Circus of Death - Candace Wondrak Page 0,8

over my casket once they found my body. Pretend, just for a little bit, that I’d been the nicest girl ever, sweet and caring, that everyone had loved me in their own way.

I doubted it. That was just the wistfulness of a girl who was nothing more than a ghost now, a girl who still somehow had a bit of her consciousness even though she was dead.

I mean, I had to be dead, right? You didn’t get your throat ripped out by a big ass tiger without dying. That wasn’t something you lived through. It wasn’t like an ambulance had been waiting in the background, ready to take me to the hospital after the tiger had its way with me. After Trey had his way with me? Eh, whatever. I still wasn’t too sure what the hell had happened; all I knew was it had hurt like a motherfucker.

Normally I wasn’t one to load up on the swearwords, but this whole day had definitely called for them.

If I was dead, I didn’t know why my mind was able to ramble so much, though, so that didn’t make too much sense. It confused me so much, I could’ve sworn I felt my eyebrows creasing—but that would mean I was still attached to my body, I didn’t pass on, and I wasn’t really dead. Maybe a little dead, but not fully dead.

Was there such a thing?

I tried to make a sound, a groan, and to my surprise, my ears heard that groan. My eyes were slow to lift, and to my utter shock, I came to, staring at the ceiling of a tent, its red color illuminated by the sun outside.

I was in a bed. A bed inside a tent, which meant I was still at the circus.

What the hell? Was all that a dream?

Another groan left me as I sat up, my body feeling all different kinds of sore. I went to hold my head, finding my hair was a little wild. After that, I touched my shoulders, my neck, finding absolutely nothing wrong with it, no torn skin or bandages, no blood. Did someone slip me some drugs when I wasn’t paying attention?

Looking down, I found I wasn’t in my own clothes anymore. A tight, strapless black dress clung to my chest and my stomach, and I nearly fell out of the bed I was in when I noticed. Yeah, that definitely wasn’t something of mine. I didn’t own a dress like this. Hell no.

My feet were bare, the dress tapering off around my knees, and I wondered who the hell had changed me while I was out, and why? Why put me in this dress? Why change me to look like I was in the circus myself? I didn’t know how these people grew up, but you couldn’t force someone to join a traveling circus. Hell, I didn’t know how traveling circuses got started these days, but this was not okay.

I needed to have a word with Nigel. Or… I paused that train of thought right then when I remembered how he’d looked when the tiger was on top of me. Or maybe I should just leave. Get out of here while I still could, lest that dream come to fruition.

It was funny, though, in more of an odd, bizarre way than a ha-ha way; it hadn’t felt like a dream. It’d felt real. So real I could still remember the pain, how it had taken over my body and forced me to oblivion, how much it had hurt to feel the tiger tear at my neck and see its jaws lined with my blood.

I looked around the tent I was in, finding it was small, bare of any other furnishings besides the bed and a small nightstand. A tarp sat above the grass, so my feet touched nothing but plastic. It looked as if I was under a bigger tent, dividers hanging around the small space, indicating there were probably other rooms like this under the same tent.

Was this where they stayed, all of the performers? They didn’t have trailers or anything like that? What kind of life was this?

No, you know what? It wasn’t my place to wonder; I had to focus on getting out of here and doing it as soon as possible.

As in, right this very second.

Heaving in a giant breath, I moved to the tent flap, peeking my head out. The harsh light of day shone overhead, almost blinding, not a single cloud in