Carnival Macabre

Ok, you want the truth. I’ll tell you the truth, but you gotta promise you ain’t gonna make fun of me and at least try to believe my story.

First off I gotta tell you I got lost, but I didn’t go to the carnival to have fun. I was running for my life. Why I was running really doesn’t matter but if it hadn’t been for the carnival and getting lost I would probably be toe tagged in the morgue right now.

Yup. In case you are wondering, I am what you are thinking. I’m a gangster and being a gangster is why I was running for my life, from other gangsters, but like I said ‘why’ doesn’t matter. Deciding to hide at a carnival does matter. Deciding to hide in the chamber of horrors mattered too. Who would think a big tough gangster would hide in a place like that. But I did and that is where I got lost. But like I said I ain’t gonna tell you about it unless you promise to do as I asked, especially the part about believing me because if you don’t a whole lot of people are going to get messed up. Maybe even dead.

So I put my twenty for the entrance fee and disappeared into the crowd. I don’t know if the creeps who were chasing me followed me in. I didn’t care as long as I could lose them. I was real glad there were lots of people there, kids teenagers, adults, mums and dads, all the people that even gangsters are reluctant to mess up. Cops, even bad cops don’t like it when we mess with ordinary folks.

I went to the ticket booth and bought a ticket. Any ticket I told the clown in the booth. He gave me a ticket to the chamber of horrors and I figured that would be as good as any, then I thought it would probably be the best place to hide out for a while. I could even make out like I was one of the horrors, a badass gangster. I even had a gun stuffed in my pocket.

The Horror of Chambers attendant, a creep that looked like one of them harlequins out of the mediaeval times, took my ticket and gave me a great big grin that I should have seen was giving me fair warning. At least that is what I thought after I found myself lost in the Chamber, that wasn’t a chamber anymore.

The chamber had all the usual things like rats and bats, demons, vampires, werewolves, banshees, things that jumped out at you, chills and screams, wind and things that moaned, a cadaver in a coffin and other things that groaned and as I came around a corner there was a mirror. In the mirror I saw myself, only it wasn’t me. It was kind of a monster version of me, like a walking corpse, dare I say a walking dead version of me, but not a zombie. It was like me only a lot nastier and a little wormy.

I tried to run but suddenly the mirror me grabbed my arm and yanked me into the mirror and there I was in a horrifying place, just like the city but one that was dark and stinking and broken down as you see in those apocalyptic movies. Some of the big sky scrapers were collapsing and most of the streets were just rubble. There was electricity in some of the buildings and people hanging out of the windows throwing stuff down at people walking on the streets below.

Vultures and rats, feral cats, and wild zoo animals big enough to me were stalking about and there were others like me…walking corpses but with all their faculties. It seemed like everything there was out for the kill. It didn’t matter what got killed either.

I turned around to try and escape, back through the mirror but there wasn’t any mirror there to escape through, just a lot more broken down city with a dark line on the horizon that looked like a place where the night got stuck and the other way, east I guess was reddish-gold where dawn got stuck and the rest of the sky was blotted out be dark billowing clouds that were nearly black in places and spewed out lightning that snapped and crashed and zapped and left deafening thunder in its wake.

But let me tell you. That was only the beginning.

At first, I thought I had been dragged into a zombie apocalypse but it turned out that everyone there was a gangster, a dead gangster and the city was where all dead gangsters go when they rubbed out without getting purified. I even recognized some of them.

That got me thinking that maybe the creeps who’d been chasing me caught me and pugged me full of lead and I was here to meet my maker or more probably the grim reaper or, dare I believe it, the devil himself.

But I figured it out. I wasn’t exactly dead. Like the others. They were shooting each other but they weren’t dying. They were just shooting each other and laughing about it. Kinda like wrestlers battling it out in the ring then after the fight they went to the bar and got stink faced and laughed at all the creeps who thought the fight game is real.

Like I said. I thought I was dead but when I got shot in the arm and it hurt like hell and I started to bleed I realized that even though I looked like them I wasn’t one of them. It was like I was wearing a costume that was glued on but still a costume.

