Everybody Is in the Place

The fair comes every year with its wild music, boys, and rides, but Maybelle and Enid are far more interested in the rumored return of the Labyrinth, which hasn’t been seen in several years…

We’re coming up, coming up, coming up, coming up, we took the acid half an hour ago, and I can hear the fair music rising up louder and louder, washing over our boring town like a wave. I try to explain to Maybelle about an old song I like that’s about waves, and the lyrics go backward and forward and the music does too. “It mimics the song,” I say, “the words, the flow,” but I can’t explain properly, and I look at her and she laughs and shakes her head. She looks so fucking happy. Her blonde curls shake and I can see traces, electric blue and purple and green sparking off them. “It’s happening,” I say, and she says “yes, yes,” and we grin at each other because this is it. We’re living the life, this life, our life, and fuck this is more like it. We’re going to the fair and we’re young and we’re absolutely off our heads and—

“Let’s go,” shouts Clara, and she stomps her foot like a cartoon character, and I imagine her shaking her fists at us, and it makes me laugh. “The fair’ll be over before we get there at this rate. Come on!” Clara wants to get to the fair to see the fair lads, she wants to go on the waltzers, the ride that always makes me want to puke. It goes around and up and down in sickly waves while the booths spin madly on their own axes, like the Tilt-A-Whirl but dark, closed in. Clara wants to scream while the fair lads spin around the girls they like faster. She tips up to drink from the big plastic pop bottle she’s drinking from, and I know it’s filled with disgusting white cider and pineapple juice. She’ll puke it up later, but for now she’s drinking and tapping her foot to the fair music. “Come ooooonnnn,” she shouts, and we laugh, but we follow her. She says we walk too slow, and we do stop to talk, and to look at things, and to think about things, but isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Everything is interesting, and everything doesn’t end, we come back again, and the fair will always be here, really, if you think about it.

We’re walking up the hill, next to the road, past the church and the fire station and then our school, but it’s the weekend so it doesn’t matter, and then we see the fields where the fair comes every year. The old folks call it the Feast, but I don’t know why. I imagine them all eating each other—blood and gore as they feast—but I have to push, push, push it out of my head because that’s not what we’re doing here. The weather is the best it’s been in months. There are clouds, but it’s bright and warm. Even if it rains, it won’t matter because the fair, right?

“What?” says Maybelle, and I say

“What?” and she says—

“You’re muttering.”

“That song,” I say. “It goes backwards and forwards.”

“Are you still going on about that?” she says.

I can’t remember the name and it’s an ancient song anyway. I’m embarrassed I mentioned it.

“Can we at least get there before the sun goes down?” says Clara. “I can literally see the field.”

“Go ahead,” I say, “we’ll find you before you have to go for your bus.”

“Yeah, right,” she says, but she necks the rest of her drink and throws the empty bottle in a bush and keeps walking, wobbling a little.

Maybelle and I don’t care about the waltzers or the fair lads or spinning around faster. Rumor has it that the Labyrinth is back; it hasn’t been there for years. Rumor has it a girl got killed or went missing or something, but that can’t be true because it’s back and if it’s back, then there must be nothing wrong, right?

I sit on the short wall just before the field and light a cigarette. It feels too large between my fingers and my face feels funny. It’s hard to smoke when I can feel the euphoria of the trip bubbling in my chest. “I’m nervous,” I say, “about the Labyrinth.”

“Why?” says Maybelle. “You’re from the rat maze, you should be used to it.”

“Ouch,” I say. Not all of us can come from the fancy neighborhood, but I don’t think I say that out loud. She sits next to me and bumps her shoulder into mine, like a cat.

“You know I don’t mean it. Dusty says people from the rat maze are authentic.” Dusty is her drug dealer, and mine by default, I suppose. He was the one who supplied the tabs earlier. A new kind, “horns” he called them, a smiling bull’s head printed on each one.

“Dusty would know,” I say fake earnestly. Maybelle laughs.

“See, who even says stuff like that?” I laugh with her, but I can see the map of the rat maze forming in front of me on the pavement. All of the alleys and dead ends and crappy streets that form where I live. Too-small houses and flats too close together, all of us crammed in. I’m looking down at it. It raises up like a head on a coin and starts to spread over my feet and ankles and knees. I throw my cigarette into the road and try to brush the maze off, but it spreads over my hands. I don’t tell Maybelle; I figure I can just live with it.

