Slowly, the train begins to grind to a stop. The car jolts sharply, tossing cards and betting charms across the table as the group rushes to clean up their game. Fuego was the lucky one today, if they had bet real teeth ve’d be the richest among them. They never bet their teeth, of course. That was an adult’s game. For them, mere grown-ups, they’re more than satisfied with buttons and cicada shells.

They find themselves stopped in near total darkness. Not even the lamps hung between the windows can fully illuminate the train cars. The shadows cast from the indiscriminate forms outside are pervasive, filling up the car like water in a glass. The longer they stare out the window, the closer the shadows seem to gather.

DJ is rather unfazed by the dark. They stand up from their seat without even the slightest touch of fear and walk out into the aisle, waiting for the others to join them. The others, however hesitantly, slide out of their seats to join them. Except Juniper, who sits and stares out of the window, paralyzed by the darkness.

“Juniper, are you good?” DJ asks.

“Yeah, it’s just,” Juniper mutters, “I never expected there’d be a circus out here.”

“It’s so the lights stick out during the brighter night,” DJ explains, “If anything jumps out at us, I’ll fight it. How about that?”

The others seem calmed by DJ’s words, but barely so. Juniper scoots out of the booth and joins Adderall and Fuego’s side as DJ starts to stride along to the door. They fling open the door and help the others to the ground, just as they had at the train station back by the castle. Some of them jump at the feeling of cold ooze beneath their feet. DJ seems not to notice. They silently turn to the engine as soon as everyone’s settled. The others follow close behind them, watching with darting eyes as DJ leads their walk beside the train tracks.

“Relax, you guys,” DJ says, “It’s just the forest.”

DJ walks up to the engine door and gives it a knock, their claws clanking loudly against the wrought iron of the train. With a ghastly groan, the door swings open, and the two headed beast raises its gaze towards the travelers.

“What do I owe you?” DJ shouts.

“One molar for each of you,” the closer head growls.

DJ reaches into the satchel around their waist and counts out six molars. The conductor holds out his wiry hand, and DJ drops the teeth into it. The conductor counts them again, then puts them in an old mason jar mug, already overflowing with molars and grinders.

The conductor scratches his head. “There was somethin’ I was itchin’ to tell ya, now what was it?”

Peony is the only one brave enough to speak. “Did it have to do with the circus at all?”

“Yeah, yeah. Somethin’ ‘bout the birth of madness, or was it rage or sadness?”

“At the circus, sir?”

“Ah, don’t worry about it, miss,” the other head calls, coal dust flying from his mustache, “He gets like this when people come along. Never missed a chance to scare ‘em, I’ll tell ya.”

The other head laughs, and the head sticking out the door turns around to scold their companion.

“Ah, cut me a break, this time I mean it! There’s’ a-somethin’ awry about this place, ya hear?”

Peony pushes ahead of DJ. “Sir, what do you mean?”

The door slams shut, and at once the train speeds away. The group stands still for a minute, watching the train speed off into the darkness. Soon, the hot smell of coals and smoke feels like a distant memory. All alone, the forest feels suffocating.

“We’re stranded,” Fuego mutters in terror.

“Don’t go that direction quite yet,” DJ says, “We just got here.”

“And don’t you know you’re stranded the second you hit the island?” Juniper scolds, her ears folded down on her head.

“Pessimism isn’t getting us anywhere, and that’s final. Now, everyone, close your eyes for a few seconds so you can adjust to the darkness.”

The group waits for DJ to fan out their wings to their full glory before closing their eyes tight. If there’s only one force more powerful than grown-up ferocity, it’s grown-up phobia. DJ closes their eyes right along with them, and when they open them again, the lights are brighter than before.

“Open your eyes, guys,” They say, “And look around for a minute.”

The others open their eyes, and DJ tucks away their wings.

