The Funhouse

For a moment she couldn't see anything. Just darkness out there.
         Tap-tap-tap.
        Who's there?” she asked, her voice as thin as tissue, her heart suddenly beating fast.
        Then lightning spread across the sky, a tracery of fiery veins and arteries. In the flickering pulse of light, there were large white moths fluttering against the screen.
        “Jesus,” she said softly. “Only moths.”
        She shuddered, turned away from the frantic insects, and sipped her bourbon.
        She couldn't live with this kind of tension. Not for long. She couldn't live in constant fear. She had to do something soon.
         Kill the baby.
        In the bassinet the baby cried out again: a short, sharp noise almost like a dog's bark.
        A distant crack of thunder seemed to answer the child, the celestial rumbling briefly blotted out the unceasing voice of the wind, and it reverberated in the trailer's metal walls.
        The moths went tap-tap-tap .
        Ellen quickly drank her remaining bourbon and poured two more ounces into her glass.
        She found it difficult to believe that she had wound up in this shabby place, in such anguish and misery, it seemed like a fever dream. Only fourteen months ago she had begun a new life with great expectations, with what had proved to be hopelessly naive optimism. Her world had collapsed into ruin so suddenly and so completely that she was still stunned.
        Six weeks before her nineteenth birthday, she left home. She slipped away in the middle of the night, not bothering to announce her departure, unable to face down her mother. She left a short, bitter note for Gina, and then she was off with the man she loved.
        Virtually any inexperienced, small-town girl, longing to escape boredom or oppressive parents, would have fallen for a man like Conrad Straker. He was undeniably handsome. His straight, coalblack hair was thick and glossy. His features were rather aristocratic: high cheekbones, a patrician nose, a strong chin. He had startlingly blue eyes, a gas-flame blue. He was tall, lean, and he moved with the grace of a dancer.
        But it wasn't even Conrad's looks that had most appealed to Ellen. She had been won by his style, his charm. He was a good talker, clever, with a gift for making the most extravagant flattery sound understated and sincere.
        Running away with a handsome carnival barker had seemed wildly romantic. They would travel all over the country, and she would see more of the world in one year than she had expected to see in her entire life. There would be no boredom. Each day would be filled with excitement, color, music, and lights. And the world of the carny, so different from that of her small town in Illinois farm country, was not governed by a long, complex, frustrating set of rules.
        She and Conrad were married in the best carnival tradition. The ceremony consisted of an after-hours ride on the merry-go-round, with other carnies standing as witnesses. In the eyes of all true carnival people, their marriage was as binding and sacred as if it had been performed in a church, by a minister, with a proper license in hand.
        After she became Mrs. Conrad Straker, Ellen was certain that only good times lay ahead. She was wrong.
        She had known Conrad for only two weeks before she had run off with him. Too late, she discovered that she had seen just the best side of him. Since the wedding, she had learned that he was moody, difficult to live with, and capable of violence. At times he was sweet, every bit as charming as when he had been courting her. But he could turn vicious with the unexpected, inexplicable suddenness of a wild animal. During the past year his dark moods had seized him with increasing frequency. He was sarcastic, petty, nasty, grim, and quick to strike Ellen when she displeased him. He enjoyed slapping, shoving, and pinching her. Early in the marriage, before she was pregnant, he had hit her in the stomach with his fist on two occasions. While she'd been carrying their child, Conrad had restricted his attacks, contenting himself with less brutal but nonetheless frightening abuse.
        By the time she was two months pregnant, Ellen was almost desperate enough to go home to her parents. Almost. But when she thought of the humiliation she would have to endure, when she pictured herself begging Gina for another chance, when she thought of the smug self-righteousness