Part 1
Otto Diffenderfer ran away to join the circus. But who doesn’t, one way or another?
The year he left North Dakota, winter came early and seemed as though it would never leave.
Born the third of three children – an afterthought and a runt, Otto found life particularly challenging. Especially life on a small farm where he floundered about mangling chores and being chided for his ineptness.
His mother, a moon-faced woman with a blousy body, meted out food and justice with a ladle. Neither appetizing.
His father, narrow as a barn slat, worked pre-dawn to dinner enslaved to the farm as if an indentured servant. In the evening, after another arduous day of digging, lifting, pushing, pulling—squeezing from his slice of heaven a subsistence existence, he filled a glass with his “tonic,” hoisted it aloft in a hand gnarled as oak roots and said, “Bottoms up.” Or, “Here’s looking at you. Or, “Cheers.”
Cheers. Otto couldn’t remember being happy. Certainly not after the second funeral.
His older brother went first. Chewed up in the machinery of the haymow. Nine-year-old Otto thought that’s what the preacher meant by the “grim reaper.”
Sister died years on in an automobile accident involving a drunk and icy roads.
Involving that blind assassin—fate.
Known as Ms. Burke County, she had made the covers of all the local and statewide publications and became famous for being pretty.
After her death, Father fell thoroughly in love with his “tonic” and out of love with Otto. The one who shouldn’t have lived. The one whose face wasn’t fit for the cover of anything but darkness.
It took running away to become beautiful.
Part 2
On a grim, gray November morning–1938, on the brink of Thanksgiving for which there existed little to be thankful for, Otto packed his father’s battered grip with what clothes he owned, stole $97 of the family’s “cash-on-hand”—a fortune—from the kitchen cupboard, and hitched his way to the bus station in Minot, North Dakota.
There the eighteen-year-old farm boy bought a one-way ticket to Gibsonton, Florida.
Gibsonton served as winter headquarters for various circus performers and unfortunates who served as oddities to be gawked at.
The Siamese twins, for example, Chang and Eng. Lobster Man. Monkey Girl.
Otto’s diminutive stature, square head, fulsome mouth, flamboyant ears, compressed nose made him a likely candidate for their company.
But he was bound for something less than glory.
As the silver bullet of a bus shot through the heart of America, Otto’s fellow passengers changed with the landscape. Folks toting cardboard suitcases and wearing expressions as shopworn as their clothes waited stoically at each makeshift depot as the bus sighed to a stop and the door slipped open.
They’re all running away like me, Otto surmised as he watched the castaways board without a backward glance and no one to wave them goodbye. It further depleted his spirit to think so many lost souls—such as himself—peopled the world.
So many solitary travelers forced by circumstances and cheap fares to accommodate one another across miles and miles of silence. Heads lolling, minds cluttered, Otto imagined—like his, with the jigsaw pieces of their lives where nothing seemed to fit. And so incomplete and yearning each were headed for the same destination: someplace else. For young Diffenderfer, it was the beginning of the end of his line
Otto sat in a window seat. He watched America kaleidoscope by at 55 mph. Winter imbued the country. The weight of cold bearing down on any expression of life till it had very little voice at all.
Having abandoned his birthright, Otto felt alien and untethered. And with nothing but time on his hands, was patient with the innumerable stops in unremarkable small towns stitched together by asphalt and Greyhound buses.
In Wynot, Nebraska, a girl younger than his sister’s age when she was spun into obscurity boarded with a red-cheeked, hurly-burly child on her hip. A large pink and blue stripped bag hung from her bird-like shoulder.
She made her way through the gauntlet of passengers’ stony glares warning her away and to the empty seat next to Otto. He shrunk in tighter against the bus’s cold frame. She unhitched the bag and held it out. “Hold this,” she told Otto.
Otto hesitated.
“It won’t bite you,” she declared and shook it for emphasis.
Otto untangled his arms and took the bag onto his lap. It smelled of talcum powder and a sweet perfume.
The girl shifted the child and dropped onto the stained seat—now Otto’s ill-favored traveling companion.
“Jesus, it’s cold out there,” she said and faced the child forward on her narrow knees. It turned its large, round head toward Otto and stared at him with dark, doleful eyes as if wanting Otto to speak, but Otto—never having had much use for words—could only offer up a brief, tight smile before disengaging.
Totally asea, Otto clung to the bag as if a buoy.
“You can set it on the floor,” she informed him. “My bag.”
“Something might break.”