The forest around them is a twisted, warping mess of branches and stems, with small rings of light flowing from the ground and up into the incomprehensible masses of the canopy above. From the lower branches, glowing ropes of moss dangle like fingers, dripping starlit dew to the floor below. Mist hangs low around the oozing ground, and the smell of overripe fruit rises from the muck below their feet. All around them, the hostile sprouting branches of neuronic trees and nervous herbs twist and contort into fearful growths. When they look above them, they find no comfort of the stars. Instead, they catch the occasional glimpse of a hostile set of eyes from the undersides of exposed leaves. The only color not blue, violet, or sickly green is the light of flames from DJ’s eye and tail.

Juniper lets out a sharp scream. A flock of large moths takes flight overhead.

“Be quiet!” Fuego whisper-yells.

“I can’t help it!” Juniper rebukes, “There’s a centipede that crawled over my foot.”

The others stare at her in concern.

“That’s it?” Adderall asks.

“Oh, you guys know I can’t do bugs!” She whimpers, “DJ, is there a path out of this place?”

They point into a clearing where the grasses glow a dim purple. “There’s one right across from the train tracks, on the right, there”

“Let’s get out of here,” Peony mutters, unconsciously grabbing Sebastian’s arm and racing for the clearing.

The others follow closely, with DJ lagging behind at the end of the convoy. When they reach the grass, they all wipe their feet free of the slime.

“How are you not scared of this?” Juniper asks.

DJ shrugs. “Guess it comes with age.”

“You’re, like, not even that much older than us!”

“Nine years, Juniper. A lot can happen in nine years.”

Juniper growls under her breath. “Can’t wait till I’m 26.”

“Did everyone get the,” Peony pauses, “Ick off their feet?”

“I think so,” Adderall says, “Should we get going?”

DJ nods. “Yeah, of course.”

“Can DJ and I go ahead of you guys?” Fuego asks, “Just in case something jumps out in front of us.”

“Actually, maybe we should put DJ at the front and you in the back,” Adderall adds, “So we’re safe on both sides.”

“Sounds good to me,” DJ says.

DJ walks up to the front of the group, and Adderall and Fuego lag behind. They walk out of the clearing and into the narrow trail ahead. The grass makes a curious cracking sound as they walk atop it.

Peony finds herself still holding onto Sebastian. She looks up at him, and she finds him staring off into the distance. She looks back down at their hands, and it seems as though Sebastian’s fingers have merged with the ooze of her left hand. She looks away from him in haste, focusing on the darkness between the trees as she lets his hand go. As sharply as she turned away, she looks back, and Sebastian turns his attention to her as if he didn’t notice anything.

“I haven’t heard a word out of you,” Peony asks, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian replies, slipping his hand in his pockets. “I’ve kinda just been enjoying it, actually. And you?”

“Enjoying it?”

He nods. “Well, yeah. It’s like a laser tag area.”

“I guess. I could see how you got there.”

“But how are you? That’s more important to me right now.”

“Honestly?” Peony stares at the ground, “Not as scared as I think I should be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like I ought to be more afraid of what’s out here in the woods. Especially with the conductor’s warning.”

“That did feel like a ‘one tells only truth, one tells only lies’ moment, didn’t it?”

“I wish there was some sort of answer to that.”

“How about we do this: which answer would you prefer it to be?”

“I don’t know. I’d rather stay on my guard, actually.”

“Then I will do what I can to keep you safe. I’ll look past the glow of the trees and make sure nothing’s coming for you, is that alright?”

“You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Why would I not?”

Peony looks down at the ground. Here he is, throwing himself at her feet, and what has she done to deserve it?

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

To Sebastian, though, he’d be dead if it wasn’t for her. It’s the least he can do.

“Thank you, Sebastian,” she says with a small smile.

“You’re welcome.”

The two carry along, Sebastian now holding onto his wires ready to shock whatever crawls across the path. He knows it’ll hurt, but it’s worth it for her. Worst case, DJ can help him.

