Kulsoom and the Carnival of Chaos
Aug 13, 2025
Long ago—though really only last Friday—the wind changed over the town.
It came humming from the east, carrying colours too bright and scents too sweet. With it came the Carnival.
No one questioned it. That was the strange part. Teachers, parents, even police officers smiled as if it had always been there. The striped tents shimmered like silk. The carousel sang lullabies. But Kulsoom knew something was wrong.
She had always seen what others missed.
Her sidekick, Miso—a blue-eyed lemur with a tail like a question mark—clung to her shoulder as she stood outside the gates. The carnival music twisted in the air like vines: beautiful, but false. Miso hissed.
Kulsoom entered.
Inside, nothing stayed still. Rides shifted places. Tents stretched taller when she looked away. Every prize in the hook-a-duck stall had the same face: her own.
The first clue was found in the Hall of Mirrors. One mirror didn’t reflect her. Instead, it showed a boy spinning endlessly on the teacups, never slowing, never aging. The sign below him read:
“WINNERS NEVER LEAVE.”
Kulsoom reached out, but the mirror was ice-cold and pulsing. Miso chattered nervously.
They moved on.
Next was the Fortune Teller’s Tent. No one inside. Only a single card on the table. It read:
"Find the Laughing Man. He holds the key to the Exit."
Laughter echoed across the fairground—high, wild, and full of teeth.
She followed the sound past the candyfloss machine (which spun clouds of fog instead of sugar) and the coconut shy (where the coconuts had blinking eyes).
Finally, they found him.
The Laughing Man was ten feet tall, with spinning eyes and joints like hinges. He juggled clocks and spat out riddles. But when Kulsoom approached, he stopped.
He whispered a riddle:
"Three turns right, one turn back—
Where screams are silent, find the crack."
She turned right three times, then back once. She found herself at the House of Silence—a ride no one else dared enter.
Inside, there was no sound at all. Not footsteps. Not breathing. Just silence thick as soup. And in one wall—a crack.
From her pocket, Kulsoom pulled the golden token she’d found in her shoe that morning (she hadn’t put it there). She pressed it into the crack.
A doorway opened.
Behind it was nothing but sky.
Real sky.
Clouds. Wind. Moonlight.
Freedom.
Miso leapt through first. Kulsoom followed. The carnival screamed behind her—music crashing into broken chords, colours melting into grey. She didn’t look back.
The next morning, the carnival was gone. No one remembered it had ever been there. No newspaper mentioned it. The school carried on as normal.
But Kulsoom knew.
She kept the fortune card in her pencil case. Sometimes, it changes its message.
This morning it says:
"You escaped once. But the Carnival remembers.”
Published with Permission of Dixons Manningham Primary School
