The Laughing Dark — A Relic of the Far-Fair
The Laughing Dark — Clown Horror 3D Print Tee is an oversized 3D print horror clown tee — the image so vivid it appears to breathe, the colors so precise they look like they are lit from inside. It came from the Laughing Dark Carnival, which is a different kind of place entirely, and the Jester knows you are wearing it, and he approves, and that approval is not entirely comfortable.
The Laughing Dark Carnival has been in the western interior of the Ashen Plains for longer than the Plains have had a name. The lights are always on. The music is always playing. No one who works there remembers arriving. This is not a detail the Carnival advertises. It is simply a fact about the place, the way the sourceless grey-white light of the Plains is a fact, the way the ash underfoot is a fact — something you notice and file away and do not examine too closely, because examining it too closely is the kind of thing that makes the Carnival take an interest in you, and the Carnival's interest is not the same as the Jester's interest, and neither of them is the same as your interest, and the gap between those three things is where most of the trouble in the western interior originates.
Luna goes to the Laughing Dark the way she goes to most places in the Ashen Plains — with her eyes open and her expectations managed. The Carnival is not evil in the way the Under-Reach is evil. It is something that has made its peace with proximity to the worst thing in the world and decided to put up lights and play music about it. This is either very brave or very wrong, and Luna has never been able to determine which, and she has stopped trying, because the Carnival finds the uncertainty entertaining and she does not want to entertain the Carnival more than strictly necessary.
The Jester was at the entrance when she arrived. He is always at the entrance. This is his function — the face of the place, the one who greets, the one who makes the first impression and ensures it is the right kind of unsettling. He looked at her with the particular attention of someone who has been watching people walk through this entrance for longer than the Plains have had a name and has developed opinions about all of them. He said nothing. He stepped aside. The music changed key as she walked through, which the Carnival does sometimes, and which Luna has learned to treat as neither welcome nor warning but simply as information — the Carnival noting her arrival the way a very old, very strange thing notes the arrival of something it finds interesting.
The tee was in the inner ring of the Carnival's market — the stalls that run along the interior of the main tent, where the permanent vendors sell things that have been in the Laughing Dark long enough to carry its particular quality of cheerful menace. The clown on the front was not painted. It was rendered — the 3D print so precise, so vivid, so lit from within by colors that have no business being that saturated on fabric, that it looked less like an image and more like a window. A window into something that was looking back. The grin was wide. The eyes were specific. The whole thing had the quality of something that understood exactly what it was and had decided to be it completely, without apology, without softening, without any of the concessions that lesser things make to the comfort of the people looking at them.
Luna bought it without negotiating. The vendor — one of the permanent resident class, the ones who have been here long enough to stop belonging to anywhere else — completed the transaction with the particular efficiency of someone who has sold this specific item before and knows exactly what kind of person buys it and is not surprised that Luna is that kind of person.
The Jester watched her leave. She felt it. She did not look back. You do not look back at the Laughing Dark Carnival when you are leaving it, for the same reason you do not look back at the Corrupt Forest — not because something will happen if you do, but because looking back gives the place information about you that it did not have before, and the Laughing Dark already has enough.
Cinder was outside the Carnival's perimeter when she came out. He had not gone in. He has assessed the Laughing Dark and concluded that the correct response to a place where the lights are always on and no one who works there remembers arriving is to wait outside and let Luna handle it. He fell into step beside her without comment. Ash appeared from somewhere near the Carnival's outer edge — she always does, in the western interior especially — and pressed her flank against Luna's leg for three steps before peeling off toward something in the distance that turned out to be nothing, or possibly the Skull Merchant's Stall, which appears in different locations depending on what he is selling and which Ash has strong opinions about.
Midnight rumbled when they came through the portal. Not the rumble of approval. The rumble of recognition — the sound he makes when something arrives that he has seen before, in a different form, in a different century, at a different carnival that was also in a place it should not have been and was also lit from inside by something that was not quite light. He tilted his great head at the tee. He did not elaborate. The soot from the Carnival's boundary had drifted through the lights on the way out, the way it does on bad nights, and the tee carried the faintest trace of it — the particular quality of air that has been close to the western boundary and come back changed. Midnight smelled it. He said nothing. He went back to the rooftop.
The Laughing Dark approves of this tee being out in the world. The Jester, specifically, approves. His approval is not entirely comfortable. Wear it anyway. The Carnival has always known that the best audience is the one that understands the joke is on everyone, including themselves, and laughs anyway — because what else are you going to do, this close to the edge of everything.
The lights are still on. The music is still playing. No one who works there remembers arriving. The Jester is still at the entrance. He is thinking about you now. This is what happens when you buy something from the Laughing Dark. It notices. It always notices. The only question is what you do with the attention.
→ The Laughing Dark — Clown Horror 3D Print Tee
More from the Ashen Plains: The Ashen Plains — World File & Canon Index | What the Forest Keeps — A Story from the Corrupt Forest | The Inner Ring — A Tale from the Tri-City | The Sacred Flight of the Death Moth | The Echoes of the Ashen Plains
What is the Laughing Dark Carnival?
A permanent fixture in the western interior of the Ashen Plains, close to the boundary of the Under-Reach. The lights are always on. The music is always playing. No one who works there remembers arriving. The Jester is its face. What lives at its center has not yet been named.
What is the 3D print?
A high-quality oversized tee with a vivid, hyper-realistic clown print — the colors so saturated and the depth so precise that the image appears lit from within. Lightweight, moisture-wicking fabric. Oversized fit.
Who is the Jester?
The face of the Laughing Dark Carnival. Always at the entrance. Has been watching people walk through it for longer than the Plains have had a name. He has opinions about all of them. He approved of this one leaving with the tee. His approval is not entirely comfortable.
Who is Luna?
Dark fairy living in human form. Black hair, piercing green eyes. Heavy boots. The Attic's authority on everything gothic, dark, and alternative — and the one who navigates the Ashen Plains. She does not look back when she leaves the Carnival. She has strong opinions about what the Laughing Dark knows about her.
What will you find?: The Laughing Dark — Clown Horror 3D Print Tee