Goblin Carnival

- Goblin Carnival -

Go to the goblin carnival, they said. You'll have a blast, they said. Like a fool I listened, and dropped our euros into the green hand that thrust out of the hatch in the gate.

Fifty-four nights I have now spent inside this canvas labyrinth. Forty-five nights have passed since I last saw my girlfriend. Prettiest Human Female, read the competition's hand-printed flyer, and unheeding of my apprehension she eagerly signed herself up.

Fifth place was awarded to my sweet Christine. The judges of the panel all wore white-powdered judicial wigs and banged their gavels lecherously. Doesn't it strike you as odd, I said, that most of the other entrants are goblin women in face paint? As the judges led her away hand in green hand towards the zithers of the winner's buffet she turned to tell me to stop freaking out.

Seven pints of pumpkin brew, I’ve discovered, are about what it takes to stop freaking out. But it's only after the eighth that you steady out enough for the shooting galleries round the backs of the brewhalls. You need to get good at the shooting galleries, if you want to win enough to eat.

Four sets of shoes I have now lost to the sucking mud. My current sneakers I stole from a pair of legs that stuck out untwitching from beneath a tent flap. I wedged a Free Pint token between his toes, so was it really theft?

Twenty-six tokens currently sit in my pouch. Exchangeable for four half-hours in Esmé's tent, with a couple left over for tips. The first visit, I sat hungover and nauseous in the red gloom while she consoled me with her goblinpurr. You must really miss your girlfriend (she said as she squeezed out of her corset), but I'm afraid I haven't seen a sign of her. Now watch what I can do with this toffee apple. And she showed me.

An unknown number of lantern-dangled avenues separate me from the entrance gate. I have spent many nights trying to find my way to the edge, sleeping under brewhall tables by day, but the directions that the mountebanks and merchants shout over the hiss of frying batter are convoluted at best and thieves' ploys at worst. And I cannot leave here without Christine.

Three-hundred revolutions per hour are made by the glowing sphere of Squire Pumpkin's animatronic head at the top of the scaffold spire, and three times a night his speakers crackle out summons for another happy hour. However lost I am in the warrens of lanes, I hear it echoing out, and can look up and see the far-off grin.

Two beauty spots are tacked onto Esmé, one on her rouge-purpled cheek and one elsewhere. She sublets her tentspace from a lackey of Squire Pumpkin. The rent, she tells me, as I cling to slippery goblinrump, keeps going up and up and up. That's exploitative, I say, that's intolerable, as I paw at down-hanging goblinteat.

One night, in fact last night, I thought I saw her. Christine, that is. The face, however, was veiled, owing to the wedding dress, which was mud-caked below but still pristine up above. She walked one step behind a gangly man in pumpkin mask and top hat, who turned one eye-hole to me as they passed. I would have stepped closer, of course, to see through the veil, but I'd asked Esmé to save me a half-hour slot, and she gets huffy whenever I'm late. So I hurried on and merged with the commotion of the numberless crowd.