The map begins to hover slightly above the surfaces, the gray pavement, the jeans on my knees, my hands, and begins to slowly move in a wide, lazy circle. I know that if I looked in the mirror, my freckles would form the same pattern. “Are there mirrors in the Labyrinth?” I ask Maybelle.

“Yeah,” she says, “Dusty says it’s like a mirrored maze rather than anything scary.” How does Dusty know everything, suddenly? I look up at her. Maybelle doesn’t have freckles. She tans easily though, even with her almost white hair. She takes a last drag of her cigarette and throws it in the road after mine.

“A labyrinth is not a maze,” I say. “A labyrinth goes one way in and then you follow one way out. It doesn’t have dead ends like a maze.”

She laughs.

“How did you get so brainy?” she says.

“I’m not,” I say. I look down and a big fat raindrop plops down on the map, making it run a little like ink. Then another and another. “It’s raining,” I say, but when I look up at the sky, the clouds are gone. It’ll be dark soon.

“Is it?” says Maybelle.

“I think so,” I say, “the map’s running.” I can’t feel the rain though. I get on my hands and knees and feel the ground. It doesn’t feel wet, but my hands are wiping away the rat maze, causing it to smudge. Maybelle gets down next to me, patting the ground. She doesn’t ask about the map.

“It might be raining,” she says, “I can’t tell.”

An old lady walks by. She keeps turning and looking at us, crouching down to see what we’re looking at. She thinks we’ve lost something. Maybe we have. It’s not raining. The acid hits again and I’m laughing, laughing, laughing at what we’re doing, so much I’m crying, and Maybelle is too. She gets up and grabs my hands to drag me up. “The fair!” she shouts.

“The Labyrinth!” I shout, and we run past the old lady, up, up to the fields where the fair is.

I can hear the thump, thump, thump, thump of the music of the waltzers as we get nearer, where most of the people we know from school are. I can feel it in my chest, next to my heart, doing an echo of my heartbeat, thump, thump, thump, and underneath, organ music from the carousel. “CA-RUH-SEL,” I chant as the ticket booth comes in sight. Then the music stops, a record scratch, and rewinds, quickly, before starting again. I look over at Maybelle to see if she notices. She skids to a halt, her face blank. “The trees,” she says. I look at the trees lining the road at the edge of the fields, perfectly straight, a leftover from when all this was a fancy estate with a famous gardener.

“OK,” I say. They are in a straight line and green. I can see the far tree where we go to smoke at break time.

“No, look again,” she says.

I blink. The leaves turn yellow. I blink again and they’re red, then brown, then the trees are bare, then pink and white, spring blossoms, then green, then they cycle faster and faster until I have to look away. The woman at the ticket booth is looking at us suspiciously. Maybelle pays for us both, and the woman puts a paper bracelet on my shaking, too-skinny wrist. The sun is almost down, and the bright lights of the fair are beautiful. I think about when I was a kid, on the bus with my mother at night, and I thought all the streetlights glowing orange in the dark were fairs in the distance—huge rides, rollercoasters like I’d seen on TV, far bigger than those at the Feast. I would ask my mam if she could take us, if we could get off at the next stop and go to the fair, and she would look at me confused and shake her head. “We’re going home, Enid.” I would try to explain, but I couldn’t make her understand. I think about telling Maybelle, but—how could I tell her that sometimes what I thought was true wasn’t real, even without the acid?

I stand in the center of it all. I can feel the sounds wash over me, the carousel organ winding up faster and faster, the pulsing techno of the waltzers shaking my feet, the whirring and buzzers and alarms of the sideshows and arcades. Kids shrieking, someone blowing a whistle, barkers shouting, and Maybelle sing-shouting, “Enid, Enid, ENID!!” and I grab her by the shoulders and kiss her, and she pushes another tab into my mouth with her tongue. The world spins, the fair lights a colored blur in the night as the smells hit me: the patchouli oil that Maybelle always wears even though it’s for hippies, the sweetness of toffee apples and candy floss, the heavy grease from the hot dogs and burgers, the cigarette smoke that makes me crave another, the acrid scent of fair-lad sweat, and the ten thousand layers of oil used to grease the old machines. I imagine someone will die on the waltzers tonight, a car will disconnect and fly off its connections and spin recklessly into those standing on the gangway. I hope it’s not Clara, but I know I’m in no condition to stop it, any of it.

