In the Bouncing Castle

The birthday party officially began at 12:00 AM so that the children could avoid the embarrassment of sun induced mania. So in the middle of darkness and prone rainy clouds and a mist from the mountains, a giant, two meter high cake was lit by a thousand candles to be blown over in five exact hours. All of the children screamed and screeched and scrammed in jubilation as they went around their business: some of the children decided to go and play in the forest behind the house, others decided to play in the abandoned industrial zone buildings to the west of the house, others decided to play in the graveyard to the east of the house, but the more popinjay ones decided to enter the secret castle.

“Just for you my beautiful darling, it is all for you,” the protracted mother body figure said to her now daughter for she had been born a son but had finally come to terms with the beautiful individual that she was.

“Alas, thanks, to the mother of me, I give it all to you, for me, as I have, the things in me, because of you,” the daughter, now named Awanda (i.e., a sleeker Amanda) said, hugged her from behind the hellish fire of the birthday cake, and entered with nine other friends into the bouncing castle in the shape of a castle with onion domes that looked as if restored in the USSR.

“Birthday! Birthday! Birthday!” the ten children sang in unison as the jumped across the bouncy place. They went from the kitchen to the throne room, from the bedrooms to the dungeons, to the torture chambers to the kinky chambers (with all of the erotic elements removed and the word KINKS painted over so it said LINKS). They were all holding hands and they jumped and they jumped and they jumped so high.

“Help me! Help me! For I am a traveler from a faraway land that has seek-ed refuge,” said a figure that had hidden itself in the toilet room. All the kids got behind the birthday girl for she was the oldest, strongest, tallest, and more rhomboid of all of them.

“Who are you, who could you be if it is you that are so very real, in no imagination of us kids who have jumped?” said Awanda, slowly approaching the figure. The shadow that was crouching became enveloped in an aura of many colors, its eyes turned crimson, and its lipstick was purple like a lollipop that turns your tongue purple and before the children could laugh themselves into hysterical, irreconcilable fear, the figure appeared, and it turned out to be Yuyuyabub, the funny unmurder clown.

“It is only the clown,” one of the friends said and they all laughed and jumped all over. The clown was now blowing out its own balloons and bringing all of the animals and things it created into literal, breathing, metabolism-heavy life: puppies and spiders, and straw scarecrows and snakes, butterflies and wombats, and pangolins, and also a tiny bear, and an anteater with a briefcase and a hat.

“AWANDA, cake for the birthday, in the birthday we call upon you to blow the candles!” shouted the mother figure and the children playing in the graveyard, in the industrial zones, and in the forest came running as if they had all poopy in their pants to see the blowing of the candles, but Awanda did not want to stop jumping yet.

“No better yet, mother of mine, come and let me do it here inside the flammable, inflatable, hoppy foretress,” shouted Awanda as a balloon spider attached itself to her back. Normally, the mother of Awanda wouldn’t put up with it, but since it was her precious daughter’s birthday, she acquiesced and everyone got inside the bouncing castle to jump, cut the birthday cake, blow out the candles, and divide the cake inside.

“Happy birthday! Happy birthday! Happy birthday!” everyone yelled, while Awanda lied on the floor, and surrounded her while watching directly into her naturally sunken eyes and sang the happy birthday song without blinking, not even once, in the same emotionless, monotone voice that Awanda loved so much to hear in her favorite darkwave songs.

“Make a wish, make a wish before the sun comes out, for it is soon, soon that it will vanquish us,” said Yuyuyabub as it kissed the mother of Awanda, for it turned out that they had raised Awanda together, since Awanda’s father abandoned her.

Awanda looked at everyone jumping around her, the friends she had made and were so very dear, her mother who did everything to make her feel normal and special at the same time, Yuyuyabub who was a clown, and the bouncing castle where no matter where you go it was easy to have fun, and she made a decision.

“That the sun gives us no harm and only joy!” she screamed and everyone gasped. “Also, a tandem bike for people like my friend who has four legs!”

They all waited anxiously for morning while eating the cake in whole big gulps, jumping still in the castle, and vomiting outside. And though her mother was scared, and so was the clown, and so were her friends, they all waited for the sun to rise and when it finally touched their delicate skin, they felt for the very first time its warmth embrace. For the very first time in her life, Awanda could distinguish the face of her mother, the face of Yuyuyabub, and the faces of all of her friends, and she cried of joy, and everyone around her hugged her very tightly.