The Carnival by D.C.Embers ( Halloween special)

Delilah peered out the open window and immediately felt something was wrong.

Not just with her apartment ,though that was part of it,but with the world itself. Colors seemed to pulse with an unnatural life; certain hues glowed with an almost radioactive intensity while others had been drained to ash. It was as if Tim Burton himself had taken a paintbrush to the whole of nature, saturating the oranges and purples until they hummed.

Yet the street below betrayed nothing unusual. Jerry from across the way raked leaves into neat piles, wearing his usual flannel. Cars passed. A dog barked. No one else seemed to notice that the sky held a bruised violet tinge, or that the shadows under the pine trees had grown too long for this time of morning.

"It looks like a Halloween special out there," she whispered.

Somehow, despite her internal calendar screaming that she'd lost time, the scene outside looked like the platonic ideal of October. The leaves blazed in impossible shades—crimson, pumpkin orange, sulfur yellow, and even a few that shimmered an iridescent purple. A brisk wind carried the scent of woodsmoke and candied apples, cool enough for sweaters but not yet demanding heavy coats that winters required.

Delilah backed away from the window, her bare feet cold against the floorboards.

"Okay," she mumbled, the word becoming a mantra. "Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,”

One of those frat guys had slipped something into her drink. That was the logical explanation. A bad batch of whatever was circulating the party, some recreational alchemists research chemical that was making her trip twelve hours later. She'd hydrate. She'd eat something. She'd go to the ER if it didn't wear off by noon.

Then the chill hit her—not from the window, but from somewhere deeper. It traced her spine like a fingernail.

She turned slowly.

Her laptop sat right where she'd left it, but the device had been changed. The soft cosmic light had been replaced by something sinister—a pulsing, blood-red aura that seemed to emanate from the plastic casing itself. The screen, when she dared to look, glowed an unnatural ectoplasmic green with the title of one of her stories The Carnival by D.C.Embers written during a session of blackout drinking during one lonely Halloween night. If her parents had been there, they would have crossed themselves and spoken of possession. They would have forsworn technology entirely and dragged her to the nearest church.

Delilah wasn't ruling out possession yet either.

This was harder to dismiss as the side effect of some drug dealer's illicit merchandise. You didn't hallucinate specific, consistent details like this. You didn't feel the temperature drop ten degrees near a possessed-looking piece of consumer electronics. Cold sweat fell down her brow, looking for something to steady herself.

That put her thoughts onto her phone.

She fumbled for it on the nightstand, her hands trembling. The lock screen greeted her with a date that made her stomach clench: October seventh.

It was the beginning of the month. It is practically the beginning of the academic year. If her phone was correct—and the calendar app, and the timestamp on her messages—she had somehow traveled backward. The party had been last night, or so she thought, but the date suggested she'd lost weeks. Or gained them. Or...

Salt in the wound, she thought. The whole year warts and all starting all over again. Her academic progress reset to basically zero.

She opened her messages.

The reply came faster than it should have, the notification sound warping into something like a pipe organ in her still compromised perception.

Normal.The word seemed to writhe on the screen like worms in the dirt.

Delilah set the phone down and noticed something she hadn't before: a flyer, wedged beneath her door. She must have missed it in her panic but odder still the mailboxes were out by the road, nobody slid flyers under these doors. Not since her landlord bit that pizza guy becuase .... well she didn't quite remeber why. For some reason the bite itself felt like the more important part of the story to her rather then the reasons why. The terror of the chase was exciting her for some reason.

She crossed the room and picked it up.

The paper felt wrong—too heavy, almost leathery, with a texture that made her think of something found in a dungeon. The design was vintage circus, all twisted Art Nouveau lettering and crimson dot illustrations like those old comic books she would see sometimes. At the top, a ringmaster leered out from beneath a towering top hat, his coat the color of fresh drawn blood, his smile showing too many shark-like teeth, and the artist was very generous about what was between his legs.

THE CARNIVAL OF DARK DELIGHTS, the banner read. ADMISSION: YOUR INHIBITIONS. and a modest fee of 12.95 per person

Below the ringmaster, the attractions were listed in ink that seemed to twist and dance when she wasn't looking directly at it:

The Husband and Wife Strongman Act—Watch Them Lift Burdens You Won't Believe.

Madame Pyrrha, Fire-Eater and Fortune Teller.

The Great Vaati, Magician of the Macabre.

The Stable—Featuring Pony Girls, Sol and Luna Trained to Perfection.

The Giggling Gaggle of Clowns—They'll Tie You In Knots of Laughter!

And at the center, taking up half the page in lurid detail: a woman bound in chains, collared, her body arched in a pose that could have been agony or ecstasy—or some alchemical combination of both. Tears streaked her face, but her eyes were rolled back in rapture. The artist had captured every link in her restraints with photorealistic accuracy.

Delilah stared at the image longer than she intended to. Long enough to notice that it looked like the woman's chest was rising and falling. That her tears were fresh, leaving wet tracks on the paper.

The flyer felt like it was moving.

She dropped it. The paper fluttered to the floor, landing face-up, the bound woman's eyes now open and staring directly at her. Before being blown away in the wind.

From outside, somewhere in the too-colorful distance, the sound of calliope music began to play.