Story length: approx. 2,000 words
Genre: Romantic literary fiction
Trigger warning(s): Descriptions of anxiety & panic attack
When Charlotte told me she loved carnivals and circuses, I bought two tickets for this weekend — an unofficial first date. Unofficial because I didn’t specifically ask her to go on a date with me; we’ve known each other for a little while now, but we haven’t quite made a connection yet. I don’t know if she’s assumed this is a date or not, but there’s something about that light in her eyes whenever she looks at me. Our mutual friend is convinced she has feelings for me — that, perhaps, she’s too scared to tell me, just as I’m too scared to tell her.
Her face lights up the way a child’s does in the same situation — enthusiastic and wholly wrapped in the bright colours, the screams of excitement, and the battered meatiness of hot dogs on sticks. She’s a child experiencing the effects of all her senses for the first time, all at once. We play all the games, and I win her a few prizes. She squishes the plush elephant against my cheek, and its soft fabric scratches against my stubble. I already know elephants are her favourite animal, but she doesn’t know that I know.
She walks by herself to the bathroom, and I linger near the face-painting tables. A little girl offers me a smile, showing me her missing tooth, while the face-painter brushes her cheek with pink paint. I smile back. Behind her, there are three women dressed in colours and patterns that don’t match, their hair full of glitter and their arms full of flowers and candy. One hands a lollipop to the little girl, as big as her painted fairy princess face. Another of them approaches me, and I ask for a sunflower.
The little girl, licking her lollipop, asks me what I want to have painted on my face. I laugh and shake my head.
“Yeah, Joey,” Charlotte says as she joins us, “what are you going to get on your face?”
I hold the sunflower between my thumb and forefinger, twirling it slowly back and forth by its stem, offering it to her. She smiles and takes it, her soft fingers brushing mine.
“You should be a fairy princess like me!” the little girl exclaims.
Charlotte bends toward the little girl, resting her hands on her thighs. “You know what, sweetheart? I will be a fairy princess — just like you. I love fairies.”
“Me too!”
I’m pulled into this painting madness; the little girl insists that I be a fairy princess, too. The face-painter giggles and promises to use blue paint. Charlotte asks for purple paint and winks at me. I know that her favourite colour is red, but mine is purple.
The little girl’s mother finds her and apologises to us; we laugh, no need to say sorry, and take a photo with the little girl. Three fairy princesses. The blue paint hardens on my skin and crinkles whenever I smile.
We sit at a table to share a big bag of cotton floss. She asks me to put the sunflower in her hair. Her hair is soft, whispering gently around my fingers. Then we light up a cigarette each, and she moves to sit on the table surface with her feet on the seat, facing me.
The breeze swirls our cigarettes’ smoke into spirals — dancing, longing, yearning — then fading into the air. She stretches her arms behind her head to touch the sunflower in her hair, her cigarette resting between her lips.
“Sunflowers are my favourite,” she says.
“I know,” I reply.
She smiles.
We finish our cigarettes silently, and then I tear open the bag of cotton floss. She tears off a big piece and shoves it into my mouth. The sweet, pink clouds disintegrate on my tongue. The breeze blows a stray, dark lock of hair across her face, and I carefully tuck it behind her ear.
Then she points behind me.
“What’s that supposed to be?” she asks me, putting a chunk of cotton floss on her tongue.
It looks like something you’d go into on Halloween. The walls are painted black but scratched, as though a monster had dragged its claws across them. Hanging above the doorway are cobwebs made of frayed cotton, the homes of gigantic, black felt spiders with red pompoms for eyes. People line up at the door, and the carnival employee allows only a few inside at a time.
The sign above the door says The House of Fears.
“Looks… spooky,” I say, wriggling my fingers at her and exaggerating the O’s.
She wants to check it out, so she pushes the cotton floss into her bag and leads me by the hand. Her fingers are soft but cold — Australian skin that still can’t quite acclimatise to this English weather. We stand beneath the fake cobwebs, and she looks up at the felt spiders. Her lips stretch and she utters a mumbled throaty sound, shaking her head.
“Not a fan of spiders?” I ask, raising my eyebrow.
“I’m Australian,” she replies, “so, no, I am not a fan of spiders.”
She rubs the back of her neck. Her skin is prickling with goosebumps.
We file in behind a couple and their young son, and I suppose to myself that it can’t be that scary if a child can handle exploring it.
Above us, ghosts dangle their arms made of ripped, sheer fabric, reaching down to us. A mechanical witch cackles and flings its arms up. Charlotte lets out a gasp, her hand instinctively gripping my jacket. She looks up at me and chuckles. The jump-scare gets me, too, but I’m okay; I know I’m okay because I have to be — for her.
Fearlessly, the couple’s young son points at the mechanical witch and laughs. He jumps up in the air and waves his arms about, triggering the witch’s sensor. It cackles and flings its arms up again. He laughs again.
As we walk on, a mechanical zombie senses our presence and moans in a recorded, hoarse voice. She screams and backs into me, turning her head into my chest.