“Suit yourself.” She settled back in the seat and combed at the child’s hair with a spidery hand. “Name’s Mandy, if you want to know. This here is Charlie. He doesn’t mind strangers. Hell, that’s the only sort of people he’s acquainted with.”
“He seems friendly enough,” Otto said.
“Wait till he gets hungry. Or messes himself. Then he’s a monster. Aren’t you, Charlie,” she said kissing her child on his crown.
Charlie remained non-committal.
Otto wasn’t sure if he should pray the child was well-fed or on the verge of hunger.
A new driver hitched up onto the bus, adjusted the mirrors, cranked the engine to life, issued the door closed and he and his uprooted passengers continued their journey south toward warmth.
And maybe even salvation.
For at least some of them.
Charlie remained perched on his mother’s knees silent as a dummy. His dead-eyed stare began gnawing at Otto’s sensibilities. He returned to peering out the window, but felt the back of his head being scrutinized and swung around to alleviate the sensation.
Charlie’s eyes flickered.
“Does he talk?” Otto asked hoping the answer would be no.
“Yep,” Mandy answered. “But only to me. Ain’t that right, Charlie?”
Charlie nodded.
“I’m running away from his father,” Mandy added as if it explained everything.
“Me too,” revealed Otto. “Well, not his father, but a father.”
And so with that thin thread of commonality, two strangers in the company of a mute child strung together a conversation that filled up miles of road with their small community. A mutual give and take. Mandy the giver, Otto the taker – a vessel to be filled with her tribulations. Her absurdities. Her life. Both of them made lighter by the sharing.
Otto, too often disconnected, took in all of Mandy. Her ratty, brown hair done up in an untidy bun. Blue-feathered earrings dancing from her delicate lobes. Plain and guileless features that became more and more endearing as the hours ticked away.
What a wonder, Otto thought, how she so willingly engaged him. Validating his existence. Making him laugh. And when Charlie, apparently sensing the moment and in synch with their transient trinity, reached out to be sat on Otto’s lap – to be held by him. Otto—awkwardly, to be sure, welcomed the child and once nestled in his arms a surge of quiet elation nearly overwhelmed the emotionally famished farm-boy.
And, yes, Otto allowed himself this thought: He might be somebody after all.
And this: if his father had cradled him thus, he’d be home and safe in his embrace.
When Otto revealed his destination—the circus, Mandy applauded him. His first and only audience, as it turned out.
In the Wichita depot, Mandy stood, retrieved Charlie from Otto, and her outrageous bag. “It’s been great talking with you, Otto,” Mandy said.
“Please stay,” Otto wanted to say, but, of course, it was too much to ask of the universe and they shook hands and it touched Otto’s soul. The warmth of her firm grip. Indeed, her unconditional reception warmed Otto all together. Back on the Diffenderfer farm, every season had been cold as hell.
On their way down the aisle, Charlie waved his pudgy hand at Otto and smiled brightly. “Bye, Otto,” he said. “Bye, bye.”
That simple salutation sustained Otto all the way to Gibsonton, Florida.
Part 3
Gibsonton existed on the fringe of Tampa. A quirky municipality with zoning laws that allowed for elephants in residences’ front yards.
There folks expected the unexpected.
Otto tottered down off the bus in the late afternoon, grip in hand and stood for a moment to acclimate his legs to standing before being bumped out of the way.
Not certain how one actually joined the circus, he wandered the sidewalks of what constituted downtown Gibsonton peering in shop windows looking for what? Clowns? Acrobats? A Ring Master?
Rain rushed from the sky. Otto darted into the nearest place of business. A dingy saloon called Three Rings. On his right a long bar accompanied by metal barstools. A large mirror fronted by shelves of gleaming bottles bearing multicolored liquids against the wall behind. To his left round wooden tables surrounded by desk chairs bathed in dim ocher light.
At the furthermost table, a stick-thin man with extravagant legs sat reading using the borrowed illumination from the celestial skylight overhead. A large beer stein his companion.
Otto, remembering his father and his “tonic”, stepped to the bar, released his grip and clambered up onto a stool.
Emboldened by Mandy and Charlie, he cleared his throat calling attention to himself.
The bartender remained busy with a racing form. Perusing it as if a sacred text wherein the secret to wealth could be materialized.
Perhaps, this time, Lucky Strike or One For the Governor or some such unreliable thoroughbred would be the answer to his secular prayers.
