The poles extended too far into the ground and the soil was too loose. People disappeared just frequently enough that I couldn’t ignore it. I hated the carnival because I saw it as the

machine it was instead of what it pretended to be. The tricks didn’t work on me, literally, would not work for me. I couldn’t understand the appeal, but the kids seemed to be having fun.

No one showed any signs of distress right up until the fire started. 

To her credit, there was no quicker way to clear the place out. Even against the night sky, the dark smoke came up in columns. As soon as the first person noticed, everyone else did too. 
Everyone still able to move - not rooted to the fairground - did so expeditiously. 

I only saw June for a second, had a conversation I couldn’t recount even if I wanted to. She mostly told me not to catch on fire. There was little time for anything else.

We went into the tent and this is when things begin to get fuzzy for me. I know what I saw. I understand it conceptually. But the actual memory of seeing it has completely escaped me.

Probably because I saw more than I was supposed to, ending up experiencing it in short seizures, and have blacked out the memory of what it was like. If they’re lucky, the bodies

experienced the same amnesia and will have escaped almost unharmed. 


What I must’ve seen was the bodies lined up in rows and their sacks strung up on hooks, with umbilical cords carrying sugar to them and breaking away tissue from their bodies, recycling 

it back into the system. I must’ve seen them up close and seen through the thin red film that separated me from them and I must’ve realized that the ones inside couldn’t have been any 

older than me, weren’t any taller, that their eyes were still open. And I guess my hands were shaking too bad to hold the knife because Ezekiel took it from me and he was the one who 

split the membrane open and dragged all the still-living bodies out. 


Some other things happened after that, presumably. I am told they happened. Ezekiel’s memories are fully intact, but he won’t write more about it. He told me that the entire time I was 

speaking under my breath. June said I kept going on about how "inappropriate" the whole thing was. Lola said I called her and that things became difficult as a result. 


I don’t remember that, but I do remember when she walked out from between the curtains and out into the burning grounds with a fearful nonchalance. Seeing Lola again was not what I 

expected it to be. I had years worth of memories of her alive and about three hours of her dead. I had almost forgotten. I’d been prepared to find her at the bottom of a ditch somewhere, 

in the same miserable state she’d been in throughout most of our time at the cabin. But she wasn’t. She looked much better than she had in a long time. She had begun to grow into herself. 


Witnessing this was not a positive experience, to be completely honest. It wasn’t that I liked seeing her miserable, but up until then I hadn’t realized just how much my pity had curbed 

my fear. There was the same darkness behind her eyes that there always had been, but not the same gravity. She’d gotten better at holding it. I got the awful sense that now she would not 

be chained down to anything, that she would just be completely unhinged. 


But the tethers of human connection were still there. When she saw me, her eyes lit up. I saw she wasn’t angry and I was horrified by the scale of my own relief.