Wonderland Dreaming.
Author Archives: The Crazymad Writer
1897 Steampunk
The year was 1897, but the world had already begun to forget the rules of time.
In the misty borderlands between the Black Forest and the Rhine, where the air smelled of coal smoke and lilacs, Captain Catherine Voss piloted her brass-and-copper beast down a forgotten lane no map had dared record. The machine beneath her hissed and sighed like a living thing, its boiler heart glowing cherry-red behind her shoulder. Steam curled from valves shaped like dragon heads; the headlamps burned with captured aether, casting gold pools across the mossy path.
Catherine’s gloved hands, black kid leather stitched with tiny brass gears, rested lightly on the rosewood wheel. Goggles pushed up into her wheat-gold hair revealed eyes the color of storm-lit steel. A scarlet silk scarf, the only softness in her ensemble, fluttered against the high collar of her flight jacket like a defiant flag.
She was running, though no one followed her yet.
Three nights ago, in the underground salons of New Augsburg, she had stolen the Heart of Chronos, a fist-sized ruby that pulsed with the stolen seconds of a thousand lives. The Guild of Horologists wanted it back. The Kaiser’s mechanized hounds wanted it for their master. Even the sky-pirates of the Zeppelinreich had put a bounty on her head high enough to buy a small kingdom.
None of them mattered.
Catherine needed the Heart for one reason only: to wind time backward exactly eleven years, six months, and nine days. To the morning she had left her little brother, Lukas, waving from the balcony of their father’s workshop. To the morning the sky cracked open and the first iron airships rained fire on the city below. To the morning she had been too late.
The road narrowed. Ancient oaks leaned overhead like conspirators. The automobile’s gauges trembled; the Heart, hidden inside a secret compartment beneath the seat, was singing to the engine, making the needles dance. She was close now—close to the ruined observatory on the hill where the veil between minutes grew thin.
A shadow passed over the moon. Catherine glanced up. A black airship, silent as an owl, drifted above the treetops, its searchlight sweeping the forest floor like the cold finger of fate.
She smiled, small and sharp.
“Let them come,” she whispered to the night, to the machine, to the ruby heart beating beneath her. “I have stolen time itself. A few more thieves won’t matter.”
She pressed the brass throttle forward. The dragon-valves screamed with delight. Steam roared. Wheels spun, biting earth, and the steam-car lunged into the darkness, carrying Captain Catherine Voss and every second she intended to take back toward the place where yesterday waited with open arms wide open.
The hunt was on, but time, for once, was on her side.
**************************************************************************************************************************
The forest ended as if someone had sliced it with a knife.
One heartbeat the oaks were clawing at the sky; the next, the steam-car burst into a clearing where moonlight pooled like spilled mercury. In the center rose the observatory: once a proud dome of iron and glass, now a broken crown of girders and star-shards. Vines had strangled the telescope; its brass barrel pointed at the heavens like an accusing finger.
Catherine killed the throttle. The engine coughed once, twice, then settled into a low, wounded growl. Silence rushed in, thick and listening.
She stepped down. The ruby (the Heart of Chronos) was warm against her ribs, wrapped in oil-cloth inside her jacket. It beat in time with her pulse now, faster, hungrier.
A rope ladder unrolled from the black airship overhead with a soft hiss. Black boots touched earth. Then another pair. Then six more. The Kaiser’s Nachtjäger, masked in burnished steel, goggles reflecting the moon like dead suns. Their leader carried a long rifle whose barrel was a coiled spring of clockwork.
“Captain Voss,” he called, voice muffled by the mask. “Return the Heart and you may yet keep your life.”
Catherine smiled the way a wolf smiles at a candle.
She drew the ruby. It flared, painting the clearing blood-red. Every gauge on the steam-car behind her leapt; needles slammed against their pins. The dragon-valves screamed open, venting white fire.
“I’m not here for my life,” she said. “I’m here for someone else’s.”
She slammed the Heart into the hollow brass socket her father had built into the observatory’s cracked pedestal eleven years ago (exactly eleven years, six months, nine days ago). The moment it seated, the ruined dome groaned. Gears long rusted began to turn. The great telescope swivelled downward until its lens stared straight at her like a blind glass eye.
Time tore.
The clearing rippled. Leaves ran backward along branches. The moon jittered across the sky in stuttering jumps. Catherine felt her hair lift from the ground as every second she had ever lived flashed past her in reverse.
She saw Lukas again: eight years old, waving from the balcony, mouth open in a shout she could no longer hear. Saw the first bomb fall. Saw herself running too late.