Otto waited patiently – his strong suit. Waiting. His legs dangling. He admired the jewel-like shimmering bottles on the glass shelves and the captivating glow of their fermented liquids. The subtle shades of reds, golds and mahoganies. Punctuated with a musty blue. A fairy tale pink.
He knew there existed no happy-ever-after in those elixirs. His father had taught him that.
But they did offer a numbing sort of solace. A quiet surrender.
Being a stranger in a stranger land, that would be something.
“There’s a customer sitting at the bar, Lazlo.”
The thin man’s voice behind him startled Otto.
Lazlo turned his attention Otto’s way. “That customer should speak for himself, Corky,” he said.
“He shouldn’t have to. The ponies can wait.”
Lazlo shambled over to front Otto. “What’d ya having?”
“A tonic,” Otto said impulsively.
“As in –,“ Lazlo said looking to Otto for clarification.
“As in – something to drink,” Otto offered.
Lazlo placed his two beefy hands on the sticky bar top. “Ya gotta give me something to work with here. Are we talking gin, vodka, neat on the rocks? Straight up?”
He might as have been speaking a foreign language.
Intimidated, Otto considered making an inglorious exit when Corky spoke up.
“Give the man a glass of water for Christ’s sake, Lazlo and point him in my direction.”
Glass in hand, Otto crossed the planked flooring and stood at Corky’s table.
Corky kicked out a chair. “Sit. Tell me your name,” he said
“Otto Diffenderfer,” Otto answered and sat.
Corky slammed shut his book. “Seriously?”
“No, Otto Diffenderfer.”
“I got that. It’s a name for a clown.”
“Is that good?”
“Could be. Could damn-well be. Drink up and let’s talk about your future.”
And just like that, Otto joined the circus.
Part 4
It so happened that Corky himself was, indeed, a clown of some stature he informed Otto meaning to be both funny and explanatory. “And if you’re looking for work,” he said, “I’m your man. I’ve got connections. I know whomever is worth knowing in any of these circus communities.”
“I’d be grateful,” Otto said.
“Damn right. And hey, if you show any aptitude, maybe – one day – you’ll be under the Big Top.”
Otto beamed. “You mean with the elephants,” he said.
“And a shovel,” Corky answered and laughed, a strange cawking sound that reminded Otto of the rooster back home.
The rain had dissipated to random sprinkling. Corky instructed Otto to follow him and the six-foot, five-inch headliner in the company of his four-foot, five-inch neophyte made a most likely couple as they strode through Gibsonton to Corky’s plain white, clapboard house at the edge of town.
“The circus is hard, gritty work,” Corky explained as they perambulated along. “It’s not for sissies. You’ve got to put up with a lot of shit – literally and figuratively – to make it work.”
Otto knew about hard work and shit he assured Corky.
“Good. You’ll start at the bottom. Break you in. And, yes, if you’re diligent, something may break your way.”
Corky assigned Otto a closet-sized room “for the time being”. It was stuffed with a cot and boxes of paraphernalia – “tricks of the trade”, he told his new tenant. “We’ll get to them later.”
The next morning, Corky introduced Otto around to stunt riders, dog trainers, cat masters, monkey minders.
And the North Dakota refugee went to work shoveling dung, poop, caca, manure, feces. Shit of all shapes and sizes and weight. Work with which he was too familiar.
But circus animals, not so much. Chittering, nervous and neurotic monkeys, heavily maned lions suffering ennui, spiteful zebras that kicked, great ponderous elephants—one whose thick rope of a trunk clobbered Otto to the ground—these animals, once exotic, lost their charms in a hell-of-a-hurry. Caged and hobbled, Otto observed, they’re creatures to be pitied, but never trusted.
Like so much of humanity.
As the weeks and the droppings accumulated, the calluses on Otto’s hands thickened and so did his disillusionment.
And while winter in Florida proved sweet, after a month of being in the circus, Otto concluded it stunk.
“Didn’t I warn you?” Corky reminded Otto. “Sure, you expected glam and glitter. But the circuses you’ve seen from the grandstands are illusions. We sell illusions, son. And, yeah, that’s a tough thing to learn.”
The circus Otto was learning about resembled the farm life he left behind.
Less than inspiring.
More than despairing.
Every bit as isolating.
For the diminutive shit-shoveler had no cache within the circus community. Not even among the abysmally named freaks. They had status. Otto had none.
