The Summer Job

Jobs were hard to come by on the Peninsula.  Nearly all her friends were gone now, gone for the summer or longer, to take jobs elsewhere.  Eliza didn't really want to go out there for a job but there was nothing near home and she needed to save money for next year's tuition.  Time and again, she found herself trudging to the local Employment Office to see what was available.  Most were either low paying or required skills she just didn't have.

Finally, after nearly four weeks, she'd just about given up.  She'd have to run her student loans even higher and that would make it harder after graduation.  As she was walking along the quay, she ran across a battered newspaper.  Strangely, only the jobs section was relatively intact.  Something there caught her eye.  A job, with room and board no less, reasonably good wages on top of it!  The address wasn't that far away either.  Without looking at the date on the paper, she hopped on her scooter, paper in hand.  It didn't take too long to realize she was heading away from town towards where the local carnival wintered the year before.

She threw the paper down in disgust and checked the date.  Sure enough, her ideal job had packed up weeks ago for the carnival's tour of local fairs and exhibitions.

"Damn!" she swore aloud.
"Something stuck in your craw?" a cracking voice behind her asked.
"No," sighed Eliza.  "I'd hoped ..."
"You were hunting for a carnival job then dearie," the voice asked.
"There was one ..." her voice trailed off.
"They're not too far afield yet."
"No they left weeks ago."
"Not all.  We be one exhibit short and hunt still."
"Exhibit?"
"Snake girl."

Eliza remembered exhibits like that from her childhood.  You paid a few dollars and got herded up a ramp and got to look into an enclosure of some kind.  There was some cute trick or something that made the thing (almost) worth the admission.  She remembered badgering her parents to see the mermaid.  Inside was a large glass bowl with water.  Through some trick of projection, they had a girl in a mermaid costume projected into the bowl like a trout-sized mermaid.

Eliza couldn't hide her disappointment.  She needed the money but could she do that for a whole summer?  A snake girl.  She'd run across them on the internet.  A girl, with her head stuck through a hole in a floor, had a long rubber snake attached.  The snake wiggled a bit (probably with sticks or something from below) but it was a rubber snake even given the poor quality of the image on the website. She shook her head.  Would she take that kind of job just to get a job?  She stood thinking about it.  None of her friends would ever see her in the silly get-up.  And she needed the money.  And there appeared no other jobs about.  With a sigh, Eliza turned to the woman behind her.  She was an old crone but dressed in brightly coloured clothes.  A gypsy.  That fit with a carnival.  She probably ran a fortune telling booth or something.

"What would I have to do?" Eliza asked.
"Nay a lot.  You've no carny experience, me lass.  We'd not have you doin' roustabout, now would we?  Nah a lot at all.  You'd haveta keep your part of the trailer clean.  Be on time and ready every morning.  They be long days in the carny -- 12 hours on, 12 hours off.  You be in exhibit all day 'cept for meals, o'course."
"It's only until school starts again."
"Sure an' we only run until mid-August anyway.  Most shows are summer an' winter's for sunnin'.  I'll make sure you be back in plenty o'time fer schoo'."
"OK.  I'll take the job.  What do I have to do?"
"Madame Ezelda, I be," she held out a hand.  "Part-owner of the sideshow.  I've the contract hereabouts.  Jes' a second."  

She rumaged about in a beat up purse and brought out a rolled folder.  Taking a stapled pair of sheets from the folder, she proceeded to outline ELiza's duties.  Eliza, it seemed, really didn't have much to do except play the snake girl.  They had others to set up and tear down.  The cooking was handled by 'cookie' (whoever that was.  All she had to do was keep her display area clean and her living space -- well -- livable.  Eliza didn't read the rest of the proffered contract.  She took the pen from Madame Ezelda and signed.

"Dat be excellent!" she chortled as she slipped the contract back into the folder.  "We bes' be goin' then." 

She pointed to a rather beatup car at the side of the road.  

"You be needin' anything from home then?" Eliza lived with her brother.  

She'd best give him the heads up. He was just on his way out when the ancient vehicle chugged up.  Eliza quickly told him what was happening.  He shrugged and told her he'd take care of things as long as she kept up her half of the rent. She looked over at Madame Ezelda.

"Dat be no problem.  If you be givin' me a void cheque, I be settin' it up at the bank afer we get on da' road." 

James, Eliza's brother, took out a cheque book, tore one off, wrote void across it and handed it to Madame Eliza.  "Here be my card.  If der be problems wi' da' money, you call me collect, y'hear?  I be fixin' it right quick, I will."

After Eliza had gather a few belongings in a suitcase that was tossed in the back seat of the car, they were on their way.

"Where are we going?" she asked.
"De carny be setting up at Johnsonberg.  We be starting in two days."
"My costume?  Will it be ready?"
"I an' da' costumer an' the painter will be helpin' you get all that set tomorrah.  Be too late once we get in tanight."

They were on the road a couple of hours and the warm sun and the rumble of the tires soon lulled Eliza to sleep.  She was jolted awake when they left the smooth road for the rougher field the carnival was setting up in.  They were to be the midway show associated with a local agricultural fair. Eliza was soon quartered in the lower bunk of a small house trailer one of the full-time carny folks lived in.  Jill was a young woman, in her mid-twenties, that ran one of the games on the midway.  After brief introductions, both soon were in their bunks and asleep.

