The money was hot in his pocket. The first thing Allen wanted to buy was cheese-on-a-stick, which was basically a corn dog with melted cheese on the inside instead of a hot dog wiener. He found a concession stand almost immediately, despite the crowd of people, and got in line. A bright neon sign advertised corn dogs and nachos and potato tornados and lemonade and cotton candy and, of course, cheese-on-a-stick. And Allen could smell it all.
Nothing smelled better than the fair, he thought. Faintly, he could smell the funnel cakes and turkey legs from their respective stands. He smelled popcorn and smoked corn-on-the-cob. Even the scent of the farm animals, brought by the Future Farmers of America, smelled good to him. They smelled like the fair.
Allen made his order, paid the required five bucks, and received a cheese-on-a-stick with steam still rising from the fried batter. He blew on it and held the stick with a napkin while it cooled. When the teen working the booth told him to move along and stop holding up the line, he went to explore what the fair had to offer.
There were many vendors selling different things. One selling birdhouses and another selling t-shirts and another selling “beautiful lakefront property.” None of these interested Allen, of course, and the grumpy looks of the salespeople behind these booths weren’t very inviting, anyway.
Coming to the area of the fair where all the rides and games were located, Allen found himself at another ticket booth. This one was where you bought your tickets to play the games and ride the rides. This was where the real fun started.
There was a line, of course, so Allen ate his cheese-on-a-stick while he waited, savoring every last bit of it, then chewing at the fried breading stuck to the wood. He was almost to the booth, where a father was arguing with his son about the number of tickets he wanted. The guy manning the booth had his arms crossed and rolled his eyes. Finally, the kid won, and his dad bought thirty tickets.
“How many you want?” the guy at the ticket booth said to Allen, not smiling.
“How many tickets will twenty dollars buy?”
The guy pointed to a hand-painted sign. “One dollar per ticket. Unless you pay fifty. Then you get an armband, and you can do all the rides and games as much as you like for free, even the great Ferris wheel and the Bumpity Bumper Cars.” He recited this in extreme monotone. He’d clearly memorized it for the job, and now probably spewed it out without a thought.
The fifty-dollar armband sounded like a pretty good deal to Allen, but he didn’t have fifty bucks. He only had half that and wanted to buy some cotton candy or a turkey leg or something before he left. He handed the twenty over and the ticket guy shoved over four strips of five tickets.
“Thank you,” Allen said.
The ticket guy didn’t respond.
Allen made his way through the games and rides. He threw darts at balloons and picked a pair of cheap sunglasses as his prize, hanging them on the collar of his t-shirt. He missed landing a ring around a bottle, but the vendor wordlessly let him grab a hard candy from a bowl, anyway.
Allen sucked on the candy and walked around, taking in the lights and the sounds of circus music and the arcade. He watched families enjoying different things: the bumper cars and the mini-boat races. He watched a couple of men competing for the highest score on the punching bag. He watched pretty girls walking around and laughing.
The Spiniker was the first ride he rode, and it made him dizzy. He enjoyed it immensely, watching the whole fair turn into a blur of lights as he went round and round. He rode the Crazy Worm—which wasn’t as crazy as its name implied, but was still a decent mini-coaster for a fair. And then he came to the Ferris wheel.
His stomach got butterflies as he looked up at it. The wheel turned slowly, then stopped, causing some girls near the top to scream as if they were trapped up there. It really was the best thing about any fair or carnival, Allen figured, the Ferris wheel. What good would a fair be without one?
As patrons began unloading, the line started moving and eventually it was Allen’s turn to hand over three tickets and climb the stairs to board his very own, private cart. (Last year he’d been stuck in the cart with a couple of lovebirds who kept kissing and talking ridiculous love stuff.)
The attendee ordered Allen to buckle in, then slammed the metal door closed and latched it, and the cart moved up a tick as someone else boarded. The cart had a wheel in the middle which allowed him to spin around with a simple twist. Allen did this a few times but stopped as he started getting higher. What he loved about the Ferris wheel was the view.