The Nachtjäger fired. Bullets hung in the air like lazy bees, caught between one heartbeat and the last.
Catherine reached into the tearing light and spoke the single word her father had carved beneath the pedestal the day he finished the machine:
“Stop.”
The world obeyed.
Everything froze: the airship, the soldiers, the ruby, the moon. Only Catherine could move. She walked through the suspended bullets to the place where her younger self stood on the burning street, coat aflame, screaming Lukas’s name.
She knelt. Took the child’s face (her own face, eleven years younger) in her gloved hands.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was late. But I’m here now.”
Tears cut clean paths through the soot on younger Catherine’s cheeks.
Behind her, the Heart cracked. A hairline fracture, then another. Time was not meant to be held in human hands.
Catherine felt the seconds she had stolen begin to burn. Her skin blistered with years. Hair grayed, then whitened. She aged a decade in a breath.
But she stayed.
She wrapped her arms around the terrified girl she had been and held her until the fire cooled, until the bombs never fell, until Lukas’s laughter echoed from the balcony once more.
When the Heart finally shattered, the clearing and observatory and airship and Nachtjäger all vanished like smoke. Catherine was left kneeling in an ordinary meadow under an ordinary moon.
She was old now (truly old), bones aching, breath rattling. The steam-car sat beside her, cold and silent, its boiler cracked forever.
In the distance, a boy and girl ran through long grass, chasing fireflies.
Catherine Voss closed her eyes and smiled.
She had paid every second she owned, and a few she didn’t.
It was enough.
*****************************
The meadow was quiet for a long time.
Long enough for dew soaked the hem of Catherine’s ruined coat.
Long enough for the first bird to mistake the silence for dawn and begin to sing.
She stayed on her knees, palms open on her thighs, feeling the years settle into her joints like lead shot. Her reflection in a puddle showed a woman of ninety, maybe a hundred: silver hair, parchment skin, eyes still the color of storm-lit steel but filmed now with the glaze of the very old.
The children’s laughter drifted farther away, swallowed by the trees.
Catherine tried to stand. Her legs refused. The price had been exact: every borrowed second repaid with interest. She had nothing left to spend.
She laughed once, dry and cracked, and the sound startled her. It had been years since she’d laughed without bitterness.
Then she heard footsteps behind her, soft on the grass.
A boy stood there. Eight years old. Freckles across his nose. A smear of engine grease on one cheek, exactly the way it had been that morning on the balcony.
Lukas.
He tilted his head, puzzled but not afraid. “Are you hurt, ma’am?”
Catherine’s throat closed. She tried to speak his name and could only manage a rasp.
Lukas stepped closer. In his small fist he held something that glinted: a single shard of ruby, no larger than a raindrop, still faintly warm.
“I found this by the old car,” he said. “It was glowing. Then it stopped. I thought maybe it belonged to you.”
He offered it.
Catherine stared at the shard. One heartbeat of stolen time left in the whole world, and it had found its way to him.
She closed his fingers gently over it.
“Keep it,” she whispered. “It’s very precious. One day, when someone you love needs a second chance… you’ll know what to do.”
Lukas frowned, sensing more than understanding. “Will I see you again?”
Catherine looked past him, toward the trees where the younger version of herself (barely seventeen, coat unburned, eyes still bright with impossible plans) was walking toward them, calling his name.
“No,” Catherine said, smiling so wide it hurt. “But she will.”
Lukas ran off to meet his sister.
Catherine watched them collide in a tangle of arms and laughter. She watched the girl (herself, untouched by fire or regret) ruffle his hair and scold him for wandering too far.
The sun rose properly then, gilding the meadow in ordinary gold.
Catherine lay back in the grass. The dew was cool against her neck. Above her, the sky was the soft, forgiving blue of a day that had never known iron airships.
She felt her heart slow, not with fear but with a vast, exhausted peace.
One last breath, tasting of lilacs and coal smoke.
And Captain Catherine Voss (thief of time, savior of one small boy, debtor finally repaid) let the morning take her.
Somewhere far away, a ruby shard pulsed once in a child’s pocket, keeping its promise for another day, another life.
But that is a different story.
This one ends here, in the quiet meadow, under the gentle sun, ends with an old woman smiling at the sky.
It ends exactly the way it was always meant to:
on time.
The End.
