Free Circus of the Grand Design by Robert Freeman Wexler

right, to his left, everything identical; he had to get away, back to familiar cars, people. Staying here was dangerous. The walls—what if they contracted before he could escape? He jumped to his feet, his satchel flapping against his side as he ran. The door was close. It would swish open, granting him escape from this tubular hell. When he neared the door, he slowed, and caught sight of a brick structure outside. The train had stopped.
    So happy to be able to see the outside, he darted from window to window, absorbing everything he could: a squat, red brick building beside an empty parking lot. The sun cast a pinkish light along the tops of the clouds. On the opposite side of the corridor, a high embankment. Weeds, a few small, yellow flowers. An old tire. Even the tire made him smile.
    He needed to get out there, feel the soft air on his cheeks. Leaving the diminishing tunnel car, he passed through the car containing the empty storeroom and on, into the elephant car, where he stopped, confronted by unexpected absence. The grassy pen was empty.
    Gone? But where would elephants go?
    The elephant saddles had been removed from the other pen. Elephants obviously taken for a ride.
    Picturing them crashing through the train corridors, he laughed, an uncontrollable howl and cackle that erupted from his stomach and rose toward the misty ceiling, growing stronger and louder. Staccato scene changes: walls expand to allow passage, the wind pulling and tearing, eating, always eating, fortunes found despite this foundationless panorama, the essence of which surrounded him, inviolate and handsome. One plateau for the firstborn, a ridge for their elders. The landscape swayed beneath a pink sun. Evanescent doubts like crows flew from heights beyond reach of doom or decay. He was but a speck, even less, without support, without a tether to keep him from drifting into bewildering lacunae where the air-breathers suffer. The floor hard here, tile pavement gave him nothing, aloof in its squares of tensile.
    His head met something, a tubular cushion placed to aid him, here, in his moment of need. With eyes closed, the room became a universe, and he, its lone resident. Whimpering, he grasped the tube of his cushion, snaking pillow of hollow tube, and after a time, the opened his eyes, and the tubes became a hose, the hose fastened to a faucet; he unscrewed the hose from the faucet and turned the handle. Water fell over his face.
    Much refreshed, he turned off the water and sat up. This car must have an exit—elephants wouldn't be able run out through the caboose, would they? He laughed again, but softer this time.
    The outer wall, across from the pens, showed the outline of a large door. Protruding from the floor near it was a lever. He pulled it; the wall-door swung down to form a ramp. Feeling freed from prison, Lewis stood at the top of the ramp, looking out at an empty parking lot. He was about to walk down when he saw coming toward him: the three elephants and a man in a red fez carrying a staff.
    The man tapped the large elephant on the head with his staff, saying, "In Paladin, Clytemnestra, in Percival."
    The two smaller elephants wore the saddle-platforms, the larger one nothing. "Good job today gals. Special treats, special treats for my sweet girlie-girls," the man said.
    The elephants mounted the ramp. Lewis flattened himself against the wall. The elephants passed him; a phalanx of giant, shuddering beast filled his vision. The floor shook under their tread. Unable to move, unable to breathe, frozen—if he didn't move, if he remained still, so still, becoming part of the wall, mere surface, away from those terrible feet...
    The floor calmed. He opened his eyes to find the fez-wearing man staring at him.
    "Well well well," the man said. "Finally got me a new assistant, old one being gone always when work needs doing." He looked at Lewis, his expression stiff and unwelcoming. "Close the ramp door, boy."
    Lewis forced himself to