The
Trash Clown's Midnight Rummage
The
streetlights cast long, anemic shadows as Barnaby, once known to roaring crowds
as 'Barnaby the Magnificent,' now the 'Trash Clown,' pulled his rickety wooden
wagon down Elm Street.
Each wheel
sang a mournful tune that echoed against the cracked pavement. Strapped to the
wagon's frame was an object that seemed as out of place as Barnaby himself: a
colossal, rust-streaked black anvil. It was heavy, solid, a symbol of a trade
he'd long abandoned, a life of forging dreams now replaced by the detritus of
others.
He paused
at a battered green dumpster, its lid bent askew. With a sigh deeper than any
he'd ever released after a circus trick, Barnaby pulled up his tattered,
oversized gloves. The sweet-sour stink of forgotten meals and crumpled dreams
assaulted his bulbous red nose. He rummaged, his once vibrant, now faded,
polka-dotted costume snagging on broken glass.
He pulled
out a crumpled circus poster, its colors leached by time and rain. After that,
a deflated balloon, a single, glittery juggling pin missing his face, and a
half-eaten bag of stale popcorn. His painted smile, cracked like old porcelain,
seemed to falter. Barnaby was lost in
nostalgia there in the wrecked street-scene. He looked down at the heap of
refuse, then at the anvil on his wagon, a monument to his former glory.
"See
what I've been reduced to,"
he whispered, the words lost in the rustling plastic bags and the distant hum
of a late-night car tires on distant pavement.
The anvil
gleamed dully under the streetlamp, a silent witness to his fall from grace, a
heavy anchor dragging him through the remnants of discarded lives.
