“Oright, you ready? One- Two- Three- BLOW!” And on Mike’s whistle Linda and Sammy blew. They blew hard and fast and before long Sammy’s face started to turn blue itself! So she stopped blowing and her bubble deflated onto her nose. Linda, not one to give up on any competition- even after winning- continued to blow into her purple wad of hubba bubba until it popped and sprung away from itself, becoming a sticky mask on her face. “Mwinnerrrr!” Linda cheered herself on through the gummy mess. “Oright, onto the next competition,” Mike was good at keeping things moving. “Chug a glass of bubbly while hanging upside down on the back of the couch. Preparation time begins Now!”
“Ahhhhhh Maggie I’m SO super sonic psyched for a big fa-rickin’ Friday! Put your showgirl shoes on girrrl coz we ‘bout to burn- it- UP!” Brenda always spelled out words in her text messages as she intended them to sound. “Written speech is so ambiguous.” She would often say. In real life, the physical, real time form, Brenda spoke a lot with her hands. She used big gestures and large body movements to describe how things made her feel. “Unconscious body language is so ambiguous.” She would often declare. Tonight was a big night for Maggie and Brenda. It was show week and tonight was the fireworks display. They were going together as two single girls and were hoping the night would result in more than one big bang. Brenda had bought a new skirt for the night but now she was realising it might be a little bit scandalous if they went on rides. “Oh well,” she mused. “It could be worse.” Then she rode her bike up the road to pick up Maggie. When they got to the show Brenda and Maggie ate a dagwood dog. They’d been craving one since the show last year so they didn’t even stop eating when a random boy told them he’d seen the owners behind their caravan scraping mould off old hot dogs. They figured after they’d been dipped in batter and fried most of the germs must surely have been killed. People couldn’t sell food that would make you sick. After their dagwood dogs, Brenda and Maggie decided to go on a ride. They went on the Alpine Express and Maggie threw up. Because of the G-force it splashed onto a kid behind her and he wasn’t terribly pleased. After they had visited the port-a-loo’s to tidy up the girls saw a couple of hot guys heading up carnival alley, so they decided to take a stroll up carnival alley. At the very end of the game-riddled, dirt-carpeted lane they reached a giant, spinning game called The Chocolate Wheel. It seemed to be littered with things to win. “Step right up! Step right up and buy your pretty little self a ticket!” The wheel owner beckoned to Maggie with a long, bendy finger, “Pick a ticket, lucky number- wheel hits number, lady wins a prize! It’s that easy!” The boys had stopped at the game and were watching Maggie so she said, sexily, “Alright mate, give me 5 tickets.” Brenda, not wanting to be outdone said, “Double it up. I’ll take ten.” The boys bought two tickets each and the wheel began to spin. “Round and round and round she goes,” The wheel owner said. “Where she stops, nobody knows!” As she watched the wheel spin around Maggie began to feel sick again. But she gulped deeply, closed her eyes, and waited patiently for it to stop. One of the boys apparently thought she had closed her eyes because she couldn’t bear to watch. “It aint bad, pretty girl.” He stepped up close behind her. “It’s just a number on a spinning wheel.” Well, that wheel finally slowed its spin and it landed on a number which matched the number on one of Brenda’s tickets. In fact, the 10th ticket of the ten that she had previously purchased was the winner- number 34. Brenda won a new microwave and in it she cooked two minute noodles late that night for herself and the whispering boy's friend whose name was Timmy. Brenda’s new microwave caused a house fire that night, unfortunately her dog Poppet was trapped in the flame, but Brenda and Timmy escaped unharmed. On her way to the chemist the next morning Maggie bought a lottery ticket and she won five million dollars. “Luck.” Brenda muttered, staring at the charcoal heap that had been her home. “That word is so ambiguous.”
