I'm sorry but this is a terribly written chapter. It's a disgrace so please, please rip it to shreds.
8 - Lies
Sarah is more bewildered than anything else as she watches the door slowly creak open as Marian stumbles in, giggling raucously. Feeling embarassed, she pretends to be asleep, letting her eyelids open just enough to be able to see the world through a thin slat.
She watches as Marian makes a half-hearted attempt to close the door on what seems to be an uncommonly tall man with a barking laugh and unshaven cheeks. The fairy whispers something; in this eventuality failing to resemble a fairy at all. She is clad in a tiny black patent dress, ruffled from the obvious contact with her companion. Make-up is caked over her face in a way which makes her seem a very different person from the one who wore a lime-green outfit and a fresh smile.
Marian hisses something at the man; all Sarah can make out is, “Not tonight...the girl’s here. Go see Rose; she’s upstairs.”
The man mumbles something unintelligible in the fairy’s ear and presses her up against the door, leaning in for a rough kiss. Marian succumbs for a minute and then pushes him away reluctantly. “Not tonight,” she whispers again. “Rose is on the third floor.”
Then she shuts the door and perches herself on the windowsill, stretching her thin arms. She lights up a cigarette and Sarah watches it smoulder between her thin fingers. The fairy does not smoke it but wafts it around, breathing in its thin smell.
Moonlight hangs a curtain over the window, reflecting Marian’s face and in that moment, Sarah sees her. Her flimsy dress, cheap make-up and pointless anecdotes. Understands what this house is, what the fairy does and why there were people knocking on the door in the middle of the night.
She can’t stay here.
Sarah lies very still and waits until the fairy lolls against the starlit pane, her breath slowing and her eyes shut. Then, she swings her legs over the side of the bed, and folds the sheets over neatly. Sarah walks towards Marian and opens her mouth but then thinks better of it, shaking her head sadly. She brushes her fingers against the fairy’s arm drooping over the edge of the sill; a touch as light and insignificant as a butterfly kiss. And then she moves noiselessly towards the door and runs downstairs, out onto the street.
Dawn has started to break. People are beginning to switch lights on in apartments, lighting up frosted windows, giving wanderers a momentary glance of their life. The grey sky hangs limply over the town; looking almost apologetic for creating such a gloomy atmosphere. Murky snow is spread out across the black ground like a sad carpet and the lifeless trees look like empty hat stands.
As Sarah looks around, she starts to realise how little reality exists here, how any moment of happiness is just a fleeting moment, a figment of people’s imagination. Everything is a lie. The fairy was a lie, the building’s purpose was a lie, any feeling of joy she felt was a lie. Nothing was real and everyone was merely a play-actor, trying to fool people into believing that there was such a thing as truth. All lies.
Just like her.
She rushes out of the town, back through the country path aligned with fields where the sad donkey stood. Dark shapes and imaginary phantoms tower around her, clawing at her clothes and hair. The carnival site looks like a ghost town; the lights punched out, the rides still; empty, crumbs of popcorn and candyfloss scattered across the frozen grass like remnants of a happy dream.
She walks through it, a solitary figure in a place that just a few days ago had held joy; laughter, revelry, music. But what was this joy? Another lie, probably.
There is no sign of life and music to her; until a brisk movement, a splash of colour in the breaking dawn catches her eye. She follows it, walking in disjointed steps towards the edge of the carnival, to the fences around the field.
It was nothing. A red balloon, its lead snagged on an ancient wooden stile. It looks surprisingly vibrant for something old and abandoned; and Sarah can see it floating in the evanescing breeze like a beacon. With numb fingers, she frees it from the fence. For some reason, she is incapable of letting it go; her fingers glued to the tattered string as if they have a mind of their own.
She sighs and walks back out of the dead carnival, the red balloon dancing around her freely in the dark air, taunting her.
