Giggiline’s Pop Up Carnival (Patreon)

Giggiline’s Pop Up Carnival
Commissioned by danio13
Written by HarmonyMotion

Five Years, Three Months, and Two Days

Marsha approached a large, disused empty lot full of rubbish on her daily walk home from work. Dusty, uneven ground, wide, sawed off pipes, and other sorts of construction refuse was carelessly strewn around the city owned property. Kids and adults would often throw their empty soda or beer bottles into it, leaving behind crushed aluminum and shards of broken glass. The whole thing was an eyesore, and Marsha had to suffer it every day.

She wished the city would do something about it, but like any typical government agency, they moved slowly, if they even moved at all.

Preparing to be exasperated, Marsha turned and crossed the street to the block where the said refuse pile was waiting. She watched her steps carefully on the sidewalk, looking out for any shattered glass she should avoid.

But today, there was none.

There wasn’t even the usual swirling dust devil that roamed the area. And the smell... was that fresh popcorn? Caramel corn, buttered and salted corn, the sweet aroma of cotton candy and fizz...

Marsha gasped as she looked to her right. Instead of the chain link fence and abandoned lot, she saw perfectly tidy carnival grounds. The topsoil no longer blew rocky dust at the slightest breeze. An entrance gate, currently closed, with the sign “No ticket for admission necessary!” closed off the entrance to an entire host of different sized, multicolored tents. And most notable of all, a swaying, inflatable balloon of Giggiline billowing left and right over the entire carnival area.

News of Giggiline’s impending carnival spread like wildfire. Marsha gleefully and proudly took all the credit to be the first to notify the town by pinning her own printed out flier to the town square before driving around and taping some more to various lampposts, traffic lights, and putting a whole stack in some oft ignored, weather-worn newstands.

“Giggiline’s Carnival! We haven’t had a surprise carnival in at least 3 years!” the bottom of the flier read. A helpful citizen pointed out on the Cirrane message boards that it had in fact been five years, two months, and three days.

By the next morning, there was a long, orderly line outside of Giggiline’s Impromptu Carnival.

Play Games, Eat Candy, Win Prizes

“Ticket please!” A robotic facsimile of Giggiline greeted the young child at the entry.

“But mama, I don’t have a ticket!” the little girl said, dripping grievous disappointment.

“Well... you can come in cuz you’re my favorite!” Mechanized Giggiline’s red nose blinked. “Hehehehe!”

“Oh! Yaaaaaay!” The little girl grabbed her laughing mother’s hand and dragged her in.

In line behind them was an extremely tall, muscular woman with long, dark, flowing hair. She smelled of peat with a wild, feral look in her luminescent amber eyes. Dressed in what could best be described as tattered rags that barely kept her voluptuous body covered.

Her fiercely sculpted arm wrapped around the back and waist of another. The man who accompanied her stood about a foot shorter than she with unkempt brown hair. His arm was wrapped around her strong waist, his hand resting on her carved obliques. He looked rugged as well, as though he lived in the wild, off the land. But not feral like her.

“Otsana, Otsana, you’re going to love this. I remember Giggiline protecting the city when I was still living in the town years ago before I moved and met you.”

“I’m sure I will, dear,” Otsana’s voice came out with a growling rasp. She smiled, baring her sharp fangs. “You speak good of her. Trip would be faster if you would let me...”

“I know, I know, Otsana. I’ll make it up to you afterward, I promise.”

Otsana’s predatory smile grew even wider. She even began to salivate!

Little popcorn carts were strewn regularly throughout the carnival grounds on the sunny Cirranean day. They all operated themselves with no clear indication of where the ingredients came from. A small motorized Giggiline would take off her clown shoes and shake them over the copper heating bowl, jiggling and rattling large kernels of corn out of them before she slipped them back on and sighed with relief now that she’d gotten about one hundred kernels of corn out of each shoe. A squeeze of the daisy on her chest, and melted butter squirted out of its yellow face.

