A Dream of Lights

“Is that a trick question?” the carny asked. The rollercoaster roared over the booth with a trail of fading screams. Laughter and bells. Something was breathing on Alice’s neck.

“No,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.

Smiles shone in passing, children racing unsupervised, couples hand in hand, and drunken shouts. The carny tongued his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “Yeah, Ma’am. I hear a lot of voices,” he said. His eyes were like windows into a blank soul.

Alice turned, trying to pin the spectral whispers. Red, blue, and yellow booths stretching towards infinity. A darkness beyond the night pervaded the expanse. 

“Please,” a pained voice cried. “Help.”

The cold chasm’s breath of dysphoria exhaled within her. She threw the last dart and pop! The balloon exploded. “We got a winner,” the carny said.

Alice took the stuffed bear and noticed a sheen over his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Tears fell from his unblinking gaze. Alice stepped away, and even through the crowd, felt his stare for a long while. Everyone’s going through something, she figured. It’s the whole reason they came here. She realized in walking down the stretch of booths, if she ever got the opportunity to run a carnival of her own, it would look like this. Modern touches with a classic undertone. Foods from around the world. Sturdy rides. It was a wonder how they managed something of this size. A wonder too that —as a woman who actively sought them— she’d never heard of Darlene’s Funland. A wonder that it was only… how long had it taken to get here?

“Come one, come you to the Big Top and the Halls of Horror,” a man shouted proudly in the distance, voice as carrying strongly as if he were right there. “Open at ten!” She looked off to the castle-styled Big Top with its battements and towers and wondered if it would have lived up to her mom’s standards. 

Alice stopped at the Watering Hole and poured a splash of beer onto the trampled grass. “Cheers, Dad.” She sipped and ran her fingers over the scar on her chest. For her heart’s sake, she shouldn’t have been drinking, but she came here to live.

A black treeline rose faintly on the horizon, hardly a line under the moonless sky. No thoughts of the factory in the morning, or yesterday, or anytime beyond now. A smiling ghost through the aisles. 

Something caught her eye. Swift movement across the grass. Again, an untethered shade zipped by. There was nothing moving overhead. Another shot past towards a black tent. 

“Kill him,” a voice said.

With gooseflesh down her arms, Alice watched a hail of wandering shadows darting to and fro across the grass and up walls of booths, all from or towards the black tent. She drew before the tent and watched within the crowd the short suited man on stage pulling marionette handles attached to nothing. Another man in a light pollo stood at his side, arms wide like a puppet and grinning dully.

The marionette pulled and the man moved. He twisted and the man turned.

“BS!” another screamed, red faced and sweaty.

The marionette lowered his handle and the polo man’s arms went slack. “Come see for yourself.”

The other finished his beer, handed his wife his cup, and struggled up the stage. He looked out at the crowd and mimed as if already being controlled. The marionette’s smile turned to a flat gray line, and suddenly, the drunk went rigid. His head twisted back and forth, and he shoved his finger up his nose. Laugher rolled over the crowd, but with a violent jerk of the handle, the man’s spine contorted. The marionette’s lips tightened as the man craned into a U. He and his wife screamed to stop while the audience clapped— Alice realized hers were louder than anyone else.

The marionette yielded and the man dropped. The audience continued to applaud as the woman tended to her husband, but one by one, members froze and were forced into stiff dances by his hand. The puppeteer’s gaze turned to Alice. He grinned, and then it felt as if her body was wood. She hopped, flailed, and a boundless hate overcame her. She fought helplessly against his commands. The words rose from the depths and in a voice that wasn’t her own. “Enough!”

Fear washed over the marionette’s face. He swallowed, forced a smile, and bowed. Blood pulsed through Alice’s ears as her body became hers once more. Men and women slowly withdrew, shooting her curious glances as they went. She wondered where that anger had come from. Hell of a trick though, she thought, as she finished her beer. 

Passing over the masses on a towering set of stilts, dressed in a bright yellow suit, and hidden behind a white mask which gave off a hazy mist, the barker she’d been hearing all night called, “Come face to face with your heart and yourself in the Halls of Horror!” In a slowed moment, he tipped his cap and stepped over her. 

“Good evening, Mrs. Green,” a wary voice said.

