valarltd | As a thank you to all who helped out.

Here's the first three pages of the dark carnival story.

Carni-val.

The carnival chugged into town on the abandoned Burlington-Northern tracks, the cow-catcher of the gleaming black steam locomotive plowing through waist-high weeds. Which was ridiculous, of course. The heyday of carnival rail travel was long over. No one had seen a show come to town on the railroad in fifty years or more. Still, no one gave it much mind that Thursday morning.

In the quiet little houses of Peculiar, parents chivvied their kids to catch the school bus, before going to work themselves in the City. They returned to a town transformed.

Every telephone and lightpole now sported a colorful flier for the Phantasmagoria Carnival. The walls of the post office, laundromat and grocery store, as well as the lumberyard fence bore smaller copies of the side show paintings. The Phantasmagoria would open Friday evening and run through the Labor Day weekend.

“Nagina, half-woman half-snake!” read Charlie from the poster that showed a desert and a creature that looked like Medusa from Clash of the Titans. “One of Nature's mistakes or the offspring of our First Mother, Eve and the Serpent? Alive!”

“See Torturo, the Pain-King to whom physical agony is nothing!” read Jeremy. “He eats glass, sleeps on nails and dances on knives!” He looked at Charlie. “Cool.” The poster showed a handsome brown-haired man, who bore a strong resemblance to a popular actor, racked on a bed of nails while a shapely female assistant reached toward him with a flaming torch.

“Way cool. The only Ten-in-One show featuring born freaks, oddities of nature and human performers of all sorts!” Charlie said. “This is going to be so good.”

The boys raced home, bursting to tell. The next morning, before classes, their classmates who lived on Y highway had more to tell. The Carnival was all set up. The Ferris wheel reached to the sky, the zipper beside it.

“Paratroopers, and a scrambler and a merry-go-round and a big round thing!” Nine year old Christy informed her classmates breathlessly. “And all kinds of shows and games and stuff.”

“And a real freak show!” put in her brother, Andy, with all his twelve-year old authority,. He was a sixth-grader so all the kids in the area piped down. “Real ones. We saw a couple of dwarfs setting up.”

“Dwarves,” corrected Mary, who'd been into Lewis since third grade and Tolkien since fourth. She never looked up from the fat fantasy novel she was reading. Everyone ignored her.

“And a giant. He was way tall. Taller than Ms. Denny.” The kids looked shocked at Andy's words. The principal, Ms. Denny, was as tall or taller than most of their fathers. “Taller than Mr. Harper, even.”

“No way. Nobody real's taller than Mr. Harper,” said Joey. “He's almost as tall as Shaq.”

“Way. He was holding up the pole of a tent while the dwarfs--”

“Dwarves,” Mary corrected again. They still ignored her.

“Pounded in the pegs,” Andy finished. “And the freak-show. It's like the stories mom told me about when Bushwhacker Days would set up uptown instead of out in the park.”

The bell rang and the kids trooped to their classrooms. There was very little work done in any classroom that day, the teachers being all distracted by the Phantasmagoria as well.
As the sun lowered in the September air, the calliope filled the air. The sound was loud enough to carry uptown, luring folks who had decided they might go Saturday or Monday out to the old empty field, now turned into a neon playground, heavy with the scent of sugar and ozone.

Cotton candy machines whirred, and funnel cakes fried, and the odor of onion rings and corn-dogs lay beneath them. Parents, leery of the costs involved, were shocked. The prices posted were straight from the 1950s: fifty cents for the corn dogs, a quarter for the cotton candy. Ride tickets twenty-five cents or a wristband for five dollars. Games were fifty cents a try. The freak show had separate admission, and two different shows.

“No one under eighteen allowed in after ten at night,” read Charlie. “Well crap.”

“'Sall right,” said Andy, tugging at him, urging him down to look at the duck pick-up booth. “We can go before ten.”

A handsome man came out of the Ten in One, his jeans rumpled and his dirty t-shirt reading “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me.” He looked at the boys.

“Sorry, kids. The freak show doesn't start until ten tonight. But come back tomorrow, and you can catch the matinee.” He gave them a smile and then drew a spike from a pocket.

Andy and Charlie's eyes got big as he poked it through the septum of his nose. “Torturo,” Andy gasped.

The man laughed. “Alive on the inside! Just like the poster says.” He pulled the spike from the septum and then started working it up into his nose. “Don't try this at home. Go over to a friend's house, and make sure his mom doesn't mind blood.” He got the whole four inch long spike into his nose as the boys gaped.

Torturo handed them two passes. “That's all they'll let me show you out here. Come back tomorrow, on me, and bring your parents and friends!”

“Thank you, mister,” Charlie said.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Andy corrected him. “He's a king, remember?”

Torturo laughed and waved as they dashed off, clutching the precious free passes. A pretty red-haired girl put her head out of the tent.

“T, you're a big softy.”

“No, Alice, m'dear, I'm hoping one of them has an older brother.” He tweaked her cheek, eliciting a gasp from someone still inside the tent, and ducked back in. “Besides, two free child admissions will get us at least a couple of paid adult admissions.”

“And you call me the slut,” Alice giggled as her sister Dinah stepped closer. The leg they shared provides balance as Dinah moved to her usual position, about a hundred and thirty-five degree angle from her sister's hip. Torturo felt surrounded. The conjoined twins each stole a kiss from one of Torturo's cheeks. “We need a couple of piercings, sweetheart. Can you set us up? We have a new idea for the adult show.”

Torturo cupped Dinah's breast and Alice's buttock. “Anything you like. Come to my trailer.”

Alice pecked his cheek. “You really should find a way to join us on the stage for the adult show. I could torture you.” She shot a look at her sister. “Dinah's not kinky, though.”

Torturo grinned. “We'll talk while you're under the needle.”

“Bright and early tomorrow, say ten?” Dinah said.

“Just knock loud.”

They went to get ready for the show, the calliope music and the midway barkers filling the thick-smelling canvas tent, and the small town crowd roiling outside the cloth.