Morning came far too early for Eliza's liking but she was soon part of the happy crew around the breakfast table and could almost forget it was two hours earlier than she liked to get up.  As they were finishing breakfast, Madame Exelda introduced Eliza to Gerald, the painter.  They spent the next four hours with Eliza holding various poses as he repainted the canvases that hid the display area from direct view.  He was a talented artist and had replaced the previous snake girl's face and figure with Eliza's own.  She had to admit his rendition of her as a baby snake girl was even quite convincing.  The next hour or so were spent being measured by the seamstress (who also doubled as one of the midway barkers)

Just before supper, Eliza found herself stiff from all the posing and having to hold still while she was measured again and again.  Madame Ezelda noticed and offered her some tea to ease the stiffness.  Eliza took her offer and was surprised when the pain eased.  It seemed the old family remedy was more than the usual quackery that such remedies often were.  She was famished and could hardly wait for supper.  The evening meal was full of joking and camaraderie.  Eliza found herself accepted as a junior member of the troupe rather than the outsider she feared would be the case.  Halfway through supper, though, she got a sudden sharp pain in her sides just below her ribs.  She tried to stick it out but a second pain struck, followed quickly by a third one.  She doubled over.

"It be startin'," Madame Ezelda's voice announced through the haze.  "Be gettin' her to the exhibit then." 

Firm hands took hold of her and carried her carefully to -- it was then her mind remembered what had been said -- the exhibit?  Not her bunk?  What was going on?  She tried to speak but couldn't as pain after pain from her ribs kept her curled on the soft floor of the exhibit.

The pains eased for nearly ten minutes at one point and Eliza tried to sit up.  Her arms were strangely weak and couldn't budge her torso.  'The pain,' she thought.  Then she looked down and along an unbelievably long body.  Her legs, shrunken to half their normal size were halfway down a body that was a seemingly endless series of ribs.  Again she tried to push herself to a sitting position with her arms.  It was then she looked at her shrunken arms.  No wonder she had no strength -- they were little girl arms.  Small and shrunken with hardly any muscle on them!

"What have you done to me?" she shrieked.
"In da' contract it be," Madam Ezelda stated calmly.  "Signed and sealed, it was.  Until end of summer, you our snake girl be."  

She nodded and offered Eliza a drink of the tea again.  

"Dis be needed now.  You drink, eh?"  

Eliza didn't have the strength to fight it and swallowed the concoction.  Within minutes, the pain started again, this time it was coming from the base of her pelvis.  Again and again, it struck and with each pang, another vertebrae was added to the lengthening tail that was growing from Eliza's buttocks.  Finally, around midnight, the pains stopped.  Eliza weakly lifted her head to survey her new form.  Armless and legless just like images on the canvases outside her exhibit, she lay coiled on the soft floor.  Her skin was still soft and smooth though -- human skin.  She didn't look like the pictures at all.

"Finished shape shiftin', she is," Madame Ezelda's voice noted from the viewing gallery. 

A pair of the hands she didn't recognize slipped her clothing from her long slender form.  Eliza lay there several minutes before she thought to protest.

"You can't leave me naked!" she shouted in the direction of Madame Ezelda.
"'Course not, dearie.  Watcha think all the measurements be for then?  Until your scales grow in, we be stuffin' ya into a costume set of scales.  Soon you be real snake girl, eh?  Week or so.  No more den dat."

Finally Eliza recognized the hands that had undressed her -- it was the seamstress.  Now she carried a coiled cloth costume.  It had been crafted from cloth that looked like scales and Eliza, once she had been fitted into it, had to admit she looked just like the snake girl on the canvases. The next day, after the carny hairdresser fixed her hair, Eliza did little except slide slowly around her enclosure while hundreds of local yokels peered in at her.  She heard some snicker at the 'cheap trick' as they left.  Over the next week or so, Eliza developed an itch all over her body.  Every evening, one of the other carny people would scratch where it itched worst.  Soon, strips of skin were coming loose revealing her real scales underneath.  With the week, she had scales and belly scutes just like a real snake and a thin split tongue, too.

She learned to lift the front half of her body up to stare the scoffers in the eye and stick her tongue out at them.  Her performance was too much for some and they even fainted and had to be carried to the first aid tent.  That, of course, only made her exhibit even more popular.  The weeks and months passed and, at the end of one long day, Madame Ezelda let herself into Eliza's enclosure.

"You be gettin' back ta school now," she stated as she handed Eliza a drinking cup of tea.
"Is it August already," mused Eliza.
"Aye it be.  An' we be closin' down for the season.  Time for you to get back ta' bein' you agin'"

Eliza drank the offered tea and soon fell asleep.  She didn't feel the reversal that the tea had started.  By morning, she was only a meter or so taller than she'd been at the start of the whole adventure.  By the end of the day, she was her normal size again even though her skin was still scaled.  Her arms and legs slowly grew out again over the next day or so and she shed her scales.

"That was the most fun I've had on any job," she announced as Madame Ezelda drove her home.  "Could I work for your carny again next summer?"
"Perhaps," came the reply.  "'Course next year be different exhibit.  Maybe slug girl, or octopus girl or centauress, y'tink?"
"Sign me up!" Eliza beamed.  "That would be fun!"

Woman: Ironwolves
Snake: Creative Commons