When you were young, you despised the darkness. It brooded with all manner of imaginings too foul for any adult to dream up, for there is no terror as boundless as a child’s.
Now you are a moth, drawn to it like lantern light.
The adults were right about one thing: they know more.
But sometimes, the more you know, the less you feel.
Today is a day for feeling. Modernity hangs from your bones like irons. The farther you walk from the city, the lighter those weights become. When light rain mists against you, you steal a moment to close your eyes. This is your moment, and it is the first sign that you are waking up. Feeling again.
So you venture further from the edges of the city. London’s scaling towers and spreading streets are the jaws of a beast risen from some undeterminable dimension of Hell. It gasps and sighs and exhales. The groaning of a monster made of stone, metal and blood, churning out its own evolution.
The towering bones rising out of its heart plume black smoke and the toil of thousands of souls. It hovers over hungry faces. Entitled grimaces. It casts black soot on young, thin cheeks. At the edges of your rumination are snarling hounds cornering prey at the end of an alleyway. You can feel every inch of the city. It lives in your tortured veins.
Yet something in you is fascinated by it. Maybe, just perhaps, it is enamoured with it. Chaos is not, by definition, simple. So why should your feelings towards it be?
It is the same infatuation that calls your attention to the iron gates and black, spindly tents jutting out of a field on the outskirts of the city. They are a contrivance of the place behind you. A reenactment.
There is no sign which reads The Black Carnival, though your ticket says it, so you continue forward wishing dusk would come slower.
The lanterns catch the details of falling rain with their silver orbs. One such post with three heads supports the first attraction: a jester. Occasionally, as guests enter beneath him, he makes a scene of ushering them in. Othertimes, he stares straight passed them.
The barker is mute.
When it is your turn, he hooks his legs on one of the post’s ornate arms and hangs upside down, his head nearly colliding with yours. His red eyelids are closed as he ‘watches’ you. This imparts the sense you’d rather he not open them. But he does. His eyes flash open, revealing black orbs so wide they leave only the barest whites.
His face painted in dark swirls is almost hypnotic. His red lips stretch an unnaturally wide grin.
With an awkward nod and shaky laugh you navigate passed him. But his gloved hand taps on your shoulder and pulls you back. Turning around to face him once more, the hand is now outstretched, and his eyebrows are raised in mocking expectation.
You almost forgot your ticket.
It’s stuffed in your pocket, faded but still with crisp edges.
You place it in his hand.
A flame jumps from his palm, consuming the ticket into a breath of ashes which disintegrates before your eyes. The words Admit One linger in smoke until he blows it away. Patting your head encouragingly, he ushers you from the entrance, both saddened and relieved to be over the ordeal.
You are a moth drawn to lantern light. And now, your heart has caught fire.
