The Unhappy Jester

The unhappy Jester stares at his reflection in a carnival funhouse mirror. He sees his clown clothing, a hectic motley of diamond and patchwork shapes in white, black, and blood-red. The Jester's dark and graying hair is tangled. His painted white skull-face, painted black eyebrows, and painted black mouth are distorted in the rectangular funhouse mirror, as if his face is melting. His dark eyes stare. He smiles and seems to snarl, with the expression of a madman. His jagged, uneven teeth are like the teeth of a crazed animal.                                                           
                                                             
The Jester is alone in the funhouse;the evening crowds have not yet arrived. He is alone to contemplate his madness and the terrible things he has done. Nobody else knows about the murders he has committed. Only the Jester knows about the secret passageways he built behind the glass panels of the funhouse. From behind these panels the Jester emerges to snatch solitary victims, pull them behind the glass, and slit their throats with a hunting knife sharp enough to kill with a single slash. His victims' frightened screams end when their throats are cut. Those searching the mirror maze for the source of the anguished cries find nothing.                                  
                                   
After the evening crowd leaves and the carnival shuts down, he takes the bodies of the dead to a burial spot he prepared behind the carnival grounds. Without ceremony, he buries them deep. He leaves their dismembered bodies, carved flesh, bloody organs, muscle, and axe-chopped bones and limbs to rot and putrefy under mounds of earth. But his victims' ghosts follow him to laugh in his ears and taunt him. Late at night, very late, he washes his clothes and knife blade of his victims' blood while he dreams of more murder. Oh Jester!                                                            
                                                             
The Jester hears the crowds arriving outside and slips behind a mirror into a passage, and out a back door. He locks the door and escapes into the New York early evening. On the carnival midway the Jester strides, black boots trampling on discarded carnival food and rubbish. At 6'4, 200 pounds he walks as a tall, thin harlequin of death, smiling a wicked smile, thinking insane thoughts. Bright carnival lights shine all around him, illuminating happy people of all ages - men, women, children. Sounds of the midway, laughing, shouting, screaming, the sounds of the merry-go-round and Ferris wheel, a mad jangle of 21st century noise rings into the night. Carnival dwarves and side show freaks greet him, while carnival music blares into the cold night like the music of a nightmare. A breeze chills him with its icy touch.                                                            
                                                             
"Come one, come all to the House of Crazy Mirrors, if you want a fright!" the Jester shouts as he turns, pointing back to the hall of mirrors from which he came. As he watches the hurried, chaotic crowd, he tries to remember why he went insane, so many years ago, so many delusions and twisted fantasies ago when the pain of madness began. Both God and Satan have turned against the Jester, not wanting him, shunning him. His only refuge is the shadow world of the carnival where he can be alone with his demented thoughts of torture and  
murder.                                                            
                                                             
The carnival boss now stands at the entrance to the House of Crazy Mirrors, grinning as he takes customers' money and hands them tickets. The Jester moves out of sight of the carnival boss and the customers. He makes his way to the back entrance of the House of Crazy Mirrors, unlocks then opens the back door, slips into a passageway, closes and locks the door behind him.                                                              
                                                             
The passage is lit with faint light bulbs and infested with rats. Blood from the Jester's victims stains the floor boards of the passageway. The Jester draws a gray, gleaming, cold, steel-blade knife from a sheath on a belt hidden under his costume. A sinister grin on his face, he admires the eight-inch long blade of the knife. From behind a one-way mirror he watches the happy crowd as they walk beneath the lights of the mirror maze, not knowing or suspecting the death that is so close. Laughing quietly, the Jester clutches the black handle of the knife with his right hand. An isolated victim appears. The Jester pushes open the glass panel, emerges from hiding, and attacks as the victim begins screaming.