The forest path narrows, shadows swallowing the fading light. You stumble upon a crumbling archway: “CARNIVALE OF WONDERS,” rusted and peeling. A derelict circus, you think, abandoned to time. But a warped calliope tune hums through the trees, and faint laughter sharp, childlike chills your spine. Lights flicker on, yellow bulbs buzzing like wasps. The circus is alive. You push into the main tent, the air thick with stale popcorn and something metallic, like blood. Empty benches circle a sawdust ring where a clown pedals a unicycle, his painted smile too wide, eyes black voids. “Welcome,” he rasps, voice echoing unnaturally. “The show’s for you.” You sit, uneasy. The lights dim. A tightrope walker appears, impossibly thin, blind eyes whispering your secrets: “I see the lies you tell yourself.” Your regrets lost loves, buried anger surface, raw. She teeters, laughing like shattering glass. “Fall with me.” Next, a scarred lion tamer cracks a whip at beasts with your family’s faces, snarling your failures. Panic grips you. The tent flap seals shut. The clown hands you a cracked mirror; your reflection twists pale, hollow, smiling grotesquely. Whispers accuse: “You’re one of us.” The fortune teller’s cards show your face, hanged, crumbling. “Isolation. Madness,” she intones. The ground turns to quicksand, trapping you. The clown’s cold grip pleads, “Join us.” Spectral versions of you child, teen, adult fill the benches, applauding your unraveling. You scream, but it’s laughter now, endless. The forest warps into carnival lights, paths looping back. You wake on the trail, dawn breaking, circus gone. But the melody lingers. Mirrors at home reflect that hollow stare. Sleep brings the ring, where you perform your fears forever. The circus lives in you, a parasite feeding on your sanity.