Cirque Nocturne: In-Character

My Anne-Rice-obsessed-younger-self cannot believe I am living in New Orleans. I even went and bought the whole book series - even the worst ones! - for the sake of nostalgia. But it's also weird, because when I was obsessed with vampires as a kid I didn't know that vampires were a real thing. Which is probably for the best? I don't know what twelve-year-old me would have done with that information. (She might have run off to join a supernatural circus to live with vampires. Can you even imagine!)

(It's okay, I'm not a weird vampire groupie, I have well and truly grown out of that phase.)

Anyway, there's a cool shop I went to yesterday and I wanted to buy everything to put in the tea room. And they had up flyers for vampire masked balls and witches balls and steampunk balls and, wow, this whole city is so goth. I wanted to be a goth so much when I was a kid. Maddy and MJ please never show people the photos of tiny goth me.

I have also been to the pharmacy museum which was so cool. So many old jars filled with questionable substances and weird surgical instruments and a cool soda fountain. I recommend it if you like history stuff.

Breathe deep and feel the cirque enter the lungs, cold like frost and hot like blood. Yes, a good feeling, a good thing to be back home.

But where is everyone I know? I feel like I hardly recognize a face. The Old Gang's taken off without me here? And where's that girl who could unhinge her jaw to swallow a whole baby? She promised me a private showing when I returned.

A home for so many old monsters yet such an unhealthy turnover rate. Do you scare them off into the woods, Ringmaster? Where have all our oldest friends gone away to?