Shatter Ball Pt. 1

Early morning, the space between deep sleep and the alarm. It was a dim, peaceful grey that cast a spell of hazy imprecision over thought. Reaching out to scrape my phone from the nightstand, I checked my messages. A flier was being sent to every group chat I had.

Steve, two steps ahead of me, was already texting pictures of black tents looming over treetops as I lurched from my bed. He’d thought of me as soon as he’d seen the flier, and gone to confirm. Even frozen on the screen their sides rippled with rainbows, flowing like an oil slick. I swear I could have thrown up. I frantically texted back, “The Shatter Ball is here.”

The flier was simple. A single image, black background and white text, was passed from phone to phone a hundred times by the time I really looked at it. Cryptic rules, half written in an indecipherable jumble of different fonts and languages stretched across the page: no “elders,” after dark, bring nothing. Part gibberish, part invitation, part veiled threat as it promised “retributions” if its decrees weren’t followed. Below the flier’s rules was a short caption. Markedly different, it broke away from the scrambled mess and violent rhetoric of the rules themselves. Hand-written in delicate, flowing cursive there was something like a poem. Still disjointed, the gentle hand was more comforting than the rest of the flier’s words.

’Come one,

Come all,

to the greatest show never seen.

Where the whole can be made broken

and a thousand other impossible things. To the deadly desperate

and grinning keen,

come find the Shatter Ball and be made unliving things.’

There was a sense of allure to it, something that made me hungry and thirsty, but too nauseous to put anything in my stomach. The Shatter Ball was calling us, arms outstretched, one hand reaching to caress, and the other balled into a tense, waiting fist.

Alisa still took it as a joke. “What’s the point of keeping it a secret? It looks like Hot Topic set up a circus outside of town. Everybody will know it's here!” Annoyed at my dismissals, she even threatened to expose the whole thing, post the pictures to a public group chat. She wouldn’t do that to me.

She was shaky, nervous, gittering as she prayed I wouldn’t call her bluff. She behaved like I’d somehow forgotten everything I knew about her and she could fool me by putting on a brave enough face. She was trying to gauge how serious I was, how far I would go. My stomach growled at the thought of caving and the curling invitation was all I could think about as I made it clear it wasn't worth testing. I’d never forgive her if she spoiled this one thing, ruined something that I was starving for like an animal. It wasn't worth losing a chance at whatever was inside that fairground.

Her fear blended into Steve’s anxiety. A slow, blooming mania in him at every story I let slip in my excitement. I’d read in message threads of grinning, pointy-eared boys with arms bent at wrong angles. Talk of the dead-eyed girls with translucent skin set his teeth on edge. Even as Alisa played at being unaffected by the Shatter Ball’s infection, Steve wore it proudly. He chewed the insides of his lips till his spit was red. He scratched at the leather of his car seats, and tore free the stuffing. He chain smoked constantly, barely even trying to hide his shaking hands. Alisa pretended and Steve looked as desperate as a leper. Whenever I watched him I’d wonder if I looked the same.

The black tents were a fungus spreading spores, growing in our lungs, spreading on the breath of any mention of their existence. There were cryptic posts about an “Obsidian Room” and the mysterious Ringmaster, a Walking Woman who moved without flaw. The Shatter Ball asked only that we do what we'd always intended, that we simply take one step to insure that this show was without pearl-clutching, soccer moms, or clucking librarians. Curiosity killed rebellion stone dead.

Summer plans derailed, hurriedly re-organized into secret rendezvous. Family trips were met with excuses and college decisions became secondary in the face of a radical change in priority. Windows all over town were jimmied open and well-oiled to avoid any squeaking as rogue athletes, musicians, holy rollers, honor-roll-regulars, and underachievers slipped into the warm dark of July.

___________________________________________________

It was long after the street lights came on when Alisa and I stumbled into the diner parking lot, eyes darting toward every sound. She grinned when we spotted each other, clutching herself despite weather. We found Steve sitting in his car in a dark corner of the lot, only the angry, red eye of his cigarette, hovering on the driver’s side, visible in the black. A half dozen butts littered the ground around the car.

Steve’s car smelled like a coffin. Empty cans on the floor rattled as we got in, clinking together noisily as Alisa and I swept them off seats and bent them under foot. The fresh bruise coloring his right cheek made Steve look all the more stony, a thundercloud before the storm. He said nothing, just peeled off into the dark. Inevitability hung over us, heavier and heavier, as more and more people appeared alongside us in trucks and little packs of bikes. It was like watching specks of dust circling the shower drain, slowly pulled into the vortex, gently swirling with the flow before being suddenly sucked down in an instant. Finally, nerves shot and praying for any distraction, Alisa and I began to discuss what we’d been reading online in preparation for the show. Anything to break the suffocating pressure. Steve stayed silent, staring at the road, purple knuckles gripping the wheel.

“I heard they were in Maine last. Put on only two shows before they were run out of town by an honest-to-god lynch mob.” Alisa, ever knowledgeable, rattled off a familiar set of facts gleaned from online forums. “There are probably just a couple different performance groups putting on the same show, like an international ballet company.”

I flinched, but managed to keep my voice even, “This thing’s been running since like the 70s. It’s practically a fossil. If there were multiple groups there would’ve been more shows per year.” Alisa, feeling more herself suddenly, gave a smug, pitying look in response, “Oh Starchild, thinking there’s magic in the world. The owners just want to cash in on the limited supply for that demand. It’s so simple if-”

“They don’t charge admission.”

Steve’s voice cut through the brewing argument. No hint of annoyance, he said it like he was commenting on the heat yesterday or how his car needed new tires. It was like a gunshot in the car.

“They don’t charge no admission and never have, that’s what all the stories say no matter where they are. The tents come, people go in, and they come out and never really tell what happened. That’s how it goes, just a bunch of different crap that don’t make sense together, buncha weird shit going on that’s apparently the greatest thing since weed and poptarts.”

Steve was willing to talk right now.

That was a good thing, his silences could stretch for weeks if he felt so inclined.

Steve knew enough about the Shatter Ball to know they didn’t charge admission.

The fact made me swallow a prickly feeling in my throat, blinking to banish the sudden sting behind my eyes. Alisa stared at him, probably waiting for some explanation or a follow up apology for being, “so geeky.” None came. Steve sat, oblivious to the awkwardness, settling back into the rhythm of the road. The odd flash of reflected headlights shifting the shadows across his face, hiding his eyes in the dark.