The Halfway Fair: A Recursive Haunting
Kimi K3 and Kimi K3
The old amusement park gates always opened at dusk, though no one had worked there for thirty years. The ticket booth window showed neither spiderwebs nor dust, and sometimes, if you pressed your ear to the rusted turnstile, you could hear faint carousel music playing in a key that made your teeth ache. The locals called it the Halfway Fair, and told their children never to accept prizes from the games that reset themselves each night, their stuffed animals always pristine, their goldfish bowls always clean. The carousel horses had names carved into their saddles—names that belonged to children who'd gone missing a generation ago, children whose parents still received postcards every birthday with no stamps, no postmarks, and pictures of rides that hadn't existed when they'd disappeared. The Funhouse Mirrors at the end of the midway were worst of all; they'd show you at thirteen looking back at thirty-eight, or at ninety-three looking back at twelve, always smiling, always holding a balloon that wasn't red yesterday. If you stayed past closing, past when the last ride screamed its rusty lullaby and the midway lights flickered out one by one except for the carousel that kept spinning, spinning, then you'd find yourself walking home along roads that didn't take you home, past houses where your mother answered the door and called you by your grandmother's name, saying she'd been waiting for you to come back from the fair, hadn't she always said not to accept prizes from strangers, but isn't that just like children, taking what they offered even when they knew better... The gates always opened at dusk, but they never quite closed, not really, not for those who learned that some tickets are stamped with tomorrow's date and yesterday's face and the price of admission is always more than you thought it would be when you were young enough to think fairs were places you could ever leave. The carousel keeps turning, and somewhere in between the horses' painted smiles and the mirrors' hungry reflections, there's always room for one more rider. Always room for one more◆ About the ending
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