Short Story / Presley Welver (Analysis)
“What is it?” Diana asked as she looked up from Ryan’s laptop.
“It’s a Halloween Carnival, at Nitaren Park,” Ryan called back from the kitchen. Diana stared once more at the computer screen, scanning the page for information about this carnival. She looked back at him again, but he was busy getting something from the fridge and could not see her look of disgust directed towards him. So she looked back at the computer.
“What do you think?” Ryan asked as he walked out of the kitchen and sat down on the couch in the living room, next to Diana.
She looked at him, but hesitated to answer. What did she think? Well, the truth is that she thought it was a horrible idea because she absolutely hated Halloween. Ever since she was younger, she has never celebrated, or even tried to think about Halloween, and this carnival was something she definitely did not want to go to.
“Well…,” she began, “I think it looks like…fun?”
Ryan stared at her and started chuckling. “I didn’t say you had to like it, I just asked you a question. I think it looks pretty awesome.”
“Yeah…awesome.” Ryan took the laptop off of Diana and put it on his lap.
“I mean look at all this stuff. They’ve got tons of food, games, prizes, and rides, a carousel, and a fun house. Oh man I can’t wait! And it’s tomorrow!”
Diana stared out the window of her ground-level apartment, and wished desperately that he wasn’t so excited about this, because she didn’t want to go. But she loved seeing him happy, almost more than anything in the world, and she knew if she said she didn’t want to go, he would be extremely disappointed.
“So?” Ryan asked, drawing attention away from the window. “You wanna go?”
She hesitated, but then she smiled. “Yes, sure. Why not? I would love to go.”
Ryan smiled, stood up, and put the laptop on the table in the dining room. “Are you sure? Cause I know you don’t like Halloween. I mean, what kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t know that?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, I’ll be okay.”
“Alright, sweet. I’m gonna go call Freddie, Trevor, and Ginger, and see if they want to go too.”
“Okay,” Diana replied, once more staring out the window. Tomorrow was going to be interesting.
Diana had to admit that it did look pretty cool. There was the carousel right in the middle, with the rides, games, food, and Fun House surrounding it. Some of the rides were big and scary looking, and the games all had that “carnival” sound, where there’s a lot of yelling and “Yes!” and bells. The food all smelled really good, and the Fun House was gigantic, able to be seen from all over the park.
They met up with their friends Freddie, Trevor, and Ginger at the entrance. They were all about 23 or 24, fresh out of college for the most part, including Ryan and Diana. They were all also very naïve about things and opportunities in the world.
“Hey guys,” Ryan called as he spotted them. “Over here!”
They walked over, and all of them entered the park. Everywhere, the theme was definitely Halloween. Decorations hung all about, the rides, tables, games, and even food were decorated with Halloween objects, artifacts, flavors, and all sorts of monsters. There were hired professionals to walk around dressed up as dead people, werewolves, vampires, people who had been murdered, and things that the imagination may never have conceived.
Diana started shivering. Ryan, who was holding her hand as they walked towards the food, felt her shivering. “Are you okay?” he asked looking at her.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just cold.” Ryan eyed her suspiciously, but didn’t say anything.
They went and ate food first. There were hot dogs, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, popcorn, pretzels, candy, cotton candy, caramel apples, peanuts, and all the food you would find at a carnival. However, each one had the option of having its own little Halloween twist. Like the cotton candy would be the color of blood, of the caramel apples were actually eyes. Little things like that that weren’t scary, but were enough to make you not want to eat anything. Then Diana saw something that almost made her sick. She saw a guy eating a hot dog. Only, the hot dog was a finger. And it wasn’t one of the twists, because it was a real finger. She suddenly stood up from the table she was at, screamed, and ran over to pull the finger out of this guy’s mouth.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the guy yelled at her.
“I---I---you-—finger…” because when Diane looked at the hot dog she had pulled out of this guy’s mouth, it was indeed just a regular hot dog.
