances, you know everyone already wants to get a good look at me, but now they have to pay a whole nickel!
You taught me well and cared for me as best you could. I'll keep my wits about me and write when I can. And you know I'll be back every year in the summer... only now I'll be the star of Cirque Macabre!
Yours always,
Bug |
"A presence dark invades the fair
And gives the horses ample scare
Chaos reigns and panic fills the air
When Something Wicked This Way Comes..."
Leave the day-to-day world of routine and convention behind, if only for one unforgettable weekend, and run away to join the traveling carnival, Cirque Macabre, where fortune tellers, grifters, burlesque girls, acrobats, jugglers, magicians, contortionists, the art of the sideshow, and all manner of oddities and singularities eccentric, unusual, and diverse are not the exception, but the norm.
Taking our inspiration from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Carnivàle, Carnival of Souls, The Elephant Man, and the ragtag street-fair scenes in Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norell, among many others, our proposed theme for Convergence 13 Seattle draws from literary, historical, and cinematic settings ranging from the 1800's through Depression-era traditions of American and European traveling sideshows, carnivals, medicine shows, Vaudeville, and Victorian and Industrial Age obsessions with the unusual, exotic, metaphysical, and occult.
We hope you'll join us as our guests as we turn the "dark and peculiar traveling carnival rolls into town" meme of our collective Gothic subconscious into ephemeral reality! |