Meanwhile, in the back of the convoy, Adderall, Fuego, and Juniper are having problems of their own.

“Who would ever build a circus out here?” Juniper asks, “I think you’d want some sort of large clearing for one of those.”

“I mean, you can set up tents with trees instead of poles and such,” Fuego replies, “More cost effective, more efficient.”

“You think they’d have room to do that here?”

“Sure. Cut down a tree or two, put something up.”

“That’s why you keep a pocket dimension on you,” Adderall interjects, “Why else do you think the tents are bigger on the inside?”

“Don’t say that! What if we get stuck in a pocket dimension?”

“So what if we do, we just have to find a little tiny tear in the fabric of reality and rip it apart like wallpaper. It’s simple!”

“Won’t that kill us?”

“Can we even experience death if we’ve no atoms to support our consciousness?”

Juniper looks at her, whether in terror or disappointment is anyone’s guess.

“Adderall?”

Adderall grins quite literally from ear to ear. “Come on, answer me!”

Fuego sighs. “I brought my pocket-dimension-escaping kit with me, don’t worry.”

“How do you fit that in your pockets?” Adderall laughs.

Ve shrugs. “Adderall, I could fit an entire long sword in these pants if I wanted to.”

“True, true,” she grins, “But you could have always used a pocket dimension.”

Juniper looks down to the ground. “We’re all gonna die.”

“Now don’t say that,” DJ calls back, “You’re not gonna die, promise. Matter of fact, I think we’re getting close.”

“How can you tell?” Peony asks.

“Hold on,” DJ says, “Do you guys smell that?”

Everyone pauses.

“The sugar, you guys!” DJ says, “It smells sweet, that’s all.”

“It does,” Sebastian adds.

He takes a deep breath full of the air and turns green with nausea. The air is sweeter than nectar, but it settles at the bottom of his stomach and aches with dreadful knots and clots. He looks down to Peony, hoping for her to appear slightly sick too, but finds no comfort in her expression. He looks away and buries the feeling.

As they continue their walk through the forest, the smell grows ever stronger, and soon the faint sound of music creeps its way through the trees. The others slowly stop talking to listen to the sound filling the air. To any other listener, it's a cacophony of disagreeable noises, but to the group, they all find the melody a hypnotic sort of pleasant. Something amidst the rambling of noise finds sense in their minds and buries inside like a horrid little worm. All of them, save for Sebastian, who combined with the horrid smell maiming him from the inside, feels closer and closer to shutting down.

“DJ, can I borrow your MP3 player for a minute?” He asks, tugging DJ’s coat, “I can’t take this song.”

DJ fishes around their coat pocket before handing them the black box with the cracked screen. “Alright then. Just be careful with the buttons.”

Sebastian puts in the earbuds and turns up the music. He puts a sleeve-covered hand over his face and keeps on walking along.

Soon, though, the ambient music dies down and the lights of the trees are overpowered by the light in the clearing ahead. Clearing being a relative term: it seems just as suffocating as the trail that leads them there. Sebastian takes his earbuds out and hands the MP3 player back to DJ. With another minute of walking, they soon find themselves in a whirlwind of color. As they carry on into the clearing, they lose memory of the path that came before.

They find themselves wrapped in a cloak of warm, bright lights among tents and stalls nestled into the treeline. The path quickly turns from grass to dirt, and the mist turns into dust. All around them, ghostly performers in vibrant colors walk along the dusty trails, never looking at them or showing their faces. The crowds are as vast as the sea, and yet somehow they stay a good few feet away from them as they creep deeper into the carnival. The voices of guests fill the air around them to near bursting, but no one other than nuclear shadows of guests find their way here. Smells of popcorn and sugar waft their way to the group, and yet no food of any freshness lies in the stalls.It’s suffocating, all of it, a whirlwind of maddening stimuli that would make even the most insensitive of people break.

But do they notice?