Allen reached the peak moments later, and he looked over the fair with wonder. Everyone scurried about like little ants. The wind was blowing at this height, ruffling his hair and causing goosebumps on his skin.
He saw the Crazy Worm zigzagging around its tracks, saw a couple of kids battling it out with bumper cars, saw the building where they had art exhibits and folks out behind it enjoying a smoke break. He saw the roof of the pavilion where the FFA was showing off livestock, saw the many food vendors and vendors of toys and gadgets and souvenirs, saw the lighted parking lot where he’d been dropped off.
Just before the Ferris wheel started moving him down, Allen saw something else—a small canvas tent wedged between the arcade and the Toot-Toot Kiddie Train. The tent was olive green, almost blending in with the grass, and a man sat on a chair out in front of it with his legs crossed.
Probably just a breakroom for vendors and fair employees or something, Allen figured, not noticing any neon or flashing bulbs directing customers to that location. There was a sign of some sort next to the closed flap of the tent, but he couldn’t make out what it said from this distance.
On his second time around on the Ferris wheel, Allen could make it out no better, so he decided he would investigate the canvas tent when the ride was over. He checked his phone, noting he still had at least an hour before his mom arrived.
Allen disembarked when his time came and walked through the crowds of people lining up for their turn. The fair was getting busier as the stars came out. More teenagers now and less little kids. Deer flies buzzed around lights, and off in the distance between rides, Allen could see fireflies blinking off and on. He reached the canvas tent after avoiding five different vendors’ pleas for him to play their game and win a great prize.
OLEN THE GORILLA, the sign—a dry erase board—read.
“Well, hey there, young man!” the man sitting in front of the tent said, putting away a pocketknife he was using to pick at his fingernails. He stood up. “Are you enjoying the fair?”
“Yes, sir,” Allen said.
“Well, good! The fair is all about entertaining young fellas like yourself, I reckon.”
Allen smiled awkwardly, looked at the sign, then back at the man.
“So, young man—my name is Ernest, by the way—are you interested in seeing Olen the Gorilla? He can be pretty fierce—we brought him straight from the wild Congo—but we have him locked up. You’ll be plenty safe.”
“Yes, sir. How many tickets is it?”
“My young man, it’s only three little tickets. Then you can go on in and have a looksie. I’ll even let you feed him a banana. I imagine Olen the Gorilla is a bit hungry right about now.” Ernest looked at his watch as if to verify this.
Allen reached in his pocket, bringing out the last of his tickets. He only had two. His shoulders slumped and he held his hand open with the two tickets lying there like crumpled leaves, wishing he could make another materialize.
“Do you only got the two?” Ernest said.
Allen nodded, feeling—embarrassingly—like crying.
“Hey, young man, don’t you worry. I’ll take the two. Two will work just fine.” He took Allen’s two tickets, stuffing them in his own pocket, then reached into a paper sack beside the chair and pulled out a ripe banana. “Follow me, young man. Let’s go see the Congo’s own Olen! No pictures, by the way, so keep your cellphone put away, please.”
He pulled back the canvas flap and disap
peared into the tent. Allen followed.
The first thing to catch his eye was the lighting of the place. There were what appeared to be kerosene lanterns hanging in four different spots, giving the inside of the tent a yellowish glow. On closer inspection, however, Allen noticed little yellow lightbulbs inside the lanterns. Hay was strewn about on the ground, and various tools one might expect to carry on an expedition were propped here and there. In the center of everything was the wrought iron cage. And in the cage was… the gorilla?
It was seated on the hay-covered floor of the cage, its back turned to Allen and Ernest. But, to Allen, it didn’t look like the gorillas he was familiar with from television and books and the internet. There wasn’t the thick coat of black fur one envisioned when they thought of gorillas.
Instead, it looked… very hairy, yes… but not furry. And through the thick layer of dark hair, Allen could see white flesh. He’d never heard of a gorilla with white skin. It was possible such things existed, of course. Allen was pretty far from an expert in such things. He caught a glimpse of the gorilla’s hairy ass-crack, with strands of hay sticking out from between, and quickly looked away.
