by Joe Hill
8:11 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Dad had a zombie lip in his hair. I am so glad I didn’t eat lunch. Looks like a gummy worm and it smells like ass.
8:13 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Naturally Eric wants to keep it.
8:13 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Here comes the ringmistress again. She says the next act is the cat’s meo
8:14 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE OMG OMGthat was not funny. She almost fell down and the way they were snarling
8:16 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE The men in hazmat suits just wheeled in a lion in a cage. Yay, a lion! I am still girl enough to like a big cat.
8:17 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Oh that’s a really sad, sick-looking lion. Not fun. They’re opening the cage and sending in zombies and he’s hissing like a house cat.
8:19 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Roawwwwr! Lion power. He’s swatting them down and shredding them apart. He’s got an arm in his mouth. Everyone cheering.
8:21 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Eeeuuuw. Not so much cheering now. He’s got one and he’s tugging out its guts like he’s pulling on one end of a tug rope.
8:22 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE They’re sending in more zombies. No one laughing or cheering now. It’s really crowded in there.
8:24 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE I can’t even see the lion anymore. Lots of angry snarling and flying fur and walking corpses getting knocked around.
8:24 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE OH GROSS. The lion made a sound, like this scared whine, and now the zombies are passing around organ meat and hunks of fur.
8:25 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE They’re eating. That’s awful. I feel sick.
8:26 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Dad saw I was getting upset and told me how they did it. The cage has a false bottom. They pulled the lion out through the floor.
8:30 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE You really get swept up in this thing.
8:30 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE The Mickey Rooney guy who led us back to the seats just showed up with a flashlight. He says we left the headlights on in the van.
8:31 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Eric went to turn them off. He said he has to pee anyway.
8:32 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE The fireswallower just came out. He has no eyes, and there’s some kind of steel contraption forcing his head back and his mouth open.
8:34 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE One of the men in the hazmat suits isFUCK ME.
8:35 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE They shoved a torch down his throat, and now he’s burning! He’s running around with smoke coming out of his mouth and
8:36 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE fire in his head coming out his eyes like a jack o lante
8:36 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE They just let him burn to death from the inside out. Realest thing I’ve ever seen.
8:39 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE What’s even realer is the corpse after the hazmat guys sprayed it down with the fire extinguishers. It looks so sad and shriveled and black.
8:39 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE The ringmistress is back. She’s really weaving around. I think something is wrong with her ankle.
8:40 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She says someone from the audience has agreed to be tonight’s sacrifice. She says he will be the lucky one.
8:41 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE He? I thought the sacrifice was usually a girl in this sort of situation.
8:41 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Oh no he did not. They just wheeled Eric out, cuffed to a big wooden wheel. He winked on the way past. Psycho. Go, Eric!
8:42 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE They hauled out a zombie and chained him to a stake in the dirt. There’s a box in front of him full of hatchets. Don’t like where this is going.
8:43 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Everyone’s laughing now. The lion scene was a little grim, but we’re back to funny again. The zombie threw the first hatchet in the crowd.
8:45 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE There was a thunk, and someone screamed like they got it in the head. Obvious plant.
8:45 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Eric is spinning around and around on the wheel. He’s telling the zombie to kill him before he throws up.
8:46 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Eeeks! I’m not as brave as Eric. A knife just banged into the wheel next to his head. Like: INCHES. Eric screamed too. Bet he wishes now
8:47 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE OMGOMGO
8:47 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Okay. He must be okay. He was still smiling when they wheeled him out of the ring. The hatchet went right in the side of his neck.
8:50 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Dad says it’s a trick. Dad says he’s fine. He says later Eric will come out as a zombie. That it’s part of the show.
8:51 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Yep, looks like Dad’s right. They’ve promised Eric will reemerge shortly.
8:53 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Mom is wigging. She wants Dad to check on Eric.
8:54 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She’s being kind of crazy. She’s talking about how the guy who sat in front of us never came back after he got hit by the shoe.
8:55 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE I don’t really see what that has to do with Eric. And besides, if I got hit by a flying shoe . . .
8:55 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Okay, Dad is going to check on Eric. Sanity restored.
8:56 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Here comes the ringmistress again. This is why Eric agreed to go backstage. With the fishnets and black panties, she’s very goth-hot.
8:56 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She’s being weird. She isn’t saying anything about the next act. She says if she goes off script they don’t let her out of the ring.
