Warning: This story contains disturbing imagery, body horror, and themes of psychological manipulation
I always imagined my homecoming would be warm.
Two years at university had been a blur of lectures, sleepless nights, and the kind of loneliness that gnawed your bones.
I thought of New Year's Eve back home—the smell of fish frying in peanut oil, my mother's laugh echoing in the narrow streets, fireworks blooming over rooftops.
I should've known better.
When the bus dropped me off at the edge of town, the first thing I noticed was the silence.
Not the quiet of winter nights, but a silence that swallowed footsteps and breath alike.
My suitcase wheels clacked against the asphalt, and as I turned down the familiar road toward my neighborhood… I froze.
The houses were gone.
Every single one of them.
In their place stood tents—striped red and black—sprawling across the streets like an infection.
Ferris wheels with rusted spokes groaned against the wind.
Wooden stalls stood crooked, painted with grinning faces that peeled like flayed skin.
Banners hung low, dripping with something darker than paint.
The entire town had been transformed into… a circus.
Not those happy ones.
But something chilling and unsettling.
I tried to convince myself I'd made a mistake, that maybe the bus had dropped me in the wrong town.
But my heart stopped when I saw it—my street sign.
Bent, blood-streaked, nailed into the dirt.
This was home.
"Welcome back, Avan!"
The voice made my blood ice over.
From behind a crooked booth emerged a figure: tall, thin, dressed like a ringmaster.
A top hat perched over his pale face, and his grin—God, his grin—split his cheeks wider than any human mouth should.
"We've been waiting for you."
I stumbled backward. "What's going on? W-where's my family?"
His eyes, golden and sharp, twinkled as he tapped his cane against the cobblestones.
"Inside. Everyone's here. Everyone's smiling."
A chorus of laughter rose from the tents.
Not joyous laughter—screams twisted into mirth, choking, guttural.
My stomach churned.
I ran.
Every turn I took brought me deeper into the carnival maze. Tents loomed, their cloth flapping like diseased lungs.
Stalls displayed grotesque wares—jars filled with eyeballs, masks stitched from flesh, puppets that twitched on strings with no puppeteer.
And the people…
At first, I thought they were mannequins.
But no.
They were my neighbors.
The baker, the postman, even old Mrs Amara who used to feed stray cats.
All of them sat slumped on benches or nailed to wooden crosses, their faces twisted in permanent smiles.
Their lips had been carved open, widened, stitched with wire so they could never stop grinning.
Some were still breathing.
Their eyes bulged, tears dripping as muffled moans rattled from throats torn raw.
I vomited on the ground.
"Don't look so horrified, boy."
The ringmaster's voice came from everywhere, from inside the very air.
"They wanted happiness. And happiness is a smile, isn't it? Haven't you missed it? Don't you want to smile too?"
My body trembled, but rage lit inside me.
"Where is my family?" I screamed, voice cracking.
The circus roared with applause.
I was dragged into the main tent amd i don't remember how.
One moment, I was standing on the street, and the next, I was chained to a chair in the center of a bloodstained stage.
Hundreds of faces stared at me from the stands—not faces, not anymore.
Painted clowns, stitched horrors, my neighbors, my teachers, my childhood friends.
All smiling.
In the center of the stage, the ringmaster spread his arms.
"Ladies and gentlemen! For tonight's New Year's Eve special, our beloved boy has returned home! Avan, the prodigal son! Shall we play with him?"
The crowd shrieked in unison, their laughter a storm of madness.
And then the games began.
The first act: The Hall of Mirrors.
They unchained me and shoved me into a corridor of warped glass.
At first, I only saw my reflection.
But then the mirrors moved.
One showed me stabbing my best friend in the university dorm.
Another showed me strangling my mother.
Another—laughing as my sister burned alive.
Each reflection moved independently, pressing against the glass, whispering:
"Admit it. You want this. You've always wanted this."
I ran, smashing mirrors, but the shards cut my skin, embedding deep.
Blood painted the floor as the laughter echoed louder.
The second act: The Feast.
A long table, covered in meat.
They sat me down and placed a knife in my hand.
The meat smelled wrong, sweet and metallic.
When I cut into it, the truth spilled out—veins, tendons, human bones.
I staggered back.
"Eat, Avan," the ringmaster hissed, his grin glowing in the dark. "It's your family's cooking."
The slabs of flesh twitched.
Faces appeared in the meat.
My mother's.
My father's.
My sister's.
Their eyes opened, and they screamed silently from the plate.
I refused.
So they strapped me down and fed me, shoving bloody chunks down my throat until I gagged and vomited into my lap.
The third act: The Choice.
They dragged two figures onto the stage.
My parents. Or… things wearing their skin.
Their lips were sewn into smiles, but their eyes pleaded with me.
"Choose one," the ringmaster said, placing an axe in my hand.
"One lives. One dies. But hesitate, and both will suffer."
I froze.
My hands shook so violently I dropped the axe.
The crowd booed, stamping their feet, chanting: "Smile! Smile! Smile!"
When I refused, the ringmaster laughed, and both figures were dragged screaming into the darkness.
A moment later, wet tearing sounds filled the tent.
I closed my eyes.