Alice turned to a dark-skinned crone outside of a small purple tent, hunched over her cane in a fishnet shirt that revealed far too much, and mostly bald beyond the few long strands of white hair. Alice’s gaze turned to the sign, ‘Kali’s Temple of Truth’. 

“It's Miss,” Alice said.

The woman smiled half-heartedly. “Divorced?” she asked, pointing to Alice’s hand.

She noticed a tan line on her left ring finger. “No… I just like rings.”

The crone nodded contemplatively. 

Alice felt the weight of a stare on her back and noticed a number of shadows suddenly dissolve. A symphony of whispers wails swam overhead. Children’s. The hair down her back raised, somewhere between titillated and terrified. “Do you hear those?” Alice asked.

“Of course.”

“What are they?”

The crone’s head fell in thought. “Why do you love carnivals?” she asked.

“Isn’t that your job?”

“Because your mother used to perform. The voice she thought would take her across the world, yet died out alone in a bathroom with no one to hear.” 

Alice swallowed nervously.

“Your mother still hasn’t forgiven him for taking her off the stage. And he still hasn’t forgiven you for ruining their marriage.”

Anger arose beneath the breathless unease.

“Your daughter hates you.”

Alice smiled. “I don’t have a daughter.”

“Then why are you crying?”

She felt the stray tear on her cheek and cleared her throat. 

“Can I see your hand?” the crone asked.

“No.”

A beautiful singing voice carried from somewhere in the distance, and a shiver ran her neck as the woman’s irises went black. “Pain. Devoured by a century of stolen souls. The end of your dream. Trapped for eternity.” Alice noticed blood leaking down the cane from the crone’s hand. A chorus of atonal voices raised up against the wind, hateful and pleading. 

Snapped back to reality in breathless shock, the woman’s eyes turned brown again. “I’m sorry…” she said, suddenly withdrawing into the tent. “I wish I could help you.”

“What?”

“I have to take care of myself,” she said, zipping the doors shut.

The cold drip down Alice’s spine said to follow, but she reminded herself it was just another trick to draw her in. She repeated it to herself and wiped the sweat from her eyes. Carnies’ gazes followed from behind the orange tips of cigarettes and popping gum bubbles. Just a trick, she said.

Alice ventured down the way, feet crunching over popcorn and plastic cups, past the groaning of tired parents and shouting kids. The bells grew louder. Screams from rides more shrill. Like most people, Alice had had an interest in the supernatural for a time, the cards of fate, the I-Ching, rituals in dusty tombs, and geometric truths. But she moved on. Moved on. 

She stopped before a large portable and read the flashing lights. ‘Can You Find Your Way’. With kids running lines around her, Alice drew up the narrow steel steps— the only adult bothering to actually enter the maze— and stopped before the Victorian animatronic at the entrance. With a sudden jerk, it turned its head. Alice jumped, laughed, and imagined having one guard her home.

“Mama,” it said, then convulsing in a short circuit. It’s head jerked side to side with pauses between. Its arms shot out. Alice grinned nervously. “Mama,” it wailed. “You forgot my birthday.”

A nervous tension balled in her throat. 

“Why don’t you love me?” it asked.

She looked at the stuffie in her hand and, unsure what she expected, held it up. In a sharp blurred motion, the animatronic ripped the bear away. Its eyes met the bear’s, and after a moment, the bear asked in a squeaky voice, “Who are you?”

The animatronic stroked its cheek rigidly and said lovingly, “God.”

Cold goosebumps rolled down Alice’s arms as she ventured past their strange moment and into the mirror halls. Could the bear talk all along, she wondered? The animatronic? Preprogrammed lines? Through the corridors, she watched her reflection bend and bulge. Children raced past and bounced off the dead ends in laughter. Shadows slithered at her feet. Circus music played over the questions in her head.

“Set me free.”

“Slit his throat.”

“Find the heart!”

“I want my mom.”

No longer whispers but shouts, screams. With a deep throbbing in her head, she tried to turn back and crash! Left and crash. Right. God dammit.

Her breath sped as she saw it wasn’t her reflection in the glass anymore, but children with pitch-black eyes, banging on the mirrors.

“Your mom is burning!”

“You’re why he drank!”

