Masquerade--Chapter two
(C) Heather Farthing, all rights reserved
Chapter one
Chapter two
Lost Garden used to have an animatronic dinosaur on the log flume, but it was too close to a waterfall and stopped working. Somebody took it off the ride and put it next to East Props and Makeup, and it’s a tradition for zone ambiance to pat his nose for a good performance, causing the teal scales to fade to a sickly gray.
I know this because I’m the one that dusts it, and I know for a fact it’s nothing but latex scales over a cheesy metal endoskeleton.
I also know for a fact it’s chasing a tall man dressed for Steampunk Singularity at breakneck speed as he tries to fend it off with the stream from fire extinguisher.
The haunt slider, true to his assignment, drops to his knees and power slides toward the dinosaur, taking its legs out from under it with the shovel. Before hitting the wall, he’s back up on his feet, spinning with the shovel and smashing the skull with a heavy crunch. For a split second of abject silence, he trembles all over and then sinks to his knees, gently stroking the creature’s head as bruising forms around the left side of its face, it moaning in pain, and something sweet that numbs my tongue flowing freely from the gas mask.
“Has everyone here completely lost their minds?” the tall scareactor shrieks.
At over six and a half feet tall and very thin, no older than his early thirties, he’s a striking figure in black and white stripped pants, black combat boots, and an olive drab with brown suspenders, hanging loose at his narrow hips. His brown hair is cut short, his long, pointed teeth crowded. There’s a noticeable swideways curve to his spine and a dip along his sternum, his arms and legs too long for his comparatively short torso. A silver bracelet with a medical alert symbol jangles at his right wrist.
“Crazy tall…creepy flexible…soft-hearted…” the haunt slider muses, looking up at him.
The tall man flinches, training the extinguisher on the masked figure, then sighs, “Oh, great, you’re cuckoobananas, too.”
“Wrench…would be…more…effective…” the slider wheezes, indicating the prop wrench at the tall man’s hip.
“It’s a prop,” the tall man replies, taking it from the holster. “It’s plas…that does have some heft to it.”
The slider has a breathy laugh, lemon entering the lavender/chamomile mix of his smoke. I’m staring transfixed at the tall man’s hands, long palms with foot-long fingers, blackened in color, writing and moving like octopus tentacles, a tail at the base of his spine to match.
“Your hands…” I whimper, then immediately feel bad for having pointed it out, like observing another person’s deformities in public.
“Yeah, I know,” he grins, showing his elongated canines and sharpened incisors. Were those even meant to be seen inside the leather and mesh mask around his neck?
Looking up at him, I stifle a squeak of surprise and alarm. He has no eyes.
None.
Whatsoever.
There’s not even an indent where they’re supposed to be, like he closed his eyes and they stuck that way. It’s all empty skin between his cheekbones and eyebrows.
“What’s happening here?” he asks.
Tearing away from his lack of eyes, I gesture at the dinosaur. “That’s the one they put in Props and Costuming, isn’t it? The one that used to be on the log flume?”
The tall man looks down at the whimpering creature. The haunt slider gently slides open its lip and pries free a few loosened teeth, placing them inside his breast pocket.
“That’s a robot,” the tall man replies. “It doesn’t have a power source, and when it did all it could do was turn its head and hiss.”
“Yeah, well, we were…um…just upstairs and it’s…” I start, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“What’s happening?” the tall man asks cautiously.
“…Gunpowder…screaming…bad things…” the haunt slider answers. “Collecting…flesh…for the…Master…”
“It could be a terrorist attack,” I suggest. “Something in the fog machines?”
“This is not a terrorist attack,” the tall man growls, holding out his hand, the tentacles hanging limp and lifeless, like he doesn’t know how to use him. The tip of his tail flicks, like cats do when they’re ornery.
Impulsively, I reach out to touch the appendage, to see if they’re flex or latex, but he pulls away from me like I ran at him with a hot poker.
“No touching, please,” he chides, then sort of stares at his hand, flinching as if to offer it to me in handshake before thinking better of it. “I’m Isaac.”
“Is…that supposed to be funny?” I ask quietly.
“I See You…” whispers the haunt slider.
“I’m sure someone thought it was.”
“Sherene,” I reply, keeping my job quiet, because I know I don’t belong here, not in the park and not with them.
“Snake…Charmer…”
“What about you, Locomotive Breath?” the tall man asks. “You got a name?”
There’s a whiff of something like bleach and an undercurrent of candy corn. The haunt slider doesn’t answer, just staring.