But even status provided no guarantee of happiness. Behind the scenes, Otto discovered— beyond the offal—sans the sequins, make-up, bright lights and blaring music carnival life could be cruel and biting. The headliners—the stars appeared dull and desultory. Disagreements between the talent and toadies led to red-hot anger. Anger led to fights.
Booze, too often, led to screaming matches.
Back stage, out-of-sight, the circus reeked and sweated and stung.
“High risk, minimal reward,” Corky told Otto—his ever-patient host and only port in a discordant sea.
“Then why,” Otto asked after washing up for dinner one evening and spooning into a bowl of canned beans.
“We’re addicts,” Corky responded. “We need our fix.”
But what did Otto need, he wondered to himself. Whatever it might be, it didn’t appear to exist amongst the sawdust and excrement.
Amongst folks as disenchanted as himself.
As Otto trucked animal dung in the oversized wheelbarrow, he would have realized regret but for the fact memories of North Dakota didn’t allow for that sort of malingering.
What he did allow for, Mandy and Charlie had taught him: He could be somebody. Given chance—a chance. If he simply said yes when an opportunity arose. If he remained alert to possibilities, someone else, some other girl will say, “Hey, Otto, I think you’re swell.”
It happened once. It could happen again.
Such is the gift Mandy and her child had bestowed on Otto!
It provided him impetus for perseverance.
It got him out of bed in the morning and eased his sleep at night.
And like all fairy tales, it came true.
Unfortunately.
Part 5
The holiday season crept up on the folks in Gibsonton without anyone hardly noticing. And they passed without a wishbone to share.
All but New Year’s Eve. On that night, so many of the circus affiliated population jammed into Three Rings it proved impossible to move without inadvertently molesting someone.
Otto, tucked away in a corner, sipped at his Shirley Temple watching the now familiar faces aglow with the moment and alcohol engage one another.
Corky, a head taller and more than most, commandeered the room. Ten seconds to midnight he began the countdown.
Countdown to what, Otto thought? A new year, but the same old life fraught with its bumps and bruises of both the spirit and the flesh. Celebrating January 1st had always seemed to Otto a futile custom. More so that night.
At “one” Three Rings exploded with raucous cries of jubilation as if the celebrants had all been saved. Rescued by the calendar.
And there, for an unrestrained moment, for them, for humanity all over the battered world, lived hope, after all.
Someone rushed up to Otto. A petite girl a with wild mass of yellow-colored hair. She framed Otto’s head in her hands and in the euphoria of the moment, gave his sticky lips a full-on lusty kiss.
All Otto’s senses lit up like the fireworks exploding over Tampa Bay.
“Happy New Year, little man,” she said and melted away into the rollicking crowd.
Otto choked down a swallow. Fought dizziness and lack of air. Made his way through the throng out into the explosions of red and green and yellow pyrotechnics – the kiss surmounting the radiant display.
It lingered in him for the remainder of his brief life.
Part 6
Next morning, lips still afire, Otto set out to find his assailant. This is the opportunity for which Mandy had prepared him. To have the courage to answer yes, and risk being told no.
To cultivate the growing self-possession to ask for more.
The town, indeed the morning, seemed abandoned to itself. Having celebrated a new year, folks now were reluctant to face it in broad daylight.
Even the animals played subdued.
Otto checked the nearby trailer park. A woman dressed in a tawdry leopard-print bathrobe, her face a road map of trouble and woe, sat on a stoop of a blue and white mobile home smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Otto approached.
“Good morning.”
The woman exhaled a stream of smoke into the bare-bones day. “Good ain’t got nothing to do with it,” she told him.
“I’m looking for someone,” Otto said.
“Aren’t we all,” she answered and flicked ashes in his direction.
“A girl.”
“Well, that’s unusual.” Her mid-morning sarcasm escaped Otto’s intention.
“I wonder if you’ve seen her.”
“I used to see her looking in a mirror,” the smoker said and glinted her eyes like gunslinger challenging Otto to pester her further.
Otto, propelled by experienced intimacy, pressed on. “She’s – short – lots of bouncy hair. Nice lips,” he added.
“Christ,” the woman cursed. “Already. I knew she’d be trouble. Last trailer on the right. But if you was anyway smart, you’d turn around and leave her be. Save yourself a heartache.” She hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat it at Otto’s dusty boots.
Otto hurried away.
The last trailer on the right sat askew on its concrete blocks. The screen door hung lamely off a hinge. An old washing machine, its lid open as if accepting donations, decorated the yard.
