The Fire and Embers

by Tamara Bloodhoof

Chapter 9: A Trip to the Fair

Chapter 9
A Trip to the Fair

I woke up to my ears pounding like a drum, my head splitting with a horrible migraine. My face was pressed into the ground and everything hurt like Hades, from my brain to my bones. Whatever I was lying on was smooth and hard, but at this point I wanted to do nothing more than continue to lie here and try to slip back into dreamland. What did it matter if I was asleep?

‘Because you keep waking up in weird places.’

I didn’t like logic when I felt so horrible, but I picked myself up anyways. As I stood up, I yawned widely and began to rub my eyes, trying to scrub the lethargy from them. When I finally stopped, I felt at best an iota better. I still had my migraine and my body still screamed in pain, but at least I was awake now, and I immediately tried to get my bearings.

For some ungodly reason, I was in what could only be called a tiny room. The walls and floor were made out of cobbled together scales, a patchwork of various plated colours, each one reflecting tiny faceted versions of myself everywhere. Despite being able to see, I couldn’t find any source of light. It seemed as if the very air was glowing.

As for space, there was just enough room for me to lie down. I couldn’t see any doors or windows, and my roaming fingers were unable to find a crack or line that could reveal a hidden passage. I felt as if the earth itself had swallowed me whole, and I was quickly growing claustrophobic. I wanted to cry at my predicament, but I knew that would get me nowhere so I instead forced myself to sit down, my hands wrapping around my legs. I had no way out and, in a room like this, it meant that there was only one option; to wait.

Hours ticked by as I sat there, muttering under my breath the entire time. Things like “What’s going on?”, “Why am I in here?”, “Is this a prison?”, and, of course, my favourite; “What in Hades name did I do to deserve this?”

‘Does the world need a reason to be cruel?’

“No, I guess it doesn’t…” I sobbed as my stomach began to grumble. My stomach was empty, a withered balloon feeding upon itself, and it was the breaking point. I began to gently rocking back and forth, my breath erratic and wavering, almost panicked. I was just a teenage girl. Why did this have to happen to me?

‘Because the world has a horrible sense of humour.’

“Are you sure you aren’t talking about yourself?” I asked with a chuckle, happy to at least have something to talk to, even if it was just my mind. “If not, then something’s wrong.”

‘Hey, I got you to laugh at least, that’s worth something isn’t it?’

“I guess so...” I whispered, my closed eyes pressing into my legs. The second that they met, I felt the wall I was leaning on vanish. With a yelp I fell backwards through the sudden hole behind me, tumbling head over heels before slamming yet again onto the ground. All the pain that had started to recede came back again with a vengeance, and I whimpered at the agonizing sensation.

‘Case in point.’

‘If you’re just going to be an ass, do me a favour and shut up!’ I thought, slowly standing to my feet again, wondering where I had wound up. I felt my mouth go slack as I realized just what I had literally stumbled upon.

It was a carnival.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes, squinting at the flashing multitude of lights in front of me. They didn’t melt away when I looked again, and there seemed to be a lively hubbub surrounding it. The sky was cloaked in a wave of black, no stars or moon penetrating through what had to be the largest cloud ever. After a few moments of looking, I felt my feet moving of their own accord, dragging me towards the tents and games.

‘This doesn’t feel right.’

‘Says the voice in my head which talks back to me.’

‘…touché.’

The inside of the carnival was very different from what I was expecting. Stereotypical carnivals are places of happiness and merriment, where everything is specifically built to be insanely fun. However, despite the bright and cheerful colours, the entire place seemed dark and dreary. I was the only one here, and the games were oddly grim for a place of joy. The rifle booth was filled with actual rifles and, seemingly randomly, the targets would literally explode as a shot went off. The ring-the-bell game had a spiked mace larger than a baseball bat for the hammer, and the water gun game was actually burning. On and on the games changed from frivolous pastimes to legitimate dangers, but nobody was running the stalls, the lights in the booth flickering every now and again.

As for the prizes that could be won, every booth that I passed was filled with first aid kits or pre-packaged food or other necessities rather than the usual cheap plastic toys. The only things that came close to normal prizes were massive stuffed animals, the ones that were just as big as the one who got it, and they were always the most expensive prizes.

I couldn’t understand the logic of this place, and the fact that nobody but me was even here gave me a sense of growing dread. As I continued to look around, I kept hearing some faint noise creeping around, and every time I recognized its presence my hair stood on end and my body became highly responsive, as if it was the hunting cry of a creature that had decided I was on the menu.

