The Funfair of Terror

John opened his crusty, sleep driven eyes, and went to roll over to look at the alarm clock. However as he moved he found himself stuck to the bed, in fact it wasn't his bed at all but a hard board and his hands and feet were bound by ropes to it tightly.

Where was he, he thought to himself trying to adjust his eyes to the dark lit tent like arena he seemed to be in. What had happened? He had gone to bed last night as normal only to find himself now in what looked like a deserted funfair big top, tied to a board that was being held up vertically so he could see all around the tent.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw one of his worst nightmares, a little monkey in a red and white striped fez, was slowly riding a tricycle towards him, clapping a pair of symbols like a manic toy he used to get scared of as a kid and always hated seeing. 

The monkey got closer and closer and as he did, the speed of his symbol clapping got louder and louder, John tried to shut his eyes but he found he no longer could. Somehow as he had opened them clips from above his forehead had reached down to pin his eyelids fully open. He was wide awake and not even able to close his eyes to escape the manic monkey clapping and slamming the symbols together. Louder and louder they got, as he got closer and closer to John, the evil little beady monkey eyes wide open and staring directly at him.

“Get away from me”, John tried to cry out but all that he heard was a rasping gush of stale bed  breath.

This was when he noticed an arm was grabbing his own left forearm tightly. He tried to move his head but couldn't.

“I wouldn't struggle if I were you”, it will only make your heart beat faster, causing the mixture of barbiturates and formaldehyde to quicken it's action”. Formaldehyde, what was going on, was he going to become a new Damien Hirst installation.

“Yes you are”, came the reply from the side of his head. A crisp, dark and deep voice that he could only hear and not see the speaker. “A fine exhibition for our Funfair of Terror you will make indeed” it followed up with. “Don't worry, we all become art at some stage, some become art pieces like you, and others become dancing skeleton's, once the maggots have done their work, look!”, he felt the arm release from his arm and saw a black sagging draped wrist point up to the roof. He followed the hand with his pinned open eyes to see a row of skeletons shaking and dancing to silence, hung in a horizontal row.  They were not nice white fake skeletons he was used to seeing at fun-fairs No these were real, human skeleton bones, half were still decomposing with rotting flesh hanging off their breast plates and ribs. The row of skeletons shook along as a tune started playing from the corner of the tent.

He looked over towards the sound of the music only to see a white cloth draped, woman with a see through head, and what looked like skeleton hands playing a piano. The woman was playing as if she were in a concert, hitting down hard on the keys as her emotions ran deep, and the rusty piano tunes were played out of her ancient instrument into the air.

It was a concerto of death, as the skeletons all started dancing along in front of John in unison. They were actually dancing, as bits of mouldy flesh dropped from their bodies onto the floor. One bag of bones had a large maggot riven piece of flesh hanging by a strand of tissue from it's rib before falling to the floor right in front of John.

It was then he suddenly noticed the sound of rustling beneath him as giant rats with pointy party hats tied to their heads scurried about and headed for the meat. Their sharp grey poisonous teeth ripped at the flesh tearing it apart, as if it were a plastic bag and being torn by multiple people at the same time.

“Don't worry, I won't let the rats eat you”, came the voice from the side again, as John started to feel the insides of his body tighten from the formaldehyde. It was only the dulling sensation from the barbs that took the edge off the pain but it hurt, it hurt a lot.

“Why, why are you doing this to me?” John tried to speak, knowing nothing would come out of his mouth but that somehow the mysterious man would hear him.

“Why, well that is a deep and philosophical question John”, came the reply “But to be honest, I am an artist, and this is how I do my work”.

It was then a loud symbol crashed right next to his feet. John looked down and saw the mad crazy monkey circling around the bottom of the board on his bike as the rats scurried out of his way. The monkey's little red and white Fez was tilted to one side and he looked at John with his dark beady eyes as he bashed his symbols louder and louder, seemingly to accompany the white woman’s piano playing, which was also getting louder and more annoying. Both were out of tune with each other and the combined sound was agonising as hell to listen to.

Why was this happening to him, John thought, he had done nothing wrong, he had been a good Catholic boy, maybe a bit too good to that dirty old Priest at boarding school, but that was not his fault. He was a young kid and didn't know better and those old “celibate” men took advantage of the boys all the time. Year after year his parents happily paid them thousands of pounds to keep fondling their son and ensure he stayed out of their way all year just so they could go cruising and skiing all around the world.