Otto rapped on the faded-yellow front door. Nothing. He rapped again. More aggressively.
“Is it ten o’clock yet?” a female voice shouted at him.
Otto checked his watch. Nine fifty-eight. “In two minutes,” he replied.
“Then you’re early. Come back at ten.”
Otto stood away from the door and waited. Shuffling his feet. Hands in his pockets.
At 10:01 he made another assault on his objective. The door flew open exposing just about everything the girl who had kissed him New Year’s Eve had to offer. “Damn-it,” she protested and seeing Otto gathered her dressing gown and self-together. “Oh, thought you were one of those idiot Floratina brothers.”
“I’m Otto.”
“And?”
“You kissed me,” he said coming to the point. Overcoming his natural reticence.
“I did?”
“Yeah. At the party.”
“Ah. And you liked it.”
“A lot,” he answered never one for guile.
“And you’ve come for another.”
“Actually, I did wonder if it was possible.”
The girl looked Otto up and down. He had sincerity inscribed all over him. A rare quality in most every male she ever dealt with.
Sincerity and a humble regard.
Those two aspects trumped his disquieting appearance.
His youthful naivete triggered her nurturing instincts.
“What the hell,” she said. “Get yourself in here, Otto. Let’s talk.” She pulled the farm-boy up into her rental mobile home and settled him on the plaid, sprung couch littered with intimate apparel discomfiting Otto more than a little.
And they talked.
“I’m Crystal,” she told him. And despite the protective hard-as-nails exterior, she did sparkle. Having not yet wholly succumbed to the rigors of physical performance—prolonged travel, her eyes blazed bright blue. Her skin appeared as polished enamel. Burnished, lemon-yellow hair crowned her fine features. Those pert lips—honey-dewed.
Part of a high-wire act recently arrived, she had been all over the states—even North Dakota about which she questioned Otto.
Ensnared in Crystal’s charms, Otto gave himself up to her attentions. Described his North Dakota life. His search for something warmer.
Something like a kiss.
Otto’s diffident manner appealed to Crystal. His earnestness. Her solicitations allowed him to speak of his trauma. Of his sister’s attractiveness which didn’t ward off death. His own physical deprecations. The scorn and laughter he’s endured.
The raw rasp of truth tore open old wounds. His hurt rising to the surface palatable. It swamped his voice.
No matter. The bereft boy lacked the vocabulary to describe the worst of his torment.
Crystal, knowing something of the coarse nature of being, of human beings, and touched deeply by his tale, took his small hands into hers. “Look at me, Otto,” she said. “Look and let me be your mirror.”
And Otto did and he saw in her eyes a reflection new to his experiences.
“In my mirror,” she told him, “you’re beautiful.”
Tears leaked from Otto’s eyes. A rush of rapture made him breathless-nearly stopped his heart.
Then Crystal kissed him. Again. Dumbstruck and transformed, every other depravation gave way to euphoria.
First Mandy and Charlie, his traveling companions, and now this further confirmation.
Everything was possible if you simply gave anything a chance.
A loud banging on the door blasted the moment apart.
“We’re late,” announced a male voice. The Floratina brothers wanted their rehearsal.
“Come watch,” Crystal invited Otto.
Of course. Of course. Of course.
And so began the end of this tale.
Part 7
Otto accompanied the four Floratina brothers and Crystal to the Big Top and he watched as Crystal tumbled and twisted through the air—glittering even without sequins in shafts of sunlight knifing through vents in the tent. He watched, mouth agape, Crystal this magical being casting her spell on the poorly cast farm-boy. He wallowed in the performance. His acclamations flowering to adoration when she dropped into the net, flipped off to the packed earth nimble as a child and hurried to him, flushed with exuberance.
Winter lost its tedium in her embracing smile. The circus its drab demeanor.
And his life took a turn for the better.
Before it turned decidedly worse.
Part 8
While Corky encouraged Otto to attend clown school, play to his physical attributes, Crystal dissuaded him otherwise.
“You don’t need to hide behind a mask, Otto. Or play the fool. Let me teach you to fly,” she told him.
Otto, frightened of most everything, including heights, liked his feet on the ground.
But Crystal insisted. She wanted more for him than he wanted for himself.
Transfixed by her sparkling eyes, her belief in his inner humanity. Enraptured by her tender ministrations, Otto followed her up into the sky.
