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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Hello @raj808,
Writing up a storm here. Dark visions. Who likes theme parks? No one, after reading this 😄.
This works not just because it is well written, every word powerful, but it works because it is also a judgement, a commentary on the dehumanization of labor and the public appetite for delusion.
We don't trust the people who are in charge, and we also don't trust the narrator. One realizes that there is something grotesque going on, but how much of this is part of the narrator's psychosis and how much is objectively real.
The best horror stories leave this question unanswered. Doubt and suspicious: essential elements in horror.
Hope you are well, @raj808
I'm OK @agmoore, apart from breaking my little toe today while swimming in the pool... a place I thought it was impossible to injure yourself 🙃 It is not too bad though, and although I now have a grape-shaped and coloured toe, there is nothing you can do for a broken toe. So it's just a case of putting my feet up when I'm not writing, and not walking about too much.
Your analysis of my stories is something I will miss 100% about stepping away from hive.
You're right, I wanted this story to show the drudgery of the work-a-day world for most people, in a kind of strange dystopian way. I think that this comes across, the feeling of lethargic resignation that a job you hate elicits.
And you were right on the money about the ambiguity of whether it is all in Mr Loosh's mind... or,
with odd bell-shaped jar on the bedside cabinetat the end, who knows what nightmare world he's inhabiting. That is definitely something I was trying to convey, and knowing that the reader picks it up clearly is music to my ears.It never occurred to me that this was a horror story, but now you've pointed it out, it is 100% a psychological horror tale.
Hmnnnn, that has made me think.
Thanks, as always, for making me see something in my fiction that I missed.
I hope you and your family are all keeping well @agmoore 🙂
Wonderful piece. What a trip! I stand speechless trying to come up with a suitable comment, your mastery of writing is way beyond my skills and expertise.
All I can say is, Franz Kafka came into my mind while reading that story, and your Orwellian world building was simply stunning.
Lastly, I wish you the best in whatever path you take in your life man.
Cheers!
Thanks for the well-wishes for the future m8 🙂
I'm happy as long as you enjoyed the short story... to be compared to Kafka just makes me blush tbh 😊 but also encourages me to continue with my manuscript for the trilogy of novels I'm working on. Even though the manuscript I'm working on is genre fiction (fantasy), I feel that some fantasy and sci-fi might become some of the literary classics of the far future, as long as humanity reaches that future. But I'm not reaching for the stars, I'd just like to finish the trilogy and get published 🤞 (I suppose that is kinda reaching for the stars).
It didn't sit well with me having my final fiction being the serialised fantasy pieces I published in Scholar & Scribe community. I have nothing against that community, and the fiction I posted there was gritty fantasy, and far too gory for The Ink Well, but I just wanted to finish up where I started (I even toned down the sex scene in this story to make sure it wouldn't break the ink well's rules).
I think it is fantastic what everyone currently working behind the scenes at the ink well has built here, it is awesome! 👍🙂
Please don’t go, don’t leave Hive, just like the song my heart reaches out to you - please don’t go!
Your talent has no boundary or definition, you scale the walls of the improbable and let the dust fall in heaps at our feet. You raise the bar, you make us see it and then you slaughter us with words. OMG, this is brilliantly done.
Ahhh, I appreciate your sentiment and kind words, and I've no doubt that you're being honest about enjoying this short story @itsostylish, but I have to choose where I put my time. I've health issues, which means I can only function effectively for limited periods of time, so it is an either/or situation for me. Either stay on hive and keep getting distracted and procrastinating, or focus 100% on my manuscript (the first draft of a trilogy of fantasy novels).
Hive has continuously pulled me away from a large writing project aimed at mainstream publication for years now. I explain it all very succinctly in this post I wrote about a month ago.
It didn't sit well with me having my final fiction being the serialised fantasy pieces I published in Scholar & Scribe community about three weeks ago. I have nothing against that community, and the fiction I posted there was gritty fantasy, and far too gory for The Ink Well, but I just wanted to finish up where I started at The Ink Well 👍
I'm really glad you enjoyed the short story about the twisted environment of Looshie Land, and I think it is fantastic what everyone currently working behind the scenes at the ink well has built here, it is awesome!🙂
Hi @raj808,
Thank you for participating in the #teamuk curated tag. We have upvoted your quality content.
For more information visit our discord https://discord.gg/8CVx2Am
I read this story as a scathing critique, but also as a stifled cry. The cry of someone who has not been able to find a safe place for the desires of his soul. It is the voice of a protagonist who knows that something is very wrong but does not have the strength to face it, overwhelmed by reality. Powerful images, a very defined environment and a feeling that overwhelms the reader.
Best wishes for your writing projects, @raj808.
Hi @gracielaacevedo
Yes, John Loosh (the narrator) is definitely lost in a nightmare world, perhaps a world of his creating, he is full of pain and unresolved issues, and as I was writing the first draft, I was kinda just trying to create an impression of what an extreme psychotic episode might be like, then as I got further into the story I liked the idea of making it more magic realism, with the boundaries of reality blurred.
In the end, it turned out to be psychological horror - as agmoore rightly pointed out - and you have noticed too...
This is spot on, the story is meant to be unsettling, and honestly, I'm not even sure if John Loosh is a worker in an almost dystopian theme park (which is totally meant to be a satirical poke at a certain American theme park & cartoon making institution) hallucinating that he's involved in some type of diabolical experiment, or if he's a mental health patient undergoing an extreme psychotic episode hallucinating that he's working in a dystopian theme park.
This ambiguity is something that I only wrote into the story right at the end, and it developed through several re-drafts. To be honest, this story has been in my drafts folder for over a year being tweaked and changed, then I forgot about it until I saw it last week when doing some work cataloguing all of the poetry I've published to hive.
Anyway, thanks for reading Gracie.
All the best to you and your family 👍🙂
I too wish you wouldn't leave Hive, @raj808. You have such creative fire. The Ink Well misses you!
This story is painful and intense, but an incredible read. I think it's a bit like an acid trip, although I've never experienced that. But the sense that we're traveling through a place that is almost normal (the amusement park setting), yet at the same time haunting, creepy and surreal, is present throughout. You have an amazing gift for language. You truly do. I know you're leaving the platform to focus on pursuing your creative goals, and I do applaud that! And I believe in you!!
I do have one little request of you, my friend. Because of our rules about gore, and how hard we've worked to set a consistent baseline for what's acceptable, I need to ask if you would please edit one line. I'm not going to repeat it here, but I'll just tell you it's the one where he sees that the boy is dead. Would you please edit that to make it less... oh... cringe-worthy? Thank you. (Also, if you could link directly to the image source, that would be best. Currently the links go to the artist and to Pixabay, but not to the source.)
Well, thank you for popping in to share your story. It's always good to see you here! Hugs!
Yay! 🤗
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You have such a unique style of writing, and such unique ideas for a story. It's so rich with detail and introspection. Great job 😄
Thank you @littlepiggies
I'm glad you enjoyed the story, and you're right, the nature of the narrative in this short story is highly introspective. I think it suits the close first-person view of the narrator, but also just overall story dynamics with the ambiguity between if the theme park is a real place, a hallucinatory landscape, or a horrific mixture of the two 😂
Anyway, I won't write an epic 8 paragraph comment like I'm often prone to doing 🤣 Like any writer, I just appreciate that people have read and enjoyed the story.
Thanks again 👍