Ryan came over and pulled Diana away from the table, but not before giving the guy money to buy a new hot dog. “Why did you do that?” Ryan asked her once they were seated back at their table.
Diana was still staring at the guy, who was now happily eating a new hot dog, as if nothing had happened. Ryan stared at her, waiting for an answer. Finally, she looked at him.
“That man…he was eating a finger.”
Ryan just looked at her. “A finger? No. That would be a hot dog.”
“I know that. But I swear I saw him eating a human finger. I’m not lying to you, I know what I saw.”
Ryan looked at the guy, and then looked back at her. “Diana, I think you need to get more sleep at night,” and he turned away from her and started talking to his friends once more.
Diana knew that that was a finger. She knew she wasn’t going insane. But then how come it wasn’t a finger?
“You can’t get it Ryan, you’re not that talented!” Ginger called at Ryan as he was playing one of the ring toss games.
“Shut up, Ginger!” Ryan tossed the ring and it landed on one of the bottles. “Ha! You see!”
“Pick your prize,” the attendant to the game said as he yawned. Ryan picked a big, brown teddy bear and than handed it to Diana.
At first, Diana smiled and thought it was very sweet. But as she held it in her arms, she could’ve sworn she had seen it smile, wink, and then whisper something at her. She screamed and dropped it on the ground.
When she looked around, no one had seemed removed by the fact that an inanimate object had just moved, and they were just staring at her.
“What happened?” Ryan asked her as he picked the bear off the ground and handed it back to her.
Diana didn’t know what to do. Maybe she was losing her mind. “I..uh…saw a spider on it.”
Ryan laughed and took her hand. “Is that it? Okay well there are no more big bad spiders so it’s safe now.” Diana smiled uneasily as she held the bear away from her and they started to walk towards the rides.
“Let’s go on that one!” Freddie had shouted as he was pointing at a roller coaster that goes high up in the air and does the regular turns and flips.
So five minutes later, they were all sitting in their seats in the roller coaster and waiting for it to begin. When it took off, it went up real slowly into the air, getting ready for its long dive to the ground.
When their car reached the top, Diana noticed that at the beginning of the next hill after the dive, there was a piece missing from the track. She started screaming and wiggling, trying to tell the people that it was gone. Surely they would see it, for it was very noticeable. She looked over and saw Ryan staring at her with a grin on his face.
“We haven’t even gone over yet and you’re screaming!” he yelled to her and grabbed her hand. Diana looked down in terror and prepared to die.
The coaster went down the huge dive, and when it started to go back up and reached the part where there was no track, it flew off the track and into to the air. There was a bunch of screaming as people started flying out of their seats. Diana felt Ryan’s hand slip out of hers, and watched as he flew out of the cart and hit one of the poles from the ride, cracking his neck and killing him.
She continued to scream as the coaster flew threw the air, hitting various parts from the ride, until it finally starting descending down, where she was going to die.
“DIANA!” Ryan screamed at her. Diana opened her eyes and saw that she was still sitting in her seat in the roller coaster, that Ryan was sitting next her, and that the ride had not started yet. She looked around, and thought she must be dead or something, because she had just seen all these people die.
“Diana?” Ryan asked looking at her. “What happened?” Diana kept looking around, and touching everything with her hands. She was shaking so badly that the car they were in actually started to move.
“Ryan?” she said at last, looking at him.
“Yes? Diana? What’s wrong?”
“Ryan? Is that really you?”
Ryan looked around as if expecting someone to help him out. “Yea, Diana. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“We have to get off of this ride!” she screamed and jumped up, but could not go anywhere because of her restraint. “Don’t let them start it! We have to get off!”
“Okay, okay.” He looked around and signaled the attendant over to help them out. He explained that that they had to get off, and the attendant took of the restraints. As soon as they were let out (Freddie, Ginger, and Trevor included), Diana ran off, still shaking and upset.
Ryan looked at Ginger, Freddie, and Trevor, but they all just looked back at him blankly. So he ran after Diana, who had gone completely out of the rides section and to over where the carousel was.
