After animal shows were banned, the circus found a disturbing alternative.

Dust in my lungs. Small, reluctant steps and mushed voices and carnival music making teeth and chests vibrate. I looked up at the red painted lanterns and then ahead at the tent shaped like a bird cage. Heat from so much skin moving and clothes of all colors and people and people and people pushing to the entrance, then the moon disappeared under the red and white cloth and everything turned orange.

Inside, I sat on a bench after my ticket got torn by the painted woman who smiled. Voices vibrated and rose over any other sound, and my breath rushed back into me hotter than I’d left it. Crowded, so much anticipation.

Why?

Well.

I guess we were all curious about what they’d do. After they banned the live animal shows, for safety reasons, to go against human cruelty. The poor elephant balancing on a ball for the entirety of its life was now free to sit in a corner and stare into the distance, dreaming of whips and dark cages. Talking parrots had been discarded and thrown out like used toys, and lions – set free, yes, but who would accept them? Set free to surrender their lives to others who still knew how to bite.

The circus rose up from the ground one day and claimed to have come up with an exciting show. And I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t for my daughter Moira. She was staying with me this weekend and she’d already begun to call her mother’s house “home” and my house “dad’s”, so I wanted to do something fun with her, remind her that her home is bigger than she thinks and there’s room for me in her heart, too.

So we sat next to each other in the sweaty, humid air and waited for the lights to dim and the ringmaster to appear. I remember thinking that he looked a little sad in his cheap costume and dirty shoes.

I don’t recall the beginning of the show. It all feels like a dream – you don’t remember what built up to its final moments, when the memory of it started to feel real. Acrobats and magicians and clowns. Contortionists. Final act. Anticipation.

Anticipation.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, children and taller children, we have arrived to the final moments of our show!” howled the ringmaster, his head barely holding his enormous, tilted hat. “As you know very well, we have decided to let our beloved animals and greatest friends to rest for a while and they’re all very, very happy now as they returned to their homes. Don’t worry, they got paid for their work,” he laughed and winked.

“I shall invite our Handler, Celestia, to present to you our newest additions to the team! What’s better than animals, you say?”

Behind him, a tiny woman dressed in velvet. “Well, we asked out best scientists to come up with a solution. You’ll be surprised by what the human mind can do. Does anyone know what an animatronic is?”

Several hands raised. Some responses about video games.

“Well, with the help of our genius friend Elora, we have created our very own animatronics. They’re incredible and, the best part – robots. Robots are obedient and they’re never lazy. Who wants to meet our first friend?”

A bunch of high pitched “meee”s in the audience.

“Say hello to our monkey animatronic, Senticarne! Senti, the stage is yours!”

The purple curtains pulled back to reveal a life-sized gorilla robot who excitedly entered the stage and circled Celestia, waving to the audience. It rose on two legs, beat its chest with its fists and then clapped.

“Senti is our first gorilla animatronic. Do a pirouette, Senti! Show them how nice your fur is! Isn’t that so real?”

Senticarne did a comical pirouette and acted out an awkward laugh as a response to the compliment. She then pretended to arrange the small bow on top of her head and blew a kiss to the audience. I heard some children laugh.

The movements were insanely fluid. I wasn’t convinced they were robots – probably some humans in animal suits. The suits were oddly realistic – I assumed they’d used real fur and leather, but I could even make out the shape of the muscles underneath and wasn’t able to spot any zipper.

They had Senticarne do a comical playback to some cabaret song. At some point, she turned to us and we briefly made eye contact. I don’t know how to explain this, but I did feel like I was looking into the eyes of an animal, not a human being.

My impression of the state of these “animatronics” shattered with the arrival of the next performer, Dolores, a small monkey who flipped and jumped through hoops. That was something no human could do – even the movements were oddly realistic. Were they STILL using animals?

The horse followed – I don’t remember its name. It couldn’t have been a human in a suit because the eyes did not match. It couldn’t have been an animal, either, because the horse walked into the arena onto its hind legs and waved. Everybody sat in silence, mouth open, staring at what we believed to be the best and most realistic animatronic we’d ever seen.

