The carnivals lights made the summer evening seem like high noon, mystical and friendly to the young patrons of the town. Polly Anderson strolled along with her current boyfriend, Beau Barker, a gawky, overly polite runner with dry elbows and a genuine smile. They were only in their early years of high school. Neither had filled out into their adult minds or bodies quite yet but both attempted to appear more adult than they actually were. Beau slicked his blonde hair down with gel and Polly did apply her lipstick to exactly match the outline of her lips. She still dressed youthfully as well, with her white sundress spotted with red polka dots, her bright red sandals, and her little ponytails tied with ribbons on each side of her head.
Polly smiled at passerby and laughed easily at the different booths, as if the carnival were a new planet and she were a cosmonaut finally discovering it at the age of ninety. Beau Barker was much shyer than her and simply enjoyed watching her react to the fair. He won her a stuffed bunny, kissed her on the Ferris wheel beneath the full moon, and endured her screeching during the Freak Show.
They were presently wandering, no meetings on their carnival schedules. They turned down dusty lanes to make sure they witnessed every booth, ride, and animal. They giggled in each other’s ears, sharing jokes that no one else would care to interpret. As they leaned in close to each other, absorbed in their hyper exchanges, they veered into an empty strip of the carnival. Polly noticed their voices’ growing as they left the louder sections and followed the dusty aisles. She looked up from Beau’s shoulder, trying to find their bearings. “What’s wrong?” Beau asked.
In front of them stood a faded tent. A crooked sign hung over its dark entrance with “Hall of Mirrors” lit upon it. The “M” flickered on and off and the final “s” was completely shut down.
“Let’s go!” Polly cried and dragged Beau towards the tent.
“Oh, no. I don't really like those.”
“Please, Beau? It’ll be such a laugh.”
Beau smiled at her, not wanting to tell her no. “Tell you what. Why don’t you go in and I’ll go find the men’s room? Then we can meet up back here.”
“Okay. Kiss me?”
He obliged her and handed her a nickel.
“A nickel?” Polly took it but looked at him skeptically. “That won’t cover it, will it?”
Beau pointed at the entrance. Polly turned towards it. Sure enough, a sign nailed into the ground beside the entrance read, “5 cents. Enter if you can afford it.”
“Well, I suppose you must be right -,” she said, turning back to see Beau shuffle off in search of the bathrooms.
Polly walked over to the tent and stepped inside, expecting to find an operator asking for her nickel. Instead, the anteroom was deserted except for a coin machine with a wire leading to two metal doors. On the doors, a happy dog was painted in clown makeup. The colors seemed to have been vibrant at one time but now the paint chipped away to reveal the cold metal behind the cheerful canine. Polly walked over to the coin machine and inserted her nickel. She tugged on a crank at the side and the nickel clunked through the mechanism. The doors creaked open, sliding apart as loud, cheery music played. It sounded like circus music played over a gramophone. The doors caught a few times but they finally heaved to a stop with a metallic sigh. Polly stared doubtfully into the dimly lit corridor beyond. Uncertain if she stood step forward with no attendant in sight and the tent so far away from the main thoroughfare of the carnival, she worried about being caught in a place where the way out was not certain.
No one else seemed to be in the funhouse either. She did not hear the ubiquitous laughter and shouts of the rest of the carnival. The music had stopped as the doors opened and she stood alone on the brink. She wished someone, maybe Beau, maybe a complete stranger, was there to hold her hand or at least tell her to stop being silly and enjoy her time. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I am not a child.”
Candle sconces filled a curving hallway, lighting an array of mirrors. In front of each mirror, a pair of white footprints was painted onto the black carpet. Polly walked along, her red sandals tracking dust from the carnival onto a black, short carpet that led the way. Her body transformed in the mirrors as she walked along, growing tall and skinny or short and fat. She stopped by a few and giggled but did not step into the footprints to examine the strange perspectives closely. She felt quite alone in the exhibit and found herself wanting to move out of it quickly, the lost quarter be damned.
