CABAL PLAYS WITH DOLLS AND HORST BROADENS HIS VOCABULARY
Fairs and carnivals are not, by nature, profound experiences. They are there to amuse and distract, to draw the citizens from their grey workaday lives into something that has a flavour of the extraordinary. The lights dazzle, the sideshows amaze, the rides excite, the stalls frustrate, but all pleasantly. It is a jolly pickpocket and a charismatic confidence trickster. The rubes … the suckers … the customers know full well that their wallets and purses are slowly deflating every second that they walk upon the fairground, but the customers … the suckers … the rubes would have it no other way. They do not mind being taken for a ride, as long as the ride is fun. This is the nature of fairs and carnivals.
The Cabal Bros. Carnival was something special, though. Something unusual. Something different. Whereas a normal carnival is a shallow, ephemeral experience intended to take average persons out of the mundane world and fool them—for as long as they are prepared to be fooled—into believing that fun really does travel the highways and byways as a bolus of giggles and glee, the Cabal Carnival wore that belief as a mask. It was, however, merely a facsimile of a façade. Behind the wide, welcoming smile was a mantrap baited with desires and delight, pleasures and popcorn, hedonism and hot dogs of dubious content. Satan, who was after all something of an authority in matters of temptation, was quite right when he had said that the carnival lowered the defences of those who walked through its gate. Everybody comes to the fair to have a good time in the full expectation of being ripped off at some point. All that was different here was the scale of the loss.
But all this is theory. Examples are more salutary.
“We’re here to have fun.” It was said in a tone that indicated that the alternative was a split lip.
Rachel hoped it wouldn’t come to that; the last one had only just healed. “I am having fun,” she said, and smiled. It wasn’t a very convincing smile, but it showed sufficient compliance for Ted to uncurl the fist that had unconsciously formed at his side. His hands spent a lot of their time balled.
He looked around. Before them spread the carnival, a whirling chaos of sound and light and smells that promised so much. Calliope, neon, and the scent of fresh popcorn created a new world: a place of wonders and excitement and fun. Yes, its true function was to tempt to contentiousness, to blasphemy, argumentation, and murder, but you could also win coconuts.
Ted regarded it all with the sour expression of a man who expects disappointment, and usually deals with it by putting the source in the hospital. He held out his hand towards Rachel, and she took it quickly, allowing herself to be drawn through the gates and onto the fairground proper. As they walked through, they passed the farmer on whose land the carnival was set up.
He stood, thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets, looking very pleased with himself, smiling and nodding at everybody who paused at the gate to buy tickets as if he owned the carnival, too. In truth, he was keeping a headcount, partially to make sure that he wasn’t cheated out of his rent, but mainly for the sheer pleasure of running the steadily increasing number through some simple mental arithmetic and revelling in the hefty sum that popped out starboard of the equals sign. He would doubtless have been less happy if he had known what was waiting for him in the shrouded future, at a time shortly after he left his deathbed. If he’d been under the impression that the Ministry of Agriculture was addicted to unnecessary paperwork, first contact with Arthur Trubshaw would set things in perspective.
In the wide paths that led between attractions, Ted and Rachel walked. Had a curious bystander watched them for a few minutes, he would have observed that it was not immediately obvious why the couple had come at
Fairs and carnivals are not, by nature, profound experiences. They are there to amuse and distract, to draw the citizens from their grey workaday lives into something that has a flavour of the extraordinary. The lights dazzle, the sideshows amaze, the rides excite, the stalls frustrate, but all pleasantly. It is a jolly pickpocket and a charismatic confidence trickster. The rubes … the suckers … the customers know full well that their wallets and purses are slowly deflating every second that they walk upon the fairground, but the customers … the suckers … the rubes would have it no other way. They do not mind being taken for a ride, as long as the ride is fun. This is the nature of fairs and carnivals.
The Cabal Bros. Carnival was something special, though. Something unusual. Something different. Whereas a normal carnival is a shallow, ephemeral experience intended to take average persons out of the mundane world and fool them—for as long as they are prepared to be fooled—into believing that fun really does travel the highways and byways as a bolus of giggles and glee, the Cabal Carnival wore that belief as a mask. It was, however, merely a facsimile of a façade. Behind the wide, welcoming smile was a mantrap baited with desires and delight, pleasures and popcorn, hedonism and hot dogs of dubious content. Satan, who was after all something of an authority in matters of temptation, was quite right when he had said that the carnival lowered the defences of those who walked through its gate. Everybody comes to the fair to have a good time in the full expectation of being ripped off at some point. All that was different here was the scale of the loss.
But all this is theory. Examples are more salutary.
“We’re here to have fun.” It was said in a tone that indicated that the alternative was a split lip.
Rachel hoped it wouldn’t come to that; the last one had only just healed. “I am having fun,” she said, and smiled. It wasn’t a very convincing smile, but it showed sufficient compliance for Ted to uncurl the fist that had unconsciously formed at his side. His hands spent a lot of their time balled.
He looked around. Before them spread the carnival, a whirling chaos of sound and light and smells that promised so much. Calliope, neon, and the scent of fresh popcorn created a new world: a place of wonders and excitement and fun. Yes, its true function was to tempt to contentiousness, to blasphemy, argumentation, and murder, but you could also win coconuts.
Ted regarded it all with the sour expression of a man who expects disappointment, and usually deals with it by putting the source in the hospital. He held out his hand towards Rachel, and she took it quickly, allowing herself to be drawn through the gates and onto the fairground proper. As they walked through, they passed the farmer on whose land the carnival was set up.
He stood, thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets, looking very pleased with himself, smiling and nodding at everybody who paused at the gate to buy tickets as if he owned the carnival, too. In truth, he was keeping a headcount, partially to make sure that he wasn’t cheated out of his rent, but mainly for the sheer pleasure of running the steadily increasing number through some simple mental arithmetic and revelling in the hefty sum that popped out starboard of the equals sign. He would doubtless have been less happy if he had known what was waiting for him in the shrouded future, at a time shortly after he left his deathbed. If he’d been under the impression that the Ministry of Agriculture was addicted to unnecessary paperwork, first contact with Arthur Trubshaw would set things in perspective.
In the wide paths that led between attractions, Ted and Rachel walked. Had a curious bystander watched them for a few minutes, he would have observed that it was not immediately obvious why the couple had come at
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