We moved forward hesitantly, toward a dark green tent. When we reached the tent flap, I heard more whining and buzzing inside and realized my hands were sweaty. I wiped them one by one on my pants, struggling to hold the flamethrower.
Anna took the heavy fabric in her hands and I nodded. Inside, against the green-and-white fabric background of the tent, was an armchair in front of an old box TV, a side table, and a refrigerator. I was so perplexed by this scene that I didn't notice anything else until Anna gasped in horror and yelled, "look up!"
There were more of the mosquito-fly thingies. As we raised our flamethrowers to shoot, the tile floor under our feet began to shake and buckle. I sprayed the flies with fire as the tent shuddered, and tile began to fall into a pit.
I jerked Anna's arm and we fell backward, away from the pit that was hidden beneath the floor. Inside was a horrible smell - the smell of death and decay, just like the dead -
I couldn't think about that terrible sight. Not without being sick.
"Oh god," I whispered into my fist, my voice bubbling through nausea.
The pit was full of maggots writhing in a green-orange soup of I-don't-know-what. I closed my eyes and sprayed fire. The maggots, eager to escape, began jumping and squealing, smacking me as they tried to escape.
"Come on!" Anna cried. "There's a path across. And a door."
"Okay," I mumbled, afraid I would let loose again.
Anna grasped my hand and we went for the door. I avoided looking at the pit and held my breath, staring instead at the MUSEUM OF THE SLIGHTLY CURIOUS sign above the exit. Or maybe it wasn't an exit, because it was just a new room of horrors.
"There's nothing really bad in here," Anna whispered. "Just…weird stuff."
I opened my eyes. There was a giant shoe, which was called the World's Biggest Shoe. In my past life before the carnival I would have made a joke about its size and my foot fitting in it. There was an Egyptian mummy sarcophagus, a creepy dummy in a glass case, a big skull, and some weird fetal thing in fluid in a jar. And…
"Flapjacks!" I yelled.
Anna shrieked and we both started to burn the tent, Flapjacks coming from all directions. One of them surprised me by hanging upside-down from the ceiling and I screamed before shooting flames right in its face. I watched the man's - er, monster's - face melt and blacken and I felt instantly sick all over again.
Flies joined the flapjacks and we raced through the exhibits past them, out toward fresh air, toward the carnival. I realized as we pushed past a horse with two butts and "no mane" that there might not be an end to the Freak Show. This might be the rest of our lives, forever. And how weird that was to think about, because it wasn't long ago that I was on a school trip. Anna was gasping for air.
"Anna," I whispered as we looked into another clearing, with more tents and stages, "do you think we should keep going? Or go back?"
"I think-" she stopped and stared ahead. I followed her gaze to a wooden circle propped upright. It was spinning slowly, with a skeleton hanging on it. The skeleton had knives that I'm assuming were thrown at it - into it- while he or she was alive.
The air filled with humming and buzzing, and more Flapjacks were approaching, grunting with glee at the prospect of tearing us apart. And that girl was screaming for help again, somewhere inside one of the buildings.
"There!" Anna cried out, and pointed to a large concrete dome with a glass roof.
A ladder led to the roof, and we ran for it, climbing despite our sweaty, callused palms and heavy breaths. My lungs were feeling ragged from the effort, and I stopped to cough on the way up. My spit tasted like blood.
Anna got up to the roof first and held out her hand. "It's a little…" she said, and slipped, nearly sliding off the edge. If we fell, I gulped, we were doomed. Dead.
"What now?" I breathed.
She screamed in response - a flapjack was on the roof with us. I pumped my flamethrower and shot at it, but the heat caused the glass to crack and splinter. With a shriek, the Flapjack fell into the building below. Anna and I looked at each other.
"Let's go in," she said.
"Are you nuts?" I sputtered. Something weird was going on.
"No," she said. "Just trust me. It feels right."