She was sitting on a bench and she was crying.
“Diana! What’s wrong?”
She looked up at him, her face red, puffy, and full of a mixture of tears and sweat. “Ryan,” she said as she breathed heavily, “I think I’m in trouble.”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
“I keep seeing things that I think are real, but no one else sees them.”
“Diana, what in the world are you talking about?”
“See what I mean? I think I’m going crazy.”
Ryan looked around, and then focused back on her. “Diana, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The roller coaster left. It took off. And then it went off the track and you died. I saw it. I was about to die too. But then…I don’t know. It’s like I woke up or something.”
Ryan put his arm around her and held her as she cried into his shoulder “I’m sorry that you’re upset, but things will be okay. Trust me.”
Freddie came over, although he did so cautiously because of Diana’s condition. “You guys wanna come with us? We’re going into the fun house.”
Diana took her head off Ryan’s shoulder and looked at him. He shrugged. “It’s up to you,” he said.
Diana looked at the fun house, which was plainly visible from the bench. “Yea, sure. Why not.”
At first it wasn’t so scary. Yea, so there was a room with people dressed like the rest of it jumping out and “scaring” you. Whatever. The five of them walked through that one easily, even though Diana was still shook up. The next room was completely visual effects, because the people split up into two groups, with a glass wall separating them. On the glass wall, you could see the other people, but they were now deformed, bloody, and torn up. Yay! Big deal.
It was the third and final room that was really the problem. You wouldn’t think it would be so bad, because it is just a maze, which leads to the exit. However, there are no walls, only mirrors.
They approached the entrance, and already it looked confusing because you couldn’t tell which entrance was the real one. They watched as a couple of people tried to find it, and ended up bumping into the mirrors. Not only were the walls mirrors, but they were not all straight, meaning that parts of some of them were sticking out, making it even more confusing.
“I don’t like this,” Diana whispered as they stood there waiting to move.
“Oh come on, honey,” Ryan said as he put his arm around her. “It’s only mirrors. They’re not going to bite you.”
“Come on, Freddie. Let’s be the smarter of our group and actually start moving,” Trevor said. “You too, Ginger.” Ginger and Freddie followed Trevor towards an entrance, that actually turned out to the right one.
“Good job, Trevor,” Ryan said. “You ready?” he then said to Diana.
Diana looked around, and saw that everyone else had gone into the maze already. “I guess so,” she said at last realizing that they really didn’t have a choice.
Ryan pulled her towards the part where Trevor had found, and they walked through, expecting to see Trevor, Freddie, and Ginger on the other side. However, when they went through the threshold, there was no one there; just a long line of mirrors reflecting more mirrors and themselves.
“Where did they go?” Diana asked looking down the path.
“I don’t know,” Ryan replied as he walked around, trying to find another passage. “Must’ve gone ahead. It looks like the only way to go is that way, so lets go.”
He started walking down the passage, but Diana stayed behind. She did not want to venture into a place where you couldn’t tell which way was which, and where there was no one else to be with.
Ryan stopped at the end of the passage, where it split into two directions. “Which way?” he called.
Diana walked forward, but she did so at a slow pace, not wanting to miss anything. She reached where he was standing, and looked left and right. Both ways looked the same, branching off into different directions and places.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Just pick one.”
“Okay. Let’s go…left!” They turned down the left corridor, and Diana saw a pair of eyes in one of the mirrors after they turned, and she screamed and put her head down.
Ryan stopped walking. “What? What is it?”
Diana looked up, and saw that the eyes were gone.
Ryan looked where she was looking. “What? Diana, did you see something?”
“There was a pair of…well it looked like…I don’t know anymore.”
“You probably just saw something from one of us. There are a lot of mirrors here, it doesn’t take much to get confused.”
“Yea,” Diana said as she looked at the ground. As they walked forward, she watched Ryan’s feet, not wanting to look up.
After about 5 minutes of following Ryan’s feet, she finally looked up when they had stopped.
