When Winnie returned to her senses, she realised she was sitting on the ground with her back straight and legs crossed. She could not forget what she dreamt about while getting treated, but there was something far more important than the past.

She looked around but found only the same thick thorns and bones from before, except now they were slightly illuminated by the massive circus tent in front of her. The tent looked lively compared to the darkness from outside: it was dirty with some vines growing on the sides, and painted in saturated shades of red and blue.

Winnie rubbed her shoulder briefly before noticing a cardboard clown holding an arrow sign pointing at the tent’s entrance, saying: The letters “Ever” in seemed to have been cut out with a sharp object.

“Fuck, I hate clowns.”

She entered the tent and examined its insides. First, she noticed a round wooden table with seven knives in front of her and an old wooden sign attached to it saying in red paint: . Behind it, closer to the tent’s wall and inside thick dark thorns arranged as fences, were eleven balloons hanging from the ceiling in the middle of two other cardboard clowns. These clowns, however, were much creepier than the clown at the entrance: one had an angel’s halo and white clothes, holding the sign , while the other had a demon’s horns and a tail, which sign said: .

Winnie was afraid they would actually make her kill someone but after getting shot once, there was nothing she would not do to survive. She reached for the knife and stared at the balloons; each had a different colour but a similar size: the colours were red, yellow, blue, green, purple, orange, pink, mustard, navy blue, dark green, and maroon. Eleven balloons for seven knives were peculiar numbers but she noticed four balloons were lower than the others, so she could just hit the higher ones.

“Here goes nothing,” she said pulling the eyepatch up while playing with the knife with her free hand, uncovering her eye.

Everything went red. It was like she was using a red filter to see the world, and it scared her at first, but then strong emotions started to burn up inside her heart. She was furious.

Her left eye was burning as she remembered her parents, Chiara and Marco Fusari, who died in a car crash while she was at school and abandoned her, leaving her to rot in an orphanage at thirteen years old. She hated St Saturnina Orphanage and the director, Sister Rosa, who would beat her up, every time she tried to sneak into the library to read a book other than the Holy Scripture. Winifer remembered every time Sister Rosa punished her by taking away her dinner and every time she made her watch as she beat other children to “teach her consequences”. She despised Saskia for having a nice structural family and still dared to complain about them; she never had to know what it was to work hard to eat since her parents could afford anything for their baby daughter. She hated Sophie for being a righteous good-for-nothing with eyes only for one person, ignoring everything and everyone for what she thinks is the best outcome. However, the person Winifer loathed the most was presumed dead:

image [https://i.imgur.com/RxAaZ5W.png]

Aramina was everything for everyone. “Oh, how attractive she is”, they used to say, but have they been looking at the same Aramina? She was the most plain, simpleton, damned soul Winifer had ever seen. There was nothing good about her. Her personality was borderline terrible: she acted like the voice of morals — like Sophie — but always found ways to evade them, and act like she was right to do so. She was a disgrace of a lover, always getting attached to someone new and obsessing over them until the poor person could not handle her baggage anymore. She was too jealous; too clingy and could not survive without her obsession for more than five minutes. That was Aramina’s love trap, and Sophie fell for it. Winifer wanted so much more for Sophie than her ending up with such a messed-up person. How she wished Aramina had died so much sooner—

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Winifer threw one of the knives, hitting the pink balloon, which made an excruciating sound as it popped. Stupid bitch. One after the other, Winifer threw the knives, always hitting the target, and popping balloons until there were no more knives to throw and only four balloons left: the red, yellow, green and blue; the ones conveniently lower than the other seven.

She was hyperventilating after all the adrenaline. Hastily, she covered her eye with the eyepatch, and the red world was finally gone, allowing her breathing to normalise. Winnie did it.

Then, Winnie heard handclapping and various laughing noises. In front of her eyes, velvet red curtains like those in theatres fell from the ceiling, covering her vision of the balloons and cardboard clowns. She thought it was over and could finally find her friends again, so she turned to the tent’s entrance but found no way out. The place she previously had used to enter was closed, and the only reason she knew she was not crazy for thinking that was the entrance was the stitch marks on the tent’s wall.

Winnie heard a bell ringing and turned around, only to watch as the curtains slowly opened, revealing something disturbing behind them. Tight to a chair was a woman with her head lowered. She wore white clothes and had a piece of paper glued to them that said . As she finished reading, the person lifted their head, and Winnie could clearly see Aramina Camelli’s face.

On the table, a revolver appeared in the middle of small blue electrical discharges. Winnie fell to the ground crying. She remembered her wish for Aramina to be gone, but that was not her true wish; it would never be. That was the red. The red creates, the red restores, the red destroys, and the red kills. Everything starts from red.

She heard an extravagant laugh she recognised. It was the woman from before; the woman that healed her. She was red too.

“Go on, darling, pop her head,” the woman said. “Or do you want me to do it to you instead? It would’ve been a waste after all your dear friends did for you…”

Slowly, Winnie got back up and took the revolver off the table. It was strangely light and easy to handle as if it was made for her. She stared at it for a few minutes before she pointed it at Aramina, with tears in her eyes. Aramina was looking right into her soul with those brown eyes red despised, showing no expression. Was red the manifestation of her true emotions? Did she really hate Aramina? She was sure of one thing: she did not want to die.

Winnie pulled the trigger with her eyes closed, afraid of both the sound and the sight of Aramina’s body. However, the sound the revolver made was one of a blowout whistle. When she found the courage to stare at her own hands, she saw a paper rose bouquet coming out of the muzzle, followed by another laugh.

“I can’t believe you would rather kill your friend than die by my hands… you’re a naughty little one, aren’t you? Good thing she’s already dead, then!”

She saw the skin of Aramina’s face melting, and her eyeballs falling on the floor. Now her body was in raw flesh, totally unrecognisable. Aramina was red. Everything starts from red. Winnie screamed, and screamed, but Aramina’s body was already in that state. Tears desperately fell down her eyes, and there was nothing she could do to save her friend. She wanted her dead anyway, right? Why is red messing with her head? Why is it always about Aramina? Fuck­—

Suddenly, a cardboard clown with a sign appears in front of her in the middle of a blue fog. . Then, a small blue button also appears on the table with the inscription .

She presses the blue button just because she wants to get away from that place as fast as possible. On top of the table, there was now a leather belt with a hanging compass and three small bags, as well as a pistol engraved with roses, under a paper handwritten note:

Finally, a last sign appeared next to a purple pentagram. It says . Without thinking, she puts the belt on and jumps into the pentagram. Before everything was dark, she heard a bell ringing loudly inside her head.