'Circus Skills'

Had I really applied for a course in Circus Skills? It seemed so unlike me. I’ve always hated circuses. As a consequence, I often dream about them – the ring, the spotlight, freakish performers, wild animals and their would-be tamers, glamorous women, strong men, clowns, sawdust, the seated audience eating peanuts and drinking beer. Perhaps it’s the other way around: I dream of them and so I hate them. Once a thing grows familiar it can get to be a little hateful.

I was sad to see the announcement that Interzone Digital, the online sister mag of the long-running magazine, was closing. I've had several stories in IZD over the last few years, and decided I would repost them here in order to keep them online. 'Circus Skills' was the last of the three, and was originally published in May 2025. Thank you to Gareth for finding a home for it.

IZD's closure coincided with some cheerier news: the arrival of IZ #304, featuring stories from Aliya Whitely, R.T. Ester, and others, along with the usual columns and reviews (including an 8,000 words+ instalment of Nick Lowe's excellent long-running film review column Mutant Popcorn). Single issues can be purchased at the IZ website here, and subscriptions are available at the magazine's Patreon.

For now, here is:

Circus Skills

It was a bad year. The seas were on fire. I lost my job. My dad got ill. A minor injury to his groin had gone septic: it wasn’t looking good. And I was ill myself; everybody was ill. Lots of people had lost their jobs. I’d started signing-on. I needed to show willing, my case worker told me, so I started answering ads – in fact I answered a lot of ads: those days were a fever dream of applications, job ads, ads for work-related training courses. By the time I finished, they’d all blurred into one. I might have dreamt them up. I sleep terribly, if I sleep at all, but have such vivid dreams. Because I had answered so many ads, I’d begun to dream about answering ads. By the time the rejections started coming through, I could scarcely remember the applications. Had I really applied for a course in Circus Skills? It seemed so unlike me. I’ve always hated circuses. As a consequence, I often dream about them – the ring, the spotlight, freakish performers, wild animals and their would-be tamers, glamorous women, strong men, clowns, sawdust, the seated audience eating peanuts and drinking beer. Perhaps it’s the other way around: I dream of them and so I hate them. Once a thing grows familiar it can get to be a little hateful. At least with all the rejections my case worker was happy. She was a slightly mannish though not unattractive woman of about my age. She wore a necklace of green beads and had an immense mass of red hair piled on top of her head. I also have ginger hair and on that basis had hoped to build something of a rapport. She was always playing with a Job Centre-branded biro; she had a pot of them on her desk. She’d asked me to show willing and I had shown it. Frankly, she had never seen so much willing: it was obscene. She was taken aback. I knew she’d had me down as a hopeless case, but I had proved her wrong. It had been important to me that I prove her wrong because she was absolutely right. Our first meeting, she’d broached the question of Assisted Dying. This was a new thing. I was there to sign-on, so it had startled me, but she explained it to me. Integrated Services. She was just sign-posting options. I wondered did she have a target, did she get bonuses if she met or exceeded that target? I asked what had prompted her to offer it to me. Well, she said, adopting a careful tone. My alarm had surprised her. Now she could see it was a delicate matter. Your illness, she said. My illness, I replied. She narrowed her eyes as if I had refused to play ball. You are terminally ill. I laughed aloud at this, I’m not proud to say. It was a terrible sound. Like the wailing of foxes. From the other desks, other case workers and other job-seekers looked around, wondering what all the fuss was about. The air con in the Job Centre was broken and everyone was sweating profusely. Security, hands held behind their backs, uniforms too tight and warm for summer, twitched and sniffed and shifted their weight from foot to foot. My cheeks went red, redder: I blush so easily. Everyone was looking at me. Oh that, I said, as I recovered my composure. Well, aren’t we all? My case worker pursed her lips. She was always pursing her lips. Perhaps, I said, if we’re all terminally ill, then none of us are terminally ill. Life is just a way of dying. At this she flinched. It was clear she didn’t like it one bit. She decided to change the subject. Fair enough – no one likes to think about death, even though it’s the only thing I ever think about when life isn’t making me think about something else. The problem lately has been that life hasn’t been making me think of very much. My case worker had changed the subject and I realised I’d tuned out. I noticed her noticing this and tried to tune back in. She was speaking slowly, as if to a child or an idiot or a drunk, something about work-related skills. The truth of it was there wasn’t much work around, not that she’d ever say it like this, and so we had to pretend. I realised that she was also pretending and I had an important role to play, because if I didn’t play along her own pretence would break down. I thought of everyone in the city, in and out of work, pretending to work. The pretence that held it all together breaking down. Maybe circus skills weren’t a bad idea. I said I’d retrieve that email from my Junk folder and she looked at me quizzically and I realised she’d not said anything about circus skills, I’d just imagined it. Maybe I’d dreamt up that email. All at once that made the circus skills course the one and only thing I wanted to do. It was my new fixation. I had found a purpose. I’d find community. Clowns, acrobats, lion-tamers, freaks, glamorous women, individuals of peculiar flexibility – I’d start anywhere. I’d show willing. I could be a glamorous woman. I’d clean out the pens. Perhaps I’d work my way up to ringmaster. They could fire me out of a cannon. My case worker told me she’d see me next week. She was pleased I’d shown willing but wasn’t interested in cannons. I understood that she wanted me to leave, so I left. At home I checked my email, found a whole flood of rejections; I checked my Junk mail and found nothing whatsoever to do with circus skills. I paced the house for I don’t know how long. I rang my father but the network was down, which was probably for the best. I tried a second time just to make sure. When at last I fell asleep that night I checked my mail again, opened my Junk mail, and found the circus skills rejection. I forwarded it to my waking address. I could re-apply in the morning with authentic enthusiasm. In the dream I realised my case worker was watching me through the living room window. She was my father. Come outside, son, she said to me. Her red hair was a river of flame. The street was a film set, flooded with light; above it, the black sky seethed with stars. Abashed, I complied with the request. I found her standing by a ladder. I looked up to see a cannon such as those used in certain circus acts but of truly monstrous scale. It loomed over the city. The cosmos a circus. We’ll go together, said my case worker. You first. One step at a time. I’ll be right behind you. The next morning I felt really peculiar. It appeared that yesterday’s efforts had exhausted my stores of motivation. I was still out of work. I was still ill. I had to start again – I’m always starting again. Routine can drive you crazy. I had to show willing, but all morning I sat on the side of the bed, staring at the wall, at the point where the skirting board met the yellow and white stripes of the wallpaper. Some days the yellow stripes look like bars of light; on other days, they look like the bars of a cage. I sat like that for hours, my head too heavy to lift. I needed to shower, which meant I needed to stand, fetch a towel, make my way downstairs, but the combination of these steps, straightforward on their own terms, presented me with an insurmountable problem. It was this problem, possessing mass and force, that weighed my gaze down. How, given that weight, might I show willing? Because every day is a new day. Every day is the same. Just because I had performed well yesterday didn’t mean I could rest on my laurels today. As I was thinking this, there came the ping of new mail from my laptop. It was about that course in circus skills. I started to laugh: it was the only thing I could do. It was a terrible sound.