Alice felt herself back in the basement studio, watching her and her mother’s reflection in the mirror, the phantom lashes of the rod on her legs from mistimed dance steps and stray vocal notes. Tears ran down her cheeks as she bounced left and right off the glass. Forced down a path that went for ever.

“Do something right!”

“Kill yourself.”

“Free us.”

Memories played through the reflections, peaking into her mother’s room, watching her sing alone in sparkling red dress as tears fell, the crash of the bottle and her dad’s shouts, “God dammit, Darlene! I’m trying!”, reading through the Key of Solomon in her room while open hands smacked in the kitchen, conducting the world’s greatest show with a menagerie of stuffed animals, creeping towards the limp hand dangling over the tub’s porcelain edge, the pink water and the note, ‘Anything to feel the light again’, her father wasting away at the kitchen table. 

She noticed one of the mirrors down the hall had a handle. Bracing for impact, she ran. The handle turned. The storage room glowed dim under the suspended lights, pulsating with her hurried breath. The voices softened to whispers. Only one was clear, a girl. “The red box.”

In the back corner beneath stacks of crates sat a locked crimson chest. She was losing her mind. Wind howled against the door opposite the room. She pulled it open and closed her eyes to the cool kiss of a black night. 

“Please.”

She thought of home, the small apartment, of waking up tomorrow and… what then? Going to the docks? Alice looked back to the chest and out to the dark horizon. A cramp swelled in her stomach. What if they’re real? she wondered.

One by one, she unstacked the crates, still unsure what she was doing, and upon reaching the locked bottom, noticed a hammer in the corner. She fitted the sharp rear teeth into the lock, pried with all she had, and snap! Within, rows of lightbulbs. Her brow furrowed. Boxes and boxes of bulbs. But at the bottom, her fingers ran over a handle. She gripped and pulled the false floor. Small shoes, toys, flowery bracelets, and hats. The voices hushed. Alice wiped the sweat from her brow and tried to deny what lay before her. Within the mass was a grainy polaroid. A dozen or so people, the crone, the puppeteer, the barker. At front stood a couple, a slender man in a three piece suit arm in arm with a woman, though from the knees up a hole had been marred in the picture, either from scratching or stabbing.

The girl spoke again, “Please, Mrs. Green. Don’t leave us.”

“What do you want from me?” Alice asked, in a hoarse voice.

“End it.”

She knew what the girl meant. A surge of panic rendered her silent. She met the polaroid gaze of the man in the suit. 

“... I can’t.”

“The heart is already dead.”

Maybe the stress at the farm had finally gotten to her? The pain of an empty love life and solitary hours all caught up. 

“They know you hear us. No one escapes.”

She thought of her mom, the years of threats, her dad brushing them off, she asking what ‘suicide’ meant, the crying fits, the pleas for help. Too little too late. Her dad sucking back on his bottle until his liver became a bubbling brown mass. She could’ve helped. 

“Why are you doing this to me?” Alice asked.

“Because no one else can survive.”

And she could? 

“In the halls Alice. Find the heart. End it.”

The door squealed open to a shadow made man, solid darkness looming over. Her hand became a claw, balling the photo in her fist. Without air to scream, she scrambled, bounced harshly off the door frame, and leapt down the stairs. Blood pumped through her temples as she hurried around the portable and out to the crowds, laughing and merry. Why couldn’t they hear? Why couldn’t it be someone else? She sucked on her teeth, wiping sweat and tears of terror, and thought about freedom.

From somewhere over the booths, the barker called, “Venture if you dare! The Halls await!”

She tried not to think about the eyeless children or the toothy grin of the man in the photo. 9:50 PM. She looked in the direction of the parking lot and up to the flashing sign above the Big Top. ‘The Halls of Horror’. 

She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, hurrying, face down through the crowds. The dissonant voices cursed and screamed, pressing her soul into oil, but it was all too much. Why should she lose her life over something she had nothing to do with? Down past the turnstiles and out to the trampled field turned parking lot. She scanned the vast rows, walking towards the rear where her… she couldn’t remember where her car was. What car she was driving. Row and row, she searched, knowing that if only she saw it, she’d remember. But with each long line of unknown vehicles, nothing came to her. She pulled her phone from her pocket, dialed the emergency number, and watched the flashing response. ‘No Connection’. Her nails dug into her face. Ready to scream, to cry, she sat atop the hood of a car and looked back at the luminous halo over the carnival. How was this possible?