The tents were just as weird. ‘Majestic Accidents!’ ‘Brutal Injuries!’ and even one called ‘Death and Dismemberment’ were just a few of the signs that covered the entrances. The tent doors were flapping open time and again in a non-existent breeze, and inside I saw nauseating scenes. Mannequins, or what I prayed were mannequins, were showing off broken bones, ripped skin, and flooding blood to a non-existent audience. It was sickening, and I put my head down so I could avoid seeing anything more.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Getting out of this insane place!’

Of course, since I stopped looking at where I was going I ran into something, a cloth door flapping over me as I barreled through it. I instinctively raised my head to fight off whatever had touched me, but as I realized just what had happened, I shut my eyes tight. Yet I had seen the room, and I hadn’t seen any gore so, with a healthy dose of apprehension, I opened my eyes.

It was a simple pavilion, two wooden poles keeping the top up, the crimson canvas walls billowing out thanks to the stakes shoved in the ground. In the middle of the tent were a couple of small pedestals topped with glass cases. There weren’t any signs on any of the pedestals and, like before, nobody else was here.

I slowly walked toward them, curiosity drowning out my nausea and unease. They were all topped with seemingly meaningless items: a cast, a picture frame,and a few other items which I couldn’t make out. The weird thing was, all of those items reminded me of something, even though I had never owned them.

The cast reminded me vividly of my freshman year. I had been slotted to be in almost all of the junior team inter-school competitions, and my coach had been helping me day and night, giving me tips and tricks to help me practice for the big day. I ran whenever I could get the time, slowly increasing my speed till I felt like I was flying through the air every single time. My team-mates had been jealous of the coach’s attention, but they always cheered me on when they saw how fast I ran for us. I was the best in the school, and everyone had wanted us to bring back the inter-school trophy.

But things weren’t that simple. A week before we went I fell, and my speed became my enemy as I hit the dirt, tumbling head over heels. My whole body had ached, but my shin had felt like it was on fire, the agony unbearable. When the coach had seen this, he had immediately rushed me to the nurse, a couple of kids lifting me there on the school’s stretcher. I was only allowed a shining second when the nurse came back in, a smile on her face before she said that my tibia was broken. I was lucky at how small it was though, and I should be back on my feet in three weeks.

Our school lost that year, and all of the people who I had thought were my friends turned on me. Either I had wasted too much of the coaches time, I had staged the fall or I had just wimped out, but nobody who I knew would take my side. I had failed everyone, and they had failed me.

I sighed as I looked at the cast, turning to the frame, one with a picture of a boy in it. The boy was in his mid-teens. He was lean yet not puny, and he had a mop of brown hair and a gentle smile on his face. I knew the boy, and it hurt just to look at it.

His name was Zach. He had been a kind kid, always standing up for me during sophomore year, but he wasn’t the most popular in school. He was smart and funny, but the jocks had always targeted him. They had probably labelled him as a threat and had taken it upon themselves to make sure he never actually became one, but it never seemed to faze him. He continued to be his kind self, and I never understood what he had seen in me, but he confessed to me right after home-coming. He was my first boyfriend, and my last.

We were happy together. I had finally met someone who would listen to me and liked me for who I was, and he found something in me. We would work on homework together and hang out during school, but his parents were also fairly strict with him. We could only hang out on the weekends, and Sunday after church was where we spent most of our time together. We went to zoos and parks and even the odd movie or two, but it had only lasted for four shining months.

Dad had found out that we were dating. At first it seemed that everything was still perfectly fine, but he began to grow distant from me, nervous and jumpy whenever we were alone together, as if he was afraid. It didn’t take me long to put the pieces together, and I confronted my father about it during dinner one night. I hadn’t ever done it before, and he was outraged at my attitude, but when he saw the look on my face he had finally told me about how he was pressuring Zach to drop me. He wasn’t good enough for me was dad’s excuse.

I couldn’t sleep that night, and when I saw Zach at school the next time I tried to come up with a way to tell him we should break up, but instead he kissed me. It wasn’t a quick peck, it was a real kiss, his tongue slipping into my mouth, gently yet insistent as he played with mine. The sensation was like fire spreading through my body, and I couldn’t move as he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me close to him, our hearts beating together. When we broke apart he gave me a small smile, his cheeks bright red. The hall was silent, probably had been since the geeky me had gotten kissed by the cute and funny Zach.

I wanted to kiss him back, I wanted to say everything would work out, but I noticed the bags under his eyes, the way he looked thinner than usual, and I realized that I was hurting him. Every happy thought became a burden as I looked at the poor kid in front of me, at the boy I loved so much.

