Tim Law is an author of fantasy, horror, detective and general short story fiction as well as the occasional poem or two. He heralds from a little town in Southern Australia called Murray Bridge. A happily married father of three children (plus four cats and a rabbit), family is very important to him. Currently working at the Murray Bridge Library in the role of Library Manager he has dreamed since his early high school years of becoming a full-time author. Working for a library, surrounded by so many wonderful authors it is difficult not to be inspired to write. Tim finds inspiration from playing board games, family movie night, family time and the world around him. The greatest inspiration of all for him comes from asking the golden question “what if?”

The Risk of Chasing Happy Families

The train hurtled down the mountainside as if the hounds of hell were snapping at its caboose and heaven’s salvation awaited at the next station. The circus was late; the families of Adam’s Vale would already be disappointed. Ringmaster Andrews hated to disappoint anyone, least of all the families.

“Faster! More coal!” he urged the driver, a clown named Pete.

Even through his make-up, Pete gave the ringmaster a look like he had been told his favourite puppy had been run over. Pete and Wuff-Wuff were a double act, and the stars of Andrews’ and Fielding’s Circus Extravaganza. That dog was the clown’s whole world.

“We’re already too fast for the tracks,” Pete exclaimed, but the ringmaster refused to listen.

“Nonsense!” shouted Andrews. “We have to get to the bottom of this mountain, and nothing is going to stop us.”

Just then the train jumped its tracks. There was a squeal like a whole pen of pigs had just discovered one of them was a wolf. Sparks flew from the blurring wheels, metal meeting metal again, the train returning to earth after a moment of flight.

“We have to slow down,” pleaded Pete.

Again the ringmaster shook his head.

He handed the shovel to the driver and pointed at the coal, the black rocks promising to push the steam train just that little bit further, that little bit faster, that element of risk and danger increasing, the payoff, happy families and more money in the ringmaster’s pockets.

Beyond the locomotive, tempers were boiling. The strongman rubbed his aching shoulder where he’d banged it on the bars of the ape’s cage. Rebecca Fielding, the ringmaster’s wife, had found Bruno and the great gorilla, in some jungle village. Rebecca had such a knack for languages and negotiation that she had convinced both giants to join the troupe. Since Rebecca had passed on though, loyalty had been like a waning moon, a thin crescent that threated to vanish entirely. This trip down the mountain was far from helping.

The ape grunted, the strongman nodded in reply.

“The moment this train stops, I’m breaking us out of here,” Bruno vowed.

Further down the carriages the near derailment had caused the monkey cage to burst open. Primates of all shapes and sizes chattered excitedly as they swung from light fittings and rattled windows. Freedom was so close they could smell its sweet scent.

A fringe of trees jutted forth from the white blanket revealing Adam’s Vale was only a mile away. The train flew past at such a rate Ringmaster Andrews almost missed the natural sign. He was clueless of the chaos occurring along his train too; a mutiny waiting to explode. That was until the train finally slowed to a stop.

As the crowds gathered excitedly upon the platform, that euphoria turned to fear. A menagerie of magic escaped en-masse, quickly becoming chaos. Ringmaster Andrews sadly watched the dollars he chased evaporate like a candle’s flame in a wild windstorm, snuffed out, gone.