“Andy!” a faint shout echoed. “Are you out here? David!”

Alice noticed a youngish red-haired woman running down the driveway, eyes scanning the rows in panic. “Are you out here?” She turned down the one hurried towards a faded blue Civic. The door slammed and she screamed in frustration. Alice looked at the crumpled polaroid and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Ma’am?” she called out.

The woman turned with bewildered hope which quickly washed away.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” the woman said, cursing over her phone’s lack of signal. Alice could tell the woman wanted to tell her to fuck off. “I can’t find my son, Andy, and I can’t get ahold of my husband because this place gets no god damned signal. I thought they might be out at the car, but…”

“How long have they been missing?” 

She shook her head, “An hour. I went to the bathroom and when I came back to the tables, they were gone.” She reached into her wallet and showed a photo of a red-haired trio.

“What did security say?” Alice asked.

“They’d call if they find anything.”

“Don’t let them take another.”

The woman looked back at the carnival with equal parts hate and surrender. Why couldn’t the voices have asked her instead?

“This place has secrets,” Alice finally said.

The woman’s brows wrinkled terror. 

Alice spoke facts her head refused to accept. “I think I know where to find him.”

The woman’s face turned in distrust. Her eyes glittered with a sheen of tears.

“What are you talking about?” the woman whispered.

This isn’t fair, she thought. “Your son isn’t the first to go missing.”

The woman covered her mouth and the tears fell. “We need to call the cops.”

A flickering reel of dissonant memories played through her head, like things from another person’s life. Cops searching around, asking questions, shaking hands with the man in the suit and disappearing into the mist. “You won’t get a hold of them. And even if you do, they won’t find anything.”

She felt the woman’s pain in her marrow. 

“... Then what do we do?”

“We find him.”

Alice forced her feet to move, to think of the mirrors’ reflections, of her parents’ pleas for help, of how neither listened to the other. 

Back through the turnstiles, the carnies’ gazes burned hot on their backs. The woman followed close behind, but she could sense her distrust. For the first time in Alice’s life, she saw what people had always said, a dirty, treacherous, reticent affair. Not a place of lights and dreams. Sweat dripped coldly in her eyes as unbounded shadows darted at her feet and fully formed shades who evaporated on sight. The woman’s fear forced her to be strong. They stopped before the crowd at the Big-Top.

“Stay out here,” Alice said.

“But—”

In truth, she could’ve used her support. She didn’t want to be alone. But she saw the castle tent for what it was and didn’t want to bear the weight of death over her days. 

“If I find him,” Alice said. “When I do, I’ll send him back.”

“But—”

“If you come with me, there’s a good chance he won’t have a mother to come back to.”

Her gaze turned fearfully to the black doorway beyond the crowd. Questions rose and fell from her expression. “Thank you.”

I hardly have a choice, she thought. 

As she reached the front of the line, a strong man in a red, ring-master’s outfit nodded and whispered in her ear, “Don’t listen to them, Mrs. Green.”

“What?”

“The lights don’t run for free,” he said.

“I—”

“Next,” he said, gesturing her on.

On wary feet, Alice started into the dark entryway, an empty room with flashing lights over the two doors. ‘Choose Your End’. A pale, blonde woman in a thin white dress sat in the corner, fingers rolling softly over a gold harp. Her words were uncanny and beautiful, dancing like velvet into her heart.

“Fortune’s boon to thy right, Madam,” the woman sang.

Pulled by the mystic weight of her words, Alice turned right and into a high topped room with large poles and suspended ropes. Swinging from them like a monkey in a jungle was a manic and cackling harlequin. Frozen and enraptured, she hardly noticed the pikes around the room’s perimeter or bodies impaled upon them. 

“They’re upset,” the clown said, swinging a wide parabola over her head and soaring to the next rope.

“What?”

“Opening doors you said not to open.” His laugh trailed as he flew across the room.

“...”

“They won’t look the other way much longer.”

Her gaze turned to the blood-caked pikes and the decaying eyes of impaled. Suddenly, she was swinging. He grasped her arm and pulled her up with his parabolic momentum. His laughter raised over her cries. The ground flashed below. 

