The air inside the house of mirrors grew colder. John rubbed his arms, squinting through the warped reflections surrounding him. The blood was more obvious now—dark streaks smeared across the mirrors like claw marks. Still, he tried to laugh it off.
"Great effects," he muttered, his voice trembling just enough to betray him.
"Jooohhhhnnny…"
The voice came again. Closer. A whisper slithering right past his ear.
John spun around. The mirrors bent and twisted his reflection into grotesque shapes, each version of himself more distorted than the last. In one mirror, he was smiling. But he wasn't.
That reflection raised its hand and waved—even though he didn't.
John stumbled backward, bumping into one of the mirrored walls. The glass felt oddly warm and sticky. He looked at his hand—blood. Fresh. Still wet.
He turned to run, but the mirrors had shifted. The corridor was different. Narrower. The lights dimmed overhead, flickering like dying fireflies.
Then he heard it. Footsteps. Slow, heavy, deliberate. Not his own.
"Okay," he said aloud, "someone's messing with me. This is part of the attraction, right?"
But no one answered.
He turned a corner and nearly screamed—one of the mirrors was shattered. Not broken from the outside… but from within. Cracks spiderwebbed
outward, and at the center—
A single, bloodshot eye stared at him from inside the glass. It blinked.
John froze.
From somewhere deeper in the maze, a music box began to play—a shrill, tinny melody, like a lullaby played on a broken record.
"Welcome to the Carnival..."
The whisper oozed from all directions.
John backed away, heart hammering in his chest.
Then—footsteps again. Faster now.
And laughter.
Not human laughter.
He turned, sprinted deeper into the maze, the sound of something chasing him growing louder,mirrors shattering one by one behind him. He didn't dare look back.
But he knew…
He wasn't alone anymore.
John's breath rasped in his throat as he ran, the maze of mirrors stretching endlessly, as though it had grown larger while he wasn't looking. The laughter behind him morphed—higher now, like a child's giggle smeared with static. He stopped at an intersection of three paths, all reflections and blood-glossed glass, each path looking identical.
"Jooohhhhnnnyyy..." the voice droned again. Now layered, like three people speaking at once, too close to his ears.
He chose the left path and bolted. His foot hit something soft—a clown doll, torn and soaked red. Its head lolled up at him, mouth stretched wide, eyes gouged out. As he passed, its body twitched.
"No. Nope. Not real," John whispered, but his voice didn't sound like his anymore. It sounded
hollow. Wrong.
The mirrors now reflected not just him, but other people—a girl in a torn prom dress, her eyes black voids; an old man with no skin on his face, grinning too wide; a baby crawling upside-down across the ceiling. But when John turned to look directly, nothing was there—only empty corridors.
He slowed, chest heaving, pressing his hand to a mirror for support.
His reflection didn't move.
It stood still, breathing calmly, then smiled and raised a bloodied finger to its lips:
Shhh.
John recoiled, and the reflection shattered—but not the glass. The image itself broke, splintering into jagged fragments that reformed into something else—
A face.
A clown's face.
Painted lips stretched ear to ear, red nose cracked and blackened. Its eyes were mismatched—one red, one milky white. It stared at John through the glass like a hungry animal behind a cage.
Then the glass bulged outward like water, rippling.
The clown began to press through.
"No, no, no, NO—" John turned and sprinted again, but the corridors shifted—mirrors flipping, floors creaking beneath him like an old carnival ride coming to life.
The music box tune returned, now layered with a calliope melody that was...off. Broken keys, wrong notes, and behind it—
Screaming.
Real.
He skidded around another corner and came face to face with a door. Not glass. Not a mirror. A wooden door—rotting, splintered, a rusty handle twitching as if it were breathing.
He hesitated.
Then he heard the thing behind him laugh again. Closer. Wet.
John grabbed the handle, turned it, and plunged into the darkness beyond.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Silence.
Until…
A match flared to life in the room ahead. Illuminating a pale, porcelain clown mask nailed to the wall, with one word scrawled beneath it in blood:
"Welcome."
The match fizzled out, plunging him back into darkness. For a moment, there was only silence — thick, suffocating, like the room itself was holding its breath.
Then a sound. Tick…tick…tick…
A dim light blinked on overhead, flickering. He was in a small, circular room, the walls covered in old carnival posters. They peeled at the corners, their images warped: dancing clowns with sharp, jagged teeth; magicians pulling bleeding rabbits from hats; acrobats hanging by their necks instead of their hands. Every smiling face on the posters had blacked-out eyes.
On the far side of the room was a carnival booth — a faded red counter, striped canopy above. Behind the glass sat a single prize: a grotesque marionette with human hair, stitched lips, and nails for fingers.
A sign above the booth read:
"Win and Live."
Something rustled behind the counter.
