The story opens with a description of "the purgatory falls fairgrounds" . It's closed for two weeks during the summer, but the barney and brimstone carnival happens there every summer. The narrator and his sister, April, May, and June, are all " nauseating offenders" of the "tunnel of love" and "the trouble trifecta." The narrator asks his sister why she always has to be "such a downer" , and she replies that having fun will not kill him. He then asks his friend, Jenny, what his worst carnival experience was. Jenny says that he had a good one two years ago, when he was lame in person and decided to jump off the merry-go-round while it was still going on. He hid in the bushes for a while, but when the ride stopped, everyone got sick from the vomit. He tells his friend to come back and tell him more stories, and he and Jenny do just that. They find a prize at the fair, and the narrator is surprised to see that the prize is a "marmalope," a kind of gauze-and-tongue depressors creature. He calls the creature "a marmalope" because he was touched by the first aid man at the other end of the fair. Three months have passed since the carnival was last in town.