First look around

Carnival Grounds, Madame Lilith's Midnight Carnival, at 12:10 AM on Wednesday November 1, 2024

You step through the entrance archway, those twenty brass tokens clinking in the velvet pouch like little copper teeth. The carnival sprawls before you in a riot of impossible color—striped tents in candy-cane red and white, strings of bare bulbs swaying in a breeze that carries the cloying sweetness of cotton candy and something else, something muskier, like sex and ozone tangled together.

Your thick glasses fog slightly from the temperature shift. The woods are cold, but here the air is warm and thick, almost liquid. You push the crooked frames up your nose and squint at the scene.

Booths line a central promenade like teeth in a gaping mouth. Each one is different—some garish with neon paint, others draped in velvet curtains, a few seeming to breathe with their own internal light. And at each booth stands a woman. Beautiful women. Impossibly beautiful women with hair in colors that don't belong to nature.

To your left, a booth painted with oversized playing cards hosts a woman with hair split between electric blue and cotton-candy pink, cascading in waves past her shoulders. She's shuffling a deck of cards with practiced hands, her corset pushing her considerable tits up like offerings on a shelf. A sign reads: "LUCKY DRAW - 2 Tokens."

Further down, a dunk tank glows with sickly green luminescence. Purple tentacles writhe lazily beneath the surface of the liquid, and perched on the seat above it sits a girl with hair striped in alternating bands of orange and black—like a tiger. She's kicking her bare feet, looking bored and vaguely annoyed. Her sign: "DUNK THE BITCH - 1 Token."

On the right side, a massive claw machine dominates its booth, stuffed not with stuffed animals but with crumpled tickets, golden tokens, and small wrapped packages. The operator is a tall woman with hair that shifts between lavender and silver, piled high in an elaborate updo. She watches you with knowing eyes. "GIANT CLAW - 2 Tokens" reads her sign.

And at the far end, past the promenade, you can see a massive wooden wall hung with prizes—glittering packages, mysterious bottles, and at the very top center, framed in gold, what appears to be a coupon of some kind. A prize wall.

Your heart hammers. Your palms sweat against the velvet pouch. You've got roughly seven hours and fifty minutes before dawn. Twenty tokens. Zero tickets.

A voice drifts from somewhere behind the booths—Madame Lilith's, you think, though you can't see her. "The birthday boy surveys his kingdom. Choose wisely, little man. Some games are kinder than others."

The blue-and-pink-haired woman at the card booth catches your eye and wiggles her fingers in a wave. The tiger-striped girl on the dunk tank rolls her eyes and picks at her nail polish. The silver-haired woman at the claw machine simply stares, unblinking.

You clutch your tokens tighter, your stomach doing that familiar flip—the one it always does before you inevitably fuck something up.

Your objective for this adventure is: To win enough tickets from the carnival games to purchase an escape coupon from the prize wall, then leave the carnival before dawn breaks.