The Carnival

[Aucoq]

There are many things that can be used to describe this carnival, depending on who you ask.
Ask a child and they will see lots of fun rides and games, prizes to be one from cheerful painted faces.
Ask an adult and they might see a place to hang with friends, take a date, show how brave or competitive they are.

What the average person will not describe is what I see. The hidden reality of it all.
The games are all rigged, unless the guy running it takes a liking to you that big stuffed dog will never be yours. And you really don't want him to take a liking to you.

The rides start as fun at first, but suddenly you notice a loose screw or a bit of metal that juts out wrong. You realize that this metal contraption is not a ride at all. It's a death trap. But some like that bit of adrenaline rush, that attempt to cheat fate. "It won't break down this time I ride it", you think, "I know it's bound to happen, but definitely not with me."

The cheerful, painted faces are the ones you need to watch out for most of all. I see what lies behind those eyes. They are sad and lonely people, at best. Demented and sinister at worst. People to be watched. Because they are disguising themselves, putting everyone at ease. Who knows for what reason, maybe it's just so that people will spend their money. Maybe something more, like that game runner I mentioned before.

Remember, I said you don't want him taking a liking to you. But you just had to have that big stuffed dog so you smiled sweetly and spent a bit of money. Congratulations, you won! He's staring at you now, watches every time you pass his booth. I see the grin on his face, see the wheels going behind his head.

Hope you don't turn up on the morning news.

Great post, Sita.  Thank you for posting it!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sweet good goddamn! 

[hunter s.durden]

I mean, shit. At least do your research.

If I wanted to do research I wouldn't be here begging you guys to do my homework, now would I?

Sita: prepare to be searched

[P3nT4gR4m]

So I took a walk into the mirror tent the other day. Good looking chick was checking herself out in a mirror that made her look short and fat and crying her eyes out. Fat chick was looking at herself in a skinny-mirror and crying her eyes out, stuffing her face with candy apples to try and put on some weight.

Every mirror had someone stood in front of it sobbing and sniffing up snot and feeling like shit cos the mirrors were lying to them but, even though they knew this on some level, they still believed it. Then there was this one little guy, he was ugly as shit, fat little body, skinny little legs and a face that looked like a malformed pizza with eyes. He was just standing there with his trousers round his angles, laughing his head off and wanking. Little bastard wasn't even looking at the mirrors.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

There used to be tents where you could see all kinds of stuff. Fifty cents. A lady with just hands where her arms should be and no legs, they said she was the result of an unholy union between a woman and a seal. She used to sit on a stool and some guy would comb her hair. She never looked at anybody. There were people with other deformities too, always attributed to bestiality.

You don't hear about sideshows anymore. We're nicer than that, now. The lady with hands where her arms are supposed to be and no legs is sitting on a flattened cardboard box in front of an office building downtown, and it doesn't cost anything to see her. She has a cup for spare change, but it's best to ignore that, since she might spend it on alcohol.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

 

Dear Lord, I'm going to have trouble contributing something half as good as this when I get home.

That's not going to stop me, it must be added.

[Mangrove]

Teeth? Why sir, we've always had teeth.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

"Me, I been here all my life," said the guy dumping a trash can into a larger trash can. "It ain't an easy life, but it's a good one. Fun too, when payday rolls around. I been around here long enough to know how it all ticks." He sort of trailed off a little as a kindhearted, if somewhat nervous, grin spread across his face. His gaze drifted toward the wall on the far end of the fairway. "I dunno what's out there. Never seen it. Don't care to, neither." He snorted and spat an impressive wad of mucus, as discreetly as he could, just under the fence that kept people away from the guts of the Ferris Wheel. The half curious light left his eyes as quickly as it had come, and he wrinkled his eyebrows with a different kind of curiosity. "Why you askin' anyway? Ain't nothin' outside the Carnival that's any good. You seen the lines of people stacked up to get in here? I reckon they wouldn't line up like that if there was anything all that great out there. Now get lost, kid. I got work to do, and you got too many tickets in yer pocket to be wandering around asking questions like that."

[Eater of Clowns]

You walk past all these mirrors and you're distorted, stretched out and squashed flat, pulled and compressed and bent.  It's a funhouse it says outside and as you watch your face warp up and down along the hall it's all that you expected for a few left over tickets.  At the end of the hall is a big room full of mirrors and you know you're going to get more of the same.

