Disclaimer - "Mystery Case Files" and all related characters, events, and concepts belong to Big Fish Games, Elephant Games, and Eipix Entertainment. I get no monetary benefit from this. My benefit is the enjoyment of dealing with beloved characters. Original characters, however, are mine - please contact for permission before using. This includes Darnell as a defined, fleshed-out character in his own right.
Jokers Wyrd
by DragonDancer5150
Chapter 2 - Wonderland
Darnell woke with a start, lying face down on chill concrete. Scrambling, he pushed back to hands and knees, then crouched on his heels and looked around, ready and able to lunge in any direction to get away from . . .
His eyes widened as he took in his surroundings. The nightmarish jack-in-the-box was nowhere to be seen, but neither was the antique store. It was nighttime, long threads of dull-grey clouds in the sky overhead passing like dragging claws across a large, full moon. Darnell was crouched in the middle of a narrow street, but it was unlike any street he'd ever seen. It and the landscape around it were anything but flat and smooth – swelling, twisting, dipping, and rising like the track of a kiddie rollercoaster. Up ahead, the street actually tilted up on its side at a steep angle before bending to disappear around the corner of a building. And the buildings themselves – there were no proper angles or straight edges. They looked like life-sized three-dimensional replicas of buildings reflected in funhouse mirrors, some bulging from their middles as if ready to burst their seams, others curling and looming ominously overhead, from comically narrow at the bottoms to stretched out like taffy at the tops. Everything was edged and decorated in lines of neon tubes or bright lightbulbs – blood red, sickly yellow, ultraviolet purple, ectoplasmic green. Darnell swallowed, stuffing down a choking fear to remain calm as he pushed up to his feet. "This place looks like a Las Vegas side street designed by Tim Burton."
He flinched at a squeaking sound that approached from somewhere behind him and spun around to the sight of a bear balanced on a unicycle. It wore a striped party hat and ballet-pink tutu. It looked gaunt to Darnell, not that he'd ever seen a bear in person – and don't they always say that the camera adds pounds? But its fur was badly matted and even missing in patches here and there all over its body. Darnell started to backpedal from the animal, but the poor thing had such a forlorn, frightened, and pleading look on its face that he felt more pity than fear. It wheeled closer, whining softly and reaching for him. The paw was thinly furred, much of the coat looking like it'd been worn off. The claws were all split and broken. Darnell gently took the wounded paw in both his hands and looked up. And caught his breath in shock.
The eyes staring down at him were human.
The bear's ears perked and a panicked look came over its face. It glanced around, then started trying to push Darnell off the street toward one of the buildings.
"What? What's wrong? What is it?" On instinct, Darnell kept his voice down, whispering urgently even as he let the bear guide him.
The bear huffed and whimpered, seemingly desperate to communicate better but simply unable. Then it yelped in terror as some two dozen capuchin monkeys in organ grinder outfits sprang from the shadows all around them. They were eerily silent, mouths sewn shut and eyes the dead glass of a taxidermist's work. Half of their number swarmed the bear, flailing and clawing viciously, while the other half carried aerosol cans and surrounded Darnell. They danced and darted about as they shot him with thick lines of what looked like Silly String, though they might as well have thrown a sticky fishing net over him. Try as he did, he couldn't break the colorful threads to free himself. Instead, the strings constricted around him until he was bound head to foot as in a giant spider's webbing. The monkeys pressed in closer around him. He struggled despite the futility, scared for himself and heartsick at the pained and dying howls of the bear.
He was knocked roughly off his feet and dragged along the streets for several minutes, passing more Tim-Burton-in-Vegas buildings. Despite the number, there was no evidence in the windows or on the street that any of them were occupied – no people, no animals, no vehicles, not even random bits of trash along the curbs or in the gutters. Finally, the buildings gave way to open field, the paved road turning to packed dirt as the monkeys hauled him toward a red and white circus tent. Over the entry sprawled an elaborate sign that read 'The Greatest Show Unearthed.' Sandwich boards stood on either side of the drawn-back flaps. On one, the second and fourth lines of text - 'To The' and 'Show' - had been scribbled out so that the sign now read 'Welcome Freak.' On the other, parts of the text had been spray-painted over so that 'Step Right Up' read 'Fall Right Down.' They drew closer, and a thick, metallic reek hit Darnell just as he realized that the red stripes of the tent were glisteningly wet. With a sick feeling, he suddenly wondered if the canvas panels had been dyed by soaking them in blood.
The inside of the tent wasn't any better. The tent's framework seemed to have been built entirely of bones. The tiers of benches that encircled the center ring consisted of planks of wood with bent nails and rusted screws poking up from underneath. The center ring itself looked like a massive animal spring trap. Overhead, a line of barbed wire served for the high wire while the pair of trapeze swings were bars covered in razor blades hanging from spike-laden chains.
Darnell's heart hammered in his chest with ever-mounting fright, and he wanted to close his eyes, deny the twisted circus around him, but he couldn't pull his gaze away from the gruesome sights.