Author's Game Entries

Task One: Psycho

The orange light of the street lamps cast an eerie glow on the sidewalk as Nicola trudges towards the carnival. Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine... He absentmindedly keeps count of his steps as he walks, purely out of habit. He ends up losing count though as a noisy car zooms past, the loud music and excited shouts from the people inside catching his attention and dragging it along behind the vehicle until it swerves around a corner out of sight.

With a sigh, Nicola drops his gaze back to his shoes again. The dread weighing on his shoulders is more than enough incentive for his feet to drag, but he knows he needs to pick up the pace. A little more than half of his allotted hour has already slipped past, and he's still dreading the repercussions of his secret getting out.

He especially would hate me, he's never been that accepting... The boy thinks sullenly, his mind drifting from numbers for once to explore the possibilities of his crush discovering his affections.

While his mind is elsewhere, his feet continue to walk, and before he knows it Nicola finds himself standing behind the car that'd passed him earlier, now parked in a dark grass lot just outside the start of a wooded area. He has to pause and do a double take, mentally retracing his steps for a moment so his mind can catch up with his feet. As soon as he's aware of his surroundings, his dreadful fantasies fade into dreadful reality. He's reached the carnival.

Whomever owns the old silver Toyota isn't anywhere in sight as Nicola glances around for them, though the muddy footsteps leading away from the car leave no mystery as to where they went. It seems as if whom ever came here came with friends, and many of them at that, likely four or five judging from the foot prints.

Nicola feels his anxiousness tighten again, and while he sincerely doesn't want to follow these people, he knows he has too. They're clearly going to the carnival as well. Even so, it's still a moment before he can finally work up the courage to move his anchored legs, and follow their path through the muddy grass.

While winding and almost overgrown with underbrush, the path leads almost directly to his destination. Spiraling skywards in front of him is a rusty iron wrought gate, the words 'Brimley City Carnival' spelled out in looping metal at the very peak of it. Nicola can almost feel the menace oozing from the crooked gate, the entrance inviting him in like the gaping jaws of some beast.

He isn't soothed by the little bit of police tape lingering on a bar of the adjoined fence, nor is he happy to see the rotting, painted sign just barely hanging onto the gate, the word 'Condemned' scrawled out in almost illegible chicken-scratch. Nicola has to force his gaze from these obvious warnings, and he gulps nervously before taking a step across the threshold of the gate.

Instantly an ominous feeling falls upon him, like he'd just done something terribly wrong. Nicola feels his hands start to tremble in his coat pockets, and a sickly cold chill falls upon him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Swallowing suddenly becomes a struggle, and he feels his heart fluttering in his chest, like it could stop at any moment.

"Yo! Nerd!" A voice suddenly shouts from afar, snatching up Nicola's attention with a startled jump. With his wide eyes he finds a moderately sized group of teenagers a little ways from him, all congregated at the base of the giant ferris wheel that is, for some reason, lit up in old, flickering lights. The said nerd in question can't seem to find who'd addressed him, but he does find half the group staring at him.

With an awkward cough, Nicola shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and hunches his shoulders before starting to trudge over to them. As he moves further from the gate, the creeping feeling slowly starts to leave him, like slime being pulled from his skin, only evaporating completely when he crosses out of the out of the thin forest fully and past the twisted iron fence.