I slapped him. The sound was loud enough to echo even through the crowded school. “I hate you!” was all that I could manage to say before I turned around and ran away. Nobody got in my way as I barrelled down the stair and flung myself into the girl’s lavatory. I hid in the bathroom all day, tears streaming down my face as I curled into a ball. Before I had run off I saw his face, and there was only disbelieving pain. I had done it to try and protect him from me, but seeing him look so lost and hurt was like driving a wedge into my own heart.

My dad was proud of me, said that he always knew that I would make the right choice and dump him, and it had taken all of my willpower to resist hitting him. The next time I saw Zach he was followed by a gaggle of girls, all of them talking about how they’d like to comfort him. He looked much healthier than before, the bags having vanished and his body no longer so skeleton-like, but he wouldn’t look at me. I had burned what felt like my only bridge thanks to my father, and I couldn’t forgive him.

I slowly pulled myself back from my memories, a sad smile on my face at the horrible bitter-sweet taste of them. My dad had hurt me so much, but I knew he was just trying to help me in his own way. It hurt, and I would never feel perfectly happy with him, but he had always tried to make me perfect so that I never had to worry about anything later. I knew it, but that didn’t mean I would accept it.

‘Yet you still blame yourself for so much.’

‘Do you blame me?’ I asked. ‘I never stood up to dad when I should have. I never fought for what I really wanted. I always caved in to his demands. If I have to put the blame on one of us two, how can I in good conscious say it was all him?’

There wasn’t an answer for this, and no other word was said as I turned and walked from the tent, sparing a quick glance at its entrance to discover its name. It was the only one that didn’t have a title over it, but it didn’t really matter. It was a hall of memories, and it was painful to be in it.

As I walked outside, I noticed something from the corner of my eyes, something wispy and almost ethereal. When I turned to look at it, I noticed a haze over the entrance as the flap opened, only for it to vanish. A quick look to my right saw that there were more of them at other tents, and that’s when my sight shifted.

They were everywhere. In the booths, by the tents, walking around. They were smoke given form, living shadows that had pulled themselves free from the ground and decided to visit the carnival. The small chattering that I had heard since I first entered the ground became much louder, and I could now understand why it had made my hair stand on end. It sounded like the chattering of bats or the hisses of cats, a combination of every little sound that animals made, almost monstrous in the deformity of sound it made.

“Hey, wanna talk for a bit?”

I spun about as I heard the voice. It was the same as my conscious, only I hadn’t heard it in my head, I had heard it with my ears. Standing a few paces away was a girl waving at me, the swarms of shadows crowding around her, a rueful smile on her face. She had silky brown hair in a pixie cut and startling dark blue eyes, nearly indigo in colour. She was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt which showed off her belly as well as tight denim jeans and black army boots. Her existence seemed almost fantastical, if only because she was the only living person I had seen in forever.

“W-who are you?” I asked, stuttering a bit as I tried to process what I was seeing.

“Well, I usually don’t get the pleasure of talking to you in person, but you should know me by my voice, right?” she asked, sounding genuinely hurt. Her lip stuck out a bit and she crossed her arms. “Am I really that generic?”

“But…but…but you’re supposed to be in my head!” I blubbered, my right hand clutching my crown as I walked towards her. “How is my own conscious talking to me?”

“Search me, I’ve always been in this dump!” She was laughing at my question, a smile plastered across her face at my sudden recognition of who she was. “Still, it does hurt a bit for you to call me your conscious. Should I call you my conscious?” she asked, her smile morphing into a frown. “That would make us even then, right?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, this is bullshit!” I groaned, starting to pace up and down, not caring if I ran into the shadows or not. “I can’t meet something from my own head, it wouldn’t make any sense!”

“Then how am I meeting something from my head?” she asked, a knowing grin spreading wider and wider. “Hey, if you’re going to do your usual worrying mind if we at least find a place to sit down?”

“Where would we do that?” I snapped.

“There.” she said simply, pointing behind me.

When I turned, I saw a ferris wheel flashing brightly, the cars slowly revolving around and around. “When did that get here?”

“Been here for a while, might as well make use of it, right?”

I didn’t like how familiar she was with me, how she talked as if we had always known each other, but I also felt like I somehow knew her, and good advice was still good advice. With a sigh of defeat I nodded, turning and walking towards the massive construct while she bobbed happily behind me. When we reached the base, a car seemed to open itself, beckoning us both in.

“Allons-y!” she chuckled, giving me a knowing wink as she pulled me in with her, both of us thudding into the seats as the ride began to move again. I was staring at her like she was some kind of freak, and at the moment I couldn’t think of any other way to describe her. She appeared out of thin air, acted like she knew everything about me, talked to me in an eerily familiar way, and then started to treat me like a friend I never had. I was done with this charade and I wanted her to just give up the chase.

