[ As if he needed any further proof this whole place is a damn nightmare. Or hell, maybe. Not what he was expecting, he's got to admit, but then, he isn't exactly the imaginative type. Outside a few specialties, anyway. 

Joel ignores the rides and the music and most of the rest of the noise - as best he can, at any rate. After a couple decades of gunfire and explosions and... other unpleasant things being the loudest it ever gets, and silence a matter of survival more often than not, he's markedly uncomfortable in the thick of the midway. Just maybe not quite enough so to forgo the food. Greasy, fried junk - how long has it been since this kind of stuff was commonplace? Or anywhere? 

He's carrying around a carton of popcorn, eating it in mild disbelief, when a row of rifles catches his eye. Not real ones, of course - but the kind fired at wooden ducks that drop back on hinges and fall behind their little wooden waves when they're hit. He picks one of the toy guns up, setting aside the popcorn for the moment, and gives it a once-over. Heavy for a carnival game, definitely unsafe (the thought's almost funny). 

Before he can properly consider why he'd bother, he's shot down two rows of ducks, and one of those suspect barkers is offering him an enormous stuffed something. Joel pays it no mind, waving them off. ] Give it to the next one.

[ It's quieter out by the trailers. Darker. Easier on his nerves. He's gone rooting through a few, scrounging for supplies. The everyday normal, now. 

The only decent weapon he finds is a hammer, old and work but decent enough. But that's only half his find, and not the better one. The coffee's gritty and bitter, real campfire stuff, and it's the best thing he's tasted in ages. Even beats the junk food they're hawking on the midway. 

He's sitting outside one of those trailers in the center, propped up in its shadow as he drinks. Easy to miss, with the brighter lights of the one out of place attraction set up there, its paint peeling as clearly as the trailers surrounding it. Test Your Strength. Even Joel thinks that a bit cliche. But maybe someone'll come along and give it a try. ]

[ Avoiding the big top entirely is more what Joel had in mind. But this place is a maze, and most turns are wrong ones. 

Especially this last. There's no turning around without battering his way through the crowd, but the show looks like it's almost over, anyway. Might as well wait it out. 
A concession he almost immediately comes to regret, when the biggest and ugliest of the clowns makes a beeline for him. Before he can shove the guy off, though, he's whispering something, something far more mesmerizing than his act. 

The laughter comes as the clown fades back into his troupe, greasepaint the color of blood sweating down his cheeks. The sound is rusty and badly disused, alien to him even as he recognizes it as his own. And it just keeps coming, unbidden, as he remembers it, warm blood on his hands in the biting cold. The color of that greasepaint. He grabs hold of the bleachers beside him, nearly doubled over now as it starts to hurt. ]

[ hmu @ gravejuice or by pm if you want to plot and/or wildcard. also feel free to switch to prose, i'll follow suit. cool with keeping tdm cr where applicable as well! ]