The Twelve Dalek Days of Christmas
The Daleks of Ballykillduff and the Twelve Days of Absolutely Catastrophic Christmas
Ballykillduff was gearing up for its usual festive carnage when the three Daleks (Zeg, Zog, and Zag) decided Christmas was a strategic weakness ripe for conquest. They were wrong. Spectacularly, hilariously, catastrophically wrong.
Day 1 – A Partridge in a Pear Tree Zeg declared himself the new Lord of Christmas and tried to occupy the village pear tree. The tree had ideas. One gust of wind and Zeg shot out like a metallic cannonball, landing upside-down in Mrs Mulgrew’s prize-winning compost heap. “EXTERMINATE THE COMPOST!” he shrieked, muffled by six feet of rotting cabbage. Mrs Mulgrew charged out in hair curlers, brandishing a broom. “You’ll be compost yourself, ya pepper-pot gobshite!” Zeg spent the rest of the day being hosed down by the fire brigade while the entire village filmed it for TikTok.
Day 2 – Two Turtle Doves Zog kidnapped the doves to interrogate them about “avian loyalty.” The doves shat on his dome in perfect unison, then flew off with his eyestalk cover. He chased them screaming “RETURN MY OPTIC!” straight into the duck pond. Ducks 3 – Three French Hens** The hens belonged to Sister Bernadette. They were ninja hens. Zog is still convinced they were cyber-converted. He has PTSD and flinches every time someone says “coq au vin.”
Day 4 – Four Calling Birds Zag tried to weaponising them with tiny Dalek voice modulators. The birds learned one phrase: “ZAG IS A SPAWNFACE.” They followed him everywhere for a week, screeching it at 140 decibels. He now sleeps with industrial earmuffs.
Day 5 – FIVE GOOOOLD RIIIINGS Zeg stole the five gold rings from the jeweller and tried to wear them like Olympic medals. They got stuck on his plunger. The fire brigade had to come back. Again. The chief now has a special “Dalek wedged in something stupid” incident code.
Day 6 – Six Geese a-Laying The geese took one look at three rolling dustbins shouting “EXTERMINATE” and decided it was go-time. Live-streamed goose chase lasted twenty-three glorious minutes. Final score: Geese 47, Daleks 0. Zeg’s dignity is still missing, presumed pecked to death.
Day 7 – Seven Swans a-Swimming The swans were rented from a posh estate for the crib scene. Daleks attempted a synchronized swimming takeover. Swans formed a V-formation and torpedoed them like feathery missiles. Zog was last seen doing 360-degree spins in the fountain yelling “WHY IS EVERY BIRD IN IRELAND EVIL?”
Day 8 – Eight Maids a-Milking The maids were actually eight burly farmers’ daughters who’d had three pints each at the pub. They mistook the Daleks for novelty kegs, flipped them upside down, and tried to “tap” them. Milk stout was not improved by Dalek hydraulic fluid.
Day 9 – Nine Ladies Dancing Céilí night. The Daleks stormed the hall demanding everyone riverdance in perfect Dalek formation. The band struck up “The Siege of Ennis” at double speed. The floor had been waxed with Murphy’s Homemade Furniture Polish (90% butter). All three Daleks achieved low-orbit skids, ricocheted off the walls like pinballs, and took out the Christmas tree, the buffet table, Father Murphy, and the life-size Baby Jesus in one glorious crash. The village gave them a standing ovation and voted it “Best Nativity Ever.”
Day 10 – Ten Lords a-Leaping The lords were the Ballykillduff under-12 hurling team in panto costumes. They used the Daleks as goalposts. Zag still has a hurley stuck through his grille.
Day 11 – Eleven Pipers Piping The pipe band marched straight at them playing “Garryowen” at full volume. Zeg’s audio circuits overloaded; he started speaking only in bagpipe noises for six hours. “SKRL-SKRL-SKREEEEE—EXTERMINATE—SKRL!”
Day 12 – Twelve Drummers Drumming Christmas Eve. The Daleks, battered, leaking, one still wearing a goose feathers like a Hawaiian skirt, rolled to the top of the hill for one last stand. Zeg raised his gunstick: “On the twelfth day of Christmas the Daleks give to you… TOTAL OBLITERATION!” Snow started falling. The village kids pelted them with snowballs. One perfect snowball hit Zeg’s power cell. He short-circuited, lights flashing like a disco, and began singing “Jingle Bells” in a helium voice. Zog and Zag joined in, completely against their will. The entire village gathered, phones out, singing along while three mortified Daleks performed an involuntary Christmas concert on the hillside.
Midnight struck. Church bells rang. Even the geese shut up for a minute.
