Carnival Creatures

Moonlight seeps into the mist, illuminating droplets into an ethereal haze. A single tendril curls toward the rusted wheel. It begins to spin. Twelve long poles radiate from its centre, each crowned with a seat wide enough for two. The abandoned Ferris wheel goes around and around, purposeless in its emptiness. 

The forgotten festival awakens. Lights spark one by one, glowing golden in the glass cages of pathway lamps, studding the structures of rides stirring from slumber and lining the signs of stalls long since emptied of their fairy floss. Stuffed toy prizes grow fluffier with mould. A single rubber duck still floats in a barrel, stirred into a whirlpool by the wind. 

Finally, the carousel comes alive. Painted horses regain their glimmer, shaking off the dust of disuse. Their hooves are locked in place, yet they rise and fall to the music that splutters into the stillness; a timeless tune of organs and bells rising into ecstasy. 

By the Ferris wheel, the tune is no more than a haunting echo in the gloom. But slowly, surely, the darkness begins to peel away from itself, detaching into figures that seem to melt from shadow to shadow. Voices murmur into the night, so soft they could be the sounds of a blooming rose or welling blood. Eyes glint. Fangs flash. Vermillion liquid swirls in the glasses that rest against their lush lips, dribbling down porcelain skin. Coat tails and shining buttons, royal blue and passion red; around and around the carousel, they dance, movements molten as magma, feet as light as stars.

An endless carnival, a rising fever, an insatiable thirst, an intoxicating scent, metallic as the rust that grates and growls. The evening comes alive with them. They are a swelling tide—joining hands only to pull each other down, seeming to stand in one place and be gone the next. 

The dance frenzies, their voices rise—then cut to haunted silence. Only the song of the carousel remains, chanting into the gaping night until it gasps out its final echoing chord.