“…Right,” Isaac sighs. “Are you seasonal? With the art collective? Who are you?”
The slider’s hands pause in their dinosaur-petting, the scented smoke from his mask skipping, as if he doesn’t know how to answer or…just doesn’t know.
“Um…we were up top,” I tell the tall man, fidgeting with my fingers, feeling the scaleprint of my gloves. “The…the unicorn…ran away…and then there was gunfire.”
“That’s a puppet, too, you know that, right?” Isaac asks, frowning. “It can’t do anything but turn its head and neigh.”
“Well…it…um…took off, into the crowd. And then the soldiers started firing…and the spider-legged thing…”
“That’s just a puppet. It just lights up.”
“Should tell…it that…”
Despite having no eyes, I can see the wheels in Isaac’s head turning, adding up things I haven’t seen.
“Do either of you have a ride out of here?”
“I think I dropped my cellphone, he doesn’t have one,” I explain, patting my hips again. My legs are cold.
“So, new plan…I’m going to drive you two home, if that’s okay with you,” he says. “Employee parking is that way.” He points in front with his wrench.
“Yeah…I don’t want to be here anymore,” I murmur, as unsure about going back into the park as I am about getting in a car with two men I don’t know.
“Props and…Costuming…Valuable things.”
I took a bus to get here. I’m not so sure of my options, but at least these two haven’t tried to kill me. Yet.
From deeper in the tunnels there’s a noise. It’s like the howling laughter of madmen, the kind they describe from insane asylums, back when they had those, and the honking of bicycle horns.
And it’s getting closer.
“We need to move,” Isaac growls, chewing his bracelet.
The haunt slider looks down at his feet, hidden under the hems of his coat. He moves to stand, but doesn’t quite succeed.
“You hurt?” the tall man asks.
“…Feet…legs…”
Kindly, the tall man leans down, so they’re something close to eye level. “Do you want to show me?”
The haunt slider shakes his head, looking a little embarrassed, but it’s hard to be sure under all the leather.
Leather? The costume was faux, made of plastic. It was convincing enough, but definitely not real. I picked it up enough to be sure, plastic fittings and faux leather material. What he’s wearing now is real, more than just convincing, it’s real, and he never had a chance to change clothes.
“Do you think you can get up?” Isaac asks.
I offer my hands to help him, but he looks at them as if my touch might burn him, instead using his shovel to support himself, a hand balanced on the wall as needed. His boots look like gloves, splitting five ways, three load-bearing toes and two opposible digits, one on the inner ankle and one on the outer. The boots buckle all the way to the knees, and the heels are raised above the ground, like an animal. Each toe has its own metal sheathe, like his fingers, and a small, round puck of sparking material. He wiggles his toes, like fingers, demonstrating grasping ability.
It’s seamless, like he’d always been wearing them, and he definitely wasn’t before. High-heeled boots would be murder on his joints and bad for the haunt sliding.
“What is happening here?” Isaac breathes, watching the haunt slider tentatively learn to find his balance.
“…Obvious…” the haunt slider wheezes.
Something cackles in the distance.
“You gonna be okay?” I ask, beginning to move away from the approaching crowd.
“…Neat…” he replies in a cloud of candy corn-scented vapor, following behind with a growing comfort.
Me, I feel a bit sick, like I’m looking into something my brain just literally can’t understand. Human legs don’t bend like that. We walk on the flats of our feet, not the tips, and his boots definitely didn’t look like that earlier.
Ahead of me, there’s the tall man, Isaac, and his octopus-like hands and missing eyes. He can still see, and the fingers writhe like living things, his tail lightly swinging with his steps. Reality has somehow fractured and they’re turning into what they’ve been wearing.
I step down bad on my right foot, the ground rushing up to meet me. The both of them turn and stare, fumbling at reaching up to help me, as if touching me might poison them. Shockwaves run up my knees to my hips, the ground cool and smooth beneath me.
“…Okay?” asks the haunt slider, blank-faced masked tilted slightly, offering me the handle of his shovel.
“What did you trip on?” the tall man asks, kneeling to get a better look at me, again halfway reaching out to offer me a hand but stopping short.
Maybe it’s the tentacles? He’s afraid I’m grossed out?
“Just my feet,” I reply, pulling himself up on the slider’s serrated shovel, rubbing my knees, my glove scratchy against me. “Clumsy.”
A touch of vanilla flows from the slider’s mask as he looks deeply into me. It’s creepy, being unable to see his eyes or face, but knowing he’s staring into my soul.
A bicycle horn honks from behind us.
