“We turned back to Miss Rietta, who at that very moment sprung from the top of the pole.

A nine-year-old may be told that humans are confined by the laws of nature or society, may repeat those laws with sincerity, but it is a pretense, a concession to the ambient consensus of which the child at that age is becoming too well aware. But that night we were at the circus, and Miss Rietta could fly.

With her flight all was quiet. It was her neck that broke the silence.

My father was the first to speak. 'Very unusual,' he whispered to me and my friends.

Miss Rietta was taken to the hospital but that, I'm afraid, was a formality. [An article appearing in the next day's paper speculated] as to what had happened at the top of the pole: Miss Rietta, some thought, had passed out and was unconscious when she met the ground. I did not believe that; I believed that Miss Rietta, having slipped, knew she was going to die and wanted to leave us with that last illusion - that we were more splendid, if only for a moment, than the forces which confined us.”

The Face of a Naked Lady, Michael Rips