“Hey there, Olen, big fella,” Ernest said, talking to the gorilla in the same tender voice he’d used when offering to let Allen in with just two tickets. “I brought a young man to see you. Can you turn around for us?”
Allen noticed that the top of the gorilla’s head had a bald spot, a little pale circle amidst the tangle of black hair. His dad had a similar bald spot. The head turned, the eye—looking very much like a human eye—peering over the gorilla’s shoulder at Ernest. Its head jerked back in the direction it’d been looking, as if it had no intention of turning around.
“Oh, come on now, Olen. If you turn around and say hi, we’ll give you a banana. What do you say to that?”
The “gorilla” spun his head back around quickly, its brow furrowed. Ernest was holding up the banana, waggling it the way one does a toy to entice a baby or puppy. Quickly, the gorilla spun around, hopping to his feet, his legs bent, his clinched fists walking forward on the hay.
There was absolutely no question now—this was a man. The hairiest man Allen had ever seen, without question, but a man all the same. Black hair covered his arms, legs, chest, and much of his face, which had a full beard and unibrow and even hair on the tops of his ears. But he was certainly a man. He bore the nose of a man and the receding hairline of a man and had the beer belly of a man, even—Allen hated himself for looking at it—the circumcised penis of a man.
“That’s it, Olen,” Ernest said, then turned to Allen. “What do you think, young man? Pretty amazing, isn’t he?”
“He…” Allen started, not sure what kind of gag was being played on him here. “He’s a man, though.”
“Huh? A man? That’s Olen the Gorilla, straight from the Congo.”
Olen grunted and pounded his fists on the hay. He was staring intently at the banana.
“But…” Allen, perplexed, didn’t know what to say. So, he just repeated his original statement. “He’s a man.”
Ernest looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “Young man, have you ever seen a gorilla? A real-life gorilla, I mean, up close and personal like this.”
“No, but—”
“Well, that explains a little bit. This here is a genuine Congo gorilla. Straight out of the Congo, you understand. He’s a gorilla, through and through. Ain’t that right, Olen.”
Olen huffed, pounded his fists, and snorted, causing a yellow booger to get caught in his mustache. Allen looked at him with wide-eyed wonderment, watching Olen’s muscles flex in his shoulders and jaw. Gorilla or not, he was a massive man, looking every bit as savage as a real beast of the jungle. He pounded his fist again, harder this time, his stare growing angry.
“All right now, Olen,” Ernest said, “all right. How about if our new friend here gives you the banana. Is that good with you, Olen?”
Allen’s heart nearly leapt out of his mouth when he heard this proposal. Likely, he wouldn’t have wanted to feed a real gorilla, for fear of having his hand snatched off; but now this man wanted him to feed another man—a naked man—a banana, as if it were no different from giving a duck a piece of bread at the city park. He felt hot all of a sudden and his hands grew sweaty. He swallowed and looked up at Ernest.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Allen said. “You can feed him. I’ll watch.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s all part of the experience. And there’s no need to be afraid. Ol’ Olen looks pretty fearsome—I’ll give him that—but he’s as sweet and harmless as a newborn kitten. Anyhow, he’s in the cage. Nothing to worry about.”
He held the banana out to Allen.
Olen grunted, moving closer to the bars, his eyes never leaving the banana.
“Are… are you sure?”
“Go on now, young man. It’ll be fine.”
Reluctantly, Allen took the banana from Ernest. “Do I need to open it for him?”
Ernest laughed at this. “Do you need to peel it, you mean? Well, he’ll eat it either way. But he prefers it peeled, yes.”
Allen swallowed loudly, then began peeling the banana. It was ripe, overly so, and felt mushy in his hands. He would never eat such a banana. But, he supposed, gorillas—or guys who acted like gorillas or gorillas who looked like guys or whatever—probably liked them just fine all mushy. They were sweeter that way, his mom had told him once.
Peel-peel-peel-flump!
The top half of the banana fell to the ground and splatted amongst the hay. Allen gasped, then looked up with horrified eyes at Olen. Olen stared down at the mushy mess beyond his side of the bars with his own horrified eyes, his mouth hanging open in shock, exposing a silver filling in one of his teeth.