The contraption spit out bag after bag of popcorn without need for pause.

A dark-skinned, healthy-looking matronly woman dressed in a purple dress made a beeline for it after coming through the welcome gates.

“Mm. MM!” Sharmilla appraised the snack. Her fingers glistened, covered in yellow tallow as she eagerly munched on handful after handful. “Not bad,” she judged. “Could use more salt though, honey,” she said to no one in particular.

The little Giggiline figurine working inside of the popcorn cart began to cry crocodile tears, letting flow a fountain of iodized salt from her eyes.

“I’ll be back to sample later!” Sharmilla clucked her tongue. “You’re lucky you’re not in the restaurant business, Gigi! Often the first impression can be the last! Now, there’s much more I want to eat while I’m here. Oh, are those ice cream rolls I see down this street? Excuse me, excuse me darlings, coming through...”

Sharmilla pushed past a purple haired girl dressed in a black mini-skirt with more than enough belt buckles around her waist. A low cut purple top and a sleeveless black vest left her pale arms bare and the tops of her full, luscious breasts in full view. She wore a black collar with a purple bead around her neck.

“Cute!” Pulsa remarked as she watched some monkeys perform an acrobatic routine behind a large, loosely caged display. “I would’ve gone with something a little more digital, but I suppose it is quaint...”

The monkey stuck their opposable thumbs in their mouths and blew a large raspberry at Pulsa’s criticism. From the closed end of their hands, a rubber balloon began to inflate quickly before they tied it off. They all began to work it expertly, twisting and folding the squeaking rubber into different animal shapes. Then, they all held it out in perfect sync for Pulsa’s appraisal.

“Quaint is as quaint does, I guess,” she continued, pretending to be unimpressed. But secretly, she was looking for an opportunity to whip her tablet out from between her cleavage and take some notes to begin her own work on replicating and enhancing what Giggiline had created.

The monkeys howled and screeched as they all threw their balloon animals at her.

“Now, let’s see if she’s properly using that tent I constructed for her. I fashioned it after my own house after all, so she better appreciate it!” Pulsa went off, looking for a private corner to begin her little clandestine work.

The petting zoo was a huge allure to the children and even some adults of Cirrane. Lina manned the station, making sure none of the animals or kids (who could be harder to handle!) got too rowdy. Fuzzy wooly sheep, domestic goats of various colors, pigs rooting around in the straw, a glass enclosement for ball pythons, spitting, smiling alpacas... the line to meet these wonderful placid creatures wrapped twice around the wide circumference of the display!

Some children shrieked in joy as they eagerly went to rub the animals. Lina had to shush them (gently!) and remind them that animals had feelings too, and it would be mean to startle them. Other children clearly wanted to approach the animals, but sudden playful movements like the pigs rooting and wallowing around made them nervous to approach. Lina took their hands and led them to the animals and helped them to stroke the animals. The children often broke into a wide grin before running back to their parents to tell them all about the experience which they had just witnessed live.

Lina looked over at Kai who was just across the walkway managing all sorts of carnival games: high strikers, baseball throw, corn maze, and other such exhibits. He also led and instructed a friendly fencing competition wherein he would teach the rules and then watch his patrons go wild and wave their little foils around wildly. Then, he grimaced gingerly and declared a winner at random.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” Lina gushed. “It was really grim without Giggiline around. I can’t believe she’s really back, and in such high spirits! ...But... sometimes I wonder...”

“...if she’s back for good?” Kai completed her sentence, receptive and quick on the draw as always.

Lina was too happy with the carnival to nag him for the umpteenth time about it. “Yeah. Bev’s death hit her hard; we all know that.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Kai gathered his thoughts. “There’s always going to be pain. I don’t think that will ever go away completely. But now that she’s back and not hiding from us anymore,” he pontificated. “No, not hiding from us. That was a symptom. She was hiding because of the guilt and the pain. Now that she’s back, even if she’s suffering, we’re finally able to help.”

