The Beast

The tickets sold for millions, at $100 a seat the show was a steal as many chirped. People were getting on top of each other to get their hands to the ticket to this amazing show. If the advertisements were any true then this would be the show of a lifetime. The happy faces an indication that the struggle to get their hands on a handful of tickets had succeeded. Once inside the showground the big celebration was all worth the trouble. Young kids frolicked around carrying their treats from the candy store or their loot from the firing kiosk, where you would fire shots at Timmy the Rabbit or throw a punch at Hira the Tiger, and watch the effigies crumble to the ground before claiming your price. Big posters everywhere and the fun music had everyone put on their dancing shoes as they walked in between the various Kiosks towards the big Marquee where it was all going to begin.

After the treats everyone gathered around the Arena and got in the queue behind the rest to enter through the small opening. The gatekeeper would punch the ticket and the queue would descend a bit though the opening and into the tent. The Marquee was magnanimous, the oohs and aahs a proof of the grandeur. People would look around them in awe and trip a little here and there before getting to their seats to absorb the entire enigma that surrounded them.

As everyone settled so the show began. Lights went out and slowly from the middle of the podium were coming up a cage which had the largest beast confined inside. The largest feline the humanity has seen was trapped by the fellas at the circus and that marked their soaring popularity. The cage lit from the bottom cast a shadow on the ceiling of the tent to give the beast even a bigger appearance than it already had. The cage surfaced and the ringmaster whipped the beast and when it roared the kids could be heard crying, or the crying infants too stunned to speak, and the adults could be heard sighing at the magnanimity of the scene that had unfold in front of them. The master wiped his forehead and looked at the beast in his eyes and held his gaze and moved his hand, the beast used to the beatings moved his head as per the burning beacon lit in front of him. The cage door was slowly lifted and the crowd went quiet, as the beast unfurled out of the cage the silence could be felt like a sheet engulfing the entire arena. The ringmaster had its chain buckled in this hands held it tightly as his life dependent on it. The beast had been smuggled from fairytale world of a neighboring country and had been beaten up to train since last 10 days. He had warned everyone that they were not ready but the manager hell-bent on making money could not see anything beyond the green colour and whiff of the crisp notes that would come in. He had been correct though; the cash flow had flowed in like a dam broken by the floods as soon as the news got out. The ringmaster didn’t like the idea of beating the animals to make them work and took his time to understand them, but the manager had appointed 2 other staff to accompany the ringmaster to tame the beast. Brutal as they were, their job was to beat the beast black and blue as soon as he arrived, the ringmaster would turn his gaze at this dance of cruelty in front of him and would pass a plate of food to the beast when those other 2 left. He could see flicker of his own helplessness reflected in the eyes of the beast both slaves to the circumstances.

The ringmaster shook his head and concentrated on taming the beast in front of him. As commanded by his manager, he held open the whip once again and mock waved it in the air to command the beast to sit like a lap dog. Alas the beast was not meant to be tamed, as soon as it saw the opening it flicked its tail and roared and gave a nudge to his head. The crowd gasped in horror as the nudge caused the chain to break and the beast to be freed from the clutches of the cages with nothing in between them and him. The beast roared aloud once more and then the panic broke in the podium as the crowd splattered in every direction. The ringmaster took up the beacon and tried cornering the beast to get him once again in the cage but the beast that had been confined to an 8X10 cell was not going to be reclaimed that easily.  These past 12 days had given the ringmaster and the beast an understanding which they communicated through their eyes but today all that could be seen in the eyes of the beast was the wilderness of the jungle and a longing to break free from the binds he had been subjected to. He jumped atop the ringmaster on the opening that led to pavilion where the manager sat with his 2 brutal pets counting the notes that had come soaring in. The beast knew he had to finish one job before he would fling across the walls and move to the jungle behind the circus ground.