By: Daiyu Tang
And here I was thinking I’d had enough of Carnies to last at least a year (and ideally two – my suggestion they take a gap year still stands!). It seems however fate is not being kind to your reporter as because while I did not witness the below incident and truthfully saw one of the implicated individuals as actually being one of the more benign of the night, it appears I missed something. Read on to find out why one unlucky woman had a pretty bad fortune (teller).
In Plain Sight
Carneval Obscura was back in town, and like everything else that plants its stakes in Hathian’s soil, it grew deformed and that deformity was more than expensive cotton candy and cheap prizes. It was darker.
According to a detailed account shared with the Observer, at least one woman left the carnival not on her own two feet, but limp in the arms of a man working the fortune-teller booth, after what the witness describes as a choke-hold in plain sight.
The witness, a local woman out on a date, says she and her partner were heading toward the throwing ring booth. As she glanced past the games, she caught what she believes was the man’s hands around a dark-haired woman’s throat.
‘Something’s up,‘ she remembers telling her boyfriend at the time, nudging him urgently. By the time he looked, the woman was already limp.
From there, the scene took on a familiar Hathian shape: violence recast as nightlife, an assault quickly reframed as ‘just a drunk.’
Just Drunk?
A second woman, dressed in black and standing close to the fortune teller and his dog, reportedly watched the struggle. Despite, in her own reported words, the woman ‘basically being assaulted in the middle of the carnival,’ she did not shout for help. Instead, when the victim finally slumped unconscious, she turned to the fortune-teller and calmly asked: “She fainted, what are you gonna do?“
According to the witness account, the answer was not, as some would hope, ‘call EMS. He was reported to have then raised his voice for the crowd: “Drunk bitches,” he spat, loud enough for anyone half-paying attention. “Better take drunk ass [name withheld] to bed…”
It’s an old Hathian trick. Change the narrative before anyone has time to think.
The witness reports that the woman in black, who the Observer is considering an accomplice rolled her eyes at concerned onlookers and joked that one would think a carnie could hold their liquor and moved in to help the Fortune Teller carry the limp woman.
From a distance, it looked like two friends hauling a wasted third to safety. Up close, the witness says, the victim’s arms hung like dead weight. There was no attempt to rouse her, no slurred protests, just a slack, unconscious body being folded into a story about too much booze.
I’d personally hope that the witness is mistaken but I fluctuate between thinking some people are better than others, even if their ‘better’ might still involve cults and blood. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’m not sure about when I’m fooled for the tenth or worse time.
A Car Clue
The pair walked the woman to a black Toyota Celica parked nearby. The man strapped her into the front passenger seat, seatbelt and all, like a passed-out party girl. To the untrained eye, it could have been any other messy Hathian night: one woman who’d had too much, a friend with a car, a helpful ride. It is exactly that casual plausibility that worries the witness.
She didn’t shout. She didn’t rush the car. In Hathian, that sort of heroism gets people buried. Instead, she did what she could without risking putting herself in the trunk as well. Pretending to argue with her mother on the phone, she moved closer, clocked the man’s face and the woman in black. She memorised the make and model of the vehicle and quietly snapped a photo of the rear, plate included, under the guise of texting.
The Observer has seen the image of the black Celica and the plate attached to it. We are choosing, for now, not to print plate details while we seek comment from HPD about whether any crime has been reported to the woman.
We do not know where that car went when it left the lot. We do not know what condition the unconscious woman woke up in, or if she woke up in Hathian at all, (Or woke up at all -Ed) What we do know is that, in a town already marred by disappearances, trafficking allegations, and a recent carnival night that ended in sirens and stretchers, this reads less like a harmless ‘drunk friend’ story and more like a training manual for how to make someone vanish without anyone screaming until it’s far too late.
If you recognise this scene, the woman in black, the black Celica, or if you were the woman who left the carnival unconscious that night, the Observer wants to hear from you. If you’re the Fortune Teller who moonlights as a Demon, then perhaps you’ll be able to assist in clearing up any misconceptions our witness has? We’re waiting to hear from you and maybe your photo will assist in that.
In Hathian, silence is the accomplice…