“Okay, you need to slow down and tell me straight up, why do you act like you know me?”

“Wow Ember, this is a whole new level of suspicious, even for you!” she giggled, giving me a broad smile.

“How do you know my name, why are you the only other person in this entire place that isn’t some kind of ghost, and where in hell’s name am I?” I asked, my fingers pressing together to make a steeple as I stared at this weird girl.

“Okay, three questions deserve three answers. Firstly, I know your name because we’ve talked together for years, though you’ve gotten a lot more talkative in the last few weeks. Second, I have no clue. I just thought that everyone looked like that to be honest. As for the third question, I’m still trying to figure that out. All I know is that I used to eat with those shadows, or, at least, they would always give me food until I started to win my own at the games.”

“Wait…is this purgatory?” It seemed like it. Everyone was in a giant carnival that would last forever, unable to talk to anyone else, forced to play the games if they didn’t want to die. Maybe it was a test, a way to filter out those who would resort to theft to survive from those who would just work harder.

“Can’t be. I never died, and unless you really did overwork yourself, you haven’t either.” she sniggered, rolling her eyes at my hypothesis. Her words seemed…fairly realistic actually. But this place still felt like some kind of survival zone, a place where nobody could escape from.

“Would be helpful if I could, dontcha think?” she asked, shocking me out of my thoughts.

“What are you talking about?”

“It would be really helpful if I could get out of this place, but I never really cared that much. I never go hungry and I don’t know anything else, so why would I force myself to change?” It wasn’t a question, it was simple truth and I felt a chill run through my spine as I processed what she was saying. It was something that I had told myself time and time again about my own life. It was nothing more than an excuse for staying the same.

“Okay, so if you’re really my conscious, how do you know what I’m doing?” I asked, trying to bring the conversation back on track.

‘How the hell should I know, I just get glimpses of what you’re doing while I’m asleep and I talk to you just by thinking of it. Do you have any answer for something like that?’

The voice was back in my head, and the girl was staring at me the entire time, her eyebrows raised slightly, as if daring me to answer the question. “How the hell di-“

‘Yes or no?’

“…no, I don’t.” I muttered, grinding my teeth together at the smug smirk that she had. “But if you aren’t just my conscious, then you must have a name.”

“Sure do, but why should I share it?”

‘Because otherwise you’re just a voice.’

She started to laugh at my comment, a booming, echoing sound that hurt my ears in the small car. “You really are funny! Okay, fair enough, the name’s Gemina.” she chuckled, wiping tears from her eye. “But you might want to look out the window. The view is always beautiful from up here.”

I hadn’t even realized that we had reached the peak of the ride, but I went ahead and followed Gemina’s instructions, looking out at the carnival below. It was a sea of lights, the tents making a quilted patchwork that seemed to stretch on for eternity, giant hazy trails of what looked like liquid smoke rolling in the gaps between. It was just like the carnival itself, dark and ominous yet tranquil and majestic in its own way.

“Thanks for the tip Gemina.” I said, turning my head back to the girl, but she was gone. The walls of the ride were gone. Everything had changed.

“Thanks for joining the land of the living.”

Comments

[zack black]

Heheh, wut?

[Max]

eeeeeeeh... this was confusing as hell, not sure if thats a good thing or bad thing

[Tamara Bloodhoof]

4923662
Something crazy and not altogether fun. That and an idea that had been bouncing in my skull for over a year >.<

4925840
Please don't

4934731
Sounding smart is always fun!

4936409
To respond to the entire chain, yes, it is part of life, but few people who loose the ones they love see it like that.

4935447
Really?

4935944
I hope the rest of the story interests you just as much!

4941135
The final part or the overall chapter? It kinda is meant to be, well, whoa level.

4957921
Squeee! Thank you so much, that kinda comment is why I wanted to redo this in the first place!

4959440
I will level with you, I have no clue what you're referencing

4984321
No killing fellow readers. Instead challenge them to reasonable debate or simply talk out your problems. Besides, I really don't want the police on me for aiding in manslaughter.

4986147
In his new story Blackwing actually makes Griffin a good character. Though I must agree (Sorry Blackwing, don't hat me for saying this), I don't like him in the first story that much

4994050
Confusing as in you have no clue what's going on or confusing as in you have no clue why it's going on?

[ramseymac]

[Max]

4994209 Both.

[Tamara Bloodhoof]

4996935
Then welcome to Embers position