My pen hit the sawdust. Just dropped, completely forgotten, out of my hand. I was getting close to figuring out what was going on. It was just forming, in a nice latticework of two primary layers, with interconnecting sub layers…. anyway… whatever. It was forming. I was inches away from figuring out what the relationships were between these people, and the motivations and dreams that were causing this whole deal.

Then a clown beat the shit out of a guy with a paintbrush.

No, I’m serious. A CLOWN. Beat the shit. Out of a guy. With a PAINTBRUSH. Not only that, but Mr. Artist was trying to FIGHT BACK with aforementioned paintbrush. I think the artist stuck his head in the microwave a few too many times. Then, the bad ass clown cut the head off of the mushy (literally) artist, and took it with him. If that wasn’t enough to shatter my reality, especially with this sick, warped, calliope music playing in the back of my skull, the body decayed in ten minutes. Almost completely. Then this mist came up out of the decaying mess, and formed the paintbrush-guy again. Only twenty years older or so. With grey hair.

Yeah. Insane. I really wish that calliope music wasn’t so warped.

I left the notebook and the pen there. I stood up and just started walking. Nobody else was seeing this. I’m crazy. All those times, when I worried about weather I was schizoid, or there really were spirits, this solved it. I was a nut. Completely and irrevocably insane. Oh, well, day couldn’t get any worse, right?

I wandered randomly around the Carnival. I couldn’t help but note the attractions that were listed on the back of my Golden Ticket. BB Wolfe’s Freak Show and Burlesque. Hall of Mirrors. Mr. James’ Games of Chance and the Games of Skill. Gypsy’s high-wire act (that one was marked off… I don’t remember her putting a mark on it). The Big Top. I stopped in front of a tent with a crow’s nest on top of it. This one was on my ticket, too. Dante’s Divine Gallery. Christ, this guy must be more pretentious than Nate. I looked inside, but couldn’t really see anything. Taking off my sunglasses, I decided to give it a go.

—

Truth. That was what the sign said Dante would paint for me. Well, I’m guessing Dante was the nut-job with the paintbrush. He was a dead spirit, I could feel it. I recognized it. He had lived once. Looking at his artwork, it was amazing. But… truth? None of these seemed true. None of these seemed real. What was Truth but a Dream, anyway? Hell, today’s truth certainly was turning out to be a nightmare. I winced as the music got louder in the back of my head. It was like this place had a spirit, and it was desperately trying to talk to me.

Yeah, right. I’m nuts.

There was a small painting in the back, notebook sized, if not smaller. A soaring dragon. I smiled, because I recognized it. I touched the frame of the painting. It felt familiar. I remembered the dragon soaring, angered by a lust for blood that it couldn’t quench. I remembered the dragon destroying herd after herd of cattle and deer and anything it could find, and still its lust for blood and carnage wasn’t quenched. I remembered the dragon coming upon a village, and razing it to the ground. Every single human in that village had been killed. Men, women, and children. The dragon had left nothing living. Nothing. And had felt no guilt. I shuddered, remembering. Maybe the clown wasn’t the only one with enough anger to burn down this entire place, and bring it to its knees.

There was a need for belief in balance. It was required. Too far to either side of the pendulum’s swinging, and bad things happened. I set my jaw, clenched my fists, and vowed once more never to forget that feeling of the lust for blood, so that it would never happen again. I had a job to do.

As I left the tent, I pondered how far apart dreams and truth really were. I never even noticed that the picture frame had become a softly glowing flat-screen monitor. I never even noticed that instead of a still painting, it had turned into a CGI animation of the very scenes I’d remembered. I never even noticed that another attraction was marked on my golden ticket.