Her image became less modified as she moved along and she thought that she must have not been looking at herself correctly. The mirrors, however, changed drastically in shape and form. While the first few were adorned with simple brightly colored frames, the mirrors’ frames began to become more intricate. As she could not see any change in her own appearance in these frames, she did not care to look closely at them. She felt that she was not in the exhibit to purchase the mirrors but rather to see an amusing glance of herself. Polly frowned at these and hurried along, bored with the change. As she turned a corner past a mirror framed in white with pink and blue cherubs dancing along the edges, she saw ran into one that slowed down her step.
It was a plastic version of an avocado tree with bright green, oversized fruit and cartoonish birds and forest animals propped into its branches. A mirror lined with dressing room light bulbs was embedded in the tree. Polly giggled as a toucan, animated by electronics embedded in it, bobbed back and forth and cried out, “Step right up, beautiful! Let’s see you now! Gorgeous, over here!”
Polly skipped over to the plastic tree and jumped into the white footprints painted in front of it. Her eyes lifted to view herself in the mirror. She was ten years older, her body fully grown into womanhood. The awkwardness of her youth vanished and her image in the mirror appeared perfect. She still recognized herself but she seemed to gleam with beauty, grace, and a slight dose of snobbery. Around her in the mirror, people cheered and demanded her picture. Polly turned her head to and fro and laughed in delight. She posed and winked, enjoying the attention of the fans in the mirror. They called her “Polli,” changing her name to something sexier, a one-word sensation.
One handsome photographer loudly shouted for her to lean forward a bit, to show off her goods just a little bit more. She obliged and as she lifted her head, the fans were gone. In place of them stood a doctor’s office. Her image in the mirror was twenty-five years older than before, caked with makeup. She stood naked, her breasts lost of perk, her stomach slightly sagging. A doctor drew on areas of her body with a purple marker, pointing out flaws that could easily be fixed with a slice here, a lift there. She flirted with him, bragging about her former fame and how she could certainly find a reservation at the hottest spot in town. He smiled politely and pointed out the lines around her eyes. “Botox, I’m assuming?”
She nodded and the doctor vanished. She stood in a grocery store line with Virginia Slims, two buck Chuck, and pomegranates on the conveyor belt. A sixteen-year-old boy nodded rhythmically to her yapping about who she knew and her “oh, so fabulous!” life. Her total rang up and the tone of the receipt printing changed to the sound of a lonely vibrator humming away as she lay awake in bed, now fifty-three years old. She thought about her calendar and friends she could possibly call for drinks tomorrow. Most would think of something else to do while the others would simply feel pity for all of the other times they lied to her face. She would die this way, she thought, alone in bed. A funeral would be held and mourners would say, “Oh, what a shame” but not a tear would be shed.
Polly sprung back from the footprints. Her tear ducts sprung loose and she found herself pounding the plastic surface of the mirror. She saw her own face, neither gorgeous nor modified. She shook her head. “You were only getting lost in your own stupid thoughts,” she said.
She walked away from the avocado tree, the bird shouting, “Lovely, darling, absolutely lovely! With a capital L, dear!”
“I’m not going to die alone. I’m not going to die alone,” she chanted in murmurs.
She rushed to find the exit, running past the mirrors. The hallway never seemed to end and she thought back to how the tent had appeared from the outside. She could not recall its size. It seemed small in width, she thought, but perhaps its length was longer than she had perceived. She stopped for breath in front of a Gothic mirror, gargoyles mournfully peering out towards her. As she stopped one foot landed in a painted footprint. Her eyes leapt up to the mirror, where she only saw one eye matching hers. The other was sewn together with stitches, sagging over a lopsided face. Her smile seemed crooked, her jaw appeared cracked, her nose was slit from up the nostril, and her hairline receded from the scars of third degree burns. Around that side of her face, other mutilated faces loomed. They smiled at her and whispered, “We’re here for you. We’re here for you.”
Behind them, she heard little children screaming and crying in horror, mothers hushing them in her own mother’s voice, and fathers attempting to loudly change the subject in her own father’s voice. Yet, the other faces reached out to her, their leper-like hands trying to grab her. “We’ll be here for you. Forever. We love you.”
She tugged back her foot and ran away, her toes grasping the thongs of her insensible sandals. She swept around another corner into a straight hallway. As she turned, she saw a rocking chair and collapsed into it. She wept into her hands, trying to decide if she should return to the beginning or continue along this path and hope for an exit. Between her wet fingers, she gazed down at her feet. White footprints outlined her dusty, red sandals. “No, not again… please, no.”
