Once a year the matchbox wagons creak into town and pitch their huge white moth-eaten tents.

Shabby carnival rides, paint flaking, seats patched and re-patched with layer upon layer of duct tape, unfold in a shower of rust and moldy canvas. Their groaning complaints fill the midway to compete with the rowdy barkers loudly trolling for marks.

Garish sideshow haunts round out the tacky, dingy, faded, and grubby. Beyond the fortune tellers and palm readers, past shiny corn dog stands, behind cages of angry, pacing dandelions, the ground turns boggy and the trash isn’t picked up as often. Cinnamon and peppermint give way to cigarette and motor oil.

These are the darker, seedier places behind the hurricane fences, tucked under shadows of musty tarps. Here, one might purchase a dried monkey hand, or peer at flickering wickedness in a clattering polished box. Terrors and curiosities are common, mundane, and can be found sitting on a pineapple crate reading the newspaper.

And still back of all this, residing, and at home, in the muck of the temporary sewers, one final curtain hangs beside a hand-lettered sign. It reads Freak Show.

Momma told you not to come. “That ain’t the way to have fun, son.” Her admonition echos in your head, but you anxiously pay your buck and slip inside.

And you learn, both quickly and too late, that once a thing is seen, it cannot be unseen.

Category: Halloween   Tags: m&m freak show, mutant m&ms