Then when you get there, it's not what you've expected.  It's you, images bouncing off one another and fading into endless reflections, trailing off as they follow your every move.  When you turn your head they all turn their heads.  Except just barely within your field of vision they don't look so much like you think you do.  Some look beaten and worn, bruised and hopeless, like they've given up.  Some look exuberant, thoughtful, bountiful but you can't really make it out, just that flicker of suspicion while you take the room in while the room takes you in.

They've all got different uniforms, soldiers and inmates and protestors, clergy and kings and bankers.  You hate them, you admire them, they hate each other, they're opposites they're you they're wrong they're maybe they're someplace else, somewhere else.  There's blood.  Your own blood surrounding you, a drop in one mirror a splash in another, a puddle a spray.  Too many you, too much, a million of you, more, infinite you all you, you trying to leave you looking around wildly for the spot where you aren't to leave you behind.

When you finally find it there's a bare room just before the exit but for one final mirror in the center.  It's an old one, on a stand and very ornate.  A thick golden frame surrounds the stained oval surface, holding within it this complex thing.  This great unknowable thing.

[Sita]

This has been sitting on my desktop for months. It was supposed to be a followup on the OP but I just can't seem to work it out. Figure might as well post it anyway.


The park has changed lately. New rides, exhibits. New fools being parted from their money.
Some higher up is thinking that all the place needs is a new coat of paint and a few shiny things and everyone will forget what happened.

Maybe for a while it will work, for people are quick to try and forget things they don't like.
But the place remembers and it will not be happy letting others forget.

Now one knows precisely when it began, but most agree that everyone took notice when that girl disappeared.

She was a friend of mine. She actually disappeared twice, only the second time was well known.
Saw her one day before the second disappearance. She appeared to be happy and had not a care in the world.
Until I saw her eyes. Cold and dull they were. There was no life there, none at all.

Asked her what happened. For the longest time all I got was a blank stare. When she did respond everything was fine. Nothing had happened.
It was so much easier to pretend the time didn't exist. The world is all sunshine and lollipops and nothing bad can ever happen.
Laugh, even if you are screaming inside. Smile because the world doesn't care if you feel like crying.

[Reginald Ret]

This has been sitting on my desktop for months. It was supposed to be a followup on the OP but I just can't seem to work it out. Figure might as well post it anyway.


The park has changed lately. New rides, exhibits. New fools being parted from their money.
Some higher up is thinking that all the place needs is a new coat of paint and a few shiny things and everyone will forget what happened.

Maybe for a while it will work, for people are quick to try and forget things they don't like.
But the place remembers and it will not be happy letting others forget.

Now one knows precisely when it began, but most agree that everyone took notice when that girl disappeared.

She was a friend of mine. She actually disappeared twice, only the second time was well known.
Saw her one day before the second disappearance. She appeared to be happy and had not a care in the world.
Until I saw her eyes. Cold and dull they were. There was no life there, none at all.

Asked her what happened. For the longest time all I got was a blank stare. When she did respond everything was fine. Nothing had happened.
It was so much easier to pretend the time didn't exist. The world is all sunshine and lollipops and nothing bad can ever happen.
Laugh, even if you are screaming inside. Smile because the world doesn't care if you feel like crying.

Fuck me, I'm stealing that last line.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

This has been sitting on my desktop for months. It was supposed to be a followup on the OP but I just can't seem to work it out. Figure might as well post it anyway.


The park has changed lately. New rides, exhibits. New fools being parted from their money.
Some higher up is thinking that all the place needs is a new coat of paint and a few shiny things and everyone will forget what happened.

Maybe for a while it will work, for people are quick to try and forget things they don't like.
But the place remembers and it will not be happy letting others forget.

Now one knows precisely when it began, but most agree that everyone took notice when that girl disappeared.

She was a friend of mine. She actually disappeared twice, only the second time was well known.
Saw her one day before the second disappearance. She appeared to be happy and had not a care in the world.
Until I saw her eyes. Cold and dull they were. There was no life there, none at all.

Asked her what happened. For the longest time all I got was a blank stare. When she did respond everything was fine. Nothing had happened.
It was so much easier to pretend the time didn't exist. The world is all sunshine and lollipops and nothing bad can ever happen.
Laugh, even if you are screaming inside. Smile because the world doesn't care if you feel like crying.

Fuck me, I'm stealing that last line.

Cry and they'll get on the cell and get somebody to help you. Because you're obviously not stable. You don't belong here with the norman people.