Mad Mike: part 2

The world is upside down, no now it’s the right way up, no back the other way. Onion fries, cheap beer and the Thunder Tornado ride are great on their own but together… awful idea. I think it’s something in my brain that isn’t wired right that says bad decisions look good ten minutes before I do them. Boom-Boom on Fire tops out at seventy-two mph, Charon’s Despair is a simulated ocean storm with full size ship and everything. And the piece de resistance is Mike’s house of Blood, my next stop.

“Move it or lose it Barney.” Steve ‘Wheels’ Jones runs over my left foot with his wheelchair.

“What the hell Wheels, trying to get me on your basketball team or something?” I call out to him. He spins his chair around and rolls backwards flipping me the bird and laughing. “Are they hooking you up to the rails directly?”

“Maybe Barnyard, I’ll see you in the Blood House.” His testosterone filled whoops echo above the crowd noise.

“I think he’s nice.”

“God damn it, Maria!” I actually almost threw up, she scared me so bad.

“Why are you so jumpy, you look pale now.” She says with a bit of envy in her eyes. “Do you want to ride the tea cups with me?”

“Sure, but let me walk ahead so you can check if you can see the mess I made in my pants.”

“Ok.”

“That was a joke, I didn’t really.” She is oblivious to the concern on my face.

The cups are nauseating, and not in the way they are meant to be. Maria purrs and coos with joy without changing her placid expression throughout. The thick curls of her short hair never move either, like the wind is scared to go near her, and I don’t blame it. Her cobalt eyes widen the faster I spin, I swear she’s on the verge of a smile before the ride comes to a stop.

“That was fun, what should we do next?”

“Shouldn’t you go hang out with your friends?”

“I don’t have any, like you I’m much too talented for that type of relationship.

“I don’t think that’s why we don’t have friends… Wait I have friends!”

“Your only friend is Steve, and I haven’t seen you to together all night. He wasn’t even their when you got thrown into the fountain.”

“Thanks a lot, sis. What would I do without you?”

“Probably be slightly more lonely then you already are.”

“I should have absorbed you when I had the chance.”

“Dad said it was a possibility since there haven’t been any twins on either side. Barn I miss mom and dad.”

“I do too, but unless we buy a car to visit them we’re stuck Christmas and Thanks Giving.”

“Do you want to go to Mikes House of Blood with me?”

“Did you get the deluxe pack?”

“No but you can use twenty of your Ride tickets to get on.”

Her eyes stare into me, controlling me, making my neck spasm in agreement “come on lets go you little witch.”

“My coven says I’m getting close to finding my inner goddess. Three more nude rituals and I will be a real witch.” She raises her hands in praise and kisses her opal ring. “Taylor Ming wanted to know if you could help her with some of her rites, she needs male energy to charge a peace amulet.”

“Ming, she’s the one with the back tattoo?”

“Yes, she also has─”

“I’m in.”

Mikes house of blood is at the very back of the fair. Right where the Rezfine building use to be. These carnies went all out, the trees around the four story building look real. The line is thin enough that we are in line no more than five minutes before it’s our turn on the elevator to the top. I hand the grizzled looking ride attendant out tickets and he takes us up. We have to wait a bit for the party ahead of us to gain some distance from the entrance before we can go in.

From this height I can see most of the fair, I am close enough to Thunder Tornado to hear the screams.

“No, Stop. Don’t do it. Steve, no!”

I watch as Wheels lunches himself and his chair onto the tracks. Tracks that hand twenty-five feet above the ground at its lowest point. The crowd cheers when the see he is safely stuck on the tracks and can’t fall. They stop when the arriving Cart smashes into him at nearly ninety miles. At the same moment I scream the carney pushes us into the haunted house.

By Cas & Edgar