It wasn't exactly Hogwarts but it was still full of old bearded men in robes waving their magic wands about at the kids after prayers and hymns on a Sunday.

Bang, bang, bang, the symbols clapped and the woman started singing an old Irish sailors song from a far as the skeletons all jangled their feet synchronously badly in tune.

John was feeling hot and it was getting harder to breath now, the formaldehyde must have hit his lungs as he started to freeze up.

The sounds of the funfair tent were so loud he wished he could tear his own ears off. The awful racket of piano and monkey symbols were all too much to bear.

“What have I done to deserve this?”, he breathed slowly through his lips, a silent question but one that he knew the man would hear.

“Why, why, why!” the man’s voice got angrier and angrier and then his arm wrapped around Johns chest and span the board around to face him.

John was shocked for what he saw was no man, for within the dark cloth and barely lit air, he saw not an old man or dirty priest but his girlfriend's face staring back at him. He was staring at his bird, Sarah, as the sounds of mad monkeys and dancing skeleton's accompanying the ghost women’s out of tune sailors song got louder and louder.

“You forgot to do the fucking washing up after you staggered in from the pub in the middle of the night you unthoughtful bastard!”, shouted the voice directly into Johns face, “You think you can go out all night drinking and then come home at 3am, cook a fry up, forget to turn the gas off. Then set off the fire alarm, waking me up? And you didn't even do the fucking dishes!” It was his girlfriend's face yet a man's voice but it was definitely the anger of Sarah who had been woken last night when he had stumbled in from the working men’s club in the early hours.

“You are useless, a useless man John Andrew Davies!” it cried loudly as John breathed deeply trying to get air into his lungs.

This was the end, he could see it coming, mad monkeys and a mad mirror image of Sarah with all her anger being directed straight at him. He could do no more as he took his last breath as the formaldehyde froze his lungs turning him immediately into a new installation piece. As his breath dissipated he wondered whether he would be cut in half like Damien Hirst's cow, “Mother and Child divided” and floated in water in the Tate modern for people to walk between. Maybe he would be worth millions to some rich weirdo art collector.

As John struggled one last time, Sarah was lying in bed next to him, forcing a pillow down on his drunken head, suffocating him to death. She was fed up of his drunken antics and she needed a new man. She liked the house though, so wanted to keep it, she just needed John to disappear, forever.

She had been slowly pouring water mixed with Codeine, GHB, and Fentanyl powder down his throat slowly over the past hour. It was surely causing her boyfriend to have nightmares but so what, he deserved them. The cocktail she had brewed along with the 20 pints of Stella or so he had surely drunk would ensure he died at some point. She was just helping the process along with the pillow smothering. She was caring like that.

When the morning came she would wake up, scream loudly, before ringing the police to cry over the phone that her wayward boyfriend had come home late at night and she had found him dead in their loving bed as she woke. 

She would have tugged and struggled to wake him, but the drugs that the police toxicology report would find in his body, would easily suggest that a drunken man high on downers  would have surely died in his sleep quite easily. It was all too easy.

As Sarah lifted the pillow off her now silent dead boyfriend, she re-arranged her favourite toys on the side of the bed. A silver hangman set of white plastic skeleton's and a little furry monkey in a red and white fez that sat on a bike. A toy from her past that she had kept now for decades. She loved winding it up and letting it roll around the house as it clapped it's symbols together. She stared at the print copies of Damien Hirst's best work on the far wall and wondered what piece she would get next. That shark in formaldehyde would look pretty good she thought to herself, she could buy that out of the insurance money John would have left her.

John wasn't fond of the toy's or the paintings but so what, it was her house now and she would decorate it and fill it with all the toys that she liked from now on.

She lay back next to her dead boyfriend and held the monkey in front of her face.

“Coochy coochy coo, whose a good liddle monkey wonkey eh”, she said in a childish voice holding it up in front of her face.  “You are, you are, liddle liddle monkey” she laughed before the monkey suddenly clapped it's symbols together without her even winding it up a little. What a freaky little toy eh, what a freaky little toy.

She rolled over and went back to sleep, her back resting comfortably for once against her dead boyfriend's. She just hoped he wouldn't shit the bed too much as his dead body evacuated it's bowels. 

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