“Arrrr! Bu! Bu! Bu!” Olen roared, his eyes never leaving the ruined half of fruit. His fists pounded against the ground repeatedly.
Allen backed away nervously, the other half of the banana all but forgotten in his hand.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Ernest assured them both. “No worries. That banana ain’t ruined by any means. Olen, settle on down. I’ll scoop it up for you.”
There was a shovel propped against the canvas, and Ernest grabbed it. He scooped up the banana, along with a bunch of hay, and dumped it through the bars right in front of Olen, who looked down at it with an ever-increasing expression of frustration on his face.
“Mah!” he yelled and pounded his fist into the mush. A piece of banana puree flew through the bars and landed on Allen’s cheek. He wiped it away. Olen began punching the mush and shoving it and any sticky hay back outside the bars.
“Now that’s uncalled for, Olen,” Ernest said, sounding amused. “The banana was still perfectly fine. Go on, young man, give him the rest. I guess he’s a tad on the irritable side this evening.”
Allen looked at Ernest, unsure. Olen looked more than irritable, in his opinion. He may not be your typical gorilla, but he looked plenty big enough and mean enough to rip a kid’s arm off. He had a sudden vision of this actually happening, and the gorilla then gnawing on his amputated arm like a giant turkey leg from the concessions.
“Go on,” Ernest urged.
“Okay,” Allen said meekly. Reluctantly, he stepped forward, holding out the banana in his trembling right hand. He eased to the bars and stuck what was left of the banana between them, his arm stretched to its limit, his body as far away from the cage as possible.
The banana was snatched from his hand in a flash, almost too fast for Allen to see it happening. It was in his grasp one second, gone the next, with only a little smear of banana mush remaining in the crease of his index finger.
Olen held it angrily, squishing it in his own massive right hand, his lip curled, his eyes glaring at Allen. And then they seemed to soften. The scowl evaporated from his face and he grunted something quietly, almost as if he was saying thank you or making amends. Then he stuffed the smooshed banana in his mouth, along with hal
f the peel, noisily chewing and swallowing it down.
Olen threw aside the part of the peel he hadn’t eaten and stood—hunched over like any regular gorilla, his fists on the floor of the cage, his legs bent—and looked at Allen, not a trace of anger left in his eyes.
“There now,” Ernest said cheerfully, “that wasn’t so bad.”
“I guess he liked that banana,” Allen agreed, relieved.
Olen, without moving, urinated on the hay, then grunted something. He was still looking at Allen.
Ernest led Allen out of the tent, thanking him for coming to see Olen the Gorilla, “straight from the Congo”. Allen considered questioning the man about the validity of these claims, but he couldn’t think of a way to do it without sounding obnoxious. So he simply thanked the man, put his hands in his pockets, and walked back toward the concessions.
He felt dazed, as if he were in a dream. What on earth had he just witnessed? Was it really some sort of Congo gorilla that looked almost—no, not almost—looked exactly human? He guessed anything was possible. He tried to put the image of Olen peeing out of his mind. That was the worst part. At least he didn’t drop a deus, though.
What an odd thing to have at a county fair.
Allen found a food vendor that had pretty much everything, except corn dogs and cheese-on-a-stick, so he got in line. He only had five bucks left, so he ended up just getting cotton candy and a lemonade. The zit-faced kid working the stand was rude, and he didn’t put enough ice in the lemonade, but it still tasted great.
Sitting down at a nearby picnic table, Allen decided to slowly pick away at his cotton candy and people-watch while he waited for his mom to text that she had arrived to pick him up. Who knows, maybe Mitch or Charlie—or even Megan, his crush—would walk by. Then he could chat with them for a little while.
Would they believe him about the gorilla without seeing him themselves? Probably not. And if his friends didn’t show up, that would be okay. The air was cool, and the atmosphere was wonderful. And he could play Roblox on his phone, of course.
Dark Carnival (A Horror Anthology) Page 7
