The midnight gloom encased the carnival in its inky embrace. Bright lights pierced the darkness like knives from the numerous bright lights of the old carnival that had been turned on. The only sound was the sharp snap of twigs that sounded like bones as Beowulf crushed them beneath his feet. The ominous scenery could not penetrate his well trained mind functioned without a heart attached.

He was more irritated than anything else at Jessica's nerve, how dare her manipulate him like this? He was not her puppet to pull his strings whenever she felt like it. The irritation showed in his stride as his heel drove the sticks into the ground harder with every step. The way he stormed toward the carnival like an businessman late for a meeting was a sharp contrast to the shadowy figures which appeared from the darkness as if they had materialized. They sombered forward huddled in little groups like mourners going to a funeral. Beowulf was going to make sure that this was the closest thing they saw to a funeral all week.

Beowulf ducked beneath the half fallen archway that had once stood flashing proudly to welcome visitors, but now in it's decay could only manage a dim flicker. A surprisingly large group of people were already mulling about nervously in the most shallow depths of the old carnival, he was going to end this quickly. He placed a rough hand on the shoulder of the person who stood closest to him. "Where's Jessica?"

The girl turned around, her eyebrows raised in startlement at the harshness of Beowulf's greeting. She brushed his hand from her shoulder and shot him a weird look. "The hell I know, preppy."

Beowulf was hardly in a placid enough mood to allow that remark to slip. "Are you new to this area? If you talk to me like that I will make your life a living hell. If Jessica Glenn is the president of the school I'm the motherfucking illuminati. Change your attitude or I will." He hissed shoving her aside and beelining deeper into the crowd of partially illuminated silhouettes.

He didn't have to search for long before a slim figure appeared in the lowest rungs of the ferris wheel, her satiny blonde hair catching the light it almost seemed to glow before she dropped to the ground and strode over to to the group. Her eyes caught my glare for a second before she looked away as she placed her hands gracefully on to her hips and smiled the way she smiled when everything was going her way.

With that one, controlled and powerful smile Jessica's plans shattered like glass. Without warning all of the lights went out, collapsing the fairground completely into the embrace of the darkness. For one short second there was only a heavy, confused cloak of silence, than without warning it was slashed with a bloodcurdling scream that raised the hairs on the back of Beowulf's neck.

"Is everyone okay?" Someone yelled through the darkness.

Beowulf rolled his eyes, trying not to be irritated by this whole situation. "Of course bloody not, it sounds like someone was just killed." He snapped, more to make the stupid sheep around him tremble than because he actually thought someone was dead. This was probably all an elaborate prank organized by Jessica and her daddy's deep pockets, how childish could she be?

The lights flickered back on, illuminating the fairground dimly as it had been before. Almost instantly a few more screams erupted from the crowed accompanied by a collection of horrified gasps. Beowulf flinched, wasn't one deafening scream enough for the evening? Without much interest his eyes followed the gaze of his tramarized peers to see the Jessica sprawled on the ground unmistakably dead. Blood gushed from every cavity in her body, dripping into a massive pool of blood that encircled her body in an almost perfect oval. His eyebrows shot upwards in surprise as he took a few steps toward the body, this was certainly the last thing that he had expected to happen, Beowulf knelt over her body trying not to have mixed feelings about her death. On one hand Beowulf had always known this dumb bitch would be killed eventually, she was too irritating to be allowed to live, while on another he had no idea who had killed her and if they were someone in this very group or it was someone else entirely.

"I'm calling 911!" A girl with red hair declared whipping out her phone with shaky resolve. A small gasp escaped her throat as she looked down at the screen, "that's not possible, I just had service here a second ago." Like lemmings following each other off a cliff everyone there pulled out their phone to see if they had service. Beowulf let out a long burdened sigh and took one last look as Jessica's corpse before he reached his hand into her pocket subtly and pulled out her phone, if someone in the group had killed her having access to everyone's secret might come in handy, after all he was hardly anyone's favorite person.

"It's the curse, I've heard about the curse on this place!" A small boy whimpered nervously only to attract the terrified looks of everyone around him as they remembered the old stories they had told each other jokingly as children.

Beowulf didn't believe in curses, or ghosts, or magical unicorns that farted rainbows. This was clearly the work of a human and was no cause for anything besides mild discomfort. He honestly couldn't comprehend what it must be like in these simple minded peasants heads, nor did he want to. "God, please don't be such gullible idiots. Let's just get back to the cars that some of you brought and we will all carpool to the police station."

The terrified group turned their heads toward the arena that had been the parking lot only seconds before to find that it wasn't there, instead the rotting circus stretched on as if into an infinity of collapsing skeletons of fun and dim flickering lights. Panic struck their hearts as an eruption of distress encased the group. A few people ran forward in disbelief so see if it was only some sort of mirage, only to find that it was very real.

"How do you explain that?" The quivering boy asked looking toward Beowulf half in scorn and half in hope, it was a rather odd expression to see on someone's face.

Beowulf pinched his lips shut and ignored the boy, trying to subdue his own primal fear that was beginning to rise within him like a disease. For perhaps the first time in Beowulf's life he had no answer.