The carnival sleeps Sunday morning away, recuperating after another night of revelry at five dollars per ride, three per chance at getting the basketball into the shrinking hoop, and two per warm can of soda. The horses on the carousel rest mid-step as the real ponies snuggle together for warmth. It's too early for the spinning teacups to be filled with brew, and the house of mirrors is using the early hours as time for personal reflection. The clowns lie by the idle Ferris wheel, Bozo's face looking plastic in the morning sun after a heavy night of drinking too little.

And now, an immense shadow has come, blocking out the sun so that it nearly looks like night again. A child, one of the ones for whom this happy place was created, towers over the scene laid out on his carpet, a foot poised to crush the rollercoaster with a single step, a hand reaching for the tiger that he will throw across the room, and a smile on his face that suggests he is not yet too old to have fun at the carnival.

Her eyes, wide with the reflection of the unseen, are the only white for miles. Besides that, nothing but black on black, and the dark outline of a pile on the horizon of her bed that resembles no familiar shape but fear.

Suspense is birthed in absence; it comes from anticipation of the thing the eyes cannot quite know, the space unrendered. It is the imagination doing its best work, a sculpture from a block of nothing.

At the end of the bed, from the pile, just out of eyesight for this frightened woman, a tail peeks . . . nothing demonic or serpentine, but unquestionably belonging to something more like a house cat.

Not to counter Mother Nature, who is difficult to argue with except when it comes to quantum mechanics, but flowers are not supposed to look like this. They were never meant to splay themselves, petals opened in a manner that seems somehow vulgar and the stamen doubled over itself. Color: the flushed rust red that roses take as they are dying.

Indeed, one of the petals has already fallen down. It can be seen in the reflection of the Corona bottle holding the flower, a tragic reminder that plants should not be allowed to drink.

The young man - perhaps more young than man - holds a camera. The fact that it is a Polaroid seems to excite more than it depresses him. His eye at the viewfinder has squint lines correlating to mirth and the stack of photos on the table beside him is significant.

The photograph, like fiction, like essay, searches for truth in its own way, mediating the facts of life in its own way - sometimes making something out of nothing.

His attention seems to be focused entirely on the wall in front of him. It is completely white and the fill lights behind him shine against it, making it appear even whiter. There is no winding crack that steals his attention, no swatted fly, no forgotten handprint. It is the white that engages him, the quiet space, the visual description of blank.

A hundred bodies in motion at the party. There is Elvis dancing with a bear, two smurfs trying to sandwich grind a ninja, and Blackbeard making out with someone dressed as either Richard Nixon or Jay Leno.

In the foreground, a grotesque mask of a face mangled lies on the floor. The hand that reaches for it is mangled as well, but the woman's face is beautiful: her eyes pale blue and deep set, her nose perfectly perched; lips.

The apple is precisely ripe. The perfect red green, a shine fantastic that diffuses the sun into aura. The stem, with leaf still attached, is angled in salute.

It is amazing, the way the camera has captured it in the perfect motion of falling. It floats in this moment between the tree branch and the waiting hands of a child.

The computer's screen has started flying through space, embracing an infinite loop of pixilated stars. The hair is slipping out between fingers in wisps of grey as his hand supports his forehead. His uniform is bright with medals, colorful with epelates, and well ironed.

Daily, stories are built from pictures and it is rare we call them fiction. "Inferences," sometimes, and "Mistakes," or "Bad intelligence," but rarely, rarely fiction. Pictures too, can be built from paragraphs.

The newspaper on the desk bemoans the fact that there are weapons of mass destruction that do not exist. 1984 lies butterflied on his knee.

Defecation, common as it is, exists as one of the least shared human experiences in the modern era - it is nearly always a solo journey of the soul. Despite this, the strain on the rather large woman's face here comes as no particular surprise, everyone has caught themselves squinting eyes and pitting molars against each other in the name of relief. Similarly, the thighs that spill out over the top of the jeans, that slow flow over the edge of the toilet seat are not unexpected, but merely serve as a reminder of why some activities are embarked upon alone.

Grotesque as this image is, the insight that there is at least one woman who knits while she poops nearly makes up for seeing that not meant to be seen.

The children, looking like a gaggle of dedicated elves in their flowing red smocks, hunch over construction paper canvases, creating timeless works of art that will one day soon deck refrigerator galleries. Their tongues stick out in concentration, their hands raise for more paint, their canvases spill over onto the table and friend's faces. Among all of this, one child has already finished.

The blank page is perfect in its achievement of blankness. It simultaneously offers no space for improvement and every possibility for greatness. A masterpiece and an infinite number of potential masterpieces.

One child has already finished, done before begun. She stands, haphazardly gesticulating like a loony primate to the doubting frown of a teacher. She is trying to explain the empty sheet, to tell the stories of the hundred pictures she has imagined drawn upon it, to help her teacher understand why she could never destroy the muse that lives in the empty page.

The beach is fire in the morning light and the waves are tripping over each other trying to get a piece of the hot action before the sun gets too high and everything turns jaundiced yellow. This is raw beauty: a pelican silhouettes itself in the sky.

The beached whale in the lower left hand corner is raw in its own respect, and it is sickly yellowed too. This is one of those confusing situations that come along, the kind that make your heart swell at the beauty of the world while confronting a death so ugly, so tragic that you could vomit.

There comes a time in every man's life when he gets close to the edge. All it takes then is the slightest provocation, the minutest of zephyrs to send him tumbling over the edge. Already here, the knife is raised, it glints, it poises itself to penetrate flesh.

Every story conjures a unique set of inner visions for its reader. Complementarily, every photograph demands the creation of a story - whether it is a back-story, a front-story, or a somewhere-in-between-story.

The story here is one for the inner chef to complete, a description of the marinade these steaks will be resting in once trimmed for the barbecue.

The passion on her face colors crimson in honor of the flag she speaks so highly of. All over her face is a proud confidence - there was no doubt that this day would come for her, weaned as she was on the dreams of her father.

Presidential as she looks, a card on the table indicates that this is the Vice President speaking, of the Candleberry Public High School, home of the Roaring Cardinals.

It seems here, that the picture has gone missing. The brittle, stale mark of ancient glue remains, a physical reminder that a photo once resided in this very space. There is the emptiness too, an awkward void that would seem to prove an image once called this place home.

And then there is, of course, this caption. This caption, which stands as a testament to the picture that once stood here.

Thorough and eloquent in its description, it serves itself and the picture, an independent venture that almost makes it seem as if the pictures need not even be present.