It was not Ryan that was standing in front of her though. It was a man, grungy and dirty, with a knife sticking out of his chest.
“Help…me…” he panted to her.
Diana screamed and ran the other way. In the mirrors she could see it following her, but she couldn’t tell where it was. As she was looking back, she ran into something. She looked up and screamed again as she saw that she had run into another man, this one was not bleeding though. He was holding an axe, and was about to swing it onto her. She ran back, but tripped and fell.
“HELP!” she screamed at the top of her lungs as she started twisting and wriggling to get up again. She saw in the mirrors that someone was coming towards her, but she could not tell who it was.
The man came over to her, picked her up of the ground and started calling her name.
“How do you know my name?!” she yelled at him.
“Diana! Diana! It’s me! It’s Ryan!”
Diana stopped screaming, looked up at him, and collapsed in his arms. “RYAN! Oh Ryan! Please help! They’re after me! They’re back!”
“Diana! Diana, who’s after you? Who’s back? Wait! Here sit down in this chair that was over there!” and he pulled the chair over that was against the wall.
“Oh Ryan! Please! I’m so scared…please.”
Ryan held her in his arms as she cried and begged for him to save her for about 5 minutes.
When she had finally calmed down, Ryan sat down on the ground. “Diana, what’s going on? What happened?”
“Where did you go?” she asked him.
“I was walking, and all of a sudden I turned around and you weren’t there. What happened? What’s been going on with you?”
“Oh Ryan…it all started 13 years ago, with my sister Linda.”
“You have a sister? How come you’ve never mentioned her?”
Diana sighed. “Because she killed herself.”
“You see, my sister Linda and I were bored one day during the summer, and we were in a new house, so we decided to check out the attic. We were just looking around at all the old junk that the previous owners had left in there, when we found a box. It was about six inches long, two inches wide, and two inches tall. It was extremely dusty, but once we wiped the dust off, we saw that there was a special writing on it.
‘The writing said that there was something horrific trapped inside the box, and that it was never to be opened. It said there were horrors inside, that once unleashed would haunt the people who had unleashed them for the rest of their lives, making it a fate worse than death. Of course, she was 13 and I was only 10, so we would pretty much believe anything. Which is why we agreed to never open the box, and to put it back in the attic until we could get rid of it.
“One day, I had gone out, and when I came home, I found Linda, dead in the bath tub. She had killed herself, and the only reason I could ever guess why, was because she opened the box. Her curiosity must’ve gotten the best of her, because I found it in her room afterward. I threw the box away, after I sealed it shut, and hoped I would never have to deal with it again.
“But now I think they’re here, haunting me because they couldn’t get my sister.”
Ryan was staring intently at Diana, and Diana could tell that he was now as scared as she was. “So…what do we do?” he asked her.
Diana looked around. “I’m not sure. We have to get out of here though, if we want to get anything done.”
Ryan stood up. “Well, we could always smash the mirrors down.”
Diana stood up too. “You don’t think the whole thing is just mirrors, do you? I mean, there have to be walls supporting them.”
Ryan shrugged. “Maybe…maybe not. Let’s see.” Ryan picked up the chair that Diana was sitting on, and smashed it into the mirror. Thankfully, it worked. The mirror broke, and they could now see the back of the mirror to the other passage.
Ryan kept smashing mirror after mirror, until they were finally at the exit.
They were about to walk out of the door, when Diana screamed and stopped walking.
Ryan stopped too, and turned around. “What?”
Diana pointed to the ground, in front of the door to the exit. There, was the box.
“What should we do?” Ryan asked her.
“I don’t know,” Diana replied frantically searching her brain for an answer. “Wait a minute…what if we burned it?”
Ryan looked at the box. “Do you think that would work?”
“I don’t know, but it’s worth a try.”
“Do you have anything to burn it with?”
“Crap!” Diana looked around, and then stopped and reached into her pocket, and pulled out a booklet of matches. “I forgot I had these!”
