Bloody Candies (Laughing Jack X Reader)

Suffering Spectacles

(Warnings: captive reader, unhealthy relationships, possessive behavior, horror, psychological horror, memory loss, violence, blood, torture, death)

Sometimes you longed to be like the carnival guests. They would wander grounds, their eyes dead and their skin as grey as ash. Dead and grey, just like the rest of this place.

You were envious of the way they lacked emotion. Once they may have been people with a will to live, but that part of them was long gone, confiscated by whatever power the clown held over this little pocket dimension. It was surely a miserable existence, but at least they weren't scared. They felt no fear when they were slaughtered on a whim. 

You, on the other hand, were different. The clown made sure of that. He had fixated on you. You remained just self aware enough to notice when your memories began to slip away. It was little things at first. You couldn't remember how you arrived here in the first place, then you began to lose track of how many days you had been held captive. You broke down one day when you realized you could no longer remember your address, your hometown, or even the faces of your closest friends.

Jack seemed to revel in your despair. That was the clown's name. Laughing Jack. It was a fitting name, given the glee he displayed whenever he slaughtered the brain dead guests, often forcing you to watch the bloody carnage.

With every passing day you grew more desensitized to the gore. When you first arrived you could be reduced to tears by the slightest acts of violence. Now you barely cringed when Jack would slit the guests' throats right in front of you.

It was obvious he was playing with you, delighting in your horrified responses. Deep down you knew that when you no longer reacted, he would get bored. He would dispose of you. You needed to escape before that happened.

Unfortunately today would offer no opportunities for that. You sat in a circus tent, legs crossed and hands tied behind your back, binding you to one of the wooden posts used to hold up the structure.

Laughing Jack's attitude towards you seemed to rapidly switch between dismissive and possessive, and today was one of his possessive days, hence your bound state.

"Can't have you running away now, dearest, I've prepared quite the show for you," He said, before practically bouncing out of the tent. His giddiness was a sharp contrast to the dark and damp atmosphere of the tent.

Had you been a bit braver you may have replied with some witty retort. Where did he even expect you to run to? It wasn't like you hadn't tried to flee the carnival before. You always ended up back where you started, as if you had run in a circle... or Jack would catch you, and the consequences would vary depending on his mood.

You didn't know how long you had been bound when he finally returned. Time moved strangely in the carnival. He came back dragging two bodies behind him, a man and a woman. His strength was surprising and terrifying, especially when juxtaposed with his skeletal, rag-doll like figure.

The man and woman were blindfolded and bound. You immediately realized they weren't carnival guests. Their skin hadn't gone grey, they still had a sense of free will about them, and most telling of all, they were struggling. The guests never struggled. They knew there was no point in doing so.

This was new, and it filled you with a crushing sense of dread.

"Aw sweetheart, let's turn that frown upside down! The show hasn't even started yet!" Jack said, leaning down and taking your chin in his clawed hand, forcing you to look up at him. With exaggerated motions, he snapped his fingers, reached behind your head and retrieved a scalpel from thin air. It was a sadistic perversion of a magician pulling a coin out of a volunteer's ear.