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he asked. “The magic of the show? The high flying dream?”

Now within arms reach, she saw the white and red make-up was the actual color of his skin. 

“Let go!” she said.

“Let go?” he asked. “But—”

“Now!”

Instead of letting her down, he let go of the ring, and together they plummeted towards a stretch of planted pikes, she screaming, he laughing. A short grunt bellowed as his stomach caught on a spike tip and her arm yanked from his grasp. Harsh across the canvas, she crashed between a set of spikes and rolled. Pain flashed through her shoulder and the world spun. Too shocked to believe that she was still alive, she kept her eyes closed. When at last she looked, she saw the harlequin dangling ten feet in the air, impaled upon a thick pike and stopped on a previous corpse. The pain subsided to the back of her mind, replaced by senseless horror.

Light at first but then deep and rolling, his laugh returned from the grave. He grasped the pike with one hand and grunted as he pushed himself up. Then the next hand. The world began shaking, prickled hairs on her neck as he asked, “Wasn’t that fun? Let’s do it again.”

In a quick snap back to reality, Alice eyed the door to the next room. “Wait,” he said. From over her shoulder, his voice carried, “Do I still have a job?”

Swinging lights overhead guided her escape into the next room where a sudden cloud of flame and the sharp sting of heat forced her to cover her face. On a small round platform at the center of the room stood a shirtless man breathing on a burning torch. A vast fiery serpent took shape from the flame, slithering up through the air, unbounded by the laws of physics or reason. Burst corpses lay strewn around the space, groups huddled together and charred into stone.

The flaming snake slipped upward and split into a dozen more who hung suspended and eyed her with massive hoods. 

“Turn back, my good savior,” the firebreather said, as new tendrils swam from the torch to create a set of steps.

A moment flashed from her subconscious, the man before her, much younger, juggling torches, spitting gasoline, the flames creeping back, a crowd screaming as he writhed in fiery agony, and whispering over the corpse, “You belong to me.” 

“I’m afraid you’ve run out of chances,” the firebreather said, walking over the fire, eyes flickering like coals. 

The children’s whispers hissed down her neck. Her fingers balled into a fist. “Get out of my way,” she said.

“Don’t end up like them,” the man said, shaking his head in earnest somberness. The serpents swayed in wait.

“You people are sick.”

“... We’re inspired.”

Alice had heard you get power from the legs. 

“Come to your senses,” he said. “There’s nothing you can—”

She braced her feet and twisted from the midsection. A crack sounded from inside her hand. The fist hit just above the jaw. He dropped, not out, but woozy and with wide eyes. Shock blared in the form of white noise and a throbbing hand as she ran past the descending serpents. Hisses rang at her back, crashing around. She tripped and screamed with a searing fang through her calf. Turned on her back, she watched the final head descend. 

The firebreather spoke in a language she didn’t know and it looked back to its master. As if sucked into a vacuum, the serpent withdrew into the torch. She met his gaze, baffled as to why he’d saved her. 

“Come back to us,” he said.

Alice swallowed her fear, and stumbling on her injured and blackened leg, hurried towards the next door and through the black hallway. Cold sweat ran over boiling skin. 

She froze before a room, a trap. Thick webs running from wall to wall. Rotting bodies suspended from the lines. Bones and clothes. A lake of dried blood on the canvas floor. Her gaze turned upward towards the chamber’s roof and the red-haired man looking down at her in pale horror from within a cocoon of webs. A monster stood perched at his side, some sort of naked woman with large arachnid legs, face burrowed into his stomach. Ravenous slurping sounds smacked and blood dripped off its shoulders. Moving, thinking, doing anything was impossible. A sharp and definitive crunch forced the man to gasp, and there was no following breath. 

The creature stopped as if sensing something, and slowly pulled its head free. Face twisting upside down, she set her gaze on Alice. “Have I done well?”

Alice’s jaw trembled too fiercely to speak. 

“Are you proud?”

Dread had already turned her into a corpse. 

“Speak to me grandma.” The monster’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not her…”

There was a brief moment of stillness. Alice looked over her shoulder. Run, she told herself. But her legs refused. In swift and horrid movements, the creature descended. Alice eyed a dark doorway across the room and sprinted, but her gimp foot was suddenly pulled, caught on a stray line, and her balance swung forward. 

