Ichigo
Shoveling Snow
Age : 11
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 |  Subject: Re: Cirque Du freak  Mon 4 Aug - 14:04 | |
| heres a preview os book one Not cover)"
| Spoiler: | | |
CHAPTER TEN
The second freak was Alexander Ribs, and he was more of a comedy act than a scary one, which was just what we needed to calm us down after the terrifying start. I happened to look over my shoulder while he was on, and noticed two more of the blue-hooded people down on their knees, cleaning blood from the floor.
Alexander Ribs was the skinniest man I’d ever seen. He looked like a skeleton, he was so thin! There seemed to be no flesh on him. He would have been frightening, except he had a big friendly smile.
Funny music started playing and he danced around the stage. He was dressed in ballet clothes and looked so ridiculous that soon everybody was laughing. After a while, he stopped dancing and began stretching. He said he was a contortionist (somebody with bones like rubber, who can bend every which way) and could do just about anything with his body.
First of all, he tilted his head back so far, it looked like it had been cut off. He turned round so we could see his upside-down face, then went on leaning backwards until his head was touching the floor! Then he put his hands down the backs of his legs and pulled his head through until it was sticking up behind him. It looked like it was growing out of his bum!
He got a huge round of claps for that, after which he straightened up and began twisting his body around, like a curly-wurly straw! He kept twisting and twisting, five times around, until his bones began to creak from the strain. He stood like that for a minute, then began to unwind really, really fast.
Next, he curled himself up into a ball. Mr Tall came on and picked him up, then began bouncing him up and down! Alexander shouted a lot and pretended it was hurting, but we could tell he was joking. He looked so funny, bouncing up and down, I swear, if you were near the back of the theatre, you’d have thought he was a real ball.
When Mr Tall left the stage again, Alexander Ribs stood up and got two of those drumsticks with furry ends. You know, the sort they use for really big drums in parades? Nobody knew what he was going to do with them, and boy, did we get a shock when we found out!
Alexander got the first drumstick and hit one of his bony ribs with it. There was no sound for a second, but then he opened his mouth and a musical note sprung out! It sounded like the noise a piano makes. Then he closed his mouth and struck a rib on the other side of his body with the other drumstick. Again he waited before opening his mouth. This time it was a louder note, a higher one.
After a few more practice goes, he kept his mouth open and began playing songs! I know you won’t believe me, but I swear that’s what he did. He played "London Bridge is falling down" and some song by The Beatles and the theme tunes for a few well-known TV shows.
We thought for a while that somebody else was making the music, but then he stepped down off the stage and walked through the crowd, and we found out it was for real. He let us touch his ribs and his throat, and we could actually feel the music travelling up! It was incredible. He was like a walking, living piano!
The skinny man got a huge round of applause when he was finished, and left the stage to shouts for more. But none of the freaks came back to do an encore. It was one of the circus rules.
After Alexander Ribs came Rhamus Twobellies, and he was as fat as Alexander was thin. He was enormous! You could hear the floorboards creaking as he walked out onto the stage, and I’ll never know how it didn’t collapse beneath him.
He walked along close to the edge and kept pretending he was about to topple forward. You could see the people in the front rows getting worried, and some jumped back out of the way whenever he got close. I don’t blame them: he would have squashed them flat as a pancake if he fell off!
Finally he stopped in the middle of the stage. "Hello," he said, and he had a surprisingly nice voice, low and squeaky. As with Alexander Ribs, you sensed straightaway that he was friendly.
"My name is Rhamus Twobellies," he said, "and I’m called that not just because I’m fat, but because I really have two bellies! I was born with them, the same way certain animals are. The doctors were stunned and said I was a freak. That’s why I joined this show and am here tonight."
Then he picked up the drumsticks Alexander ribs had left behind and swallowed them! Like I said, they were big drumsticks, long and round, but he gulped them down like a couple of lollipops. He waited a moment before doing anything else, then gave his belly a little pat, and back up his throat and out of his mouth they came, one after the other.
Then the ladies who had hypnotised the wolf-man came out with two trolleys full of food: cakes and chips and hamburgers and packets of sweets and heads of cabbage. There was stuff there that I hadn’t even seen before, never mind tasted!
"Yum-yum," Rhamus said. "It must be feeding time." He pointed to a huge clock which was being lowered by ropes from above. It stopped about three metres above his head. "How long do you think it will take me to eat all this?" he asked, pointing to the food. "There will be a prize for the person who guesses closest."
"An hour!" somebody yelled.
