Carnival Night

Getting exactly what you want? Look out! Maybe it's not real. Or, worse...maybe it will be. Soon.

Gray's a teenager in Henge, West Virginia. A carnival comes to town. He and his friends attend. Which is fine as far as it goes--but all of a sudden Gray's not totally sure he knows his friends as well as he'd thought. People can surprise you sometimes.

And then it turns out they don't know him very well either. And just maybe they don't know him at all...

Note: this story is included in the author's The Challenge: A Story Collection, published simultaneously. It also shares a setting with The Secret, a recent full-length near-future post-apocalyptic supernatural thriller by David Haywood Young.