“Run!” the eyeless man orders.
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter one
Chapter two
Lost Garden used to have an animatronic dinosaur on the log flume, but it was too close to a waterfall and stopped working. Somebody took it off the ride and put it next to East Props and Makeup, and it’s a tradition for zone ambiance to pat his nose for a good performance, causing the teal scales to fade to a sickly gray.
I know this because I’m the one that dusts it, and I know for a fact it’s nothing but latex scales over a cheesy metal endoskeleton.
I also know for a fact it’s chasing a tall man dressed for Steampunk Singularity at breakneck speed as he tries to fend it off with the stream from fire extinguisher.
The haunt slider, true to his assignment, drops to his knees and power slides toward the dinosaur, taking its legs out from under it with the shovel. Before hitting the wall, he’s back up on his feet, spinning with the shovel and smashing the skull with a heavy crunch. For a split second of abject silence, he trembles all over and then sinks to his knees, gently stroking the creature’s head as bruising forms around the left side of its face, it moaning in pain, and something sweet that numbs my tongue flowing freely from the gas mask.
“Has everyone here completely lost their minds?” the tall scareactor shrieks.
At over six and a half feet tall and very thin, no older than his early thirties, he’s a striking figure in black and white stripped pants, black combat boots, and an olive drab with brown suspenders, hanging loose at his narrow hips. His brown hair is cut short, his long, pointed teeth crowded. There’s a noticeable swideways curve to his spine and a dip along his sternum, his arms and legs too long for his comparatively short torso. A silver bracelet with a medical alert symbol jangles at his right wrist.
“Crazy tall…creepy flexible…soft-hearted…” the haunt slider muses, looking up at him.
The tall man flinches, training the extinguisher on the masked figure, then sighs, “Oh, great, you’re cuckoobananas, too.”
“Wrench…would be…more…effective…” the slider wheezes, indicating the prop wrench at the tall man’s hip.
“It’s a prop,” the tall man replies, taking it from the holster. “It’s plas…that does have some heft to it.”
The slider has a breathy laugh, lemon entering the lavender/chamomile mix of his smoke. I’m staring transfixed at the tall man’s hands, long palms with foot-long fingers, blackened in color, writing and moving like octopus tentacles, a tail at the base of his spine to match.
“Your hands…” I whimper, then immediately feel bad for having pointed it out, like observing another person’s deformities in public.
“Yeah, I know,” he grins, showing his elongated canines and sharpened incisors. Were those even meant to be seen inside the leather and mesh mask around his neck?
Looking up at him, I stifle a squeak of surprise and alarm. He has no eyes.
None.
Whatsoever.
There’s not even an indent where they’re supposed to be, like he closed his eyes and they stuck that way. It’s all empty skin between his cheekbones and eyebrows.
“What’s happening here?” he asks.
Tearing away from his lack of eyes, I gesture at the dinosaur. “That’s the one they put in Props and Costuming, isn’t it? The one that used to be on the log flume?”
The tall man looks down at the whimpering creature. The haunt slider gently slides open its lip and pries free a few loosened teeth, placing them inside his breast pocket.
“That’s a robot,” the tall man replies. “It doesn’t have a power source, and when it did all it could do was turn its head and hiss.”
“Yeah, well, we were…um…just upstairs and it’s…” I start, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“What’s happening?” the tall man asks cautiously.
“…Gunpowder…screaming…bad things…” the haunt slider answers. “Collecting…flesh…for the…Master…”
“It could be a terrorist attack,” I suggest. “Something in the fog machines?”
“This is not a terrorist attack,” the tall man growls, holding out his hand, the tentacles hanging limp and lifeless, like he doesn’t know how to use him. The tip of his tail flicks, like cats do when they’re ornery.
Impulsively, I reach out to touch the appendage, to see if they’re flex or latex, but he pulls away from me like I ran at him with a hot poker.
“No touching, please,” he chides, then sort of stares at his hand, flinching as if to offer it to me in handshake before thinking better of it. “I’m Isaac.”
“Is…that supposed to be funny?” I ask quietly.
“I See You…” whispers the haunt slider.
“I’m sure someone thought it was.”
“Sherene,” I reply, keeping my job quiet, because I know I don’t belong here, not in the park and not with them.
“Snake…Charmer…”
“What about you, Locomotive Breath?” the tall man asks. “You got a name?”
There’s a whiff of something like bleach and an undercurrent of candy corn. The haunt slider doesn’t answer, just staring.
“…Right,” Isaac sighs. “Are you seasonal? With the art collective? Who are you?”
