Once you pass through the gate all of the worries about your waking life fall away. You feel lighter. Suddenly, all of your senses are flooded with stimulation: the smell of sticky candy and buttery popcorn, the sound of laughter and playful music from a dozen games overlapping into a din, and the sights--oh. The sights are beyond imagination. Sparkling lights and bright colours fill your vision. A man breaths fire, a woman bends herself into a knot, and someone behind a stall dares you to give the game a chance.
For the people living there, it was heaven. They were a mix of family and friends. Then one night, it all exploded.
No one knows what started the fire. Everyone has a different story, a new reason, a unique theory all their own. But no one, they think, has the truth. What everyone knows for certain is that it was big, and fast, and all consuming. As Lucinda ascended into her final trick, it was already too late. By the end of the hour there was nothing left of the circus but ash and dust.
And the ghosts.
They don't know why, or how, but that fire was cursed (or blessed, depending who you overhear), and now the performers of the circus are trapped in an endless cycle. During the day: they haunt, they wander, they exist as spectres, ghosts and mindless corpses. But when the sun sets the circus comes alive, renewed, and ready to perform again. Over and over again, night after night, the Cirque de Fleur wakes, performs, and returns to dust.
It's easy to be death defying when you're already dead.