R/Nosleep (Get Spooked)

If You Visit The Crimson Carnival...(Pt 3)

By: u/Jgrupe

As I sank down into the darkness below the ball-pit, I began to hyperventilate. I was having trouble breathing, feeling suffocated as if I were drowning. My heart pounded faster as my mind raced. All light evaporated from the space around me and I was cloaked in blackness as I descended further from the surface, feeling increasingly desperate and trapped.

The thing gripping my ankle was tearing strips of flesh from my leg as I struggled and kicked, trying to get away. I could feel its skin, rough like sandpaper, but it was silent and made no noise as it dragged me downwards.

Then it suddenly let go.

I fell down through the air and landed on a tile floor. I looked up and saw the colourful balls floating and dancing above me on the ceiling, defying gravity as there was nothing but air to hold them aloft.

I looked around, terrified, for the thing that had grabbed my leg and brought me below, but saw nothing. I was in a dark space with checkerboard patterns all over the walls, floors, and low ceilings. Another part of the fun house, I guessed. The creature that had dragged me down there probably lived in the ball pit, and I guessed that its purpose was to bring people down here to this disorienting space below.

"Gary?"

No response.

There were several doorways leading different directions and I started walking towards one of them. Looking inside, I saw a space that was exactly the same as the one I was in, like a mirror image.

"GARY!?"

"HOO HOO HOO HOO!"

I spun around as I heard laughter and the sound of feet dropping down to the floor. Somehow I was unsurprised to see the carnival workers and clowns who had been pursuing me had followed me down below. They spotted me instantly and began to race towards me, their large knives held high above their heads, smiles plastered on their red and white painted faces, their crimson eyes glowing in the dim light.

I turned and ran, not knowing where I was going exactly, just ducking through one disorienting doorway and then another and another.

Much to my surprise, the third doorway I went through brought me back face-to-face with a clown holding a butcher's clever.

The doors didn't follow the ordinary laws of physics, it would seem, and had brought me back to my would-be-murderers instead of allowing me to escape them. This was despite the fact that I had run very much in the opposite direction away from them.

The jester grinned and laughed, his rotten yellow teeth and blackened gums showing as he chuckled.

"Hellooooo, little bug. You can try to get away but good luck escaping. Those blood and guts aren't yours, they're ours for the taking!"

Instead of using the sharp end of the clever as I had imagined he would, he took the backside of it, and whacked me across the forehead, knocking me out cold.

*

As I was unconscious I had another vision, even more vivid and real than the last. I was standing before the great beating heart at the center of the Crimson Carnival. Exactly the same as last time, only this time it was bigger. It was the size of a school bus now, and had grown larger since my last dream. It hung suspended from the ceiling of the great canopy tent at the center of the fair. It was beating loud and heavy like a massive drum, the muscle contractions were enormous and laboured, terrifying and apocalyptic.

Holding it aloft were the veins and arteries which pumped poisonous blood to the inhabitants of the place. The massive heart beat so loudly it pierced my ears, like a jet airliner taking off right next to me, only it was a dull thud that hurt my brain as well.