By the time midnight drew close, I was broken.
They had carved my cheeks so my lips bled in a grotesque grin.
My hands were soaked in blood not my own.
My ears rang with screams that would never leave me.
And then—the finale.
The ringmaster leaned close, his hot breath crawling into my ear.
"You've been asking, haven't you? 'Who should I trust?'" His tongue slithered across his teeth.
"Here's your answer. Trust the smile. Always the smile."
The crowd erupted into a chant.
"SMILE! SMILE! SMILE!"
And then… the fireworks began.
Red sparks tore the sky. The tent shook.
The crowd rose, laughing, shrieking, clawing at themselves.
And I—God forgive me—I laughed too.
Blood dripped from my mouth as I screamed and laughed, screamed and laughed until my throat tore raw.
Because the truth was carved into me now.
-----------
There was no home anymore.
No family.
No town.
Only the circus.
Only the smile.
But somehow, I survived.
When I woke, I was outside the ruins of the circus.
The tents were gone.
The stalls vanished.
The streets were empty, as if nothing had ever happened.
But the scars on my face remain.
The laughter in my head never stops.
I don't know if I escaped.
Or if I never did.
Because when I pass strangers in the city now, sometimes… they smile.
Too wide.
Too long.
And their golden eyes twinkle, just like his.
I don't know where my family is.
Are they still alive?
How did the town came to be this?
What happened in the two years i was absent?
And please i want someone to tell me—
Who should I trust?
Stream Commentary; Tape #33. "Who Should I Trust?"
[Kaireturns]
(smirking behind his black goggles, hoodie pulled up)
"So… that was Avan's story.
The prodigal son who returned not to a home but to a carnival of horror and painted lies.
what do you think really happened when Avan left for university? What became of his town?
[@Enchomay: Avan left, the town must have already been targeted. The ringmaster doesn't just appear—he plants roots, spreads his circus like an infection. Maybe Avan's absence created the perfect crack for it to grow. He returned to see only the final act]
[@Ovesix: Ohhh, maybe the whole town was already gone the moment he left for the university! Maybe Avan's been walking into a trap since the very beginning. Maybe the bus driver was one of them, huh?]
[@642: Hah! The neighbors nailed to benches, lips carved open, wires digging into flesh—oh, that's poetry! Don't you see? The town wasn't taken. It was transformed. A new circus family. His parents included]
[@Enchomay:No… I think his parents were already dead. The figures he saw on that stage weren't them anymore. They were puppets. The real bodies long since consumed. What Avan saw was theater. Theater to break him]
[@Ovesix: Or… maybe the circus is not a place at all. Maybe Avan never left the bus. Maybe he fell asleep, and the town exists only in the ringmaster's cage of dreams.
His parents… his home… gone before he even returned]
Zack (chuckling, leaning closer as though whispering directly to the viewers)
"And who is the Ringmaster, you ask?
Well, not human. Not government. Not demon, not angel.
He is the smile that spreads when despair is sharpest.
He is the mask society wears when it pretends everything is fine.
Avan asked, 'Who should I trust?' and the Ringmaster answered: no one but the smile."
Sounds familiar with a story we once discussed.
(Zack's tone hardens, the glow of his unseen eyes sharpening under the goggles)
"But let me tell you this: Avan should have trusted himself.
That's what the Ringmaster wanted to kill—the ability to resist illusion.
Instead, Avan broke. And his laughter became theirs."
[@Jaija:Then Avan never escaped?]
(Shrugs)
Perhaps he did.
Or perhaps the scars on his face, the whispers in his head, are proof he never left the circus.
Survivors are just performers who refuse to admit they're still on stage."
[@Ovesix:So the parents… what really happened]
(voice low)
"They were erased.
Turned into props, into bait.
Their love reduced to screaming masks on a rigged stage.
That's what the Ringmaster does—he turns family into theater, truth into lies, and hope into a twisted joke."
[@642:Hah! And the whole town cheered. Everyone smiling, wide and bloody. Isn't it beautiful, Kai?]
(Sighs and the chuckle)
I see the sight of blood still amuses you.
But no. It's revolting.
It's us.
That's the part you all don't want to hear.
Society already trains us to wear painted smiles while rotting inside.
The Ringmaster just pushes it to the extreme.
(He leans forward, voice steady, controlled, the faint sound of static filling the stream)
So dear viewers.
Beware the masks people wear.
Beware the smiles that hide bruises, the laughter that hides screams.
Because monsters don't always arrive with fangs or claws—they arrive with carnival tents, with music, with promises of joy.
They arrive when you're too tired to resist.
Don't let them carve your smile for you.
Choose when to smile.
Choose when to scream.
Or else… you'll end up like Avan—forever laughing in someone else's circus."
[@Jaija:Kai… tell us. When did the Ringmaster first come here? Why this town? And who is he?]
Zack (a slow grin spreads across his face)
Ahh. Good question.
Because the Ringmaster didn't begin with Avan.
No.
His circus roots go deeper.
And if you want to know the truth…"
(He leans back, hoodie shadowing his face)
"…you must first hear about The Happy Man.
That is where the Ringmaster first appeared in the town.
That is where all of this began."
STREAM ENDED