HOWLER M.C.

The County Fair, Unknown City, Unknown State....(2001)

Unimpeded ruckus filled the background as twisting metal swirled and twirled in the distance as many a machine got a good work out due to the numerous rows of people all huddled together in single lines barely able to keep the shape as many a man and woman stood amid the heat of the beaming golden rays of the afternoon sun both excited and impatient at the same time. There were attendees of all shapes and sizes, big, small, surprisingly plump, and inexplicably thin. There were people in various colorful outfits in a combination of jeans and khakis, skirts and shorts, wearing shirts of every size and style while some men preferred to wear no shirt at all and some women were dressed down due to the heat in some tight fitting and inappropriate garb that made the older people stop and stare, some wore sandals, some flip-flops, some were even barefoot and others wore tennis shoes just to be able to take part in the action that surrounded them.

There were a great many bodies in attendance that afternoon, given to various ranges of emotion and wonder as the flashy festivities continued to get underway. Amid the sea of people and various rides of every shape and color, and the numerous stands where the pleasant aroma of new and strange combinations of foods had gotten the nearby people's mouths watering enough to have their part with the hard-earned and painstakingly saved cash in their respective pockets, had been a lone little girl with the most vibrant shade of wild red hair that trailed down her back and pulled into two pigtails braided with two bright pink bows on the ends of each so as not to block her rather limited view of the world around her and impede on the fun she had beforehand.

She seemed to have been the only one not enjoying the festivities and unbothered by the sights and sounds that had come with being at such a place that normally a child as young as she would have been captivated by at the moment of arrival and perhaps before when she, herself had arrived she was, but at the current moment, her naturally baby blue eyes were blurred to the point of being difficult to see amid the vast sea of random people that surrounded her which also added to the relative puffiness of her tiny cheeks and the reddening of her little nose as a thin layer of mucus oozed from her tiny nostrils as she attempted to make sense of the apparent round of confusion that had befallen her.

A sensation of sickness filled her belly as she stood alone where last she had seen anyone she recognized in the past thirty minutes. Her belly seemed to be turning backflips as she felt the onset of churning deep within as a wave of nausea seemed to hit at a most inopportune time. The little body of the small redhead trembled as she took a step forward unsure as she did if attempting to search for her long-lost parents had been the right move.

Once more she attempted to search through tear-stained baby blue eyes for the people who had brought her to the surrounding loud, and busy carnival, that had once been a place of fun and newfound excitement for her. Sadly, all the fun and excitement gave way to only bouts of sorrowful tears as the little innocent redhead girl of six years of age, found herself unable to locate her parents following a rushed trip to the local porta potty after one too many sugary drinks while enjoying her visit.

Having had enough of playing the waiting game, she decided to try and find help from one of the working adults in the area. Despite being so young, she tried her best to recall the places her parents had taken her before she went to use the restroom but had been unable to. It did little good to travel aimlessly amid the sea of people so she ventured past them and into the spaces between the rides where she wandered into an area that had little to no people aside from the strange man who had been in charge of a goldfish game that she wished to try before having to answer the call of nature before everyone she knew disappearing.

The strange man was surprisingly thin, the bone structure included, with tight pale skin and long dark brown hair. On his face was a scruffy brown beard as thick as the hair on his head and he wore thick dark sunglasses. The girl noted him wearing a dark red carnival shirt with black trimming and faded denim jeans with formerly white sneakers caked in mud and dust from the road and the area where he set up his game.

Up close, he smelled of aged grease and dry dirt as he approached the frightened little girl who seemed to have recalled him from when they first met at the goldfish games and he commented on her bright pink shoes that matched her light pink overalls and white t-shirt with pink flowers on the end. He had even commented on the yellow kids' watch she wore, which had some wacky cartoon character in the form of a green frog on it that she won as a prize from a previous game she participated in with her family.