Carly Sparkles was a show girl, not the Vegas kind, the kind that travelled around from showground to showground selling buckshots at tin ducks and making dreams come true. Carly Sparkles was also a hottie. She wore shimmering boob tube tops and light blue booty shorts that would make Daisy Duke squirm. Carly Sparkles could make a buck or two. She worked the crowd so hard many said Carly Sparkles put the jip in gypsy. But there wasn’t a soul who left the showground with regret, despite having been semi-forcibly seperated from their cash. Carly Sparkles liked to have a demonstration of her game every half hour on the hour. She would pull back the bolt handle on her rifle with an infamous “chk-chk” take careful aim with her high, tight booty in the air, and “bam, bam, bam, bam, bam”- five little ducks fell all in a row. Hundreds of cashed up bogans with six favourite showbags clutched tightly in hand queued to win a giant teddy bear at Carly Sparkles’ stall. In fact, the queue for her Duck Hunt woud sometimes stretch so far it twirled twice around the line up for the Gee-Whizzer. Nobody ever really won but, when the stuffed bears got exceptionally dusty Carly Sparkles would offer a booby prize, straight from the heart which beat beneath her booby. And a joyous bogan would depart, bear under arm and incredibly joyous. Carly Sparkles was really a very good business woman. One day, after the GeeWhizzer had stopped whizzing and the fairy floss machine had stopped spinning sugar, Carly Sparkles sat back in her fold-out chair with her feet up on a large stack of her money and sighed. It was a happy and most contented sigh because she was both of those things. But then a dark shadow stole away her sunshine and, as she opened her eyes, Carly Sparkles looked into the eyes of Donald Fosho- the northern representative for the National Council on the Fairness of Carnivals and Show Stalls. Well, Carly Sparkles nearly fell backwards off her seat. “Donald,” She purred, immediately recovering. “Honey, how are you?” Her powerful, husky voice was almost hot enough to melt dry ice. “Same as the last time I saw you, Carly Sparkles. I’m doing professional and I’ll be doing it for the entire time that I’m here. I’ll skip straight to the centrefold, Sweet Cheeks- Line ‘em up, it’s Duck Hunt inspection time.” Carly Sparkles despised Donald and all that he stood for. It was the people’s right to choose and they chose Duck Hunt. Who was he to deny them their fun? Who was he to deem her game “unfair” or “legally fraudulent?” Carly Sparkles wanted to tell him where to shove his precious clipboard and check sheet but instead she stood, stretching her long, shapely legs, and sauntered over to the duck range. She pressed the button to make her ducks stand up and they did, then she raised her rifle and pumped the bolt handle confidently. She’d fooled him before and she’d fool him again. “I think I’ll shoot this time, Sugar. If it’s all the same to you.” Donald all but snatched the rifle from her hands. Carly Sparkles grinned sweetly at him while she considered grabbing her cash and bolting. But she wasn’t prepared, just yet, to surrender so she stepped back and watched him take aim. He would miss. He had to miss. Because he didn’t know where the hidden button was in the tiny faux-grass patch in front of the range. The hidden black button immediately set into motion a faultless plan of fraudulent action- Carly Sparkles only had to step on it once during her demonstration and a tiny hammer on the back of each duck made a nice little “ding” noise as if there had been buckshot-bird impact and the ducks laid back, fallen over, their defeat tempting hundreds of hopeful punters to the Hunt. But now her plan would surely be discovered. Ugh. At that moment a piece of paper fluttered by Carly Sparkles face, it annoyed her. It was a stupid little piece of paper fluttering in her face as if to spite her, laughing “HA-HA” like that annoying kid off The Simpsons. As Donald took his first shots Carly Sparkles grabbed angrily at the piece of paper, twisted it brutally into a tight little stick and shoved it with some difficulty into her tiny shorts, promising under her breath that she would stuff it and smoke it later. Donald tried ten times to shoot the ducks, mentioning every time that he had been his high school clay shooting champion all four years. He caught her out. He took a bribe to keep quiet. Carly Sparkles lost her business and her dignity and the bundles of cash she’d used as a footrest. Destitute and despondent she walked away from the Launceston Showgrounds empty handed. She walked as though she walked alone down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams until she met a hairy man who liked her husky voice and her womanly body and he offered her a joint. He lost his papers so Carly Sparkles pulled out the twisted piece of scrap paper she’d snatched earlier from the air. As she unravelled it she saw that there, printed on the tiny paper were a bunch of numbers. As she continued to unravel she heard a TV playing loudly from someone’s living room and a voice on the TV spoke the very same numbers as she read them. “Happy Birthday to me...” She mumbled, smiling, as she walked away from the hairy man. Carly Sparkles had won the lottery.