My fourth worse fear,” she mutters, her voice muffled by my clothing. “And, yes, I rank all my fears.”
“Zombies?” I ask, placing my hand gently on her lower back.
“Yes.” She looks up at me, resting her chin on my chest. “They could be real one day, Joey. You never know.”
The couple and their young son brush past me. The mechanical zombie doesn’t interest him.
I tuck a lock of her dark hair behind her ear. “You’re safe with me, Charlotte. No zombie’s gonna get you.”
She smiles.
I shield her eyes with my hand as we pass the mechanical zombie. I walk her with my other hand on her lower back, feeling the subtle curve of her spine through her clothing. She presses her hands over her ears and hums a song to drown out the groans of her fourth worst fear.
We emerge into a room of mirrors. The door behind us, keeping the mechanical zombie at bay, disappears into them. There’s no way out. She adjusts the sunflower in her hair while looking in one of them. I focus on how she tugs at her hair tie and tightens it again, tucks the loose, dark locks behind her ears, and carefully runs the length of her finger around the curl of her mascara-painted eyelashes.
My heartbeat increases inside the tightening of my ribcage. My throat dries out, and I struggle to swallow. There’s a lump in there — a golf ball hit and lost by a golfer, lodged somewhere between my airways and my vocal cords. I force my hands into my jacket pockets to hide their tremors.
“Joey,” she says, “why are the mirrors moving closer to me? I keep having to step back.”
I don’t answer her.
The room reduces in size. The mirrors close in on us. We are pushed ever closer until we are in a shaky, breathless, thundering-heartbeat embrace. From every angle, my pale, blue fairy princess reflection stares back at me through blurred vision. My skin prickles cold yet flushes hot as though someone has dropped both a pile of snow and a pile of coals onto me.
I am teleported back to a time when a five-year-old plays hide-and-seek with his sisters. He hides in an antique armoire. His sisters search for him. The armoire’s door is always ajar just a little. He closes it. It won’t open. It can’t open. It’s dark. He is strangled by the walls. Fur sleeves and silk hemlines reach out to him. He bashes his fist on the door. Tears sting his eyes. He screams. He trips on high-heeled shoes.
I teleport back. My ribcage tightens around my beating heart, squishing it through the gaps between each bone. The golf ball enlarges, daring me to try to breathe. My jacket pockets rattle to the rhythm of my hands’ tremors.
Her hand rests on my chest, over my heart, and she whispers, “Are you alright, Joey? Your heart’s racing.”
I try to swallow. The golf ball wriggles but stays in place. I don’t answer her. I can’t answer her. She cups her cold hands around my neck, tangling her fingers into my hair. Slowly, she brings my face down to hers. She touches her nose to mine.
“Hold me,” she whispers, breathy.
I press my hands onto her lower back, pressing her body closer to mine. My hands tremble in the folds of her jumper. Her fingers bend and stretch out in the tousles of my hair against my scalp.
“Smell the flowers,” she whispers. “Blow out the candles.”
My body shudders. My heart throbs, inching its way up my throat for a rendezvous with the golf ball. My lungs are weary, forgetting how to function.
“Breathe, Joey.” She moves her head slightly, her nose brushing across mine. “Smell the flowers; blow out the candles.”
I smell the flowers. Her warm breath sucks up into my lungs, a faint whiff of cotton floss and cigarettes. My chest expands with the breath. She places one hand over my heart again. My heart, disrupting its thundering beat, flutters.
I blow out the candles. My mouth forms an O and I release my breath. She’s not bothered that I just breathed on her. She nods, her nose moving against mine. My chest, deflated, begins to calm. My ribcage loosens.
“Again,” she whispers, pressing her fingertips gently into the fabric and flesh barring her touch from my heart.
I repeat it — I smell the flowers and blow out the candles, over and over and over. I close my eyes, and she closes hers. She whispers to me, Again, again, again, bending and stretching her fingers against my scalp. With each flower smelled, I take in her cotton-floss-and-cigarette breath. With each candle blown out, my heart slows, my chest opens, and the golf ball dislodges itself. The moment reaches into an eternity, wherein only she and I exist in this mirror-walled prison.
And then the mirrors retract.
“I’m proud of you, Joey,” she says.
She wipes a tear from my cheek with her thumb, a tear I didn’t even know was there. Her fingers release my hair and rest firmly around the side of my neck. I keep pressing my hands onto her lower back, holding her body close to mine, ignoring the fading tremors ringing out of my fingers.
“My number one worst fear,” I say.
She traces my jawline with the tip of her finger. Her other hand presses onto my chest, her cold touch forcing its way beneath the fabric. My heartbeat quickens again, beating against her soft fingers, but this time not out of fear.
I turn my head toward her, placing my lips on hers, tasting cotton floss and cigarettes. Our first kiss. The cold skin of her hand cups around my cheek, my stubble poking through the blue fairy princess mask, scratching her softness. In our embrace — in the calming silence of our mirror-walled world — I can hear her heartbeat. It’s as quick as mine.