The group gallops down the midway with no ounce of fear amidst them. They weave between figures of other circus goers and walking performers alike, only stopping to say their apologies as they beeline for the big top. One of them will point out a game with a prize of eye-catching proportions, only to be promised that they will try the game later. The crowds, the music, the lights, it’s all disorienting. There’s no direction, no guidance, only one foot after the other. They feel as if they’re falling, yet every one finds both feet coming to rest on the ground with every hurried step. One step, one step, one step.

They rush deeper and deeper into the circus. Now, the colors of the lights warp their sight into fractals and paisleys of something once recognizable. They switch paths erratically, racing down any open corridor they find, slowly finding themselves trapped within illusion after illusion. The trail from which they came from no longer exists. All that remains is them, here and now in this moment. The noises, the smells, the rising dust from their feet, it swallows them whole. They can hardly breathe from the running and the dust.

…

Drowning.

Is that the word?

I think so.

Drowning, then. We drowned.

…

Meanwhile, the small Puppeteer is cowering along the lonely paths, making its way to the big top for its own performance. It knows the way by rotted heart, however twisting and turning it may be. It crosses over from the final back alley to the midway, but hears a grand commotion coming from its side. It stops, and soon finds a colorful hodgepodge of people rushing in its direction. It drops its puppets to the ground and hunkers down with its arms over its head.

The group screeches to a halt, dust kicking up behind them. They crowd behind DJ, looking at the small figure below. The figure whimpers and shakes. They pity it. For the first time in what feels like hours, a clear thought finds its way into their heads. The Puppeteer rises up when it realizes it's not in danger of being run over.

DJ’s voice is gruff, but not unfriendly. “Hey, sorry we almost ran you over. Are you one of the performers here?”

The figure nods, picking up its bag of puppets and standing.

“Do you know where the big top is?” DJ asks, “Me and her have been arguing on where to go for the past 10 minutes.”

That wasn’t a lie. They had been talking about something. What they were talking about though was probably long lost on the both of them. Not that it matters, anyway.

The figure looks in the direction of the tent, then back at DJ. It’s no use in pointing. It knows full well about the first illusion. They’ll only end up more lost.

“Follow me,” it mutters.

The group slowly continues on. This performer isn’t at all like the rest of the crowds. It certainly wasn’t afraid to look DJ in the eye, nor was it afraid to speak. And when they walked within its guidance, the lights and colors ceased to harm them. Something about it felt real. Perhaps a little too real.

The Puppeteer can’t help but turn back and marvel at the group behind it. Were they real too? They blinked, they did not step in time with each other, and they certainly didn’t stare. Did they have stories to tell? Did they speak with malice? Did they crave meat? What were people like, anyway? It decides that perhaps it isn’t worth asking. Not yet, at least.

Eventually, the puppeteer shows them to the maw of the big top. A small flicker of light emanates down the long, cloth hallway. It’s too dark to see the colors on the walls. The group looks at the Puppeteer and nods as thanks, and the Puppeteer turns to leave. It’s stopped by a single voice from the crowd.

“What’s your name, so I can thank you?”

The Puppeteer turns around and finds himself caught in the gaze of a tall, thin figure, draped in a green cloak. Their hair is an icy white, and the bags under their eyes look practically non-threatening. Their shirt bears a glyph of some kind, and their stomach is wrapped with a great wire. Other wires coil around their neck and dangle like vines from their wrist. From their back, the wings of a moth gently slope to the ground, bearing obscured glyphs of eyes. It’s only after it notices their wings do they notice the short antennae resting atop their head, lying back in relaxation. That, and the halo.

A moth, it thinks, A moth drawn to a very unfortunate flame.

“Ano,” the Puppeteer hesitates, looking from the figure to its puppets to the ground. It can’t seem to find words in its respected tongue. Sunshine would kill it for that.

The Puppeteer looks at the figure before it. They’re not Sunshine. Was it worth it to trust them?

The puppeteer makes their choice. “Ikimono desu. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”

Ikimono bows to the moth before them. The moth returns their gesture.

