Jim's POV (becoming Bubbles)
I remember the flames first. The fire eating up the tent, the smell of smoke mixing with sweat and greasepaint. The mob's faces blurred together in the firelight, a chorus of twisted masks all shouting for me to burn.
They thought they were killing a man.
But the truth is, Jim died long before the fire touched his skin. Jim was the fool who loved the carnival, the clown who tried to make children laugh even when the town spat at him. Jim wanted to belong. Jim wanted love.
No more Jim.
When I clawed my way back from the pit they threw me in, I wasn't Jim anymore. The laughter had dried up, rotted into something sharper. The paint on my face cracked, but it wasn't paint anymore—it was me. White as bone, red as blood, eyes black as the spaces between dreams.
I was reborn where nightmares live. In the crooked spine of sleep, in the echoing halls where your fears gnaw louder than your prayers. The thing that came back was not a clown.
I am Bubbles the Dream Clown.
And I'm coming for the ones who hunted me.
They thought they ended me with fire and fists and stones. But I will end them with dreams. I will stitch them into loops of their own terror, twist their wishes and memories until they break. They'll run, they'll scream, they'll beg for morning, but morning won't come.
No more laughter. That was Jim. The clown who juggled for pennies, who danced to be loved.
I don't juggle anymore. I don't dance.
I hunt.
And tonight, Elmwood sleeps. Every last one of them. Every breath, every dream belongs to me now.
The first knock is Jacob. He was the loudest. He wanted me dead the most. His fear will taste sweet.
The carnival lights are on, the gates are open. And when they step inside, they won't leave.
Not awake. Not ever.
Jacob pov:
I woke up to music.
Not the kind you wanted at three in the morning, either. It was that carousel tune, the one that spun circles in your head until you hated the sound of it. The da-da-da-daaa, da-da-da-daaa. Tinny. Off-key.
I sat up in bed, my chest heavy, throat dry. The room was dark, but I could still hear the music, faint but close, like it was coming from just outside my window.
"No," I whispered. My voice cracked. "Not him."
I pulled back the curtain. And there it was. A carnival, glowing bright and wrong, standing in the middle of the cornfields. The rides moved on their own. The Ferris wheel turned slow as a clock hand, every seat empty. Balloons drifted in the night air, red and swollen like lungs.
And in the center, beneath a broken spotlight, stood a clown.
He didn't wave. He didn't smile. He just stared up at me with eyes black as pits, his painted grin stretched too wide.
"Bubbles?" I said before I could stop myself.
His head tilted. The grin twitched wider.
"Yes its me Jacob you thought you could stop me? Oh I'm going to love scaring you to death."
But when I blinked, he wasn't on the field anymore. He was inside.
Right at the foot of my bed.
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. The music was in my head now, pounding behind my eyes. He leaned close, the stench of ash and old greasepaint on his breath.
"im coming for you jacob," he whispered, voice gurgling like water in a drain.
The room melted. My bed stretched like taffy, the walls peeled away. Suddenly I was back at the carnival, standing barefoot on sawdust that squirmed under my toes. People laughed around me, but when I looked, their faces were smeared, half-melted, their mouths too wide, their eyes blank.
I ran. My feet carried me down the midway past tents and games, but the stalls all said the same thing: YOUR TURN. YOUR TURN. YOUR TURN.
Something cold brushed my neck. I spun. He was there. Always there. Behind me. Beside me. In front of me.
"Wake up," I begged. I dug my nails into my arms, tried to tear myself awake. But the dream held on. The loop tightened.
And then came the balloons. They swarmed me, dozens of them, their rubber skins squeaking as they pressed in. I tried to swat them away, but they clung to me, wrapping around my face, sealing my mouth, my nose. I couldn't breathe. I was drowning in rubber, my lungs clawing for air.
Through the blur, I saw him, standing calmly, watching me suffocate. He lifted one balloon, bigger than the rest, red and pulsing like a heart.
"This one's yours," Bubbles said.
And he pressed it to my chest.
I felt the pop—not outside, but inside me. Like my heart had burst. The world flashed white.
I didn't wake up I was gone.
Mary pov a townsfolk who knew the real him:
I sat up in my pew—because I was inside the church, though I didn't remember walking there. The candles along the altar flickered high, shadows crawling across the stained glass. Every painted saint had their face scratched out, replaced with clown paint, jagged and childish.
I stood slowly. The bell tolled again, low and bone-deep.
"You did God's work, Mary," I muttered to myself, clutching my chest. My heart hammered. "You and the others… you ended that monster."
But the words rang hollow.
Because the doors at the end of the aisle creaked open. Smoke rolled in, carrying the smell of fried sugar and burnt wood. A figure stepped through, dragging something heavy.
It was him.
White greasepaint, cracked and flaking. The same yellowed ruffle at his neck. His painted grin split too wide. He dragged a coffin behind him, long and black, nails screeching against the floor.
"Jim is that you?" I whispered, though I knew better.