Lina nodded. Kai wasn’t only smart, he was convincing.

They both shared a moment of silence as they both wondered what was in store for Giggiline. How badly was she still hurting? Was her new friend enough to have pulled her out of the funk all on his own?

“Hey Kai, you wanna switch places really quick?” Lina asked half courteously yet slightly disingenuously. She didn’t want to switch, but...

“What? Why would I do that? You handle the animals, I’ll handle the fencing and High Striker and stuff. You don’t know how to fence!”

“Big deal. Hey look, the kids with the pointy sticks are tackling each other and giggling.”

“Foils! They’re called foils! Hey, you two, cut it out! Um, you, the girl, you win!” He struggled to get the laughing children clear of the stage so the next two could take their turn.

“Yeah, real tough,” Lina laughed. “Besides, I know how much you like the big feature...”

“N-no I don’t! It’s whatever!” Kai protested animatedly, then calmed himself. “Ahem. Whatever. Let’s just keep our places, shall we?”

“Okay, pal. Your choice. Come on, kids! Are you ready!?”

She corralled all of them to a special box that only someone like Giggiline could create. There were illustrations of pink fluffy clouds with tiny elephants lounging on it. With a bit of showmanship, Lina tugged at the string, and when all of the kids were fully enrapt, she let loose the zip cord with a mighty pull.

A horde of miniature, flying pink elephants came bursting out of the box, rearing their head back and trumpeting with their large, strong trunks. Their floppy gray ears wiggled as the wrinkly pachyderms all made their individual way to hang around an excited child.

“Mama! Mama! Look!!!” The kids squealed as others jumped up and down with joy, petting the elephants’ wide, flat heads.

Kai did his best not to look over and appear jealous. It almost worked. Lina caught him peeking and snickered.

He sighed and turned back to another pair of kids waving around their foils like sticks.

The Surprise Main Attraction

Giggiline’s famed carnivals only popped up and stayed for one day, but to everyone’s surprise, this one stuck around through the night. A lot of people stayed and watched the campgrounds, expecting it to vanish as it sucked into a tiny little box with a cute pop sound. It was like some sort of reverse fireworks display. They wound up being sorely disappointed when nothing happened.

A new poster magically went up around town, notifying everyone that this carnival would be special. It would run on the second day with the same booths, games, and stalls, but the main attraction would be inside the large tent in the evening. At least Pulsa didn’t have to wonder why on earth she had gone to the trouble of creating the tent for Giggiline in the first place. She hadn’t even used it!

The buzz worked. People who missed the first day of the carnival, or convinced themselves that they weren’t interested, had more incentive to attend now. And attend they did.

The grounds were stuffed full of even more people the second day as everyone took time out of their normal routines or were granted time off work to witness what secret show Giggiline had planned. Sharmilla returned and sampled all of Giggiline’s food once more, this time much more to her approval. Otsana bemoaned that she couldn’t be one of the exhibits in the petting zoo since it was daytime, but Marlon convinced her (barely!) that it would’ve been a bad idea. Kai stubbornly refused to switch with Lina once more, so again he was left to look longingly upon those tiny pink flying elephants while Lina laughed at his self-induced misery.

When night fell, Otsana put on what could best be described as an extra large, heavy duty blanket to shield herself from the moon’s bewitching light. She didn’t need it to transform, but the urge was awfully tempting, and she didn’t want to succumb to temptation.

She and everyone made their way through the Giggiline-themed colored tent, yellow with pink polka dots on the left, and vice versa on the right. The top of the tent sported her signature balled up orange pigtails dangling from the awning.

Only one Peculiar fellow had been denied entry from the tent. His full head covering helmet displayed a sobbing emoji before it transformed into one of triumph. While everyone queued up to enter, he snuck around to the back and began to climb the tent’s flaps. When he was about fifteen feet high, the tent abruptly “burped” and sent him flying back toward his home in the outskirts of Cirrane. It also attached a self-deploying parachute onto his back for his safety.