John inched forward, drawn against his better judgment. A spotlight clicked on overhead, illuminating a clown behind the glass. It hadn't been there a moment ago.
Its painted smile was smeared. The eyes were wide, unblinking.
Then it spoke.
"Step right up, Johnny boy," it rasped in a voice made of nails and static. "Let's see if you've got the guts to play."
John backed away. "What... what is this? Who are you?!"
The clown tilted its head. "This is the Carnival of Carnage, sweetheart. You bought your ticket. Now you play the game... or you become the prize."
The marionette's head snapped toward him with a dry crack, its stitched lips trembling.
"Help me..." it mouthed silently.
John turned, grabbed the door he came through—locked. Of course. He banged on it, but the wood didn't give. When he turned around again, the clown was gone.
So was the marionette.
The counter now held something else:
A red-and-white striped box with a crank on the side.
John stared at it, dread curling in his stomach.
A note lay next to it.
"Turn it. Or it turns you."
John reached out with a trembling hand and grabbed the crank.
It was cold. Too cold.
He began to turn it slowly.
Clink…clink…clink…
That familiar, haunting melody began to play.
A jack-in-the-box.
The notes got faster.
Clinkclinkclinkclink—
John's breath caught.
Silence.
Click.
He stared.
Nothing.
Then the lid exploded open—but nothing popped out.
He exhaled. Laughed nervously.
Behind him, a voice whispered:
"Gotcha."
THWAM!
The wall exploded inward, splinters flying like shrapnel, knocking John off his feet.
Laughter filled the air — shrill, theatrical, absolutely delighted. A silhouette stepped through the cloud of dust and broken wood, humming a twisted carnival waltz as he twirled a giant mallet with rusty spikes ringing its edge.
His outfit looked like a crime scene from a party store — scraps of jester suits, clown collars, sequined vests, and motley patterns stitched haphazardly together. A patchwork of madness.
But it was the mask that froze John in place.
It was porcelain — cracked down the center.
One side was painted in a manic grin, red and wide.
The other… a frown, deeply sorrowful, with a single painted tear.
And the voice —
"Ohhh Johnny boy… you really should've read the fine print, heh heh HA!"
The figure leaned down low, knees bent like a marionette, and pointed the mallet at John like it was a microphone.
"Tell me, my little meat puppet... have you ever danced with a mallet full of misery?"
John scrambled backward. "W-Who are you?!"
The jester flung his arms wide like a game show host. "Moi? Oh, honeybun — I'm the main attraction! The crown jewel! The final laugh in your very… last… act!"
He skipped forward, mallet dragging behind him, He skipped forward, mallet dragging behind him, scraping sparks off the concrete.
"You can call me Jester," he sang, doing a pirouette. "The master of ceremonies! The ringmaster of ruin! The absolute last face you'll ever see — unless you squint real hard from the afterlife!"
He stopped suddenly. Head tilted.
"Now. Serious question."
He crouched down, inches from John's face, voice dropping into a chilling whisper.
"Do you like games?"
"I—I didn't sign up for any of this!"
Jester sighed and stood, arms drooping like a sad puppet. "Ohhhh, wrong answer, cupcake. See, that's the thing with carnivals — you never know which prize you're gonna win. Or which organ we're gonna take!"
He slammed the mallet into the floor beside John with a BOOM, leaving a crater of cracked concrete and a few embedded teeth… none of them John's.
"For tonight's entertainment," he purred, "you're going to play a lovely little game I like to call…"
He pulled out a deck of oversized playing cards — each one painted with blood and bone.
"Jester's Wild. You draw. You survive. You win…"
He leaned in close, mask inches from John's face.
"...I let you leave with all your fingers still attached."
John's hand trembled as the deck hovered in
front of him.
Behind Jester, the walls began to melt into circus stripes. The lights blinked blood red.
And that laughter — his laughter — echoed louder, layered now, multiplying.
The carnival had begun.
And Jester was running the show
John stared at the deck of bloodstained cards. Each one looked like it had been cut from leather — human leather, maybe. The ink was thick, red, and smelled like rust.
Jester grinned behind his cracked porcelain mask, holding the cards like a Vegas dealer on bath salts.
"Now, let's go over the rules, Johnnykins!" he said, twirling one of the cards between his fingers with unnatural dexterity.
"Rule number one: you draw a card. Simple, right?"
He leaned in, voice turning syrupy sweet.
"Rule number two: you do whatever the card says. No cheating, no whining, no hiding behind mommy's skirt. If you fail or refuse…"
He hefted the mallet, resting it gently on John's shoulder.
"Well," he purred, "let's just say the house always smashes the cheater."
He let out a gleeful cackle, spinning in place.
"And rule number three… You don't win. I just lose interest! Hee hee haah!"