“I’m Sebastian,” they say, “I like your name, Ikimono.”

“Thank you?” Ikimono asks, half uncertain of its words.

“You’re welcome,” Sebastian smiles.

“Sebastian!”

The two turn to the entrance to the tent. Peony rushes out, stopping beside Sebastian.

“Sebastian, what are you-”

She looks down and catches a glimpse of the Puppeteer, Ikimono, standing before them.

“Ah,” she says, “You’ve made a friend, I see.”

“Their name is Ikimono,” Sebastian says. “Ikimono, this is Peony.”

Ikimono nods, then bows again to Peony. She pauses for a moment, looking to Sebastian for guidance. He mouths something to her, and she bows before Ikimono in much the same way. The two rise, and Peony turns to Sebastian.

“We’d better get in there if we don’t want to miss the show,” she says, “DJ got us seats in the front row.”

“Alright, sounds good,” Sebastian replies.

He looks down to Ikimono, who’s turning to leave.

“Do you wanna sit with us, Ikimono?”

Ikimono turns back, glancing down at the puppets in their shaking hands. “I’d like to, but I can’t. I have to perform.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll watch for you, Ikimono,” Sebastian says, “If you hear cheering, it’s me, ok?”

Ikimono nods, then scurries off behind the tent. Sebastian watches Ikimono duck away, wondering what drives them to haste.

“They seem nice,” Peony remarks.

Sebastian nods. “Yeah. I hope they’re ok.”

Peony turns into the gaping maw of the tunnel beside them, and Sebastian follows close behind. All around them, fabric striped with green and black drape a well-worn footpath. No dust rises from the ground now. Dimming Edison bulbs light the path, and the farther in their journey, the dimmer they grow. Peony looks back every now and then to make sure Sebastian hasn’t stopped to look at something, but whenever she does, he’s right behind her, holding onto the knot of her obi.

When the cavernous tunnel gives way to the openness of the big top, Peony ducks by a yellow wall to begin her trek into the stands. On the far side of the room are the others, and as soon as DJ notices her, they give a small wave. She nods in reply, and follows the light of the flame around DJ’s eye to their places.

DJ’s torch is excellent for lighting the stands, but is hardly even a spark in the vastness of the stage. That isn’t what Peony minds. No, what Peony minds is the emptiness of the stands around her. The seats ought to be full of people she’d have to apologize to for stepping on their toes. But no, the seats are even emptier than the stage. She debates turning back around to ask Sebastian if he feels the same, but she decides against it at the last second.

Worse yet, despite the vast darkness of the stands, she feels as though a thousand pin sharp eyes are piercing into her. She attempts to ignore them, perhaps thinking them to be the peaceful staring of her friends, but she can’t. And the more she feels the burning eyes, she begins to hear the words. A thousand hushed whispers echo in her ears, whispering of uncleanliness and sacred blood.

Sebastian notices her start to hunch in on herself, as though she was about to get sick. He gently places a hand on her back, and she returns to her usual posture. For Peony, the voices have stopped.

The two sit down on an old wooden bench beside their friends. Whatever was bound to happen was sure to happen now. Peony prays it will at least end well.

The darkness of the stage in front of them wanes away by the yellowish glow of a stage light. The dust begins to kick up in a storm, with twinkles of glimmering light finding its way into the moon gray cloud. Lights surrounding the border between showmen and audience reveal blue curtains on the far side of the tent. There is barely any noise, save for their hushed whispers and gasps and the hum of the lights, but they feel as if they’re trapped in the eye of a storm. They squint their eyes into the flurry, hoping to catch any glimpse of what may be inside. Just as soon as the storm begins, it vanishes. When the light rises to engulf the stage, there before them stands the Ringmaster himself, standing as proud as the sun on a cloudless day.

“Ladies, germs, and all other worms,” He booms, “Welcome to the greatest illusion in the world!