Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay
Revolving metal barricades spin as hundreds of staff shuffle into the theme park.
Furry caricatures of porcupines, beavers and voles mill about, clutching their grinning demented heads against their waists.
Beyond the turnstiles, industrial cleaning machines meander through the streets of Looshie land. A stain of dust trails across the sunrise.
A suited man stands in the forecourt, ticking off a list as the barriers swallow employees.
“Smith.” Tick.
“Grovner.” Tick.
“Spencer.” Tick.
His voice rises and falls hypnotically as a pen scrawls.
In the distance, zombie-crowds mill at the gates. Arms wave tickets, yawns and the low hum of half-whispered conversations shudder from gaping mouths.
“Chalmers,” a pen ticks my name on the clipboard.
“You’re on Beaver dam log flume today. Someone called in sick. Make your way to supplies and collect a Crust’s suit, and put a smile on your face. You know the company rules.”
Rule 128: Always smile when in the park.
Today I am Crusts, the paranoid beaver who never leaves his dam for fear it will get washed away in a flash flood.
Thin light spews out of the morning gloaming as I make my way to the supply shed. The wide American horizon frowns down on me, reminding me of the long American day to follow.
She stalks the neon-lit morning, with feline grace. Her long glistening legs flash a myriad of blues and greens across the path as she approaches.
She always finds me. Imogene’s jet black hair eats up the light, framing her pale face above that ridiculous Larry Lizard costume. She clasps the head in one hand, bouncing it methodically against her thigh.
Imogene stands out like a sore thumb among the employees of Looshie land; the only person I’ve ever seen here with any flare in her soul. We met at the training camp twelve months ago, and we battled our way through together.
How can I describe the training camp?
An Orwellian nightmare where they drum the company protocols into your brain morning, noon, and night.
Protocols for when a child pukes on you in the park.
Protocols for what to do if a sadistic child beats you up while you’re in a Gerald the Gopher suit, hint… gophers don’t fight back.
Protocols for irate mothers who want their money back, and many other pointless protocols when a simple ‘fuck off’ would do the job.
“Come for your morning pick me up?” The top of her lip curls upwards as she glides toward me, swigging the last of her coffee out of the Styrofoam cup before tossing it aside.
“I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do to you since last night.” Beckoning with her long fingers, she leads me into the bushes behind the supply shed until I catch up with her, slamming her up against the wall. She feels insubstantial, delicate, withering in my arms, as she wriggles around in my grasp until she twists and pushes me up against the bare wooden boards.
I love the way she can flip the script.
Inside, I can hear the suppressed muffled voices of various people dressing in their alter-egos. I seem stuck to the back of the shed, grasped against it by an invisible force. I caress her neck desperately as her fingers press up against my temples and she hooks her legs over my thighs, baring me violently against the shed wall, soft stomach arcing against mine as she bounces rhythmically against me.
The light burns into my eyes as jolt after jolt penetrates my head. The pain reaches a crescendo as my vision blurs and Imogene’s face, haloed by the light, fades away.
Her face snaps back in startling relief against the backdrop of the swaying leaves of the bushes behind her.
My mother used to say that one lie negates a thousand truths and I’ve been spinning them ever since. Truth is overrated in a world where a giant polyester porcupine is a role model for children. You can’t help riding the carousel of lies. You get swept up in them like a tornado and can end up anywhere.
Sometimes it is fun to dance in those eddies, shot back and forth like a turd in a Jacuzzi. Picked up with a turbulent loss of control and then spat out into an uncertain world, a world you’ve created. Other times it’s more like an addiction, needy, dark and unglamorous.
A sizzling sauna sweat-filled prison, that’s what it feels like in one of these suits. They’re polyester torture chambers that chafe every conceivable part of you. Deep sharp lances of pain shoot up my back whenever I raise my hand to wave a fist at the passing log carriages that crash past, soaking me to the bone. The red welts on my back throb creating a sick, dull ache in the pit of my stomach and my temples feel like iron as they rub against the inside of the giant felt head.
A loud screech echoes across the fibreglass canyon walls of Beaver dam valley. I turn my head just in time to see a two-tone carriage packed with terrified people howling towards me. Three of the wheels of the carriage are bouncing free of the stabilising tracks while the fourth strains against the hooked metal rim.
