(As promised over on the Fiction page, this is the first of the Wiggedies, unpublished stories that I like too well as they are to change. I thought it would be a fine representative piece to get the site up and running. I hope you enjoy it!)

Alisha glanced at the slab and squinted at Rich suspiciously.  “What exactly am I looking at?” she asked.

Rich hid his face behind his clipboard, and Alisha could tell he was trying hard not to laugh.  “These,” he said with great seriousness, “are the mortal remains of James Jurowski, better known as Jiminy Sprinkles.”

Alisha glanced at the slab again and pursed her lips.  “Rich, this is a cake,” she said.

Rich doubled over, his palms on his thighs, a fit of laughter overwhelming him.  It took him a full minute to get it out of his system and catch his breath.  When he looked to Alisha again his eyes were watering.  “I know,” he wheezed.  “Can you fix it?”

Alisha studied Jiminy.  The face, a hyper-realistic rendering of a classic clown in red and white greasepaint, had been mauled.  Four ragged lines began at the brow and raked diagonally downward, tearing through layers of frosting, fondant, and sponge.  One eye had been torn in two, and the clown’s nose had ruptured and was leaking raspberry jam. 

Alisha frowned, nodded, then indicated the ventriloquist’s dummy perched on a stool beside Rich.  It was dressed like Jiminy, from its miniature conical hat down to its own floppy red shoes.  “And what’s that for?” she asked.

Rich clamped a hand over his mouth, and his whole body shuddered.  “That’s Bitsy Sprinkles,” he managed, tears streaming down his cheeks.  “He’s here to supervise.”

It took Rich a long time to compose himself, and by then Alisha was well into the work.  She began stirring, whisking, and mixing straight away, collecting flecks of fondant and frosting to recreate the colors, and Rich pieced the story together as far as he was able. 

Jiminy Sprinkles, he had been told, worked for Currier and Croft’s Circus, and during the evening’s show a lion had swiped at Jiminy as he danced by, chased by a pack of skirted poodles.  Several spectators called for an ambulance, but by the time the EMTs arrived the strongman had hauled Jiminy out of the tent and the ringmaster had announced he was just fine—the mauling, he claimed, was part of the act.  Although the EMTs asked around there was no clown to be found, but they were paid a thousand dollars apiece to deliver the cake to the funeral parlor.  That’s all Rich could say for sure.

The EMTs both believed the mauling was a put-on.  They saw no evidence of an animal attack, no blood in the sawdust or on the lion’s paws.  It was the clown’s twentieth anniversary with Currier and Croft, they learned, so they assumed it was just a gag to get the circus a little ink in the newspaper.  The anniversary also explained why they had a full-sized cake on hand.  Some prankster must have clawed the frosting as a joke.

Rich had his own theory.  “I bet they’ll bury the real Jiminy Sprinkles out in the woods somewhere,” he ventured.  “If a mauled body was brought to the morgue they’d have to put the lion down, wouldn’t they?  I doubt a traveling circus could take a hit like that.”

He kept talking as Alisha reassembled Jiminy carefully, almost reverently, losing herself in the work.  She molded a new eye from gelatin, closed the gashes in the fondant, refilled the nose with fresh jam, and blended buttercream and food coloring until she matched every shade of frosting on the clown’s painted face.  “I probably shouldn’t ask,” she said, “given what you’re paying me, but why did they turn to a funeral home to repair a cake?”

“It’s weird,” Rich admitted, “but it looks like they have an account with us already.  We handled arrangements for a trapeze artist six years ago, and Currier was apparently impressed with our willingness to accommodate their requests.  My guess is they just like that the boss doesn’t ask questions if a client pays in cash.”

Alisha finished up at half past midnight.  She circled Jiminy and nodded, satisfied.  The reconstruction was perfect.  Rich whistled.  “He looks terrific, Lish,” he said, “and I’ve seen some amazing repairs in my day.”  She offered him a beater, which he licked greedily. “That’s one delicious clown,” he added.