For as long as she'd been out in the sun, she could feel her skin becoming pained and red from all of the unwanted heat beaming down on her as she found herself in the company of this slightly familiar stranger. Her throat was so sore and dry from all of her cryings that she hardly had a voice as she attempted to ask for assistance from this stranger who had been a part of the carnival. She found it difficult to do much of anything due to the anxiousness and fear that coursed through her. She'd been so out of it that she could feel her palms sweating as she clenched them nervous as she had not been keen on speaking to strangers, but despite her young age, she was well aware that this wasn't a normal set of circumstances.

Thinking better of approaching the man, she found herself taking note of a blonde female worker wearing the same shirt as the man with dark glasses and approached her, finding it less difficult to ask for assistance from the woman than the strange man.

"C-Can you help me find my Mommy and Daddy please?" she asked.

The blonde woman had been about to assist her when the man approached smiling as if his life depended on it and kneeling to the little girl's level while waving off the blonde woman with the promise of assisting the girl himself.

"I remember you...you came with your Mommy and Daddy to look at the fish," he said in a pleasant tone.

His tone had not matched his demeanor as he'd been hidden behind thick black glasses that didn't make the girl feel very comfortable when looking at them. It was as if his eyes were foreign to her at that moment.

"I just saw them as a matter of fact, and I could take you to them if you'd like." offered the strange man.

Filled with the tiniest bit of hope that she could finally be reunited with her family and return home after such a long day, she reluctantly agreed to accompany him.

With a cheery smile and a kind voice, the strange man lead the tearful little girl away from the carnival with the promise of helping her find her family only to knock her out with a dirty cleaning rag filled with a pleasant-smelling liquid that the girl had not recognized when it covered her mouth and started to make her forget about the world around her while she struggled to get free of the strange man's grasp who had held her tightly as she kicked and screamed while he tightened his grip on her small body.

Her lungs burned and her vision further blurred despite the darkness that she'd only been privy to seeing and before she knew it, her little body went limp in the strange man's arms and he carried her weightless form toward his dark red pickup truck and tossed her inside closing and locking the door behind her as she collapsed into the back seat.

Had she been awake, she might have been afraid of the cramped space and the stench of old grease and rotten garbage that lined it.

She might even have realized the concerned woman, who had left her to the devices of the strange man was his accomplice, who had been a thin blonde with green eyes and much too much makeup on her face for a hot summer afternoon which melted immediately when she entered the passenger side of the red pickup truck.

The strange man climbed into the driver's side and started the engine after looking back at the involuntarily slumbering girl in the back of them. He pulled out of the lot as the other workers continued their labor of trying to wrap up the carnival and move on to the next town. None had been any the wiser as to what had just occurred and the little girl even less so about the true location of both her parents.

Not far along the abandoned highway were the bodies of a man roughly in his early thirties wearing a not-so-white t-shirt and dark brown shorts with black sandals on his feet. A woman of about a few years his junior with long curly red hair and ruby red lips a red button-down vest shirt and orange shorts on her legs and white sneakers now soiled via being tossed about in the dirt when her body rolled into the nearby ditch. The couple had been severely beaten to death, the man via a lead pipe to the back of the skull initiating blunt force trauma and the woman having been strangled with marks about her lovely pale neck.

These loving people had elected to leave all their cares behind when it came to their respective jobs and personal obligations and have a fun weekend as a family with their only daughter by bringing her to the local carnival for a good time. Sadly, it turned into a tragic affair when the husband was ambushed after a blonde woman approached him for help about her pickup truck going flat and his life coming to a violent and abrupt end ever since he agreed to assist her.

Concerned about her husband, but not willing to leave her six-year-old daughter behind as she used the porta-potty, The woman found herself in the middle of an ambush by an enraged carnival worker who had drug her from the line of sight after punching her into unconsciousness and strangled her to death before throwing her body into the same ditch that held her deceased husband.

Such was the fate of the drugged little redhead girl's loving family unbeknownst to her.

Much to the delight of the vile fiends that held her captive as their dark red pickup truck traveled down the open highway without a care in the world about being apprehended for their heinous crimes. As there had been no witnesses, and no trace of the lost little girl, nor her parents as the festivities went on.

TEN YEARS LATER.....