The lion was the last to perform. Umbra, they called him. He tangoed with Celestia and spun her around, then got on all fours and roared so loud that it threw off the rhythm of my heart. I glanced at Moira – she was completely in awe with the show. I had to admit, it was something truly spectacular. Truly authentic and original. I remembered thinking how expensive the tickets were going to be for the next shows. That, if they could get rid of the sickly sweet smell. Must have been the substance they used to curate the fur with.

The final trick involved juggling on a monocycle. Someone whistled really loudly, and the lion’s eyes instantly locked onto that one person. I’d never seen robots with such advanced… observing techniques.

A baby’s cry pierced through the music, then the whistle came again, louder, provocative.

The juggling clubs froze in the air, falling one by one.

Umbra stood perfectly still on the monocycle. I’d never seen a robot look… confused.

Animal hypnosis? No, that would still be animal labor.

“Umbra, the clubs,” Celestia commanded, her voice light, but harsh.

The lion didn’t move. The whistling came again – the guy who’d done it must have realized it triggered the robot. Its chest heaved, and the mechanical, rhythmic breathing we had watched for the last ten minutes suddenly turned jagged, wet and panicked.

The lion slowly pressed its paws to the sides of its massive head, joints bent with agonizing, human articulation. The sickly sweet smell in the tent intensified, a stench of formaldehyde, heavy anesthetics and rot.

A low, guttural noise rumbled from its throat. Sounded just like a man sobbing through a mouth full of blood.

Everybody went silent. Everybody but Celestia, who laughed and said “Congrats, Umbra, your very first heckler! That’s the life of a showman, darling! Threw you off for a while, no?” She grinned and pulled out a sleek, black baton that crackled with blue electricity.

Why would you need that for a robot? Or for a human?

The sight of the baton threw the lion into a panic. It let out an ear-piercing shriek and clawed frantically at its own face. A sickening, wet rip echoed through the silent tent as the mane tore away from the jawline. Beneath the synthetic muscle, there was no wiring.

There were thick, black surgical staples biting into raw, inflamed human skin.

My hand flew to Moira’s eyes as I pulled her practically into me. My arms resisted her protests to let her go. I scanned the tent for the nearest exit, but somehow I couldn’t move.

A collective gasp sucked the air out of the tent. Through the gaping tear in the lion’s cheek, I saw a human jaw, violently dislocated and wired forward to fit the elongated snout. It was a man. God help us, a surgically mutilated man trapped inside the rotting corpse of an animal. I remembered the horse and its eyes, too real and too far away to be human, and I refused to think about how they’d gotten into that position.

Blind panic took over the creature. Celestia lunged forward with the baton, but the human-lion moved with desperate, adrenaline-fueled speed. The heavy claws caught Celestia across the face, and her jaw sheared off entirely in a spray of bright crimson, her head snapping back at an impossible angle as she collapsed into the dirt.

Blood hit the first row. Screams erupted, waves over waves of panic and terror. I lifted Moira up and shoved her toward the narrow, crowded aisle. Umbra jumped into the bleachers, his monstrous, altered legs propelling him thirty feet through the air, landing on the man who had whistled and caving his chest in with a sickening crunch. The creature slowed down, driven mad by the pain of his own existence.

His jaw clamped over the man’s neck and tore sideways, and a fountain of arterial blood sprayed into the air.

People were trampling each other, slipping on the slick, blood soaked bleachers. I held Moira tightly and brutally shoved people away to escape, to reach the orange exit. The sickly sweet smell of preservatives was gone, entirely replaced by the smell of copper and voided bowels.

We spilled out into the cool night air, and the last thing I heard over the frantic carnival music was the creature’s hoarse roar, which I now realize, as I am telling the story, had a distinct cadence. IIIW EEEE.

Kill me.

I don’t remember how we made it home. I patched up a story to tell Moira, since she hadn’t seen much. I explained a fire had broken up and the robot had its face melted, and I didn’t want her to see that.

She didn’t believe me.

A fire did start. It wiped out the circus that night, along with its robots and performers, but I think that was just a cover-up. I don’t know where they went. No one has heard anything about them since.

I keep thinking about the little monkey. About the tiny bones shoved into that rotting corpse, and about the fact that no adult could fit into that small of a body. When I think about Dolores, I hope the fire got to her. I hope she’s not performing anymore.