Zeg’s eyestalk drooped. “Temporary… ceasefire. For tactical reasons.” Someone stuck a Santa hat on him. Someone else tied tinsel round Zog’s plunger. Zag got a sprig of mistletoe wedged in his gun barrel and spent the rest of the night accidentally kissing pensioners.
Mad Jimmy McGroggan raised his pint from the pub doorway and roared: “Merry Christmas, ya glorified teapots!”
And from the top of the hill came three metallic voices, small and very, very embarrassed:
“MER-RY CHRIST-MAS… TO YOU… FILTHY HU-MANS.”
Then, quieter: “…and don’t tell the Supreme Dalek.”
Best Christmas Ballykillduff ever had. The geese are already booked for next year.
When Alice met the King of England
Alice, still dusting crumpets from her apron after a particularly rambunctious tea party with the March Hare, found herself tumbling, not down a rabbit hole this time, but into a most peculiar, exquisitely manicured rose garden. The roses, all red and white, seemed to be bickering amongst themselves about the proper shade of crimson for a royal eyebrow.
“Oh dear,” Alice murmured, adjusting her hair ribbon. “It seems I’ve wandered into another spot of bother.”
Suddenly, a voice, rather like the rustle of a silk dressing gown, boomed from behind a topiary shaped suspiciously like a corgi. “Who goes there, interrupting the delicate negotiations between my prize-winning petunias and the Royal Horticultural Society’s most fervent critics?”
From behind the bush emerged a gentleman of a certain age, with a twinkle in his eye and a crown that seemed to be listing slightly to port. He wore a magnificent, if somewhat patchwork, velvet robe, adorned with what looked like tiny embroidered teacups and miniature marmalade sandwiches.
“I’m Alice, Your Majesty,” she curtsied, remembering her manners, even if the monarch seemed to have misplaced some of his.
“Majesty, you say? Well, I suppose I am rather majestic, aren’t I?” He preened a little, almost tripping over his own sceptre, which was topped with a tiny, albeit slightly squashed, golden pineapple. “And you, young lady, seem to have rather a lot of sense for someone not wearing a hat adorned with a flock of startled pigeons. Are you perhaps here to discuss the optimal length of a royal wave, or the existential dread of a lost sock?”
Alice blinked. “I… I think I just followed a very enthusiastic squirrel.”
The King clapped his hands, sending a flurry of startled butterflies into the air. “A squirrel, you say! Excellent! They’re far more reliable than those blighters in Parliament, always chattering about nuts and bolts when what one truly needs is a good, solid acorn! Tell me, Alice, have you ever considered the philosophical implications of a well-buttered scone?”
He then led her on a merry chase through the garden, past a fountain spouting Earl Grey tea, and a chessboard where the pieces were miniature, sentient guardsmen who kept complaining about their aching knees. The King himself seemed to communicate primarily in rhetorical questions about the monarchy, the weather, and the surprisingly intricate history of a particular brand of digestive biscuit.
“You see, Alice,” he explained, pointing a finger at a particularly flustered flamingo trying to play croquet with a hedgehog, “the key to a successful reign is not merely waving, or even smiling at babies. It’s about knowing precisely when to offer a slightly stale crumpet and when to unleash the full might of the Royal Corgi Brigade upon an unsuspecting dandelion patch! One must be prepared for anything, even a sudden shortage of perfectly symmetrical teacups!”
Alice found herself nodding along, even as her mind reeled. This King was certainly mad, but in a rather charming, harmless way, like a well-meaning but slightly eccentric uncle. He seemed to genuinely enjoy her company, even if he mistook her silence for profound agreement.
Suddenly, a bell chimed, a sound like a thousand tiny spoons clinking against porcelain. “Ah, tea time!” the King declared, his eyes lighting up. “And this time, I’ve insisted on a fresh batch of cucumber sandwiches, precisely 0.5 centimeters thick, with the crusts removed by a team of highly trained, miniature badgers!”
As they sat down at a long table laden with treats, surrounded by an assortment of chattering teapots and a grumpy-looking White Rabbit who kept checking his watch, Alice couldn’t help but smile. She had met talking flowers, disappearing cats, and even a Queen who threatened to chop off heads, but a King who obsessed over scone philosophy and badger-removed crusts was a whole new level of Wonderland absurdity. And somehow, she felt perfectly at home.
“More tea, Alice?” the King asked, pouring from a teapot that had a tiny crown for a lid. “We simply must discuss the geopolitical implications of a slightly burnt toast point.”
