Once I'd seen "The Claw" game, my mind flashed back to others I'd seen around the fairgrounds.
A few hours earlier, Alex and I walked up to the ticket counter for admission. We'd crossed a turn-style portal. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, but instead of steel bars, the turn-styles were made from hard plastic mannequin arms, just like in the other machine.
We wandered around together for a bit, Alex and I. Everywhere, there were kids and adults running, cheering, laughing and screaming. I happened to glance at some of the game booths. Initially, it looked like one of the classic games where players shot waterguns into Clown faces. The object of the game was to inflate a balloon until it popped. The man running the game was a somewhat ragged looking clown. His make-up was running and it made him look as if he'd partially melted. Perhaps the kids had been shooting him with water? I remembered thinking it was odd that the face-targets weren't clowns, but the stunned and frightened faces of children! At the time, I'd thought that it was all part of the carnival's slightly dark theme. When I reflected on it, however, I remembered the eyes on the plastic faces were wide with fear, and seemed to dart back and forth, staring at the children as they squirted back at them. If it were true that Dr. Morpho was somehow transforming people into carnival games, I couldn't think of a more terrible fate.
I ran in the direction I'd seen Alex go, but I'd lost sight of him. I was beginning to get very worried...