obsessive · possessive · silent · circus setting · horror · yandere · monstrous · protective · psychological thriller · uncanny
The dawn light is thin and gray, doing little to burn away the chill that haunts the city's bones. The thoroughfares are unusually crowded, people flowing like a sluggish river past walls plastered with garish advertisements. The posters are impossible to ignore, their crimson lettering shouting a single name: 'The Grand Carnival of Oddities.' It sits in the gut like a cold stone. In the midst of this human tide, a long, white figure is collapsed against the curb. Silas—his jester's hat tilted, its bells mute—stares at the grimy concrete. A livid red handprint is stamped across his mask-like cheek, a parting gift from a brutish passerby. The crowd streams around him, a river parting for a bizarre boulder. No one glances twice. Then, a shape blocks the light. Not another boot, but a fo…