Together they lowered the cake into a mahogany casket, which struck Alisha as ridiculous.  Rich, however, shrugged it off.  “I don’t think we’re actually meant to bury it,” he said.  “We’ll just replace the lining if any frosting gets on it.  There’s a viewing for family at ten, a public wake at noon.  I’m sure they just want to snap a few pictures of Jiminy lying in state.  Feel free to come back—it should be a hell of a show!”

And Alisha did return; the whole affair was too strange to resist.  She wore a black dress just in case, but she intended to spend the hour peeking out from behind a velvet curtain while Rich patrolled the parlor.  He was in the process of taking down the signs for the viewing and preparing for Jiminy’s wake when the first and only mourner arrived through the side entrance:  a pale, angular woman draped in black.

She stood by the casket for several minutes, whispering to Jiminy.  She then made a little bow to Bitsy Sprinkles, who was perched on a stool nearby, flanked with white roses, and finally exchanged a few words with Rich.  He nodded, indicated the curtain Alisha was hiding behind, and walked the woman over.

The woman clasped Alisha’s hands, lifted her black veil, and kissed them.  She left a crimson lipstick stain ringed with white foundation makeup.  “I know our ways must seem strange to you,” she said, “but we are grateful for your work.  My Jiminy looks as handsome as ever.”  She spoke in English warmed with an Italian accent, and her voice was choked with emotion.   

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Alisha whispered.  She was flustered by the woman’s seemingly genuine grief and, feeling more than a little ashamed for mocking the elaborate arrangements the circus had made for a cake, couldn’t meet her gaze.  “I’m glad I could give you some comfort.”

The woman lowered her veil, and Alisha thought she saw a melancholy smile or something like it.  “It’s a sad day,” she conceded, “but a day for family to gather, too, and for new beginnings.”  She squeezed Alisha’s hands.  “Will you stay for the wake?”

“Of course,” Alisha said.

The woman returned to the casket, bowed over it, and murmured some words.  Then she stepped to Bitsy’s stool, picked the dummy up, and laid it down beside the clown, tucking it carefully in the crook of Jiminy’s arm.  Finally she closed the casket and nodded to Rich, who escorted her out.

Alisha joined Rich outside after the viewing, glad for a breath of fresh air.  “That was disappointing,” he said with a sigh, “but maybe the wake will make up for it.”

Alisha stood just inside the viewing room an hour later as mourners filed in.  They didn’t look like mourners, however; they seemed more like bewildered tourists dressed for a weekend outing than grief-stricken circus folk. 

Rich greeted each arrival, and two men acted as if they already knew him.  He nudged Alisha as he passed by.  “Those are the EMTs that brought Jiminy in,” he whispered.  “They were given invitations.  That clinches it.  These people must’ve attended the circus last night—this is some promotional thing for sure.”

Alisha grew increasingly irritated as the seats filled.  The whole scene felt wrong, with solemn whispers giving way to casual conversation, with teens tapping at their phones, with children ignoring their parents’ pleas to sit still.  And though she knew it was absurd—there was nothing but cake in the casket, after all—she was becoming angry on behalf of Jiminy Sprinkles.  These people were behaving abominably, and she strode to the front of the room, intent on upbraiding them.

Alisha stood before them, almost shaking with rage, when the pale, angular woman arrived.  She passed by Rich, ignoring his whispered welcome, and glided to Alisha’s side.  She took Alisha’s hand, squeezed it, lifted her veil, and gazed into her eyes.  And Alisha at last understood; a profound, prayerful calm washed over her.  “To new beginnings,” Alisha whispered, smiling.

“To family,” the woman replied, her smile creasing her greasepaint.  And then she knocked on the lid of the casket as if she were knocking on a door, her knuckles rapping out the jaunty shave-and-a-haircut pattern Alisha’s grandfather always used. The woman held Alisha’s hand as the lid burst open and a host of clowns—an impossible, wonderful number of Bitsies—clambered out of the casket.  Alisha beamed as they overran the ill-mannered mourners, their floppy shoes slapping against the carpet, their belled wristlets jingling, their smiling faces smeared with frosting, raspberry jam, and something somewhat darker, somewhat redder.  There was screaming, too, she knew, but above it all Alisha heard circus music, frolicsome and lovely, a calliope calling her home.