Step at a time, to be sure. First half way up the wayward, rope ladder. Feeling it sway. Trusting his grip. Compelled by her adroitness. The agility of her taut body – his yearning for her so keen it manifested itself as an oh-so-sweet ache, he ascended rung-by-rung higher every day–fear and fancy dueling for his attention.
After each session–of acrobatics as well, they’d shared mulled cider in her cramped and cluttered trailer.
“I knew a boy like you in high school,” Crystal said several days into their companionship. “It’s a shame what happened to him. What I let happen to him. But it’s not going to happen to you, Otto. No. You’re going to soar above them all.”
Soaring had never been on Otto’s agenda, but playing a clown was proving less and less attractive. Corky often hosted his fellow performers for cards and drinks. They sat in his tiny kitchen smoking, knocking back six packs of Coors and cursing like stevedores. Raucous, bombastic men mocking one another. Their laughter sharp and pointed as daggers. Danger lurked in Clown Alley.
And Otto hated the taste of beer.
He dropped out of Corky’s school for clowns, much to the tall man’s disappointment. Pratfalls hurt. Circus humor proved crude and caustic. Chaotic. At came to Otto clowns were laughed at not with. He had played that role his entire life. It was that from which he wanted escape.
Crystal smelled of talcum powder and jasmine. Her skin smooth and cool to touch. Alone, in his bed at night, Otto imagined they were lovers.
Yes, he allowed himself that fantasy, but it only went so far. Having been raised on a farm, he knew the bestial side of things, yet never thought of Crystal in such feral terms.
Angels being more of heaven than earth.
Part 9
On the day Otto ascended to the tightrope walkers’ platform, sweat a sheen on his unseeming face, they celebrated afterwards with a banana split – Otto’s treat
“You’re a prince,” Crystal told Otto wiping at his flaccid lips.
“And you a princess,” he answered.
“How many men have told me that, mister,” she teased him.
“How many men have meant it?” Otto said without looking at her.
Crystal paused, spoon mid-air. “You’ve come a long way in such a short time,” she observed meaning more than their aerialist act.
“You’ve taken me there,” Otto acknowledged. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for giving me something better to believe in, Otto – besides—ice-cream.” Crystal grinned and emptied her spoon.
Otto, having come a long way, indeed, appreciated both the sentiment and the witticism. “I guess we’re good for each other,” he dared suggest.
Crystal took his hand in hers and spoke as if a prayer. “Remember how we are right this moment. Will you? Will you, Otto?”
Otto missed the premonition in her voice.
“I’ll remember it all the way into the future,” he assured her.
Crystal squeezed his hand, eyes imbued with affection. “Your future, Otto Diffenderfer,” she said bringing them back to the present, “is all up in the air.” They laughed at her joke.
A cascade of happiness erupting from Otto. Ador the best sort of tonic.
And hot fudge.
“Tomorrow,” Crystal said releasing his hand, “tomorrow the highwire.”
They tapped spoons.
The couple never got that far. The next day, achieving the platform, Otto’s grip so fierce his hands ached, Crystal spun a pirouette to demonstrate ease-of-mind when the platform shifted and, in a panic, Otto—scrambling to maintain his footing—kicked out and struck Crystal’s legs. She lost her balance and cried aloud. Instinctively, Otto grabbed her flailing hand as she dropped over the side, the ladder just out of reach. Clinging to a guide rope with one hand and to Crystal with the other, Otto fought mightily to hoist her up to safety. Strained every muscle, ligament – every cell. Grunting with the effort.
“Don’t let go, Otto,” Crystal pleaded.
Otto clinched his grip all the tighter, battled gravity, strove with his inner core to preserve his fantasy, but ever the runt – ever never able to measure up, he felt his strength abandoning him – leeching out.
Their eyes connected. Both recognized how this would end. Otto cried out, “Crystal!” As if her name was enough to save her.
But unable to sustain her weight, she slipped from his grasp.
And dropped in stunned silence.
To the ground.
Missing the netting by inches.
And that’s – that’s how Otto let his Crystal shatter.
And his hopes.
Part 10
There were recriminations, certainly. Accusations. Police reports.
But Otto had nothing to say.
What happened spoke volumes: Life is made of catastrophes.
Some happen at birth and never let up.
And Camus was right. There is only one serious question to be answered.
And Otto did.
Answer it.
In a lukewarm tub of water, he opened his veins like rivers to the sea.
But it’s all right, dear reader. It’s all right!
It’s all right.
For Otto laughed and laughed and laughed as he escaped into oblivion.
The End