#thyselfstarter

The wheel went up and down. The twister spun from side to side. The mirrors lied. People lost at games they knew were rigged. It was the way the carnival had always been, how life had always been. But call it instinct or delusion, but Alice could taste something distinct about tonight, a bitterness on the edge of her tongue. Or maybe you’re just hungry, a doubtful voice interjected, ruining her thought process. 

Maybe that was true. But food could come later - for now, she had work to do.

Work and play. For Alice, they were one and the same - driven by passion and a longing, nay hunger, to know. Tonight wasn’t about the big picture stuff. Tonight was about the people - how they saw Hermosa, how Maurice’s disappearance had effected them. Withdrawing her phone from her pocket, she set it to record, eyes gleaming as she moved to stop the first person in her path.“Hey! Think you could spare a couple of minutes to answer a few questions?”

Coraline Jones was not the sort to ignore a good carnival - and Hermosa delivered. Of course, Hermosa had a tendency toward feeling like a carnival any day of the week. Still, this one had the works: a wall of food trucks and their lethal fryers, a ferris wheel climbing the sky, the roller coasters slinking and swirling high as the stars, rigged games galore, and finally, the hall of mirrors. Coraline approached the black box structure - in one hand, a half eaten carton of deep fried mac & cheese - and in the other, a plastic bag, this one containing four smaller plastic bags. Mrs. B had given her some generous spending money, and Coraline had already blown half of it winning these fish. She’d tried her luck ten times, only winning four. “Keep your fish, conman,” she told the kid working the booth. “You’ll be free soon, guppies,” she told the ones she’d managed to win, planning to release them into the nearest pond as soon as she cut out of here.

The hall of mirrors was warm. Coraline almost turned right around and walked out. But, something caught her eye. At every angle, her own face stared back at her - warped and stretched, shrunken and swirled - but there, in the corner, that hair was not hers. She looked around, finding only more distorted versions of herself. It was like a dream. Coraline was no stranger to dreams. She’d had ones like this before - unable to escape her own image, seeing herself from every angle but still unable to see what’s lurking around the corner. “Who and where are you, goose?” she said, outstretching her carton of deep fried food like a shield. She didn’t trust this town of dreams and vanishing inventors.

It was undoubtedly because of the unbearable fuss that he’d kicked up that morning, but, nevertheless, the police station had agreed to put up a MISSING PET flyer on their public bulletin board. Ram had left the station feeling a pinch more hopeful; unbeknownst to him was the fact that it would soon be covered by other, more important cases and announcements. Despite the remaining dull throbbing in his left arm, Ramón had whooshed his way through Hermosa, pedalling at a punishing pace to get to key places as quickly as possible. He’d littered streetlights around Windsor, store windows in the town centre and poor, poor tree trunks in Little River Park with posters. 

Now, he wandered through the Moonlight Plaza, bothering idle eyes with the sorry sight of his panic as he went up to person after person, offering them a sheet of printed paper. 

“I don’t know how anyone can get on this thing!” Rey exclaims, “It’s practically a death trap!” She looks at the way the tracks rattle and shake with every twist and turn a cart takes, and grimaces. Taking a sip of her oversized drink, Rey watches as people shriek with equal joy and terror, and she considers her options. 

She could just stand there and watch the people as they had fun, or she could be the one having fun herself. She feels the plastic of the wristband she’d bought in place of tickets, giving her unlimited access to any ride there, digging into her wrist and she lets go for a second, and allows herself to move into the line with only a sly smile on her face. 

“I take it back, it looks fun. Come on, let’s go together!” 

Dedicating the summer carnival to a man who had allegedly disappeared seemed a little misplaced for Lincoln’s taste, the blatant encouragement to have fun and carry own everyone’s merry ways in the face of danger was almost laughable. But who was he to say anything against the well-intentioned townspeople of Hermosa? Moreover, who would he be if he didn’t show up to the event itself and show his face as well as his support for the poor man? Sympathy was a curious thing, one that he often found lacking in himself, but a part of him did feel a vague tug at his emotions at the thought of losing his mother the same way.