Alice, with a sigh of delightful surrender, reached for another perfectly badger-trimmed cucumber sandwich. “Why, I’d love to, Your Majesty.”
The Great Hot Cocoa Mix-Up
The Great Hot Cocoa Mix-Up
Old Mr. Arthur lived in the kind of silence only a widower with grown children far away could truly know. This Christmas Eve, he sat by a sparse tree, nursing a mug of tea—he’d forgotten to buy hot cocoa mix again.
Arthur decided to text his granddaughter, Clara, a photo of his favorite, slightly crooked ornament: a tiny wooden reindeer. He wanted to say, “Merry Christmas, sweetie.” He carefully typed the message, attached the photo, and hit send.
Except, in his haste, he hadn’t texted Clara. He had accidentally posted the picture to a local community group chat he hadn’t known he was in, followed by the text:
“Wish it wasn’t tea. Deer needs cocoa.”
The group, comprised mostly of busy, young families, usually exchanged lost-cat notices and plumber recommendations. They were silent for a long minute.
Then, the replies started.
A young man named Mike, who lived two blocks over, replied with a photo of a thermos: “On my way, Arthur. Best cocoa in the county. Don’t move the deer.”
A woman named Sarah added, “I’m baking cookies! Will swing by with a plate and some shortbread.”
Suddenly, the thread exploded. People weren’t just replying; they were mobilizing. Someone brought a bag of marshmallows. Another, a new string of twinkling lights to replace the half-burnt ones. The original post, with the slightly sad reindeer and the plea for cocoa, was screen-shotted and posted to a local social media feed with the hashtag #DeerNeedsCocoa.
Within an hour, Arthur’s quiet living room was filled with the gentle, chaotic energy of neighbors—strangers, really—who had shown up with gifts of warmth, light, and sugar. Arthur, eyes wide, was holding a steaming mug of actual, rich hot cocoa, the wooden deer ornament reflected in the dark surface.
He realized the “viral” part wasn’t the funny mistake; it was the immediate, overwhelming desire for connection and simple kindness that the mistake had uncovered. He looked around at the laughing faces, the glow of the freshly lit tree, and the plate piled high with cookies.
“Well,” he chuckled, lifting his mug in a salute, “it seems the deer got his cocoa, and then some. Merry Christmas, everyone.”
And somewhere, Clara finally checked her phone, saw the community post, and grinned. Grandpa Arthur had accidentally become the accidental, greatest Christmas star their little town had ever had.
My Dream Christmas Cake
A Dream Christmas Cake
Merry Christmas, in advance, to each and every one of you.
THE BALLYKILLDUFF DALEKS SAVE CHRISTMAS
A Festive Tale
CHAPTER ONE
Snow on Ballykillduff Hill
Ballykillduff was not known for dramatic weather. Rain was expected. Mists drifted in like gossip and no one questioned them.
Snow, however, did not fall in this part of Carlow. Not ever.
Which was why the villagers stared at the sky on Christmas Eve as soft flakes began to drift down with the elegance of ballet dancers who had taken a wrong turn.
Jimmy McGroggan burst out of his shed and threw his arms wide.
“I told you so,” he shouted. “The Weather Encourager Three Thousand works at last. I have finally persuaded the heavens to behave.”
Before he could continue bragging, three Daleks came sliding down Ballykillduff Hill.
“Slipping,” cried Zeg. “This terrain is treacherous.”
“My lower section is freezing,” shouted Zog.
“The ground is attempting to exterminate us,” howled Zag.
They crashed together in a perfect metallic heap inside Jimmy’s gooseberry bushes.
Jimmy sighed in a way that suggested he was used to this sort of thing.
Click HERE to continue reading this story.
The Ballykillduff Banger
The Ballykillduff Banger (A Ballad of Mad Jimmy)
(Verse 1) In Ballykillduff, where the grass is so green, Lived a man named Jimmy McGroggan, the wildest ever seen! They called him “Mad Jimmy”, but not for bad grace, He once tried to heat up the entire whole place! With a kettle and toaster, and a spring from a peg, He wasn’t quite right from the waist to the leg! He was just inventive, you see, a mechanical nut, Like a squirrel who stores nuts in a lawnmower’s gut!
(Chorus) Oh, the Ballykillduff Banger, a sight for sore eyes, A chariot of junk, underneath Irish skies! A mobile compost heap and a Transformer blue, Mad Jimmy’s creation, for me and for you! It’s got a wee wobble, it’s got a small cough, But when he got going, the wheel just fell off!