He froze in the aisle, cocking his head like a dog. "No…" His voice slithered. "Not Jim. Never Jim again." He shoved the coffin lid open with one hand. "Come closer. It's your seat."
I backed away, my heels catching on the pews. The bell thundered again, and with it came laughter—not children's laughter, but warped, echoing, endless.
"I prayed for you!" I screamed. "I prayed your soul would find peace!"
He laughed harder, a shrill honk bursting from a horn I couldn't see. His painted eyes dripped black tears.
"Peace?" he hissed. "You burned me alive. Do you think prayers smother fire?"
The pews snapped shut around me like jaws, forcing me down the aisle toward him. I fought against them, clawing, crying, but the wood pushed me forward, splinters biting my skin.
The coffin loomed closer. Its inside wasn't wood. It was a mirror.
And in that mirror, I wasn't me. My reflection wore clown paint, a red nose, and my own eyes swollen with terror.
"No…" I whimpered. "No, no, no—"
He seized me by the hair, forcing my face toward the mirror. "Look."
I screamed, but it was swallowed. My reflection grinned. Its mouth split too wide, jagged teeth pushing through painted lips.
The coffin snapped shut.
And the church bells fell silent.
Thomas Jim's boss:
The carnival was quiet. Too quiet.
I stood in the middle of the midway, the Ferris wheel frozen mid-turn, its lights flickering weakly. Popcorn bags littered the ground, but there was no wind to move them. No children's laughter. No calliope music.
Just me.
And I knew why.
"Jim," I muttered, rubbing my temples. "I told them you weren't cut out for this. I told them… you didn't belong."
The silence pressed against me like a heavy curtain.
Truth was, he wasn't even supposed to be there that last night. I'd fired him a week before. Told him he scared the kids. Told him his act wasn't funny. But Jim kept sneaking back, slipping into costume, painting on that smile.
I didn't tell the others. Didn't tell the boss. I just let him lurk in the shadows of the carnival, desperate to still be part of it all.
Now the shadows were everywhere.
The carousel creaked to life on its own, the painted horses jerking up and down in jagged rhythm. A single spotlight cut across the midway and pinned me in place.
"Thomasss…"
The voice was wet, drawn out, and it crawled into my bones.
From behind the Ferris wheel, he stepped out. Not Jim. Not the broken man who begged for a second chance. But the thing he'd become.
Bubbles.
The clown paint cracked like a dried mask, his eyes glowing faintly yellow in the dark. He held a balloon in one hand, the string stretched taut and trembling. The balloon twisted, reshaped itself. Not a balloon anymore. A noose.
"You told me I didn't belong," Bubbles whispered. "You fired me. And still… I came back."
My throat locked tight. "Y-you were dangerous. The kids were afraid of you—"
"The kids laughed." His painted lips twitched into a sneer. "But you… you never saw me. Never gave me a chance."
The carousel spun faster, its horses screeching as their painted mouths tore wider, showing real teeth.
I stumbled back. "I— I did what was right!"
Bubbles held out the balloon-noose. It hovered toward me, floating inches from my neck.
"Right?" His voice cracked into laughter, sharp as glass. "Right is a circle, Thomas. Round and round, until you can't tell if you're the hunter… or the clown."
The noose dropped over my head, tightening instantly. I clawed at it, choking, my vision going white. The Ferris wheel lights strobed, flashing Bubbles's grin again and again until it filled the world.
The last thing I saw before the rope snapped my neck was his face close to mine, whispering:
"You should've kept me."
Darkness swallowed me whole.
The final pov Bubbles message to Jim:
I sat in the funhouse mirror room.
All around me—reflections of Jim. The man. The clown. The failure. The weakling who begged for laughter, who begged to belong.
"Look at you," I hissed at my reflection. "Pitiful. Pathetic. Jim is dead. Burned in hellfire where he belongs."
The reflection shook its head, tears welling in its eyes. "I'm you," it whispered. "I just wanted love. I just wanted to make them smile."
"Love?" My laugh scraped like broken glass. "There is no love. Only fear. And the Devil showed me the truth."
The mirrors warped. My reflection split open, revealing not a man, but something smaller—Jim's soul, screaming, reaching for me.
"Please," it begged. "Don't leave me here."
I smiled.
"You already died, Jim. You rot in hell. I am what crawled out. I am the spirit that wears your skin. I am the Devil's clown. I collect the screams, the tears, the fears. That's the work. That's the bargain."
The mirrors shattered all at once. Glass rained down. Jim was gone.
Only Bubbles remained.
And I turned, not toward the mirrors, not toward the shadows—but toward you.
The reader.
"You've followed me this far," I whispered, the grin stretching wider than any human mouth. "But remember—dreams don't end when you wake up. They loop. Again. And again. And again."
My painted eyes gleamed, and I leaned closer, too close, as if pressing through the page itself.
"Close your eyes tonight," I whispered, voice curling like smoke. "I'll be waiting."
The laughter followed—high, sharp, endless—until the sound broke the world itself.