MicroHorror

“We should visit the Valley View Carnival,” I said to my family. Around the breakfast table, they lifted their eyes, but not their heads. I said, “Sadly, it closes in just a few days.”

After I read the local newspaper, I announced to my wife and children that I hadn’t walked inside Valley View Carnival for twenty years. My heart had pounded thunderously when the small roller coasters had plummeted my naïve body into the blackest pits imaginable. Inside my kitchen, my mouth still watered for the sugary candy that my mom would buy to occupy me. With food in my mouth, I wouldn’t yell for rides on the Valley Coaster, at that time the largest roller coaster in the state and the one that had provided the loudest joyride. At my early age, I couldn’t buy a ticket onto the mighty behemoth. Still, it would tower over my head like a large snake curled around everyone. Like a chilly shadow, the lines would stretch over nearby lawns on massive metal rails. Nobody would argue the safety of the monster with thick braces that would hold people into the carriage. In my thirties, I felt capable to ride the coaster, like a twenty-one year-old who could finally taste alcohol legally.

We paid the thirty dollars per family to visit Valley View Carnival, located in the bottom of the state like an anchor holding a boat. Looking upward, I couldn’t help but marvel at the Valley Coaster, which looked as impressive in adulthood as it had in my childhood. Only, my mother couldn’t keep me from the thrill that would pump adrenaline into my body in ways unknown before. After a lengthy wait, which I had fully expected, I sat inside the carriage like a forty-year-old virgin who just touched femininity. Cranking the metal chain as slowly as a young lady would undress before her very first boyfriend, the bulky carriage ascended the hill.

After what felt like eternity, the cabin that held ten people dropped incredibly. No plummet in my life had fluttered my heart like the Valley Coaster. My hairdo messed quickly; my toupee flew off my bald head in a manner that brought a toothy smile to the boy beside me. My children probably laughed, too, while it billowed backwardly. After six turns and an upside-down journey over a local neighborhood, I understood the bloody heat that embarrassment and fearfulness alone brought. When it finished, with a loud clank, I wobbled slowly off the machine.

When I looked at the people still in line, they all pointed toward the sky. They were looking fearfully at the ride that I had finally enjoyed. When my vision cleared, I recognized the faces of the people between the ropes. Waiting like a puppy for her master, a woman in her late thirties, dressed in familiar khaki shorts, flipped her hair as seductively as my bride could. Oddly, a woman appealed to me besides my wife. Somehow, the woman aroused sexuality in my body in ways unknown. My blood pumped like a train headed for a deadly wreck; I knew the Valley Coaster didn’t do it. My children, who stood in line by the familiar lady, pointed like she did. When I looked upward, I understood why.

About five rails from the stoppage point, the metal poles that held the twenty-year-old Valley Coaster had fallen completely, and had crushed several people who had wanted happy times. Many people were still pinned into the carriage. With her fluffy hairdo noticeable from the stoppage point, my wife and my skinny children with their loud clothes were smashed into bloody piles of flesh, as well. I needn’t find my body to know that I didn’t survive either.