His helmet’s display turned back into sobbing, followed by a heart and clown emoji.

The tent was easily the largest, most visible attraction at Giggiline’s carnival. Still, it was no larger than some of the most expensive homes built in the hilly suburbs of Cirrane’s most wealthy. It certainly shouldn’t have been able to host over half the town’s population, but...

Giggiline’s circus tent accepted all comers with no issue at all! From the outside, people expected the glorified tarp to start bulging outward, growing larger, perhaps seeing the imprints of people’s faces or backs against the flaps. Perhaps some sort of Giggiline inspired comedy with the tent fighting itself, jumping up and down off the ground before spitting some disgruntled patrons out! But it stayed serenely still as it continued to house all newcomers.

A waft of humid and temperature controlled air blew over everyone who was about to step inside. It was a nice, refreshing reprieve from the capricious weather of Cirrane and a prelude to the majesty and magic inside the tent.

The interior was modern and sleek, belying its outer appearance. It must have spanned twenty floors, with more than enough seating for everyone! Escalators along the aisles carried the audience to their seats in neat and tidy order, a modern touch thanks to Pulsa’s reality programming.

A procession of pink elephants lined the ceiling in their frilly pink skirts, playing a welcoming fanfare with the trumpets on their trunks. Confetti floated in the air, wobbling but mostly staying in place. The flying bits of colorful paper spelled out, “WELCOME!”

When everyone was seated in the colosseum sized modern digitized tent, the elephants stopped playing and the overhead lights dimmed. The murmurs of the crowd quieted down to deafening silence. A low drumroll began to rumble like thunder.

A large floodlight illuminated a circular hole in the middle of the stage. A cylinder with a large curtain draped over it rose out of the floor as the drumming accelerated and crescendoed. As the rising platform clicked even, the drumroll cut to the blaring trumpet blast from the elephants above.

The curtain dropped.

There was nothing.

The crowd began to murmur amongst themselves. Lina and Kai, sitting in front row VIP seats, began to panic. Had Giggiline gotten cold feet? God forbid she regressed back into her dark place again...

And then with a loud eruption, a spray of confetti filled the air from inside the empty cylinder, and Giggiline appeared in a puff of smoke!

The crowd erupted in a tidal wave of roaring approval. Giggiline smiled and waved wildly, her white gloved hand inflating larger and larger to make sure everyone could see.

After a quick run, skip, somersault and hop around the circular arena, her clown shoes squeaking loudly as she clacked them together in midair, she extended her arms in a perfect T and did one last lap around the perimeter in imitation of an airplane.

As the roaring applause died down, Giggiline waved her floppy sleeve and large cuffs wildly, shaking out a microphone with no cable, in her stadium with no speakers. She tapped it a few times with a fat gloved finger. Feedback screeched through the arena.

“Sorry!” Giggiline mouthed silently as she gave the accursed thing some hard bangs against her thigh. It transformed with every hit—a bouquet of flowers, a paper cone with wisps of blue cotton candy, a fishing pole, and then finally back to a microphone.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” Her voice came through loudly.

The crowd cheered in the affirmative.

“Thank you for coming to the second night of my Pop Up Carnival!” She bowed deeply to further cheers before continuing. “I know that one extra day doesn’t make up for my five years of absence, but I am grateful, overjoyed, um...”

Giggiline choked down a sudden swelling of emotion before she tried to continue speaking. “It’s, guh, uh... ahem!”

She wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. The fact that nothing humorous happened was the real indicator of how serious she was.

“Anyway... I love being here, I love protecting Cirrane, and I hope you all enjoyed my carnival. You will be seeing a lot more of me around town, and seeing the smiles on your faces makes me happier than you could ever know! Thank you!”