I started to run and keep behind stuff so the dead gangsters couldn’t shoot me again and I gotta tell you, I was scared because I didn’t know how I was going to get out of there. Hell, I wasn’t even sure how I got in there. Not really. I know what I told you, that the dead thing that looked like me reached out through the mirror and dragged me in but he disappeared and suddenly I became the dead thing, but like I said, I wasn’t dead. I was alive, dressed up like I was dead trying to dodge bullets from real dead creeps who thought I was dead like them and didn’t realize they could kill me.

My arm was hurtin bad and I was bleeding so bad I figured it wouldn’t take long for my blood to drain out and then I would be dead for sure. But I had to wonder what happens to a living creep in a dead creeps world who gets killed by dead creeps. Do I get to be one of them or do I just lay there and rot or get eaten by the rats and cats and wild things running around.

I was getting pretty weak when I saw a sign that read, Hospital, with an arrow pointing the direction pointing out to me. I looked and sure enough there was a hospital that was all lit up and looking brand spanking new.

I started to run for it, but it was more like a forced stagger and I got weaker with every step and the blood was still pouring out but not as bad. I figured I was getting low, and I was getting dizzy. But I kept going and managed somehow to find the emergency entrance.

The doors slid open and I stumbled through and fell over, flat on my face. I busted my nose flat and it started to bleed draining out even more blood

I managed to get back up and saw my reflection in the glass of a door. I wasn’t dead anymore, pale like I was running out of blood but not dead. No worms or skin rot. Just pale and weak and gaunt and with a flat bleeding nose.

I passed out. If I hit the floor again I don’t remember. I just remember waking up in a bed with some young kid who said he was Doctor Smith, staring down at me.

“What’s happening to me?” I choked out.

“What do you mean?”

What’s going on out there?”

“Oh. I get it. You are having a hallucination because you’ve lost so much blood. Who shot you. I have called the police. They will be here soon to ask questions.”

“No. Not the police. I gotta get out of here. If the police get me I am done for, for real. I’ll have every creep in the city gunning for me.”

“Well I am sorry but it is our duty to call in the police when we come across a gunshot wound. Now rest while you can.”

The doctor walked away. I pulled a tube in my arm out and sat up. I was dizzy but I couldn’t let that stop me.

I ran. I was still wearing my clothes but they were in good shape, the suit I always wear and as I ran I didn’t feel weak anymore. I ran back to the place where I was dragged through the mirror, and by damned there was the half-dead corpsy thing that looked like me standing there swaying like a dead tree ready to timber over and crash. The mirror was there. I mean the backside of the mirror.

I stepped close to it and an arm reached out and dragged me back into the chamber of horrors. It belonged to the Harlequin who looked at me and said, “What the hell are you doing?”

I looked at him like a dummy. Then I looked around.

There were shards of mirrors everywhere and I was cut up pretty good.

“I don’t know what happened. I was. Hell, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how the mirror got broken.”

“Sure buddy. Maybe you can tell me why you were shooting the place up.” Said the Harlequin.

“What?”

The Harlequin nodded at something on the floor. It was my gun.

“The cops came in and busted me. I guess that was good because now the creeps trying to kill me couldn’t. At least not yet.

I told them my story and then I landed in a court room and then I landed here and now I am sitting here talking to you babbling like a freaking idiot trying to convince you I am not crazy and everything I told you happened exactly the way I said it did.”

“Mr Lundohan. If you keep this up I can declare you unfit for trial, but in doing so you will remain here at the sanitorium until I deem you fit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Max Lundohan. Mob assassin. You have killed at least a dozen people. It’s called murder.”

“Oh, man. This is nuts. I must still be lost in that freakin carnival horror chamber. I am not a hit man or a gangster of any kind. I just write stories about it. Crime mysteries.”

“Very well Mr Lundohan. You have convinced me. I will make my report and recommendation. Welcome to the Carnival Macabre for Lost Minds.

I walked out of the office of the head shrink and for a moment I was trundling down a hospital-like corridor but as I passed by a glass door I saw my reflection Then suddenly an arm reached out and a clawed hand grabbed my wrist and drag me through the door. On the other side, this creep who looked like he just crawled out of the grave said, “Hey Boss. It's about time yah got here. There’s a new gang in town trying to take over. Looks like we’re gonna have us a war.

I just stood there, complete befuddled. I said, “I’m lost bum. I am lost in a carnival of madness.”