The circus of terror
A caravan of ten trucks drove through the city tirelessly repeating the invitation to a circus:
"Great circus of horror, over eighteen only! Don't miss it!"
There were no clowns in sight, no elephants, no horses, no contortionists, just ten trucks painted with tongues of flame, with erupting volcanoes, with apocalyptic scenarios, with razed lands...
According to a commercial criterion, that invitation, in which nothing was anticipated, or perhaps only the mystery, would not cause any impact.
But it was the opposite.
People chased and reproduced the information with astonishing speed and on the day of the premiere many people had to go home, unhappy, when tickets were sold out.
Little did they know what those who managed to buy tickets would be witnessing.
As the last spectator passed through, the narrow door closed. At that precise moment the lights went out and a thunderous fanfare flooded the precarious auditorium. A second before the music ended, the unmistakable sound of grating could be heard from behind. Everyone turned in unison, with an alarmed murmur.
The bewilderment disappeared in seconds as a huge halo swept across the tent to come to rest on the circus presenter.
"Gentlemen and ladies, ladies and gentlemen, lovers of terror, I have the immense pleasure of announcing that as of this moment you are all imprisoned. Clowns, please close the second gate!"
The clowns ran back and forth, and with comical gestures, separated the stage from the audience with sliding bars.
People stood up from their seats, looking at each other with nervous smiles, but the applause from the stage took the place of fear.
Laughter erupted.
After all they had paid and stood in long queues to get in.
Nothing other than being in the circus could be happening.
Everything was in darkness except the stage and there a long man, dressed in a jailer's suit, was leading a strange jester by the hand. His face was made up, over a black robe a ridiculous ribbon.
With microphone in hand the presenter rebuked him:
"Don't be so rude! Say hello to the gentlemen, they are friends. "
The clown is a silent buffoon, he gesticulates, refuses, writhes, clings to the fence as if he wants to flee, desperate.
The audience bursts into laughter. The presenter asks for applause, the people applaud, generous, until the presenter stops them by raising his hand.
"The audience wants to know what your name is," he says.
The mime, for all intents and purposes, turns his fingers into a gun and shoots off.
Your name is Bang? he insists.
All right, Bang, and what did you want to be when you were a child?
Now the clown cries blue tears as he continues to shoot himself in the head....
The audience is no longer laughing en masse. Only isolated nervous giggles can be heard.
A jailer comes and puts the clown in a straitjacket. Then they hand him a huge syringe, the jailer injects the clown demonstratively.
The clown calms down, smiles.
The jailer, who is also a clown, with the gesture of a tired mother, sits his sedated colleague in front of a big screen.
"Let the show begin!" The voice of the presenter is heard off-screen.
Many actors enter like in a film shoot.
In front of the screen they parade, come and go. Young people, teenagers, men, women, whites, blacks, Asians...
Suicide figures appear on the screen. Statistics by nationality, by age, by sex...
The actors below play it out, shoot themselves, poison themselves, throw themselves off the cliff...
This act is followed by that of the orphaned children, and then the tightrope walkers interpret hunger, sadness, mistreatment, trafficking, while the screen above continues to deliver data.
The last scene is a little girl clinging to a stuffed monkey...
Immediately the stage is filled with extinct animals, the ones we will never see again in this world, they are gentle, grieving ghosts crying out for their environment.
The audience is in total silence, no longer wanting to laugh, no longer wanting to applaud.
The actors who transform themselves from children into animals and from animals into soldiers...
They follow the summaries of the wars, they watch, on the big screen, the scalding of the skins, the piles of dead people...
Then follow, with music in crescendo in the background, studies on pollution and pandemics. And so the climate will rise, one disaster after another, inclement, unstoppable, until, in the fantasy of the circus of terror, Armageddon is recreated...
When the doors opened, at the end of that circus performance, every person in the audience was someone different from the one who had come in looking for two hours of quiet laughter.
