/lit/ - Literature

>on the motorway with brother
>"This way to the Museum of Childhood"
>wow it sounds like something from a fairy tale or something
>I should write it, a la Angela Carter's fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber

Old man, a widower, wakes up in the morning to find a travelling carnival has encroached on his village. He is at first apprehensive and, as will be shown later, rightly so. But the racket and the tumult coax him out of his cottage, which is filled with objects of personal importance, grounded in the past - photographs, a piano he used to play with his wife/dead or absent child etc.

Showman fella invites him into tent, promising that he has an attraction that will appeal to him. "I will show you -" swish of cape, "the Museum of Childhood!"

So he goes in, and it's a Mirror of Erised-type affair. He gets to relive the good moments, but begins to waste away his final years there. Eventually (and this is the bit I need help developing+changing) the consequences prove negative. The carnival moves away perhaps, and he returns to find his home in disrepair, overrun with rats, and all his important objects desecrated.

I'd like it to somehow bring about his own personal ruin as well. With a touch of magical realism maybe, a supernatural touch.

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