Nightmare Carnival

Skullpocket is, of course, a culling game. It’s not about singling out and celebrating a winner. It’s about thinning the herd.

Jonathan Wormcake does not appear to be listening to the story anymore. His attention is outside, on the darkening waters. Although her name has not come up yet, the Orchid Girl haunts this story as truly as any ghost. I wonder if it causes him pain. Grieving, to a ghoul, is a sign of weakness. It’s a trait to be disdained. The grieving are not fit for the world. I look at the hard, clean curve of his skull and I try to fathom what’s inside.

They were clever little ghouls, Uncle Digby said, and they kept to the outskirts and the shadows. They didn’t want to be discovered. A ghoul child looks a lot like a human child when seen from the corner of the eye. It’s true that they’re paler, more gaunt, and if you look at one straight on you’ll see that their eyes are like little black holes with nothing inside, but you have to pay attention to notice any of that. At the fair, no one was paying attention. There was too much else to see. So Wormcake and his friends were able to slip into the crowd without notice, and there they took in everything they could.

They were amazed by the striped, colorful tents, by the little booths with the competitive games, by the pens with pigs and mules, by the smells of cotton candy, frying oil, animal manure, electricity — everything was new and astonishing. Most of all, though, they marveled at the humans in their excitable state: walking around, running, hugging, laughing, and clasping their hands on each other’s shoulders. Some were even crushing their lips together in a grotesque human version of a kiss!

Here the children laugh. They are young enough still that all kissing is grotesque.

There were many little ones, like themselves, and like you. They were swarming like hungry flies, running from tent to tent, waiting in lines, crackling with an energy so intense you could almost see it arcing from their hair.

It was quite unsettling to see humans acting this way. It was like watching someone indulging in madness. They were used to seeing humans in repose, quiet little morsels in their thin wooden boxes. Watching them like this was like watching a little worm before it transforms into a beautiful fly, but worse, because it was so much louder and uglier.

A little girl raises her hand. She seems angry. When Uncle Digby acknowledges her, she says, “I don’t think flies are beautiful. I think they’re nasty.”

“Well, I think you’re the one who’s nasty,” Uncle Digby retorts. “And soon you’ll be filling the little tummies of a thousand thousand flies, and they’ll use you to lay eggs and make maggots, and shit out the bits of you they don’t want. So maybe you should watch your horrid little mouth, child.”

The little girl bursts into shocked tears, while the children around her stay silent or laugh unhappily.

Wormcake stirs beside me for the first time since the story began. “Uncle,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” says Uncle Digby. “Dear child, please forgive me. Tonight is a glorious night. Let’s get back to the story, shall we?”

The children are quiet. Uncle Digby forges ahead.

So they made their way amongst the humans, disturbed by their antics. They knew that it was only a matter of time before the humans all reached their true state, the condition in which they would face the long dark inside the earth; but this brief, erratic explosion of life stirred a fascinated shame in the ghouls.

“It’s vile,” said Stubblegut. “We shouldn’t be seeing this. It’s indecent.”

“It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen,” said young master Wormcake, and with the courage that had always separated him from the others, he strode out onto the midway, arms a-swing and head struck back like the world’s littlest worm lord.