And that is where I left her. I felt nothing but fear, raw fear that pierced any human part of me right down to the animal instincts beneath. A terror that made me run, screaming, leaving her behind in the tent with that thing.
“The fair that’s in town sounds fun!”
Is what she’d said. I resisted like I always did. I’m not a social person. I’d rather spend the night indoors reading, or watching something in the comfort of my own home than out in the sticky, Summer heat.
“We should check it out.”
A statement more than a suggestion. It was the only thing I could imagine being worse than the bars and clubs she usually tried to drag me out to. I’d been to enough state fairs as a kid to remember the crowds, the rigged games, the aura of cheap and broken down carnival. Above all else the oppressive heat. The California sun had beat down, making the worn metal of hastily assembled roller coasters and spin-rides unbearably hot to the touch.
“We’ll go at night! It’ll be cooler.”
I knew better than to keep resisting. I had said “next time” to far too great a number of her successive suggestions, without ever actually having “next time” come. I knew it would still be too hot, even at night. The usual Southern humidity would compound with the heat generated by the masses of people, animals, deep fryers, and burning bright lights. Still, what else was I to do?
So we made our way to the fair. She was excited and I was dour, but still willing to hide it. Some part of me hoped she’d become daunted at the sight of the lines, the overflowing parking lots, the humidity and sweat of it all. Of course she was not. She considered these obstacles to be a natural cost of the experience, while for me they were nigh unbearable.
It was all I had envisioned, if not somehow tackier and worse. We emerged from our long wait in line into a world of ill-maintained neon, twisted metal, and flashing lights. My shirt already clung to my body, sticky with sweat from standing in the heat. I felt miserable, though I kept it hidden. I could tell she was happy to be doing something with me besides staying indoors.
We worked our way through the crowds of people. The smoke of burning fat filled the air, along with the shouts and cries of workers.
“Step right up! Have your weight guessed! Don’t be shy ladies!”
“Come on big man! Test your strength! Give it a try!”
Their voices surrounded, combined, and choked me. One stimuli after another bombarded me with no measure or moment between. The chime of rings hitting glass bottle necks, the sound of mallets striking metal, the screams of fear and joy. Music started up with a grinding of gears as rides sprung into action, and the unbearable stench and heat of it all!
“It’s fun to get out right?”
She asked with a typically innocent smile. I smiled back and told her that she was right, it was.
We took our time losing at the rigged games and getting what consolation prizes we could. We ate fried food and drank sugary drinks. In big multi-colored tents and stalls the sad eyes of dirty farm animals looked out at us mournfully, and I wanted to escape.
I subtly did my best to guide her to the outskirts of the fair, and away from the thickest crowds. I desperately wanted some space from their overpowering density. As a result, we quickly found ourselves among the more obscure attractions.
Signs for caged tigers and alligators, bearded women and lizard boys. The types of things I hadn’t imagined were still considered attractive in this day and age. They were all hidden in canvas and tents, guarded by 5 dollar admission fees.
She was as put off by the spectacle as I was, but still, I led us deeper in. There were far less people here, and although they’d certainly taken on a more seedy appearance, the barkers and fair workers sat pleasantly and quietly idle by their stations. The boldly painted letters and signs, advertising whatever lay just tantalizingly behind tent flap, did the obnoxious shouting for them.
HALF-GIRL, HALF-FISH. SALLY THE GORGEOUS MERWOMAN AWAITS WITHIN!
THE TWO-HEADED GIANT TORTOISE! ONLY ONE OF ITS KIND! A UNIQUE TWO FOR ONE SPECIAL!
RALPH, THE GREY-SKINNED ELEPHANT BOY, ONE OF NATURE’S STRANGEST MYSTERIES YET!
I insisted we give these attractions a try, despite her evident desire not to. She wanted to get back to the hustle and bustle, the bright lights and crowded chatter. Away from this; what she called an unethical display. I found the concept of these freak sideshows repulsive myself, but at the same time felt strangely in my element now that I was at one for the first time. I had suffered, grinning all the while, through the hours we’d spent at the fair doing whatever she had wanted to do. I felt a perverse and petty kind of pleasure knowing that she now had to suffer through whatever I chose to do in turn.
I broke a 20 dollar bill into four 5s, and together we perused the row of freaks. Sally, the gorgeous mermaid, turned out to be a rather stodgy and bored looking middle-aged woman, whose fishtail seemed to be hastily sewn together out of sequins and scales. She sat half-submerged in a grimy tank of water, her black and greasy hair trailing behind her like tendrils.
Ralph the elephant boy had seemed rather worse for wear. He offered only a weak smile as we entered his tent where he sat, immobile on a wooden chair. His feet were gray, swollen and bulbous beneath him. I couldn’t image he was capable of walking. He clearly seemed afflicted by some sort of medical condition, rather than being any sort of human-elephant hybrid.
The one sideshow that wasn’t a letdown was the two-headed giant tortoise. He was giant, and he had two heads. They pulled against each other in opposite directions, trying in vain to reach buckets of lettuce at the sides of his enclosure. It was a sad sight, but exactly what was advertised.
With only enough cash for one last price of admission we left the tortoise’s tent. She asked me then if we could leave, saying she was ready to go home whenever I was. I couldn’t remember a time when she had asked me this question, and that I hadn’t replied I was ready then and there, but I insisted we stay.