I dive away in a roll born of desperation; the world spinning a mixture of green, brown and crashing water. The painted grass does nothing to cushion my fall as I slam into the fibreglass cliff to my right.
Pain flashes through my temples, a sharp electric jolt that seems to burn right to the hypothalamus, and light splashes on my face like cold water in the morning as my eyes open. Imogene’s face stares down at me as she moves her hand in front of my eyes; I struggle to move my head or eyes.
“There seems to be some activity here. Quick, bring the stimulant.” Her eyes dart away urgently, looking at someone out of my line of sight.
“Quickly, for fuck’s sake, I’m sure I saw some dilation of the pupils.” Two black curtains descend as I struggle to make my voice box vibrate to utter a sound.
Everything happens at once. The carriage loses its tenuous grip on the rails and lurches wildly to the left, spraying passengers over the side of the cliff. Their arms windmill through the air like a spider’s legs when its cord gets snapped. They disappear from my view.
A metal wheel bearing, red hot from the friction of being jammed between wheel and track, whistles past my skull and thuds into the side of the fake mountain wall. Fibreglass melts and flows like butter. The carriage lurches back against the right-hand side wall of the shoot disgorging a few more people who disappear in the turbulent water, leaving only a single child left in the log carriage.
His eyes catch mine as the carriage shudders and jolts against the tracking system. He looks as calm as a praying mantis just before it rips off a grasshopper’s head. Sandy-coloured hair mats a chubby round freckled face which beams its lighthouse blue eyes straight into me.
He dares me to do something important for once in my life, something meaningful, something noble. I’ve never been one for truth or dare. As I’ve already said, the truth is overrated. I usually just make up a lie. I never take the dare. But this child looks familiar. His blue eyes mirror mine, and the way he stands awkwardly but unafraid sparks a memory.
My mother stood me in front of a mirror, telling me it was a magic window into the soul.
The crooked smile gives the game away as my limbs spring into action, a strange sort of self-preservation getting the better of me.
As I run, one of the safety hooks catches on the bottom of the carriage and drags it upwards at a slow crawl. I claw my way up the mountain, nails screaming as icicles of fibreglass slip underneath into the soft pink flesh. I eventually overtake the screeching carriage and reach out my hand toward the boy.
“Grab my hand,” I reach out, tendons ripping as I grab at his outstretched arm.
Flesh touches flesh.
I grab his fingertips, tumbling towards the carriage as it reaches the peak of the ascent. His fingers pop out of their sockets and he screams loud enough to drown out the rush of the water and squeal of metal. I yank him out of the log and onto the mountain slope.
The carriage teeters on the peak as I thrust myself away. I snap back against its side and look downwards to see a large plastic Crust the beaver’s tail caught beneath the log.
The log plummets.
Water whirls transcendent patterns of light all around me as my stomach lurches up my throat. I hit the surface of the lagoon, gasping in a last breath of air before I’m enveloped in blue.
It’s a calming world down here.
I descend, caught in the current of the water ride’s drainage tunnel. Looking up, I can see the perfect sky, a blue and white snake of light swaying as I am sucked into the bowls of the park.
Red crisscrossing lines flicker in front of me against a background of pink. Sparks swim across this strange living landscape as self-awareness takes hold. I am looking at my eyelids from the inside. There must be a light behind them.
I’m alive, after all.
Shooting red hot jolting spasms burn into me, bunching my muscles into knots and setting my temples tingling with pain before blackness descends again. A distant voice fades out in the darkness.
“This is useless. We’ve been trying to bring him around for too long with no positive results. You may just have to let this one go, Dr Hawthorn. He is catatonic. There’s nothing further we can do.”
Water arcs out of my throat as I cough and choke on the vomit that comes up with it. There’s a weight on my chest and I try to lift my head, but a large grey wrinkled hand presses me gently back to the floor.
“Not so quick, give yourself time to recover. You’ve had a nasty fall and are fortunate to be alive.” His voice grinds into my head like a mortar and pestle, full of gravel but preternaturally calming.
