Circus Act IV: The Shapeshifter vs. The Trickster

Chaos broke out as a large number of people began stampeding toward the exit.

Some random person stopped me and asked if I wanted to know why everyone was running.

I told her I did not like to be involved in gossip, but the tea seemed tempting.

She told me some filthy, greasy animal had found oil inside one of the city potholes, and now everyone was running through the streets checking every pothole in town and several nearby cities for black gold.

People were abandoning the circus in massive numbers.

The only ones who stayed behind were those with weak internet signal and no access to the pothole updates.

Within minutes, the place felt like a fully functioning ghost town.

Fortunately, the mermaid show had not been canceled.

It was, in fact, the only attraction still operating at full capacity.

The reason quickly became clear: many of the men had sent their wives, children, and pets into the streets to inspect the potholes for petroleum while they themselves remained behind to continue studying the mermaid.

Several had even filed for an emergency temporary pause on their prenups.

Officially, they said they were “saving the seats.”

I did not believe this.

As I stood there witnessing human madness and predictability, a raven pulled a strand of my hair.

This was code for: the Trickster is nearby.

I gave the raven the last of my red rose Poe stickers, which it accepted as legal tender, and sent it on its way.

The Trickster can only find me in chaos, which is why I take precautions.

Every time I know I am going to be in close proximity to mob mentality, I wear my odorless perfume.

The saleswoman said it was subtle.

I said, “Perfect. I am trying to avoid being recognized by archetypes.”

I suppose I hurt him.

Not emotionally.

Worse.

Competitively.

The Trickster had never lost a game before.

Not riddles, not “what happens if I press this button?” and not “guess which door leads to nowhere.”

I had beaten him at Mexopoly, which is basically Monopoly, except it is played with Mexican money because your money goes farther.

He had no experience with the conversion rate.

That was on him.

Still, he considered the entire incident a betrayal and had been looking for revenge ever since.

He kept treating pesos like dollars.

I let him.

That is not cheating.

That is allowing a man to meet the consequences of his assumptions.

“Come out,” the Trickster yelled. “I have a lot of souvenirs with your legal first name on them.”

That was when I realized why I could never find my name at souvenir stands.

He had been buying them all.

“I know the first of the hundreds you use must be your favorite,” he shouted.

The worst part is that it is not even my favorite name.

I only buy souvenirs with my legal first name on them in case I lose one and someone needs an easy time finding me.

It is not sentimental.

It is identification.

The Trickster believed he had discovered my original form.

He had not.

He had discovered my emergency contact name.

I do not feel bad for the Trickster.

I am not the one spending money on personalized souvenirs with my government name on them in an attempt to lure a shapeshifter out of hiding.

I am not the one flying across the world — knowing him, probably first class — to find someone in the middle of chaos.

That is his financial decision.

He says he is seeking revenge.

I say he is carrying the cross of holding grudges through international airports in a potato sack full of personalized souvenirs.

At that point, what he needed was not vengeance.

It was a financial advisor and a back adjustment.

The Trickster, unable to reach the podium on his own, used the man standing nearby with crutches as temporary scaffolding.

The man complied because he believed he had been randomly chosen as an audience participant in whatever act was currently unfolding.

This was reasonable.

By then, the circus had suspended normal ethics.

Once elevated, the Trickster cleared his throat and began what I assumed was a sermon.

At first, it sounded like he was trying to sympathize with the man beneath him.

Then I realized he was using the man as both a podium and a character witness in his campaign to expose me as the Wicked Witch of the South.

Meanwhile, the Trickster kept shouting.

He was desperate now.

Almost evangelical.

He was doing the full gospel of revenge, calling me out in front of the crowd, promising restoration, judgment, and possibly a rematch of Mexopoly.

But nobody was listening.

Half the crowd had noise-canceling headphones on.

The other half checked his profile and realized his follower count did not end in K.

This destroyed his credibility immediately.

In the old days, a trickster could stand in the center of town and cause mass hysteria with one sentence.

Now he needed at least 10K followers, a verified aesthetic, and one verified celebrity following him back.

The Trickster said this is why they should never have burned the witches.

By burning them, they made them stronger.

The ones who were already witches were fed by the fear, the spectacle, and the belief of the crowd.

And the ones who were not witches were burned so deeply into the public imagination that they were reborn as witches anyway.

That is the danger of collective belief.

People think they are destroying something, when in fact they are giving it shape, energy, and permanence.

In the end, the fire did not erase the witches.

It multiplied them.

The Trickster spotted a mysterious woman wrapped in many layers of clothing and assumed it was me.

Without warning, he kissed her on the lips.

“You taste fully human,” he said. “It’s not her.”

Then he proceeded to ask for her digits.

This was his first mistake.

His second mistake was believing the layers were symbolic.

They were not.

The woman was a shoplifter, and the layers were evidence.

Seconds later, the Trickster reached for his wallet and found nothing.

She had taken it, along with his return-flight tickets.

This was devastating because it meant he was now trapped in my town until his replacement credit cards arrived in the mail.

This whole time, I had been hiding behind the cotton candy machine, snacking while watching him make a fool of himself.

It was not that I was afraid of the Trickster’s tricks.

His tricks had gotten boring.

That was the problem.

I was afraid he would find me and force me into the full polite human interaction: the greeting, the fake surprise, the brief weather report, the comment about how long it had been, and a full recap of everything he had experienced while searching for me all over the world.

Then he would try to warm me up emotionally.

Then he would suggest a rematch of Mexopoly.

Then, if I survived that, Uno.

Then Dos.

This was not revenge.

This was social death by escalation.

I had a mermaid show to catch.

To be continued.