"It feels right?" I glanced behind me. More flapjacks below, and a maze of tents. I wasn't sure that moving forward was the right move. But then again, we didn't have time really to think about it…and going back down was no better. "Okay," I groaned.
We peeked into the concrete silo. The way down was far. Very far. There were ropes strung across the void beneath our feet, and some kind of tower with weird things you could climb up. It reminded me of some kind of sickening cat tree or jungle house.
Anna hopped down to the first walkway, holding her arms out as it trembled and she regained her balance. Then she held up her hand again.
"I hope you know what you're doing," I said.
"I don't, really…" she frowned. "But-"
A skittering noise somewhere off to the side of us made me jump.
We held up our flamethrowers in preparation.
I felt something fly past my head and whipped around, spraying a jet of flame without thinking.
"ARGH!" Anna yelled, and I turned to see her shirt in flames. In a panic, she dropped her flamethrower and it bounced on the walkway, then down to the ground below. I rushed to her, patting her arm to put out the flames while she continued to cry out. Another thing whizzed by my head, something with a lot of little skinny legs.
"I'm so sorry," I was whimpering over and over.
She held her arm and slouched to her knees, the shirt burned and frayed up to her shoulder, and a gnarly dark red burn starting to pucker the top layer of skin down to her elbow.
"I'm so sorry," I whispered again.
She mumbled something, then her eyes shot open with fear. I turned slowly, not sure what I would see- it was the seeing things that I liked least of all - the smelling too.
Behind me, on the wall, was a small army of spiders. Very big ones, the size of my head. They were brown and fuzzy and their legs twitched and bent menacingly slowly. Their heads though, their heads were monkey's heads - not cute ones, but withered and nearly bald with lips pulled back in a sickening grin. The monkey heads looked like they were dead, like someone had just sewn them onto…
Someone probably did. Someone named Umlaut.
"Can you climb down?" I asked Anna. She nodded, slowly backing away lest the spiders jump at her, and looked down at her next obstacle - a big rope she'd have to drop to.
"Three…two…one…GO!" I yelled, and shot flames at the spiders just as they jumped, their monkey heads squealing and screeching angrily, maws now open wide revealing razor-sharp teeth. I didn't know what was worse: getting chomped to death by crazy monkey heads or feeling a lot of fuzzy legs crawling on me, but I didn't want to find out.
Anna was climbing down and more spider monkeys were following her. I wouldn't be able to shoot at them with fire without harming her. But we also couldn't shoot while climbing.
She cried out a few times as spider monkeys brushed her or lunged at her.
I dropped to the rope where she had been, realizing at the last minute that I wouldn't be able to hang onto the rope and my flamethrower. In a panic, I dropped it, seizing the rope at the last second. I bounced in the air and then slowed to a stop. Beneath me, there were metal curved ladder-looking things and rings. I descended quickly, swiping and kicking spider monkeys as I went. It felt like an eternity. When I was close to the bottom, I heard the roar of flames and felt the heat on my shoes. Anna was screaming, flaming them all to oblivion, and they were screeching, racing away, trying to escape, trapped in the concrete silo. They began racing back up the climbing things to get away from us.
I dropped to the ground and grabbed my flamethrower.
"You okay?" I asked Anna.
"Uh huh," she said, then looked at her arm again. "You set my fucking arm on fire!"
"I know, and I'm really sorry," I said. "I mean really-" The screeching continued, and I noticed that the spider monkeys had stopped climbing and were now eyeballing us. No longer sensing we were a threat, they seethed and began to descend on us again.
Anna and I shot flames behind us as we ran toward the only door we could see - a metal iron prison door.
Please open - please open- I pushed with my shoulder, and Anna pushed with her good shoulder, and we fell out into the damp night air once again.
This time, though, we were at a dead end - a stone wall greeted us, and an empty courtyard. The only place to go was forward, like Anna had been pushing - toward a stone cold tower with glowing red letters: CHAMBER OF HORRORS.