The Sun shone down on the lifeless corpses of a billion smashed guitars.
Diane found a road in the refuse, a narrow path through the trash heap. Once instruments of divine melody, now reduced to an ocean of broken timbre and frayed catgut. Rolling, muted waves as far as the eye could see.
The road was long and empty, just as the blue sky overhead. The Sun radiated there, lonely and stationary. Night never fell anymore. The stars never danced and the moon didn’t sing. The Sun had eaten them, devouring their light to become The Light. Diane longed for comforting shade.
There was a Fair up ahead. From a distance, it looked to be a cyclopean wonderland. A swarm of balloons streamed upwards, helium dreams reaching for the Sun. Curious, Diane knew she had to see what all the fuss was about.
It was a Job Fair. No cotton candy or Ferris-wheels here. Only clowns clowning clowns. Sad clowns, singing their Pagliachi melancholy, heartfelt and emotionless, while the other clowns feigned to be heart-struck. Mischievous clowns, honking noses and pulling pranks, professing it was all a big game, and pretending it didn’t hurt when the punchline slithered back around to bite them in turn. Brilliant clowns, who could tell you how to send a man to the stars, but couldn’t tell you where heaven had gone.
There was noise here, but no music, and so Diane moved on. She looked back down the road from whence she had come, but it grew thinner and thinner the further back it went, until it was nothing but a single strand of yarn. The strand ended in a messy tangle that may have once been a compact ball, but who could remember such a time? A cat with sharp claws was tangled up in in the fray, playing with the yarn ferociously. Diane thought about going back and petting the cat, but decided she didn’t want to lose the road ahead. That cat looked dangerous.
Diane trudged on, forward, down the only path through the trash heap of guitars. The road was cobbled with tombstones. There was a toll booth blocking the path, its flimsy arm extended authoritatively, obstructing the road. She would have to pay the Fare.
A Troll stepped out of the toll booth. It was a slippery thing to look at. Its face and body were always changing, never keeping the same form for more than a few seconds. It swaggered with hideous confidence.
“Don’t you find me beautiful?” the sultry Troll asked. Its breasts grew and grew, until finally they were so pendulous that the moon fell out of orbit and circumvented to their keeping of time.
“No,” Diane said apologetically. “I do not.”
White hot rage simmered for just a moment, but then the mask of confidence was back so quickly that it may have been an illusion. “Are you sure you don’t find me beautiful?” The Troll grew skinny, nearly skeletal. Its skin became such a pale white that it began to flake off like smoky ash, dust on the wind.