(Verse 2) Jimmy had a dream, not of riches or fame, But to drive a fine motor and utter its name! Now, banks made him sneeze and the law made him frown, So he built his own car from the junk of the town! The lads in the pub put their money down fast, They bet his poor shed wouldn’t properly last. His garden, a scrapyard, a magpie’s delight, With half a fridge, a pram, and a bathtub painted: “CURSED! DO NOT SIT TIGHT!”
(Verse 3) The chassis was bunk beds, all twisted and old, The engine from a lawnmower, the tale must be told! Four wheels he found, two from a trolley so bright, One from a wheelie bin, one from a unicycle‘s might! The steering wheel? Ah, a dinner plate grand, Glued fast to the shaft of a Dyson in hand! The horn was a bicycle bell, gave a “meep” when it cared, And the seat was a toilet with a cushion prepared!
(Chorus) Oh, the Ballykillduff Banger, a sight for sore eyes, A chariot of junk, underneath Irish skies! A mobile compost heap and a Transformer blue, Mad Jimmy’s creation, for me and for you! It’s got a wee wobble, it’s got a small cough, But when he got going, the wheel just fell off!
(Bridge) Sunday morning arrived, the townsfolk all near, Father Dunne kept his distance, quite sheltered by fear! Jimmy put on his goggles (a sieve with some film), The engine went “brrrrrrr” like a goat in a chill! He shot down the hill, then he spun to the side, Right into the hen house where Seamus’s chickens reside! Jimmy popped out the hole, with a feather on top, “She handles like a dream! Full of terror and POP!”
(Verse 4) They made a repair, added the bathtub as a seat, A microwave door for the glass, isn’t that neat? He tried one more time, on a hill stiff and steep, He made it just seven feet, then fell fast asleep! ‘Cause the wheel took a runner and flew down the slope, Chased by a child, a dog, and Father Dunne shouting: “NOPE! It’s heading for the Sacristy, oh dear, dear, dear!”
(Outro) Now the Banger is parked, an exhibit for sure, Tourists take selfies beside the front door. But Jimmy sits in it each Friday at dark, Sippin’ tea from a spark plug, just having a lark! Hands on the dinner plate, engine noises he’ll make, “Best car that I owned!” for goodness’ sweet sake! And smoke rises gently from somewhere amiss, But nobody tells him, they just nod and they kiss! Ah, nobody tells him otherwise!
The Circus Came at Twilight
The Circus Came at Twilight
When twilight settles over Ballykillduff, a strange hush falls across the fields… and a tent no one saw being built begins to glow.
“The Circus Came at Twilight” is a dark, melodic folk ballad inspired by the haunting tale of The Circus of the Grotesques — a place where shadows breathe, lanterns flicker without flame, and laughter sometimes sounds like weeping.
This version blends cinematic musical-theatre emotion with eerie dark-folk storytelling, creating a mysterious, immersive journey into the heart of a cursed circus that appears only at dusk… and remembers everyone who enters.
✨ About the Song
🎵 Style: Dark folk • Cinematic • Theatrical
🎤 Vocals: Haunting male lead
🎻 Mood: Melancholy, magical, foreboding
🎪 Inspired by the story Circus of the Grotesques
✨ What You’ll Hear
• Warm yet eerie harmonies
• Whispering strings and distant calliope echoes
• A rising sense of mystery as the tent “comes alive”
• Lyrics that weave a ghostly narrative of arrival, memory, and fate
✨ Story Theme
The circus arrives without warning.
It grows like moonlight on empty ground.
Those who step inside may leave… but not unchanged.
Read the entire twelve chapter story HERE
The Ringmaster’s Chant
**🎩 The Ringmaster’s Chant
(Spoken, low and hypnotic)**
“Ladies… gentlemen… wanderers in the dusk…
Lean closer now.
Don’t worry—
the shadows lean closer too.
In this tent of trembling light,
names slip,
faces shift,
and truths grow thin as moth-wings.
Repeat after me—
silently,
inside your obedient little minds:
Look not too long…
Look not too deep…
The circus wakes what should not wake from sleep…
For here, under the pearl and black,
the mirrors do not show you—
they show
what you fear you are becoming.
Listen…
Do you hear the canvas breathing?
Do you feel the ground remembering your steps?
Good.
It means the circus has seen you.
Now hush.
The show begins when the tent blinks.
And if it keeps its eyes open…
you may yet walk out
the same shape
as you walked in.”
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 