The Carnival

The carnival is where she fell, for the first time on the carousel”

One week in and she forgets everything. The earliest memory she has is of blood, rust and cold. Her eyes are permanently red, but her tears have stopped falling. She burns every book in the house, throws out all her black clothing, rips her favourite dress apart and never stops screaming. The sounds come out broken, like her whole being. There’s a hole in the wall from when she drove her fist into it. She’s covered most of the other walls with paint, marker-ink—only dark colours, except red. She has a whole section stained red that no amount of soap can erase. She’s finding it harder and harder each day to stay sober. Two weeks in and she starts to remember, but she shreds every happy recollection. She’s stripped the house bare. The only thing she can’t bear to throw out is the bed sheet—plain and grey. The mornings, she spends hiding all her scars, drawing all the curtains close, hoping that they’d keep her grief in, and the light, hope and faith, out. The nights, she spends sobbing alone to songs that sound like The Oh Hellos, staring out through broken glass, digging fingernails into her skin, reciting lies under her breath, watching hair wash down the shower drain. She wails uncontrollably when she can’t find the pictures, forgetting that she burnt everything the week before. She’s dialed the same number into her phone 493 times, never pressing the call button. She hasn't left the house, hasn't eaten in two days.

One month in and she stops sleeping. Two hours a day on normal days, three if she’s lucky, and four if she overdoses on medication. She’s tried it all—Ambien, Sonata, Lunesta—her dreams still turn into nightmares; she wakes up with sweat-stained sheets and hands that won’t stop shaking; she buries her face in her pillow and covers her ears with her hands to drown out the silence. She asks the shadows if she’s responsible for the red that won't stop flowing, if it’s the reason she’s haunted by gunshots and sirens and rough voices. It’s a rhetorical question. She knows she is. She still listens to the same song every night on the music box that she got for her twentieth birthday. She breaks something every day and spends her afternoons cleaning the mess up. Two months in and she steps foot outside the house for the first time. She drives for hours on end, not knowing which state, which city, which hotel. She stumbles across a carnival. She’s never been to one, so she stops the car. She enters a tent, and is hit with the strong smell of incense. The woman’s a fortuneteller—her robe looks washed out, her nail polish is chipped, she hardly has any hair under her wig. She instantly regrets her decision; she’s about to leave when the woman speaks. “You’ll never spend your life with the person you love.” She feels her heart drop; she’s running, out the tent, scrambling towards her car; she’s breathing heavily, she can’t stop choking on her sobs; she’s wide open and bleeding. She’s deluded; she thought she was getting better but she’s a mess, she’s a wreck, she can’t stop running, past the carnival, past her car. She can hear the sick whining and creaking of the amusement park rides, the high-pitched, mechanical music in the background. She’s repulsed by its cheeriness, disgusted that happiness and sadness can coexist in one space, wishing that fire would rain down from the heavens, especially over the tent. She runs back to her car, crashes it into a tree on purpose, mumbling, screaming the same name over and over until her wounds close up again. She doesn't leave the house again. Four months in and she’s half her weight. She has only tubs of ice cream in her fridge; her utility bill is so low because she lives in darkness. She’s decided to bury the outside forever—cotton candy, laughter, funhouse mirrors, clowns, acrobats, popcorn, roller coasters. She’s convinced herself that she doesn't deserve the time she has left. She looks for new hobbies—she’s stopped making the table for two, stopped leaving the heater on, stopped washing clothes that haven't been worn. Instead, she reads poetry, nursery rhymes. She finds solace in ‘all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men, could never put Humpty Dumpty back together again.’ She also grows plants, but the flowers never bloom for her.

"Round and round through the same hell, she never gets under his shell.”

One year in and she stops believing. Time passes agonisingly slowly, but still she doesn't heal. She keeps the bolts on her door shut, turns everyone away. She occupies herself with mindless hobbies. She counts the days down to the anniversary of his death. She’s scrapbooking this time—‘honeymoon’, ‘first trip to Japan’, ‘visit to the Louvre’, ‘we’re pregnant!’, ‘baby shower’, ‘baby steps’, ‘first haircut’, ‘kindergarten’, ‘football game’—she’s decorating pages that will never fill, leaving tear stains where pictures should be. Her room is littered with hundred-dollar bottles of champagne—some cracked, some still in one piece. Her feet are lined with cuts from when she steps on the million glass shards in the house. She’s never bothered to clean them. She’s used all her disinfectant on her hands. Two years in and she’s still the same. She’s better, she’s not. Five years in and she’s still the same. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Round and round, like a horse on a carousel, round and round through the same hell, she never gets over this spell.