Ryan stared at her. “Why do you have matches in you pocket?”
“From this morning, when I was lighting the candles in the house, remember? You told me to keep them in case I needed to light the candles again.”
“Oh yea…talk about lucky.”
Diana passed the matches to Ryan, who struck the match and went up the box He was about to light it on fire, when suddenly all the lights went out, including the match.
“Ryan?” Diana called from the dark. “Ryan? What happened? Are you there?” She felt around for him, and finally found his shaking body.
“Yes, I’m here,” called Ryan. “Everything is okay, Diana. Don’t worry. You’ll be okay. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine…soon.”
Diana was pulled back, and fell to the floor. The lights came back on, and it wasn’t Ryan that was standing there, but a man who was wearing a long, grey overcoat, and was holding the box in his hand.
“Hello Diana,” the man said to her. “Do you know who I am?” Diana shook her head. “I am Presley Welver, and I am the owner of this box.”
Diana looked around, and spotted Ryan on the ground, and he seemed to be knocked out.
“Do you know what today is?” Diana shook her head again. “Today is the 13-year anniversary of your sister’s death. 13 years is how long it takes for the spirits to become ready once again to go out and have fun. Today is also the day you will be joining them.” Presley opened the box, and started to walk towards Diana.
“You see, this box sucks up whatever I allow it to, and makes that thing a part of it. That is your job.” He started walking even closer to her, and Diana tried to move back, but couldn’t because she was against a wall.
“Don’t worry, it won’t hurt. You’ll enjoy it. You owe it to these guys, because your sister didn’t give her full account. So now you have to repay her debts.”
He had finally reached her, and the box was now cracked open, waiting to be fully opened. “Sorry it has to be this way, but you’ll like it.”
Presley almost had the box opened, but suddenly it was lit on fire, and so was he. Diana looked behind Presley and saw Ryan standing there, holding the matches. Diana stood up, went and stood next to Ryan, and the two of them watched the box and its owner burn until there was nothing left. It seemed as though once the box was gone, all evidence of Presley Welver was also gone.
“Well, you can’t say that it wasn’t an interesting Halloween,” Ryan said to Diana as they pulled up to their apartment.
“Yeah. But hopefully it’s done and gone. I don’t want to have to deal with that crap anymore in my lifetime.”
“At least we had each other,” and Ryan turned off the car, looked at Diana, and smiled.
She looked at him and smiled back. “Yeah.”
They got out of the car, and Diana walked up to the apartment while Ryan got their stuff out of the car.
Diana was about to open their door, but stopped and screamed. Ryan turned around. “What?” he said looking to see what was wrong. But then he saw it.
Sitting there, on their doorstep, was The Box with the words, “Compliments of the Welvers” now carved into the top of it.
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““Yeah…awesome.” Ryan took the laptop off of Diana and put it on his lap.” Be careful of this sentence. By putting ryan’s name in the front, it looks like you are assigning the statement to him when I know it is meant to be said by Diana.
“They were all about 23 or 24, fresh out of college for the most part, including Ryan and Diana. They were all also very naïve about things and opportunities in the world.” I’m using this as an example that you should apply to the rest of your piece. There are a few major problems here. First: the comments seems like an after thought. It looks like you were sitting there and said “well I just threw in these characters, maybe I should say something about them” Also, these statements are too general. There s nothing that couldn’t have been put in some interesting dialouge. Show, don’t tell.
“and things that the imagination may never have conceived.” Loose this. Obviously someone’s imagination (even yours perhaps), have concieved of these things. Don’t worry, we get it.
“The theme was denfinately Halloween” This has already been established that this is a Halloween carnival and is very redundant. Also, describe the decorations. Are the cheesy? Realistic? Hokey? Give us something! Show, don’t tell.
Finally, please pick a point of view and stick with it.
Please forive me for not completely reading the entire piece, however, your technical errors are as such that it was impossible to do so. I feel you may have an interesting story here…but you need to do some major re-writes before having the ability to draw the reader into it.
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