8:57 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE But she doesn’t care. She says she twisted her ankle and she knows tonight is her last night.
8:58 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She says her name is Gail Ross and she went to high school in Plano.
8:59 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She says she was going to marry her boyfriend after college. She says his name was Craig and he wanted to teach.
9:00 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She says she’s sorry for all of us. She says they take our cars and dispose of them while we’re in the tent.
9:01 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She says 12,000 people vanish every year on the roads with no explanation, their cars turn up empty or not at all and no one will miss us.
9:02 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Creepy stuff. Here’s Eric. His zombie makeup is really good. Most of the zombies are black and rotted, but he looks like fresh kill.
9:03 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Still got the hatchet in the neck. That looks totally fake.
9:03 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE He’s not very good at being a zombie. He isn’t even trying to walk slow. He’s really going after the ringmistress.
9:04 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE oh shit I hope that’s
part of the show. He just knocked her down. Oh Eric Eric Eric. She hit the dirt really really hard.
9:05 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE They’re eating her like they ate the lion. Eric is playing with guts. He’s so gross. He’s going totally Method.
9:07 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Gymnastics now. They’re making a human pyramid. Or maybe I should say an INhuman pyramid. They’re surprisingly good at it. For zombies.
9:10 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Eric is climbing the pyramid like he knows what he’s doing. I wonder if they gave him backstage training or
9:11 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE He’s up high enough to grab the wall around the ring. He’s snarling at someone in the front row, just a couple feet from here. Wait
9:13 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE no lights fuck thta was stupid whyd they put out the
9:14 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE someones screaming
9:15 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE this is really dangerous its so dark and lots of people are screaming and getting up. im mad now you don’t do this to people you don’t
9:18 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE we need help we areacv
9:32 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE gtttttgggtttggttttttttgggbbbnnnfrfffgt
9:32 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE I cant say anything theyll hear. were beinb ver y qiuet wevegot a plas
10:17 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE were off i70 mom says it was exit 331 but we drove a long way the last town we saw was called ucmba
10:19 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE cumba
10:19 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE the people in the stands were all dead except for us and a few others and they were roped together tethered
10:20 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE please someone send help call UT state police not making this up
10:22 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE @caseinSD lease help you know me you know I wouldnt isnta joke
10:23 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE have to be quiet so I can’t call got the ringer is turned off
10:24 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE AZ state police mom says its arizona not UT our van is a white econlein
10:27 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE its quiet less screaming now less growling
10:50 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE theyre dragging people into piles
10:56 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE eating theyre eating them
11:09 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE the man who got hit by the shoe earlier walked by but he isn’t like he was he hes dead now
11:11 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE just mom and me i love my mom shes so brave i love her so much so much i never ment it none of the bad things not one i am with her i am
11:37 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE imso csared
11:39 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE theyresearching to see if anyone is left with flashlights the men in hazmat soups i say go out mom says no
11:41 PM – 2 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE were here were waiting for help please forward this to everyone on twitter this is true not an internet prank believe believe believe pleves
12:03 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE ohgod it was dad went by mom sat up and said his name and mom and dad and mom and dad
12:09 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE notdad oh my oh bnb nnnb ;;/’/.,/;’././/
12:13 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE /’/.
12:13 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Were you SCARED by this TWITTER FEED???!?!?
9:17 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE The FEAR–and THE FUN–is only just BEGINNING!
9:20 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE “THE CIRCUS OF THE DEAD” featuring our newest RINGMISTRESS the SEXY & DARING BLAKE THE BLACKHEARTED.
9:22AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Watch as our newest QUEEN OF THE TRAPEEZE introduces our PERVERSE & PERNICIOUS performers . . .
9:23 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE . . . while DANGLING FROM A ROPE ABOVE THE RAVENOUS DEAD!
9:23 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE A CIRCUS so SHOCKING it makes THE JIM ROSE CIRCUS look like THE MUPPET SHOW!
9:25 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Now touring with stops in ALL CORNERS OF THE COUNTRY!
9:26 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Visit our Facebook page and join our E-MAIL LIST to find out when we’ll be in YOUR AREA.
9:28 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE STAY CONNECTED OR YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’LL MISS!
9:30 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE “THE CIRCUS OF THE DEAD” . . . Where YOU are the concessions! Other circuses promise DEATH-DEFYING THRILLS!
9:31 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE BUT ONLY WE DELIVER! (Tix to be purchased at box office day of show. No refunds. Cash only. Minors must be accompanied by adult.)