A resounding crash shook the ground around her. She looked through her fingers to the mounted creature overhead, the long spiny legs and the naked torso, the hateful, blood-soaked eyes. Alice’s pants flushed warm with urine. She couldn’t help but scream herself hoarse as its jaws unhinged a foot wide and its tongue rolled down to her face.

“Candy!” a man said.

At the doorway across the room stood a slender man in a gray suit, arms behind his back, the same from the photo.

“Leave her be. You’ve already caught one tonight.”

It looked between him and Alice, a savage hunger in its eyes. The man remained still and unflinching. At last, it huffed in scorn and started up the maze of webs. Frozen in time and fear, Alice laid there on her back wondering how she could do anything to stop this madness or why it had to be her.

The girl’s voice rang hollow in her chest. “You’re close”

“Alice, are you coming?” the man asked. 

With trembling hands, she pushed herself up, ripped her foot free, and hurried towards the man. Everything about him was sharp. His chin, his stare, his shoulders. Still, there was something…

He shook his head. “Why do you do this?” After a silent moment, he started up the rounding stairs. Over his shoulder, he said, “They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“So it’s true?” she asked, following warily, considering if she should strike. “You killed them.”

“Offered them.”

As they drew up the stairs the air went from frigid to hot and muggy. They came before a wooden door with a scrawled note nailed to the top, written in a geometric script she didn’t know, but had a hunch meant, ‘In Your Name I Serve’. 

The office was circular with a single window— she realized it was one of the turrets she’d seen outside. Leather chairs, twin desks, and shelves with human nails, hair, pickled eyes and organs. A steel table sat at the back with built in restraints and a sprawl of knives, paring up to two handed cleavers. Blood symbols painted the wooden floor, most noticeable the large circle in the center of the room, and the red-haired boy lying paralyzed in the center and staring at the roof. 

Alice’s skin rose in pins. She tried and tried not to imagine the horrors that were going to be inflicted upon him, which already had, those which were coming to her. But she couldn’t shake the feeling… something about the place spoke to a hidden part of her. Her gaze turned the room over in search of an escape.

He took a seat on the edge of one of the desks and watched her, no malice or anger, just pity. “Did you at least have fun tonight?” he asked.

“...”

“If you lose your passion, what’s the point?”

Alice fought the chattering of her teeth and looked at the frozen child. “Why?”

He sighed. “They keep the light bright, keep the magic going. Make it real. People remember this show their whole lives, tell their kids, their grandkids. Just like your mother. We inspire the world, and their sacrifice allows it.”

He spoke with genuine passion, a heartfelt defense, as if it could actually be redeemed. 

“You don’t believe me,” he said, shaking his head and pacing, “How could I get you to see it? Think of it like this, most people don’t do anything with their lives. What are the chances that the few we take will actually mean something? Here, they give joy to generations. Stories eternal. Real wonder. All it costs is a few.”

“There were more than a few bodies in those rooms.”

“They didn’t listen to Seraph's song.”

“You’re all monsters.”

“... We’re dedicated.”

“You’re crazy.”

He rolled his eyes. “Enough to put up with you.”

Sweat ran in thick beads down her neck. Was the kid still breathing? Her gaze turned the room over. Ceremonial daggers, knives, hammers, crystal balls, skulls, spikes. The short hairs down her arms raised, and a curious compulsion pulled her further into the room.

“So there are no tricks?” Alice asked. The jars, the instruments, the symbols. The pinprick gooseflesh sharpened, but the source felt different. She looked back to the boy, slack jawed, a new tear down his pale cheeks.

“No,” he said.

“How?” she said, parsing the shelves.

“It took us a lot of time to figure that out,” he said.

Panic left her frozen as approached. With a somber smile and tender touch, he ran his thumb over the tan line on her left ring finger. “They’re children,” he said. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. Even if you did what they ask, there’s no bringing them back.”

It felt as if something was in the walls.

“If it’s any consolation,” he said. “They’re still with us.”

“I saw them in the mirrors.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He looked to the boy. “Strings will put his body to good use. He’ll eat his favorite foods, ride his favorite rides, work the booths. A child’s dream.”