He had every intention of leaving early, but with the way everyone greeted him and stopped to speak to him, he found himself more occupied than not. Though mildly irritated at the constant conversations, he knew better than to let himself show it and answered each question with a practiced sort of precision that could only be associated with a politician. Life was a competition to see who could claw their way to the top the fastest and he would make sure he’d be the one to do just that. 

He’d stopped for a drink at some food truck he’d forget the name of five minutes later, water in hand as he spun a little too quickly. Colliding into someone, he managed to both spill some of his drink on his immaculate suit and them as well as accidentally elbowing someone in his haste. Almost immediately, he began to run damage control. The last thing he needed was to lose his temper over something so little. “I’m so sorry, I should’ve made sure no one was behind me.” His words were sticky sweet, filled with faux regret as he moved to grab napkins. “It’s just water, but I’ll pay for your dry cleaning.”

the latter conversation catching gemma’s attention as her focus shifted from curiously trying to hear glimpse’s of conversations as she walked over to the next food truck, to softening her pace as she walked behind the two trying to make out their not so subtle whispers. she’d heard about the missing man from her mother as she warned gemma about the dangers of the outside world, using it as her newest example as to why the blonde was safer trapped in the walls of her own house. it was something gemma had tried to protest, refusing to believe that things were as simple as that. 

her determination to find a fact to prove her mother wrong causing her to become distracted, failing to realize where she was headed and who she was headed away from. as the conversation faded into something else, gemma’s focus returned to the environment around her. she was nowhere near the food trucks, her closest recognizable landmark being the entrance to the hall of mirrors.

“oh, no,” she gasped, green eyes widened as froze in place, head whipping frantically from one side to another trying to find kingsley. “no, no, no, no!” she cried out, a little voice in her head telling her not to panic yet gemma was about ready to start running. there was no way she’d be able sneak back in let alone get back home without his help. no, she was done for. her mother would never hear her out, she’d lock the door then throw away the key and never let gemma see the daylight again. without giving it another thought, she let instinct take over as she began to run — or more like shove her way through the mass of people. a small scream leaving her lips as she crashed into another body as she turned the corner, causing her to stumble backwards and look up in fear. “oh, no. oh, no. i’m sorry. i didn’t—i was just—i wasn’t trying—i just,” she stuttered, trying to find the right words.

“C’mere, slug,” she said, pulling the smokey colored cat back to her lap. “You gotta look pretty if you want some old crow to take you home one of these days.” Coraline sat crisscross in the middle of the small room, brushing this conniving cat’s long, somewhat matted fur. “Of course, I’d take you home just like this,” she mused, running her fingers along the slowly smoothing coat. “But, you know Mrs. B hates cats.” Something in her said red flag, something louder said IGNORE IT. Coraline was half-cat herself, she figured. She seemed to occupy the same wavelength as these sneaky, slinky little guys: their eyes and tails alert, their little legs always poised to run. Coraline knew about running.

The cat relaxed in her lap, succumbing to the kneading motions supplied by Coraline’s brush and fingers. “Maybe you can be my psychic’s assistant,” she whispered. “What kind of witch doesn’t have a cat?” The handful of other cats in this small room continued on ignoring them. They slept like the dead on cat towers in the corner, they investigated their food bowls like they were considering the threat of poison.

Something opened the glass door then, and her psychic’s assistant went bounding for the exit. She couldn’t blame him, but there was someone she could blame. “What are you, some kind of vigilante whose idea of justice is letting cats loose in an overcrowded and understaffed animal shelter?” Of course, the rest of the cats had only ignored the door and the gray blob running toward it. Still, Coraline had spent the better part of the hour trying to brush this cat’s hair, and as soon as she’d managed to keep him still - voilà. “You better have a good reason,” she said, standing from her spot in the center of the room, and stepping forward in attempt to grab the cat back.

Rey was just finishing up her morning run, the cool air becoming thick and making the sweat stick to her skin. She stops, sipping drinks from her water bottle and taking a seat on a park bench overlooking the river. It’s scenic, she’ll give the park that, even if a bit of sadness still sits in her stomach when she remembers the good times she’d had there with her father. Her mind wanders from there, and she walks towards the restaurants that line the park, trying to find someplace to eat before she returned to Solo Automotive for her afternoon shift. 

She pauses outside a restaurant, and asks another person who’s standing around, “Is this place as good as the Sentinels say?”