John wiped sweat from his brow and reached forward.
"Upsy-daisy!" Jester slapped his wrist lightly with a gloved finger. "Pick with intention, darling. This is destiny, not a discount raffle."
John gulped and drew.
The card read:
"Mirror Maze: Face Yourself."
The lights cut out instantly.
Then came the sound of breaking glass — all around him.
CLANG!
A spotlight snapped on overhead.
John was alone.
Mirrors surrounded him again, but this time… the reflections were wrong. They didn't copy him. They moved on their own. Each one wore his face but with something off — gouged eyes, slashed mouth, black sludge pouring from their ears.
They started speaking.
Not in unison. Not to him.
To each other.
"He's weak."
"He's meat."
"He should've stayed home."
One reflection stepped out of the mirror, glass cracking around its legs like ice. It held a knife.
John stumbled backward, reaching for something — anything.
From the shadows above, Jester's voice rang out, singsong and cruel:
🎵
"Mirror, mirror, filled with dread,
Show me how he ends up dead!"
🎵
John dodged as the doppelgänger lunged, slashing wildly. He grabbed a broken shard of mirror and stabbed back — the reflection shrieked, shattering into a thousand writhing
fragments that oozed into the floor like oil.
Silence.
Then—
Applause.
Slow. Sarcastic. Echoing.
Jester reappeared in a burst of confetti and smoke, swinging down from a noose like a trapeze artist of doom.
"Ohoho! Well done, killer! Didn't know you had that kind of sparkle!"
John collapsed to his knees, panting. "I didn't want to do that—!"
"Well that's showbiz, baby!" Jester barked, tossing a fake rose at him. The petals were razor blades.
He sauntered back to his podium, reshuffling the blood-soaked deck. "Round two? Or are we calling it a night and going straight to the funeral?"
John looked up, eyes burning with something new — defiance.
He reached for another card.
Jester's giggle turned into a low, delighted growl.
"Ooooh... this is gonna be delicious."
John's hand shook as he drew the next card from Jester's deck. The blood-slick surface stuck to his fingers for a second too long, like it didn't want to let go.
He flipped it.
The card read:
"Laughing Room: Make 'Em Smile."
Jester gasped, practically vibrating with glee.
"OHHHH, this one's a scream! Literally! You're gonna love it. Or lose your lips!"
He leaned in close. "Pro tip: bring your A-game. These folks are a tough crowd."
The floor beneath John dropped with a lurch. He fell—screaming—into a chute of red velvet and exposed bone until—
WHUMP.
He landed hard in a padded room — no windows, no doors, just walls covered in clown faces. Painted. Stitched. Screaming. Some were real. Some used to be.
A spotlight clicked on overhead, and a row of figures sat in theater seats that hadn't been there before.
They had no eyes. No mouths. Just stitched-on, Joker-like smiles.
Each of them wore faded carnival attire — once-festive, now soaked with mildew and something worse.
A microphone descended from the ceiling in front of John.
Jester's voice echoed overhead like a carny god
"Here's the game, Johnnyboy: Make the crowd laugh. One solid chuckle — and you live. Bomb the act… and we remove your funny bone — THROUGH YOUR NECK."
🎙️
John stood still, stunned. "You can't be serious—"
"You're on in five… four… three…"
drumroll
"Two… ONE! Show time!"
The spotlight burned hotter.
John stepped up to the mic.
"H-hi… I'm John. I—I guess this is my first set…"
Nothing.
He swallowed. "What do you call a clown with no nose?"
Silence.
"…Me. After this place is done with me."
One of the stitched-faced audience members tilted its head.
Another cracked its jaw open slightly. A dry wheeze escaped — something close to a laugh.
John tried again.
"What's red, white, and really pissed off?"
He paused, shaking.
"…You guys, if I bomb this joke."
One audience member snapped its head upward. The stitching on its mouth burst open.
It laughed. Gurgled. Loud.
The rest joined in — a hideous symphony of torn stitches and phlegmy chuckles, like corpses trying to cough up their lungs.
Jester burst in through a wall like a demented game show host, holding up a glittery sign that read:
🎉 YOU SURVIVED ROUND TWO! 🎉
Streamers fell. Confetti popped. One of the confetti cannons shot teeth.
"Give it up, folks, let's hear it for our rising star! He killed out there!"
John doubled over, gasping.
Jester grinned — or maybe the mask just looked that way. Hard to tell.
He twirled the deck again and offered it out.
"Ready for round three, my little chuckle nugget? Or do we move on to… sudden death?"
John looked up, blood on his shirt, dirt on his face, tears in his eyes…
And drew another card.
Jester giggled like a child holding a magnifying glass over ants.
"Ohhh, Johnny," he purred, "you're just dying to play."
To be continued.....