Maybelle grabs my hand and shouts in my ear, “There it is!” I follow her other arm to her hand and where her finger is pointing: there at the end of the midway, is the Labyrinth. I expect it to be all flashy bright lights and neon spray paint. It is a comeback after all, but in truth it looks drab. A clapboard front painted in oranges and browns, as if it’s an old house about to fall down. On either side of the entrance are spotted old mirrors, and there doesn’t even seem to be anyone attending it.

“Why is it there?” I say, and Maybelle laughs.

“What?”

“It wasn’t hard to find,” and I mean something this mythical, a labyrinth! It shouldn’t be this easy to find. We’ve had no quest, no difficulty, not even any winding paths. “It’s just there, in plain sight.”

“It’s a fair ride, Enid. Come ooonnnnn.” Maybelle drags me over to the doors.

It is there where I balk like a nervous pony, leaping backward as if scalded. I’ve taken too much acid. The hammering of my heart is deafening. “Should we check with someone, show our wristbands?”

“There’s no one here. They’ve probably gone for a piss. You gonna go all rule-follower on me now, Enid? Who even are you? Where is my Enid, where has she gone?” She starts looking around comically, over my shoulder, under her shoes, lifting my T-shirt to look underneath. “My Enid has disappeared.” I laugh. “Since when have you been a scaredy-cat?” she says.

I grin at her and run into the Labyrinth. She runs after me. There are rushes in my body I can’t control. Rolling waves of euphoria wash over me. I can taste them.

The first thing that hits me is the silence. It’s a dead sound. We were just in the midst of so much noise, and now nothing and then an “Ahh fuck” ricochets off all the walls, bouncing and echoing and ending up fuck knows where. I turn around and see Maybelle. I can see her grin even in the semidarkness.

“I stubbed my toe,” she says.

“Be careful,” I say. I can smell lingering dry ice, but I don’t see any. The Labyrinth is barely illuminated in black light, and there are mirrors everywhere. Not fun house, just regular mirrors, and it seems creepier somehow. I look down at my clothes, and all the pills on my sweater are glowing white, like alien dandruff. I hope Maybelle doesn’t notice. She doesn’t even have old clothes. I look in the nearest mirror and I see I was right. The rat maze is all over my face. My freckles form my street, my house, my family. I look over at Maybelle; her face is clear, just a ghost of a mustache where her white hair contrasts against her tan. I have to look away and try not to think about how some of us are marked anyhow.

It must show on my face because Maybelle bumps me again. “Come on, Enid. We’re supposed to be having fun,” She’s lisping, and I realize she might have taken something else aside from the acid. “Tag,” she says, “you’re it,” and she runs shrieking further into the maze.

“It’s a labyrinth, not a maze,” I mutter to myself and run after her, not sure if I want to catch her. Let her run in front of me forever.

“Is it the beginning or the end?” she shouts, her voice echoing and seemingly deeper in the Labyrinth than is possible.

“It’s both,” I shout, slower than her, trying not to bump into the walls.

Then she’s in front of me, smiling, radiant. “Why do you never give a straight answer?”

I snort. “You know why,” and I reach out for her, but it’s a reflection, not her. I turn around to try to find her, but the Labyrinth fills with dry ice. I can’t see a thing.

“Meet me in the middle,” she says, and it feels like she’s right behind me. I almost feel her breath on my cheek, but when I turn there’s nothing but whiteout. I stumble around blind, on the edge of panic. “You’re having fun,” I mutter to myself, “this is the best time of your life.” As the white smoke begins to dissipate, the organ music starts, loud and echoing, coming from inside. The attendant must have come back from his break. The music stops the downward spiral I was heading down.

“I’m coming for you!” I shout, and I begin to move around the Labyrinth, trailing my fingers against the mirrors as I go, smearing them, leaving bright trails: blue, purple, green, the rat maze rising to meet me from the muddy floor. I look ahead instead, going faster and faster, and the music comes with me, speeding up, higher in pitch. I can see myself in the mirrors, but for once, I don’t mind. I can see myself in action, moving, getting taller and taller, my feet becoming hooves, my legs lengthening and changing shape. I gain more traction, running around faster and faster still. I know where I’m going, I follow a trail that has appeared in front of me, guiding me through. I see glimpses of Maybelle refracting around the mirrors, the edge of her jacket, the cuff of her jeans, her hand skimming the walls the same as me, and then her head, turning the next corner, horns sprouting from her blonde curls. I don’t look in the mirror to my own head, but I can feel the extra heaviness. We run, run, run, turning corner after corner, running blind now that spotlights reflect on the mirrors, dazzling us. The music fast, louder, louder. We’re shouting back and forth at each other. I scream her name over and over. How long have we been running? For hours, it seems, forever and ever, the labyrinth is never-ending. We’ve always been here.

