The Carnival

         Your camera snaps, the loud click echoes through the mirrored hallway. As you lower your viewfinder, you look over yourself in the shattered mirror. Where one of your eyes is supposed to be is jagged and blacked, the chunks of missing mirror lay at on the ground in front of you. There are so many cracks in the glass that your body looks disjointed and almost abstract. There might be a few mirrors in this place that are in passable condition, but this one isn’t one of them.



         “God this is freaky,” you say. Its one thing to think about going to an abandoned carnival and it’s another thing entirely to actually be there. You’d been dreaming of investigating an abandoned anything for as long as you can remember. You’d been living vicariously through ghost shows and post-apocalyptic games just for the faux experience of looking around this kind of environment. You even have your own little black book that instead of being full of numbers for potential friends with benefits, it’s full of addresses for abandoned buildings and ghost towns. You even talked about maudlinly visiting them all at one point or another.



         When Asher came to you saying there was an abandoned carnival just outside of town, you wondered how you ever overlooked something so close. You and Asher researched to make sure your little adventure wouldn’t land either of you in jail. You planned and planned and planned, but nothing could have actually prepared you for it; the sparks that run through your body and the chill that runs down your spine.



         “God—Ash—You ever see that movie Mirrors?” You call out, walking down the hall and watching the ground for stray glass. “Wouldn’t want to be attacked by that ghost thing here. There’d be nowhere to hide,” you laugh to yourself. It echoes through the building and is sent right back at you. You think, ‘That sounds nothing like me,’ and laugh it off. Apparently this place doesn’t just distort your image, but your voice too. “I wonder if Bloody Mary would be confused. Dare you to ‘summon’ her, Ash,” you say, lifting your camera to take another picture, this time, it’s of your own reflection.



         You get this strange feeling in the pit of your stomach as your chuckles fades out. You swallow a lump, wondering just when it got there in the first place. “Asher?” you call out. Why isn’t he responding? “Asher?” you say a little more desperately. You walk faster, gripping your camera harder. You start running, ignoring the glass beneath your feet. “Ash?” the panic is far more evident in your voice now.



         You keep telling yourself that Asher either left you behind to get pictures elsewhere or he’s being an asshole, trying to scare you. No matter how much you repeat it, it doesn’t seem to be helping though. Every horror movie in existence flashes through your mind instead. You think about how stupid you are for even coming here and you even start making a mental will.



         You round the corner, sure the entrance is on the other side, but you run into something.



         “What the hell?” Asher snaps.



         You blink, your heart is trying to catch up to your body. “Where did you come from?” You ask.



         “What do you mean?” Asher gives you a look.



         “I mean, I’ve been calling for you, where have you been?”



         “I’ve been right here the whole time, dude.”



         “Bullshit,” you say, crossing your arms.



         “Seriously, I’ve been here the entire time,” he repeats, yanking his camera from his neck. Asher hits the gallery button, showing you all the shots he’d taken in the last thirty minutes. They were all of the house of mirrors interior. They were all of the areas they passed together—



“Wow, wait—Go back,” you say, pointing at the camera as if it will make it go back. Asher scrolls back like you said, returning to a photo of photo of a mirror. It is in better condition than most of the mirrors you’ve seen so far. There is just a small crack off-center, approximately where Asher’s heart is as he reflects in the mirror. From the crack, and Ash’s body, there is a small ring of ripples. You and Asher stare, pulling the screen closer.



         “What the hell?” you mutter.



         Across the mirror, written in some dark residue, are the words, I’m terrified.



         “Now I know you’re messing with me,” you say.



         “Dude, I didn’t do that,” Asher says and by the way his mouth gapes open, you want to believe him.



         “Which mirror was that?” you ask.



         Asher says he’ll show you, then he leads the way back into the depths of the funhouse. The further in you go, the more you realize Asher is taking you back to where you had been. When you stop, you see he had literally been just around the corner from where you wondered on your own. How did I run so far to find him? you wonder, I must have gone in a big circle. This place is like a maze. That’s the only thing that makes sense.



         “It’s this one,” he says, pointing to the mirror in question.



         You want to inspect the mirror, but just at a glance, you know he brought you to the wrong one. “You sure?” you ask.



         “Positive. It’s the frame. I haven’t seen any others like this one,” he says, pointing out the frame’s faded pattern. Its frame is red and yellow zigzags. Little white letters decorate the sides, but you have no idea what they say. They don’t look like English. Must be some crazy carni symbols. You’re trying to be optimistic.



         You wanted to believe him, but not only aren’t the words there, but the rippling crack isn’t either. There is a small chip in the off-center where it was in Asher’s picture, but everything about the glass was in good condition. “Why isn’t it shattered?” you ask.



         “I have no friggin' clue, man. I swear I didn’t see anything before,” he says as he looks down at the image on his camera and back up, praying to God he stopped at the correct mirror. If he saw something like this, he’s pretty sure he’d remember it first time.