"Forty-five minutes!" somebody else roared.
"Two hours, ten minutes and thirty-three seconds," another person shouted. And soon everybody was calling out. I said an hour and three minutes. Steve said twenty-nine minutes. The lowest guess was seventeen minutes. Lots of people said he couldn’t eat that much food, not in one go, no matter how fat he was.
When we were finished guessing, the clock started to tick and Rhamus started to eat. He could eat like the wind! He went through that food like a hurricane. His arms moved so fast, you could hardly see them. His mouth didn’t seem to close at all. He shovelled food in, swallowed, and moved on.
Everybody was amazed. I felt sick as I watched him and some people actually were sick! I heard somebody puking in the seat behind me, but didn’t turn around to look, in case I started to throw up as well.
Finally Rhamus scoffed the last bun, and the clock above his head stopped ticking. We looked up to see how long it had been, and you could hear us gasping when we saw the time.
Four minutes and fifty-six seconds! He had eaten all that food in less than five minutes! I could hardly believe it. It didn’t seem possible, even for a man with two bellies.
"That was nice," Rhamus said, "though I could have done with some more dessert."
We stared at him for a moment, then realised he was joking. We began to laugh and clap and lots of people stood up on their seats to cheer him. Rhamus said nothing, only smiled happily and wiped a few crumbs from his chin.
When we were finished clapping, the ladies in the shiny suits rolled the trolleys away and brought on a new one. But this didn’t have any food: it was packed with glass statues and forks and spoons and small bits of metal junk.
"Now before I begin," Rhamus said, "I must warn you not to try this at home! As I said, I have two bellies, but they are also very strong bellies. I can eat things which can choke and kill normal people. Again I say do not try and copy me! If you do, you will surely die."
Then he began eating. He began with a couple of nuts and bolts, the sort you find in your Dad’s tool-box, and sucked them down without blinking. After a few handfuls, he gave his big round belly a shake and we could hear the noise of the metal inside.
Following a quick round of applause, his belly heaved and he began spitting the nuts and bolts back out! If there had only been one or two, I might have thought he was keeping them under his tongue or at the sides of his cheeks, but not even Rhamus Twobellies’ mouth was big enough to hold this load!
Next, he ate the glass statues. He bit their heads and arms and legs off, and crunched the glass up into small pieces inside his mouth, before swallowing them with a drink of water.
Next he ate the spoons and forks. He twisted them into circles with his hands (they must have been the cheap sort which bend easily), then popped them into his mouth and let them slide down. He said his teeth weren’t strong enough to tear through metal.
After that, he swallowed a long metal chain, then paused to catch his breath. His belly began rumbling and shaking. I didn’t know what was going on. Then he gave a bit of a heave and I saw the top of the chain come out of his mouth.
I began to applaud lightly, along with most of the other people, but then, as the chain came out, I saw that the spoons and forks were wrapped around it! He had somehow managed to poke the chain through all the hoops! My light claps quickly became hard and heavy ones.
"That’s it," I thought, "this must be his final act. There’s no way he could top that one." But I was wrong: he could!
"Now," Rhamus said in his squeaky little voice, "I am going to try my luck at the restoring and recycling game."
He picked up the last glass statue, which was a figure of a small woman in a long dress and a wide hat. He bit it into small pieces as he had before and swallowed it, but without the glass of water: this time he drank a tube of glue with it!
His belly began shaking again, so fast that it looked like he was about to explode! It jiggled left and right, up and down, and around in circles. He was holding his breath and his face was going purple.
Just when I thought he was going to pop, his belly stopped. He let out his breath in a long sigh and smiled. Then he gave a careful heave, and up came the statue, joined together again!
Well, everybody just about slapped their hands off, they were clapping so much. Rhamus smiled and walked off the stage slowly.
"It must have been a similar statue that he had in his belly earlier," I said to Steve. "There’s no way he could have put it back together without using his hands."
"Maybe," Steve said, but he sounded unsure.
Before Rhamus left the stage, he tossed the statue out into the audience and asked us to pass it around. When it came to me and Steve we noticed the cracks where it had been glued together. Steve traced one of them with his finger, then passed the statue on and rubbed his finger with his thumb.
"It’s still sticky," he said, looking at me.
"So what?" I asked.
"So if he’d had it in his belly since coming on," Steve explained, "the glue would have dried by now."
I stared back at him, then touched his finger to make sure, and yes, it was still sticky! I’ve no idea how he did it, but it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen…
… so far! |
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