by Krymzen Hall

Created on: August 21, 2008   Last Updated: May 07, 2009

"The carnival is the devil's playground."

Elayna Reese remembered her father's words as she walked past the abandoned ticket booth at sunrise. The carnival was quiet, vacant, guarding its mysteries in the funhouse, whispering through the wind that was sweeping torn tickets across the ground. Rides that were in perpetual motion the night before were now still.

She stopped next to the Ferris wheel, standing in awe of its majestic grip. The Ferris wheel was her only solace, her only sunlight. The rare moments of peace in her life came and went with every ride. The world seemed to stop while she was in her orbit. Now her world was preparing to move to another town by sundown.

The empty carnival had an abandoning feeling, a sinister overcast. But Elayna took comfort in standing next to the Ferris wheel as she waited for her rendezvous. She could reflect on her father without shaking in fear.

"Don't let me catch you at the carnival," he would often say when Elayna was young. "Tools of hypnotizing evil is what they are."

"Yes, Daddy."

"And that devil music they play. Those, those, those heinous clowns. Spawns of Satan, I tell you."

"But, Daddy, the carnival is really fun."

"Don't sass me, young lady."

Elayna's father, a distorted preacher, would grab her by the hair and drag her down the hall. "Now go to your room and repent!"

The images still haunted her. Her father's hands pulling her hair, her scalp screaming for mercy. But Elayna always managed to pray with the speed of an auctioneer. Her father would stand guard, often slapping her in the back of the head for not begging hard enough for His grace.

And Elayna had always wondered when the torture would end. And it did, when she turned eighteen.

Defiance had become her best friend, and the only way to survive the echoes of her youth. And for the last ten years, she'd visited the carnival annually, taking in its mysteries, relishing in its sin, meeting her husband, losing her virginity behind the funhouse.

As she reflected on the past, the wind pounded the Ferris wheel's metal sign against the gate. Elayna jolted in response to the incendiary reminder of where she was. Maybe it was a warning shot. Maybe she'd been taken in like her father had warned. The seats rocked, as if they were alive, ready to tell a story about the many lewd conversations they've heard over the years. Elayna knew the ride well. She rode with her husband every year, carrying on one of those discreet conversations until last year,

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