Roars of “We love you, Giggiline!” and “Welcome back!” echoed through the chamber. The mayor of Cirrane, Harriet Fraser, was the first to rise to her feet and clap. She and Giggiline exchanged a reassuring look. Lina and Kai clapped so hard that their hands turned red.

Once the welcome back chants and tears were over, the monkey organ grinders on unicycles began to play upbeat carnival music once more.

“And now, I want to introduce someone new! This is someone who helped save me when I needed saving most. She is my, uh, my... special friend!” Giggiline honked.

The crowd “oooooooooooohed!” conspiratorially as if they were in middle school and had just caught two people holding hands.

The circular platform descended and began to rise once more, this time sporting an enormous alabaster white cannon. Giggiline strolled around to the back, pounded the cannon once with the palm of her hand, and the fuse lit!

She squatted down, covered her ears, and closed her eyes, only peeking at the cannon once in a while. The audience knew that nothing bad would happen under Giggiline’s watch, but it was still a little unnerving to watch Cirrane’s greatest hero pretending to be worried about a cannon of her own design. Some of them began to fidget and panic as the fuse withered away.

Finally, the hissing stopped as the wick burned all the way into the cannon. Giggiline crouched and squeezed her eyes shut even tighter as a big, wide smile appeared on her face. The cannon bulged, leaned back, and...

Ejected a thick plume of white smoke that drifted into the air. Followed by some coughing and wheezing.

Giggiline peeked once more. Then did a double take.

“Hey! Stupid thing!” She walked up and kicked it with her big shoes.

The cannon tipped forward, and out slid a brunette wearing a polka dot beret. Her face was powdered white with pink, rosy cheeks. And all of her clothes looked slightly burnt and frayed, with black smudges on her face.

She coughed silently.

“Gatey Doux? Gatey Doux, are you okay!?” Giggiline asked with mock concern.

Gatey Doux climbed to her feet. She began to powder her face with empty hands. Without even touching herself, the black smudges disappeared. She also threw away her beret for real and mimed putting on a new one. And a new one of identical design appeared on her brown hair, perfectly unharmed.

A quick fake patting down of her clothing, and she was perfectly done up.

“Gatey Doux, everyone!” Giggiline introduced.

The mime girl stuck her thumbs into her yellow and orange suspenders. Her entire face turned cherry red as she shyly looked away from the audience and fidgeted with her legs.

“Gatey Doux! Look out, a fire!”

Giggiline stomped the center of the stage, conjuring a large but well controlled fire. Gatey leapt into the air and wiggled her limbs in pure panic before coming back down, shuffling around the stage in sheer panic with her flailing arms raised toward the sky.

Suddenly, she stopped her aimless running. Cocking her head and placing her thumb and index on her chin, a yellow light bulb appeared above her beret and turned on. She mimed attaching a hose to a fire hydrant, walked toward the fire with the large spout, took a deep breath to steel herself, and switched it on with one big motion.

She began to fly wildly through the air as the invisible firehose began to spray out real water! Lina and Kai got splashed, much to Kai’s displeasure, but Gatey finally got it under control and extinguished the flames. When she turned off the hose, she was frozen in midair for a few seconds before she realized her plight.

Knees tucked in with a look of worry on her face, she pointed at the ground and looked at the audience.

“Oh no, Gatey Doux!” Some of them yelled.

Gatey put on an exaggerated shrug as she once again obeyed the laws of gravity. She fell toward the ground, but Giggilined honked her red nose, and a trampoline appeared underneath her special friend. Gatey bounced off the mesh and right into Giggiline’s hands.

The two took a deep bow, hand in hand, to raucous applause.

When the show finally ended and the audience had been ferried out of the larger-on-the-inside tent, Lina, Kai, Jovie, and Archie could be seen in the shadow of the fading tent. Harriet looked at them with a smile, and all four of them returned the expression.

Then, the four went off to look for a private place to talk. They had a lot of catching up to do, especially with Archie, the newest member of the Giggiline Troupe!