The slider’s hands pause in their dinosaur-petting, the scented smoke from his mask skipping, as if he doesn’t know how to answer or…just doesn’t know.
“Um…we were up top,” I tell the tall man, fidgeting with my fingers, feeling the scaleprint of my gloves. “The…the unicorn…ran away…and then there was gunfire.”
“That’s a puppet, too, you know that, right?” Isaac asks, frowning. “It can’t do anything but turn its head and neigh.”
“Well…it…um…took off, into the crowd. And then the soldiers started firing…and the spider-legged thing…”
“That’s just a puppet. It just lights up.”
“Should tell…it that…”
Despite having no eyes, I can see the wheels in Isaac’s head turning, adding up things I haven’t seen.
“Do either of you have a ride out of here?”
“I think I dropped my cellphone, he doesn’t have one,” I explain, patting my hips again. My legs are cold.
“So, new plan…I’m going to drive you two home, if that’s okay with you,” he says. “Employee parking is that way.” He points in front with his wrench.
“Yeah…I don’t want to be here anymore,” I murmur, as unsure about going back into the park as I am about getting in a car with two men I don’t know.
“Props and…Costuming…Valuable things.”
I took a bus to get here. I’m not so sure of my options, but at least these two haven’t tried to kill me. Yet.
From deeper in the tunnels there’s a noise. It’s like the howling laughter of madmen, the kind they describe from insane asylums, back when they had those, and the honking of bicycle horns.
And it’s getting closer.
“We need to move,” Isaac growls, chewing his bracelet.
The haunt slider looks down at his feet, hidden under the hems of his coat. He moves to stand, but doesn’t quite succeed.
“You hurt?” the tall man asks.
“…Feet…legs…”
Kindly, the tall man leans down, so they’re something close to eye level. “Do you want to show me?”
The haunt slider shakes his head, looking a little embarrassed, but it’s hard to be sure under all the leather.
Leather? The costume was faux, made of plastic. It was convincing enough, but definitely not real. I picked it up enough to be sure, plastic fittings and faux leather material. What he’s wearing now is real, more than just convincing, it’s real, and he never had a chance to change clothes.
“Do you think you can get up?” Isaac asks.
I offer my hands to help him, but he looks at them as if my touch might burn him, instead using his shovel to support himself, a hand balanced on the wall as needed. His boots look like gloves, splitting five ways, three load-bearing toes and two opposible digits, one on the inner ankle and one on the outer. The boots buckle all the way to the knees, and the heels are raised above the ground, like an animal. Each toe has its own metal sheathe, like his fingers, and a small, round puck of sparking material. He wiggles his toes, like fingers, demonstrating grasping ability.
It’s seamless, like he’d always been wearing them, and he definitely wasn’t before. High-heeled boots would be murder on his joints and bad for the haunt sliding.
“What is happening here?” Isaac breathes, watching the haunt slider tentatively learn to find his balance.
“…Obvious…” the haunt slider wheezes.
Something cackles in the distance.
“You gonna be okay?” I ask, beginning to move away from the approaching crowd.
“…Neat…” he replies in a cloud of candy corn-scented vapor, following behind with a growing comfort.
Me, I feel a bit sick, like I’m looking into something my brain just literally can’t understand. Human legs don’t bend like that. We walk on the flats of our feet, not the tips, and his boots definitely didn’t look like that earlier.
Ahead of me, there’s the tall man, Isaac, and his octopus-like hands and missing eyes. He can still see, and the fingers writhe like living things, his tail lightly swinging with his steps. Reality has somehow fractured and they’re turning into what they’ve been wearing.
I step down bad on my right foot, the ground rushing up to meet me. The both of them turn and stare, fumbling at reaching up to help me, as if touching me might poison them. Shockwaves run up my knees to my hips, the ground cool and smooth beneath me.
“…Okay?” asks the haunt slider, blank-faced masked tilted slightly, offering me the handle of his shovel.
“What did you trip on?” the tall man asks, kneeling to get a better look at me, again halfway reaching out to offer me a hand but stopping short.
Maybe it’s the tentacles? He’s afraid I’m grossed out?
“Just my feet,” I reply, pulling himself up on the slider’s serrated shovel, rubbing my knees, my glove scratchy against me. “Clumsy.”
A touch of vanilla flows from the slider’s mask as he looks deeply into me. It’s creepy, being unable to see his eyes or face, but knowing he’s staring into my soul.
A bicycle horn honks from behind us.
“Run!” the eyeless man orders.
Chapter three
Chapter four
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