The Librarian's laughter at your whimpers is a low, rasping sound that crawls along your skin like centipedes, giving you more reasons to cry.
You're still sitting on the Library's wooden floor with your chin still being held harshly in Her hand.
Your breathing is still ragged and you let out a shaky breath while her laughter grows louder, increasing until it begins to sound like the creak of old wood.
Shadows gather around you, twisting into rather irregular shapes and watching as usual as the Librarian talks to you.
"Up you go," she croons. "The Library is still hungry."
Before you can try to struggle or say no, she's on you, taking her hand off from your chin and sliding her cold, wet and ink stained fingers to curl around your wrist.
Everywhere around you starts to tilt and a black void appears right under your feet, and the only reason you've not fallen into it yet is because the Librarian is holding you by your wrists, so that your legs dangle above the open void.
"It's time for some fun," she hisses, and her many eyes immediately start to gleam.
"Let's visit the carnival."
You scream at her, realising what she's about to do, but it's already too late and she releases your wrist, allowing you to fall into the void she created underneath you.
---
You hit the ground with a thud and groan, wondering why you always have to fall so hard.
The impact with the floor might as well have connected to your bones because your entire body now hurts like hell.
You groan again, and roll a few times before you can get yourself to push yourself up and then find yourself standing in the middle of a deserted carnival.
Seeing this, you realise why you perceived the scent of rotting candy when you landed on the dusty ground you're now standing on but what you still haven't figured out yet is why you also perceived the scent of blood soaked sawdust.
There are tattered banners flapping in the cold wind and you can see several empty and odd looking rides overhead.
There are ferries wheels that have teeth instead of seats, roller coasters that are twisted into knots and also a carousel that's spinning slowly with its horses all rotted and eyeless, and their manes dripping with ink.
Horrified, you looked up to see a cracked sign with faded letters swinging in the cold wind.
THE CARNIVAL OF SCREAMS----- that's the name that was written on the sign post.
Suddenly, there's a laugh from somewhere deep within the carnival grounds that sounds so high and broken that it instantly sends shivers in your bones.
You take a shaky step forward, but the ground beneath your feet is very sticky, and is pulling at your shoes like tar.
You think you see someone from corner of your eyes and so you turn immediately but there's no one around, and yet you hear your name.
"Come play," some voices that sound like children chant, laughing from deep inside the carnival.
Following the children's voice, you stumble forward, and begin walking towards the funhouse that's right ahead of you.
Its entrance is a gaping mouth which is lined with heavily jagged and broken mirrors.
As you walk closer to it, the air around you grows colder and thinner, so much that your breath begins fogging in the night.
Then each of the broken pieces of the mirrors on the mouth of the funhouse begin to grin at you, each one showing you a different version of yourself— some older, some younger but all shown badly.
You finally reach the very entrance, and the door creaks open on its own, letting out a gust of wind as well as the smell of decay.
"Welcome," a voice whispers from the darkness within just meters away from you.
"We've been waiting for you."
Then you step inside, taking in a deep breath.
The hallway is narrow with the walls lined with mirrors that all change your reflection, giving you a cracked skin and overly wide mouth.
You turn back to look at the door through which you came in, but the door is gone, leaving behind just a wall of glass now which shows the terrified look that you now have on your face.
Then one of your many wrong reflections steps out from the right, and this one looks taller with its arms too long, and its fingers ending in needles just like how the doll maker's own looked like.
It points at you, and croaks,
"Traitor."
You back away, but then suddenly the entire cave like room turns into several mirrors with no place for you to run to, just mirrors, mirrors and mirrors.
And they keep splitting, forming new versions of your reflection with every frightened turn you make.
One by one, the reflections crawl out from the glass, jerking their limbs as if they were broken puppets.
They circle you, and then multiple cold ink stained hands grab at you, clawing at your skin, pulling you apart as they grab you by your arms and legs, and stretch.
You wriggle, kick, punch and fight back, wanting to leave, desperate to escape this nightmare of your multiple selves but every your blow lands on them, you feel the pain and YOU get the bruise, not them.
One of them gets you just where it wants and rips off your entire right arms from your shoulder.
You scream, shouting and staring in horror as you watch the hole in your shoulder spray your blood all over the mirrors and your many walking reflections.
... And they drink it up, stopping to lick even the drops that drip to the floor so quickly and hungrily that it soon finishes...
... And the pounce on you.
Your pained scream shatters the glass of mirrors all around you, but the shards only end up creating even more reflections almost immediately— hundreds of them and each one looks more monstrous than the last.
They rush you all at once, naked and dripping in ink, baring your own face and their hands rip at your chest and your throat.
Soon your vision blurs, and you feel yourself splitting and dissolving.
Then a final reflection leans down on your head, ignoring the scattered pieces of your body and organs which are littered about the floor.
And it stares at you with its endless black eye pits.
"Welcome home," it whispers.
And You die.
-------------
You wake back up in the Library with ink leaking from your mouth and cough, only to jerk when you see the Librarian looming above you with a wide grin.
"Such lovely screams," she says, and it sounds like a praise as well as a threat all at once.
"The Library is pleased."
Your eyes sting with tears of ink and you feel every part of you ache as though you're still dismembered.
Then she reaches down at you, curling her fingers around your chin and forcing you to look into her many eyes once again.
"And to think," she purrs.
"... this is only the beginning."