The repeated claims that whatever dwelled inside the white trailer was ALIVE reminded me of Barnum & Bailey’s fiasco, similarly screamed promises painted on signs that lead paying customers into a dark room only to find a mummified monkey torso fused to a tuna’s tail. It had been advertised as a mermaid and while it was clearly not, people seemed angrier that the subject was dead rather than a scam – as though a live woman with a skirt for a tail would have been a better deal.
I approached the trailer and the booth at its center where an uninterested old man waited inside, flipping the pages of a comic book with calloused thumbs. Another sign on the front of his booth read AS REAL AS YOU OR ME!
“Excuse me, sir,” I said, “what is this?”
He jerked one of those thumbs upwards, not looking at me.
I leaned back to see a big sign above his booth and couldn’t be sure how I’d missed it. In huge, proud letters, it read:
LADY ALLIGATOR!
It’s ALIVE, I thought inexplicably.
“One, please,” I said, putting my money on the counter. Without breaking eye contact with his comic he took the coins and slid a ticket towards me. He licked his callous and turned another page.
I began to go inside, then paused. The day had grown almost eerily quiet. The boardwalk had emptied out and I couldn’t see anyone else frequenting any of the other smaller freak show trailers.
“Slow day?” I asked, and he shrugged.
Not wanting to bother him further I walked up the stairs to the right of his booth. They lead to a corridor that turned a corner, leaving behind the dull sunlight of the spring day and plunging me into darkness.
A sudden acrid smell struck me. It was not unlike the vague scent of shit that seems to surround the three rings of a circus, but something else was there too, an oddly alluring undertone of perfumed oils. The two odors struggled for dominance and neither could get the upper hand, leaving the trailer smelling of an uncomfortable animal sexuality.
I groped along the wall, determined not to let the cheap scare factor get to me. It was how they did things, these carnies, they robbed you of your basic sense of safety so they could take you off guard when their sham freaks finally made an appearance. I wondered if they’d painted Lady Alligator green for the right effect and laughed breathlessly.
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