She thought of the shadowy emptiness behind the carnies eyes and the puppeteer's stringless handle.

“Don't listen to him!”

He held her cheek softly. She couldn’t help but turn into it like a habit done a thousand times, but a quick surge of repulsion forced her to turn away. A sudden fit of hyperventilation whipped the room into a spin.

“I can’t stand to see you like this,” he said. “But it’s become a problem, He’s upset. And I don’t want to see you suffer.”

“Then stop,” she choked.

“And let go of a century's work? Isn’t this your dream, Alice? The neverending show? The brightest spotlight in the world?” 

She braced on the desk and held her chest. “You don’t know me.”

“You don’t know you.”

Her mind felt like a faulty circuit, sparks shooting and shorting her back to a reset. Where did she work? Where did she live? All she could imagine was some empty house and massaging her feet after a long day at the office? The factory? The pier? The farm? In that image, she wasn’t even herself, just some blank face. 

“This is all yours,” he said.

A throbbing migraine left her seeing stars, flashing moments playing over the tired floorboards, this man… Alden, his smile across the ritual’s circle, the woman writhing within, the chants of friends, golden plains beyond the window of their convertible, speeding across States towards the promised issue of The Book of Recourse, exchanged rings beneath a full moon in the bayou, the fear as she held the dagger over her chest and otherworldly reassurance that it would only hurt a moment, that the lights would never die, that forever she’d live the life her mom wanted. Blood dripped from her lower lip as she bit harder.

Alden’s footsteps clicked into her view. She looked up and saw he was holding a small mahogany box. “Do you remember?”

She heard the low thumps.

“Please, Alice. Not again.”

“What’s going on, Alden?” she asked. 

He set the box on the desk and rubbed her back. “It’s not easy to live as long as we have.”

Alice shook her head. “I wouldn’t do this.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“... I just want to make the world smile.”

He pulled her up softly by the cheeks. “And you have. There’s so much left to give. We just have to hold ourselves together.”

She stared into his glimmering gray eyes and shook her head. “We’re terrible people.”

“We try our best. But there’s always a cost.”

He wrapped his arms around her ribs and squeezed lightly, yet full of love. A love she missed, which she remembered as true for nearly a century and a half. Her hand slid over the desk and grasped the metal handle before embracing him. She kissed his cheek and whispered, “You never gave up on me.”

“I made a promise.”

She looked to Andy and back to Alden. “I’m sorry,” she said, burying the letter opener into the side of his neck. Shock glowed white in his eyes, then betrayal. She felt every bit of it and ripped the blade free. A quick flood pulsed from the wound. He stumbled, grasping at the opening in disbelief. Alice set her jaw and, pressing through the guilt, plunged the tip into his chest. A short breathless grunt. Hardly visible through the tears, Alden tripped onto his backside, grimacing in pain. She thought of the girl, those shoes and bracelets, the empty carnies eyes, and the visions in the mirror. Down on her knees, their cries rang together as the blade hit its target again and again. Centuries’ love withered. All at once, she wished to have him back, to feel those arms around her shoulders, see those eyes—gazing at the ceiling in sorrowful disbelief— on her with longing. However many lives it took.

Silence took the room. She looked around wondering if it had really happened, wondering when the walls were going to close in, when the place was going to crumble. Nothing changed.

“End it.”

The words sent a shiver through her skin. I did it.

“No. The heart.”

She rose up, a ghost of herself and looked down on the soon-to-be corpse and pooling blood. Her gaze turned to the box on the desk, and with trembling hands, she opened the latch. Within sat a gray atrophied heart with severed veins, beating at a slow rhythm. She ran her fingers over the scar on her chest and thought on the bypass, the time in the hospital, the made up images she couldn’t really remember. Words uttered from fleshless lips returned from the recesses of her memory. “Consider it your down payment.”

What pulse had she been hearing? Was anything she felt real? Her eyes squeezed shut against the chorus of angered voices.

“You promised!”

“End it!”

“Let us go…”

So many years at that desk. She looked around the back, that which had been hers, and saw the square cut in the hardwood. Yanking the handle up, she peered down the ladder. By his thin arms, she pulled Andy out of the circle, and as his feet crossed the threshold, he gasped deeply and broke into a horrified sob. His senses returned and he looked between Alden’s corpse and her. He scuttled away and crashed against a shelf of preserved organs. Jars crashed around him and worsened his screams. 