“It’s okay, child,” a soft voice like her deceased grandmother’s said. She lifted her head, not wanting to go further. Across the long corridor, a small mirror hung. It reflected her face wizened by time, sickened by age. Around her stood her present relatives and future ones whose faces were still unknown to her. Her eyes were dry and her skin felt cold. Her closest family members wept beside her, grasping her cold limbs. She tried to speak, tried to comfort them, but her dead mouth would not move. She saw them move away from her. She felt their despair, their mournful thoughts. She wanted to move, to help them through their grief, to shout to them that she was still alive. Yet, no one could hear the shouts of their dead loved one. She could not move from the rocking chair. It pushed back and forth and she felt as if years passed and the grief never lessened. Her mother’s voice lacked vigor, her father’s step lacked purpose, and her children lacked direction. Anyone she ever knew, would know, dead, and alive could not contain the pain and she felt it. She felt no comfort from their love but only a massive burden that never ceased. “I want to be with them forever,” she said.
She realized she could move now, she could see the hall again. “Show me!” she yelled to the empty room. “Show me how!”
Polly ran again, this time with no purpose of leaving. She ran aimlessly, confident that something would occur to show her where to stop, where to find a happy solution. Yet, nothing appeared. Mirrors flew by, mirrors that could reveal the twisted results of every wish, the answers to prayers to the devil. Instead, the lights of the carnival appeared through a slit in the tent’s canvas and Polly ran towards it, hoping to at least forget.
A tall mirror without any frame almost stopped her right before the exit. She ran across the footprints and as she did, she saw herself wink back. She tried to stop herself as she crossed through the slit into the outside world. Yet, her sandals lacked any traction and slid her forward out of the tent. She turned, trying to go back to that friendly face that winked with such confidence, such serenity. The slit was closed. The tent was only sealed canvas now, no way to return.
“Polly, are you ready?"
Polly whipped around and saw Beau standing before her, holding two servings of cotton candy in his hands.
“No,” she said.
“Okay.”
Polly breathed in deep and said, “If we are to have children and more children will come from those then we will forever be a part of this world, right?’
“I suppose so but, Polly, I’m not ready to -”
“But, maybe they’ll forget us and our eye colors may never be exactly the same as theirs. Because genes mix, don’t they? So even our genetics will barely be remembered here. And perhaps the bloodline, the family tree, you know, will stop somewhere, after last names were long erased from history books, and the last remnants of ourselves will be gone from the earth. Even if we are famous or are part of something much larger than ourselves, our names may disappear. Our accomplishments won’t be as important because someone will have new accomplishments and then ours won’t be good enough to be remembered by humanity.”
“Polly, honey, I don’t think that’s something to worry about.”
“But isn’t it? How is it even possible to live without knowing that you can’t make the slightest difference?”
“Well, I guess you’ll always have a tombstone with everything written - ” Beau said.
“A tombstone? But even the best stone will erode with time and languages change and can be forgotten. Maybe we’ll overpopulate the earth and tombstones won’t even be used anymore. Then, future generations won’t know what they are! Its purpose will be forgotten and no one will be there to remember anyone else. Bones will crumble. The earth will crumble and everyone will die and the planet will be empty of any remnant of us eventually."
“Until the sun explodes, I guess.
“Or the galaxy collapses. Or matter becomes nonexistent.”
“You’re cheerful tonight."
Polly evened her breathing and stared into the pink and blue swirls of cotton candy. “Actually, I am. I want to watch them make the cotton candy. Let’s go."
She led him away from the deserted tent, feeling like a small child beneath a starry sky or a redwood tree. Her single beat in the pulse of the universe would certainly be brief. She considered her life ahead and promised to make the short span as worthwhile as she could. Yet, as she grew older and forgot, she would live her life as all people do. A routine would form, a set of values would be created, and life would not be changed and greatness would not be fulfilled. There would only be spurts of energy towards something new, something indefinable, something grand.
As Polly watched the cotton candy man spin his wares, a star exploded. It would not be seen from Earth for millennia, centuries upon centuries after Polly Anderson learned to die.
Favorite treat: Girl Scout Cookies