9:31 AM – 3 Mar from Tweetie
Mums
1.
When Jack comes downstairs for breakfast, Bloom is on the landline, talking to someone in a confidential, urgent tone of voice. Jack pays his mother no mind and helps himself to a bowl of granola. Cereals containing refined sugars and preservatives are not allowed in the McCourt household—the preservatives in sugar cereals are known to cause both autism and homosexuality. He carries his breakfast into the sitting room to watch X-Men on TV. X-Men is liberal media brainwashing and also frowned upon, but Jack’s father is off to Wichita for a gun show, and his mother is less hung up about cartoons.
“Hey, kid,” his mother says when she emerges from the kitchen. “You want to meet your great-great-great?”
“Meemaw?”
“You know she’s going to turn a hundred this summer?”
“That isn’t true.”
“She’s so old she was born before TV.”
“No one was born before TV.”
“Before cars. Maybe before horses. All the people in my family descend from trees,” Bloom McCourt informs him. “You know how long a tree lives? There’s trees alive today that were old when George Washington was born. We’re descended from George Washington’s people, too. I forget the details. You don’t believe me she’s about to be a hundred?”
“No.”
“Want to ask her yourself?”
“Are we going to call her?”
His mother steps into the front hall. She opens the closet under the stairs and lifts out a drab and battered suitcase. Bloom sets it on the floor by her feet and gives him a pointed look.
“I was aiming to surprise you. You and I have never taken a trip together before. We’ll get the bus in Cordia and zip on over to Joplin. We can catch a Greyhound to Minnesota there.”
“What about Dad?”
“Your father knows all about Minnesota. You think anything can happen in this house without his know-about-it? Get dressed.”
“Do I have to pack?”
She tipped her head at the suitcase by her feet. “Already done. I packed for both of us. Come on, now. Put on your hurry-up shoes.”
Jack has never met any of his mother’s people, not his grandfather Magnus, not his grandmother Devoted, and not his great-great-great-meemaw, who supposedly once babysat Ernest Hemingway. They are all of them Pentecostals and live up in northwestern Minnesota, on Lake Superior.
The first inkling he has that his father is not in on the plan to head no
rth comes when they slip out through the back door instead of the front and cut across the brown January fields on foot. Until then Jack had assumed they would get a ride to the bus station in Cordia. Connor McCourt and his wife, Beth, share a three-room cottage at the end of the raked gravel drive, a quarter of a mile down the road. Jack’s father allows them to stay there rent-free, part of the arrangement he has with them. The both of them are full-time help, available to do whatever needs doing, from farming to scullery work. Connor is off to the gun show with Jack’s old man, but his fluorescent orange Road Runner is still here, parked alongside his bungalow.
“Why doesn’t Beth drive us?”
“The Road Runner needs a new whatsit.”
“Aren’t we going to say good-bye?”
“Naw. It’s her Saturday. We’ll let her sleep in for once, kid. Give ol’ Beth a break.”
They walk swiftly toward the tree line, his mother hauling the suitcase in one hand and squeezing his cold fingers in the other. Jack can see Connor and Beth’s cottage in its little stand of trees and wonders if Beth will look out the window and wonder why they’re carrying a suitcase across the furrowed field.
They wade through a few yards of stiff, frozen brush and come out on the edge of the highway. His mother marches them east along the side of the road, gravel crunching under their heels. With every step they put between themselves and his father’s sprawling red farmhouse, she seems more at ease with herself.
Jack and Bloom walk the ruler-straight highway in the strong, brassy morning light for around half an hour. His mother tells him about relations he will meet up north, people with colorful mental illnesses and amusing criminal histories. There is the aunt who fell in love with a parking meter and went to jail for taking a cutting torch to it so she could bring it home with her. There is the great-uncle who strangled someone’s poodle because he thought it was a Russian spy. Jack’s great-great-grandfather used to walk in the Easter parade, naked except for a loincloth, carrying a hundred-pound mahogany cross on his back and wearing a crown of thorns, until the town ordered him to stop—the blood on his face was scaring children. Jack is at turns incredulous, bemused, and thrilled. She might almost be describing a nineteenth-century freak show instead of family.
He sees his father’s F-150 coming before his mother does, Connor’s Road Runner following right behind it.
“Hey,” he says, pointing at the pickup, which is still half a mile away. “It’s Dad. I thought he went to the gun show.”