Just a while longer, I told her, we only have enough to see one more of these things anyway. Let’s find a good and weird one. When else do you get the opportunity to see stuff like this?
“Why would you want to see stuff like this?”
Was her perfectly reasonable response. I shrugged and laughed, and suggested it might be helpful for my writing, but really it was because I could see how uncomfortable she now truly was. I could feel that for once our roles had been reversed. That I was now dragging her into some unknown and terrible thing, just as she had done to me time and time before.
I still loved her, or believed I did. I couldn’t have known what my small measure of cruelty would lead to. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was taking us to, or the overpowering animal fear it would cause in me.
She saw the sign before I did, and pointed it out for its obvious outdatedness and the ludicrousness of what it described.
SEE THE INCREDIBLE CARNIVOROUS KARWAI! BORN IN A FAR OFF EASTERN LAND! THERE IS NOTHING LIVING HE CAN’T OR WON’T DEVOUR! HE IS THE TERRIBLE EATER OF MEN!
It made me laugh to read. After Sally and Ralph I could only imagine what lay within. Probably some poor elderly Asian man, eating raw steaks while trying not to puke. I pointed readily at Carnivorous KarWai’s tent and pulled her towards it. I had already decided that we would see this orientalist mess of an attraction, even as she protested.
“Oh God, not this one!”
I hoped it would repulse her to the point that she would not bother me with requests to go to fairs, bars, or clubs anymore. I must admit I was also attracted by, and curious about, the quality of apparent horror this show claimed to convey.
Sitting before the tent flap was a tired-looking, well-pimpled teenager, who glanced lazily in our direction as we approached. He extended his hand wordlessly to take our 5 dollars, and pulled back the tent’s canvas to let us in.
It was dark and deep, bigger than I’d expected looking at it from the outside. The tent extended back some ways, so that in the furthest corner only pitch blackness could be seen. The only light was what filtered through the tent’s seams, and I was immediately assaulted by an overpowering stench of rotting meat.
The other freak shows had all been small affairs, but Carnivorous KarWai apparently got a tent more than three times their size. I imagined the fair did this to amplify whatever cheap attempt at horror they were trying to create, and took it as a sign that whatever lay in the inky blackness ahead was nothing to fear in the light.
She pulled on my arm there, as we stood just past the threshold, and asked again if we couldn’t just go home. I realize now that any mission I had wished to accomplish was, at this point, achieved. Still I insisted we go deeper.
As we traversed the darkness I heard first a shuffling and crunching, along with what sounded like heavy, labored breathing. The smell of meat grew stronger, and a warm, musty heat enveloped us. She clung tightly to me, and I felt her growing apprehension and fear. To think now, that in that moment I enjoyed her terror is something I will never forgive myself for.
The sounds grew louder and louder as we came closer and closer to the back of the tent. She clung desperately to me, and I was now truly dragging her along. I could hear the snuffling and snorting of what I presumed to be Carnivorous KarWai, but still could not see him.
And then I did. While I had been transfixed, straining myself to make out the sounds, she had felt enough fear to pull out her phone and turn on its flashlight. In an instant a beam of crisp, white light cut through the darkness, and I saw him fully for the first time.
He sat hunched over, his back to us, seemingly completely naked and bald. He was pale, unnaturally pale, bent and spindly, but all made of sinew and muscle that rippled in his thin frame. His arms seemed almost too long, and ended in talon-like digits, dirty and caked with grime. Clutched firmly in his grip was a large bone, the source of the crunching noise, upon which he ferociously sank his teeth, gnawing at the marrow within.
He noticed us and turned his head, his eyes shining, reflecting the light. He grinned ear to ear. His teeth were like razors, and he hurled his bone aside. There was no malice or spite in his terrible smile, but a sort of satisfaction. Like someone whose hungry craving was about to be fulfilled. His grin was hunger, joy, and rows and rows of unbelievably sharp and jagged teeth.
He rose to his feet, standing tall and rake-thin above us. Her light stayed on his face, long and gaunt, with an upturned piggish nose and huge moon-like saucers of eyes. He opened his mouth, and it spread inhumanly wide. I could see fully down his gullet as his jaw seemed to unhinge. He let out a primal and terrible scream, and I realized the warm smell of rotting meat came from his very breath.
She screamed too, and dropped her phone, its light swinging over the long length of his body. I had just enough time to see the vast and distended skin of his gut, hanging limply over his pallid abdomen. I had enough time to see that the bone he had tossed aside looked like a human femur, and to see Carnivorous KarWai make his first unnaturally quick step towards us.
And so I ran. I fled, beyond logic or reason, out of Carnivorous KarWai’s tent. I didn’t think about if I loved her, or what would happen to her, or how it was my fault we had been there in the first place. I didn’t think at all. I did what every instinct in my body told me to do when confronted by a predator beyond my comprehension. I just ran.
Past the teenage worker, who seemed to grin knowingly as I went by him full-tilt. Out of the freak sideshows and back into the main fair. Past the crowds of people, the lines, and the rows of cars until I was in my own, peeling away and putting as much distance between myself and what was inside of that tent.
And that is where I left her.