The Carnaval Children

While walking down Harrison in the Mission during the annual Carnaval festivities today I suspected some foul play as soon as I saw Manuel the Blacksmith. I first spotted him from a good distance dancing to techno music in a slow writhing motion. He was wearing his proudest achievement, a disco ball tunic plate that glittered in the sun like wet fish scales. This discoplate has the magic power of numbing his opponents into a zombie state where they follow his every creepy demand.



Manuel the Blacksmith is part of an iconoclastic crew of role playing gamers that took their marginalized lifestyle into the occult. They developed intricate rituals of virtual prayer and celebration as well as complex public ceremonies that aim towards abducting cultural events for the sake of irony and pity.

I met Manuel over twenty years ago at the California Renaissance Fair, a time when things were as simple as good old lightning bolt fun. But even back then Manuel would show signs of his derision for role playing culture and his need to try out something so daring, so evil, that I just couldn't believe it would ever happen.

Manuel's sparkling discoplate and snakelike riggling attracted many children who wanted to stare and poke. He smiled a hideous grimace and directed the children to sit in some chairs where they would wait for what he called "the most sought after magic balloon show in all of the lands." I figured that witch, Griswalda, high school sweetheart of Manuel, must be behind this magic show.

I watched from afar and documented what I could without being seen. Sure enough Griswalda the Sorceress appeared out of the crowd and started smoothly hypnotizing the children with her balloon stunts and rhyming tricks. Even though Griswalda placed stuffed animals in a circle around her, she did not look amiable, in fact her large blue eyes were wild as ever, so wild and demonic, that my camera could not capture her image until she blinked.



She commenced the magic show by learning each child's name, repeating the monikers incessantly, elongating the syllables and holding her breadth in between the sounds, steadily gaining the trust of the little innocents who stared with mouths hung open. On a loudspeaker she would rap terrible tales about the kids, concocting wicked stories about the children and the balloon beast that she blew up, and neatly folded, and tied up right before our eyes. Some of the poor babes laughed and clapped wildly but a few recognized intuitively the horror of Griswalda and so they cried their little hearts out. Just look at the contrast!



Once each child acquired a magic balloon, ranging from a dragon butterfly to a worm monkey, they were ushered into a so-called "the bouncy ride of a child's most exquisite dreams," named Jurassic Adventure.



But as more and more parents looked around hysterically for lost children, I knew there was something fishy about this adventure. And sure enough, as I walked into a small alley way behind the ride I saw the most horrible thing, small children being caged and churned up and down on a human sized rotisserie!



I screamed but covered my mouth immediately to conserve my clandestine position. It's hard to be an elderly spy. Luckily police were everywhere, but after I told them of these disgusting happenings, they laughed at me and told me to go back to the senile home.



Fucking police. They just sat around giving each other high fives and shooting the shit about busting some kids who dropped ecstasy at a rave called Popsicle.

Some priorities. Look at what happened to the children.


Sold for seven dollars a pop for a "Super Chicken Kebab." Many people enjoyed the barbecued baby meat on a stick.