“Who are you?”
“I am the park’s controller, the brains of the operation, you might say. Now try to get up, but slowly this time.”
The room is full of wires and various strange machines. My neck creaks as I lift my head a bit at a time. In the corner, a large tank containing some kind of purple-coloured water bubbles in time with my beating heart.
I turn to look at my benefactor. He is short and very broad, with a pointed white beard and a wrinkled face. His drooping grey moustache makes him look like a walrus. He reaches out his arms and lifts me with ease to my feet.
“Well then, how do you feel? His eyes twinkle inquiringly.”
“Ok, but my insides feel like a washing machine.”
I look around and notice a couple of men on the other side of the room dressed in full surgical gowns prodding around inside what looks to be a human body.
“You really have been quite fortunate, you know. Now that you are down here, we have to give you a promotion.”
“Either that or kill you," he laughs, looking less Walrus-like now and more like a Pitbull terrier.
He grabs my hand and leads me over to the table. “I see you’re interested in our experiment here.”
A small body lies in a tank of blood.
“But I saved him, he reached the banks safely.”
“We control everything in the park, Mr Chalmers, the employee’s behaviour, the needs of the customer and even the condition of the rides. We needed this child’s brain for market research and then you had to come along with your heroics, so we had to resort to mechanical failure.”
As I stare at the child’s face, memories come flooding back. Playing the mirror game, sitting on my mother’s knee as she flashed a mirror in front of me, “there you are, oh you’ve gone, where’s John gone, there he is.”
The face in the mirror was round and podgy, the forehead streaked with sandy blond hair.
“That’s me, my brain.” I grab the wobbling pink mass of tissue from one man who’s preoccupied with trying to fasten a red wire to the hypothalamus. The wire rips free as I race towards a corridor at the far end of the room. The entrance of the corridor is blacker than night.
“You don’t want to go down there, Mr Chalmers.”
I turn, and the park’s controller is only a metre behind me. I back away slowly, measuring his paces.
“Why not? I’ve nothing to lose.”
“That corridor leads to somewhere unimaginably horrible and we can always find you if we need. There’s still a job for you here, but you’re going to have to be more of a team player.”
My temples jolt with electricity, and my hands stiffen. I look down and as my temples go off like a bomb again; the brain clutched between my hands flashes blue energy that rushes down a million pathways on the surface, finally disappearing into its centre. I turn and leap towards the black entrance of the tunnel.
Rivulets of heart-quaking energy wrench through me. I am a lightning bolt, unfeeling, reeling in the limitations of this human form.
A white light shines on me from above. All around me, brown leather straps whip back and forth as my body rocks in wild spasms. Frayed edges draw lines of blood along my forearms. People rush into the room, all wielding syringes at arm’s length.
Behind them a lizard-faced woman shouts, her black hair glistening, “quickly, somebody sedate him.”
The slightest prick from behind spreads a cool liquid into my blood, followed by another and then another until I sink back to the bed. My breathing slows down and I form my lips into a shape, forcing my tongue to work and gasp, "Imogene."
Her face appears above me, a warm smile dancing on her lips.
“You have suffered a psychotic episode, John, everything will be fine.” She turns to the two giant nurse’s assistants, "please take Mr Loosh to his room and restrain him."
As they wheel me out an odd bell-shaped jar on the bedside cabinet pulses a faint light. The jar contains a viscous liquid and a floating brain, thick rolls of grey matter throbbing with an aquamarine sheen.
The End.
This afternoon I was doing some work - after I finished my morning writing routine - cataloguing all of my hive posts in a spreadsheet as I'm planning on getting a few collections of poetry professionally printed to sell at poetry nights I perform at in my hometown.
Through the process of this cataloguing, I came across this short story, that I meant to publish to @theinkwell a while ago and completely forgot. It seems fitting to publish my final fiction post to the community I started, and have watched evolve into the vibrant creative writing community it is today.
My best wishes go out to all the current admin and staff at The Ink Well - @jayna @agmoore @gracielaacevedo @yaziris @itsostylish, you all do an amazing job! And finally, if he's still around, my fellow @curie curator @stormlight24 who helped me set up The Ink Well in its early days.
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