“I’m here,” she screams back, “I’m here, I’m always here.” The mirrors are a blur now; I’m running, running, faster than it seems possible. The music is nonsense, too fast to make sense. We are trails of light chasing around each other. Is Maybelle in front or behind me? She’s everywhere, all around me, we’re the same in the Labyrinth, and everything is bleeding into everything else.

And then I reach the middle. The music stops. Maybelle stands in the center, her arms raised, her horns pointing upward, hooves scratching on the floor, incandescent, bathed in light. I try to catch my breath, one loud gasp, as the air is suddenly cold and I feel it in my bones. She’s holding something in her hands above her: a large, beating heart, blood dripping down her arms.

“Enid,” she says, and her eyes are starlight. “We’re here. In the place.”

“I know,” I say. “It’s the beginning and the end.”

“We’re home,” she says.

“I know,” I say. “We’re everything.”

She lowers the heart to her mouth and takes a huge bite of it. I hear the squelch of her bite and smell the coppery tang of the gore covering her cheeks and chin. She holds out the heart to me. “The Feast,” I whisper.

Then the lights go out, and the music stops, and the dry ice floods the Labyrinth again.

The music comes back, rewinds backward, fast at first, then slows down rewinding, winding down

like an old tape gone haywire, low and weird, then stops. The dry ice clears and there’s only the black light on. Maybelle is gone. I look around and all I see are my reflections. I’m just me. My hair is mussed, but there are no horns, on my feet are my scuffed Chuck knockoffs. The rat maze is still in my freckles, but only faintly. The traces have gone. I dig in my pocket and pull out my cigarettes and light one up. My hands are shaking. How long have I been in here? The air is suffocatingly stale.

There’s a ker-clunk, and the black light is replaced by normal strip lights, like the ones at school. A voice comes out of nowhere, a rough man’s voice. “Hello? Come on, love, we’re closing. Time to go home.” I retrace my steps, back through the Labyrinth, not a maze, no, forward and backward, a much shorter distance. The attendant comes to meet me. He’s a fair lad, not much older than me.

“My friend,” I say.

“You’re the only one here, love. Come on, I’ve got to close up.” I follow him out. It’s raining. The midway is getting muddy. Cigarette butts and food wrappers mashed into the ground under the dimming lights. The fair is closing. There’s no music.

“Enid, Enid!” Clara grabs my arm; she smells of vomit and her tights are ripped. “I’m gonna miss my bus!”

“Maybelle . . .” I begin to say, but Clara tuts.

“Who? Come on, we’ve got to run.” She pulls me along, and I run after her, my feet heavy and claggy. The fair lights wink out behind us. We run past the trees. I see the ghost of them change, faintly, green then pink and white, then skeletal, then red and orange and yellow. We run down the hill, past the school and the fire station and the church, rain soaking us to the skin.

When her bus pulls out, I see Clara’s sad face looking out of the window into the blank slate of night, a face she doesn’t want me to see. I realize I haven’t asked her how her night went. But do I really want to know? I know something bad has happened. I know that they always turn sour, these nights full of promise. I’m starting to come down, I know it, but there’s this other gnawing feeling that I’m forgetting something—that something is missing. I walk through the center of town and up toward the rat maze. I see the streetlights when I reach the top of our hill, and I smile thinking about kid-me thinking there were fairs everywhere, and I wonder why my mam didn’t ask me what I meant. Just kid babble, I suppose. I sigh, like I always do before I enter the maze, and I meander through the alleyways to get to our house. I’m at the gate when I hear someone shout my name. It’s Dusty, my dealer. He doesn’t live in the maze, but he’s always here.

“Been to the fair?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Got any smokes?” I check my pockets, and there’s one crumpled in the packet. I hand it over to him and he lights up. “Those horns, eh? Pretty good?”

“Yeah,” I say. I just want to be home. Home in bed. I’m even less sure than ever that the house at the end of this path is home. “I’ll see you,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says, and I watch him disappear under the streetlights, and there are the last traces, green and purple and blue.

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Emma J. Gibbon

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Everybody Is in the Place

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