         Pursing your lips, you lift your camera, pressing the viewfinder to your eye. You snap a shot, quickly lowering the camera to view it in the gallery.



         Your heart stops.



         “Holy shit—Ash, look at this!” you say, holding the camera out to your friend after you’d regained composure. You were glad it had a fastener around your neck otherwise you knew you would have dropped it.



         Asher leans in. He glances up at the mirror then the camera, then the mirror again. It’s obvious he doesn’t believe his eyes and you don’t blame him.



         On the screen, the mirror is cracked, just like in Asher’s photo. The ripple stems out from the small chip in the center and the words I’m terrified are written in some dark residue across your face’s reflection.



         “What the hell,” Asher mutters, scratching the back of his head.



         You snap another photo and check it on your camera. The ripples have cracked further across the mirror, but when you glance up, there’s still no change in front of you.



         “Maybe it’s a trick mirror thing? This is a funhouse,” Asher says, walking up to the mirror. Asher runs his hand over the reflective surface, carefully feeling for cracks but making sure he doesn’t cut himself if he finds one. “Nothing,” he says, the puzzlement obvious. “Not one crack.” Pulling his hand back, he looks it over before brushing it off on his pants. “It’s a little dusty, but…” he trails off as he returns to your side.



         You take another picture. The ripples are bigger and the words are smeared, but still readable.



         You take a few more pictures before looking them over in order of which you took them. In each succession, you notice the mirror’s cracks cover more and more of the surface until the entire sheet was covered in them. In the next photo, it instead reads, I’m so terrified. The mirror in front of you shatters as you hit the next button on your camera and a scream echoes through the building at the same time.



         You and Asher go running, you can’t even think. Every mirror you pass reads, I’m so terrified before they shatter behind you. “This way!” you yell, heading for the exit. You knew it was, because you made a mental note when you first entered the place, just in case the cops showed up. You run and run and don’t remember this house being that big, but you’re sure you aren’t running in circles because none of the mirrors in front of you are broken.



         “We’re lost!” Asher says.



         “Now we’re not—just, trust me,” you say, but you’re unsure if you even trust yourself at this point. Then you see it. You see the light and you know where you’re going. After a few more turns, you see the opening of the funhouse. As you get closer, you see yourself. You come to a stop. Mirrors fill the exit, the words I’m so terrified written over and over again across the glass. You hear the glass crack, you see the ripples spread across yours and Asher’s images. “Cover your face!” you shout, shielding your face with your arms. The glass snaps and you feel it cut your arms as it flies past you. Pain resonates in your arm, your arms are decorated with red streaks.



         “Are you okay, Ash?” you ask, daring to open your eyes.



         Blood drips down his face, glass is sticking out of his left eye.



         “Ash!” you yell, running to him. “Jesus—“ You don’t want to touch him, you don’t know what to do. You run back the way you came. The mirrors aren’t broken and they no longer say I’m terrified but they now say you think too much. There is no shattering behind you like before, however the further down the hall you get, the more you hear music. The backwards sound of the carousel echoes through the house of mirrors. You feel dizzy, but you keep running. You see a light. The hall of mirrors is straight and you see the exit.



         You pull the curtains back, running through. You didn’t realize it was so dark. You can’t see anything. “Asher, are you with me?” you say. You turn around to leave, but the opening shuts. Everything is black.



         “I will help you,” the voice doesn’t sound natural.



         You pick up your camera, snapping a shot with the flash. You see a face painted in white under a top hat, dry, silver hair pulled back into a ponytail, a scar over his right eye with a large glass eye sticks out from the socket too far to look normal, and an old fashioned ringmaster costume. A sadistic grin is spread across his face, hanging from ear to ear. You can’t get the eye out of your head as the room goes dark again.



         You step back. “I don’t need your help.”



         “You think too much. Don’t worry, we’ll help you. You don’t need thought at the Carnival.”



         You snap another shot. It’s closer. As it goes dark, you can’t feel your camera anymore. It’s gone. It lays on the ground in the house of mirrors. The display on your camera is cracked and there is only one saved picture in the gallery. It’s of the cracked mirror you originally took a picture of. Your reflection is in it, but the area of your eyes is busted out, but there’s a smile on your lips. Written across the mirror in dark residue are the words, Enjoy your stay at the Carnival.



         “Tyler?” Asher calls, stepping over the broken glass that was pressed into the funhouse dirt. Asher rounds the final corner, leading to the funhouse exit. Asher picks up your camera. He looks at the cracked screen and the image displayed on it. His eyebrows furrow before he looks up. “Tyler?” he says, “Where are you man? You dropped your camera,” he glances back up. He must be outside waiting for me, Tyler thinks. He reaches for his cellphone and types in your number. He sends you a message calling you a pussy and saying he’ll meet you at the car.



         He can’t find you. He won’t find you, unless he joins the Carnival too.