She wanted to tell him not to be scared, but couldn’t bring herself to lie. 

Calm and amiable as possible, she said, “Andy, your mom’s waiting.”

Arms wrapped around his knees, he peered over his elbow and shook his head. 

“There’s a ladder under the desk. It’ll take you to an exit. Your mom will be at the tent’s entrance.”

He didn’t trust her. That was fine. 

“... Where’s my dad?” he asked.

She closed her eyes. “He’s… you have to go. Be strong. For your mom. Your dad too.” She took out her phone, turned the flash light on, and handed it to him. “You’ll be fine. But you have to leave.”

He swallowed his tears and nervously took the light. Scooting around her to keep distance from her, he peered down the ladder shute, squeezed his eyes shut to force out the bad thoughts, and slowly started down. 

“Good job, Andy. Don’t let this… just be strong.”

As the light disappeared at the bottom, Alice exhaled in relief, a relief which quickly vanished in Alden’s pale face.

Alone again, she took up the heart. The tear down her cheek pulled the weight of her worries and uncertainty. Alice took the letter opener and, with closed eyes, plunged it through. Breathtaking agony sent the room into a wild spin and dropped her to her knees. The heart tumbled from the box. She tried to breathe, but it only worsened the pain. Her nails dug into the grainy hardwood. Shlunk, shlunk, the heart went. Pain told her not to, but the screaming voices begged. Hundreds of souls that she’d trapped. With one hand she grasped it, and forcing herself through the tears, ripped the blade across. It tore through the pale flesh, spurring white agony that left her ears ringing and too petrified to scream. From her side, she watched the last weak beats of the split heart before it fell limp and jelly-like.

Those hundreds of dissonant voices suddenly hushed. The lights died and beyond the window, the faint circus music came to a halt. Each breath felt weaker than the last, no thoughts formed in full. A deep terror overcame her in the face of the blackness. This must be death. She wondered if she’d see her parents. She wondered if she could face them.

We’ll see.

Through the silence, there came a light creaking. The door sealed shut, and the lights came back on. With the world spinning around her, she couldn’t place the source of the slow, yet heavy steps. From the corner of her vision, she saw a large and horrid foot, made of patchwork flesh of various tones and bits of matted animal hide, all sewn together by thick stitches. She craned her neck and followed up the leg of the naked monster and its melange of fur and rotting skin. 

The world was too distant to understand, but fear of something much worse than the pain of this world sealed her throat. 

It knelt down, and in a deep voice which shook the room, it said, “And I’m the deceiver?”

Alice’s eyes fluttered.

“That’s the problem with mothers. They always see their children in everyone else… regardless of how they treated them.”

“The deal’s broken.”

He looked at the torn heart with black eyes, and two rows of inconsistent teeth shone behind a curling smile. The children’s voice drifted faintly through the air. “The kingdom has already been built, Child.”

The Shining One took the letter opener out of her hand. He blew softly and the thing carried as dust through the air. Too cold to feel, she stammered in disbelief. He held her cheek and said, “Put your conscience at ease. I’ll let you rest with them.”

“... Please,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He grinned. “I know.”

*

Alice sat silent and fetal before her mirror. Like all the children before theirs. Glass prison cells stretching with the bends of the maze. Some cried, some slammed and shouted. The walls of the maze and all the carnival’s tents appeared transparent. Clear membranes within a large organism. She saw the carnies as shadows. Crowds walked the aisles between, laughing and drinking, soaring in coasters, riding the cycles of the ferris wheel, and carrying prizes. The carnival itself sat at the base of some vast fleshy chamber, beating a slow rhythm, below them a greenish pool of pungent acid. 

Children raced the corridors, fast and unwitting, bumping off mirrors and turning back. The hollow dispare left her silent. She still felt those jagged teeth chomping on her soul, grinding her into this place. 

“Hello?” a voice said. “Is someone there?”

A young woman stopped at Alice’s mirror and looked down. She met the woman’s gaze with trembling lips, pleas on the tongue, and buried her face within her knees. Into the darkness, she sang.