Ode to the Inspiration that Launched it All

My name was on it, but not much else. The heroic soul who went out of their pretty little way to save my package from the clutches of a conniving postman who desperately tried to get a peek as she claimed neighbors should look out for each other. “Is that why a piece of your press-on is stuck under the tape,” I said, not honestly expecting an answer despite her immediate and silent eye roll as I shut the door in her face. I gather the box in a box is a better defense, although looking at it, I couldn’t imagine what I ordered that would need a thick iron casing. A five-by-four-inch cask with no label stamp or company name. Without my address under my elegantly stenciled title, it’s no wonder it sat in the lobby of my building with a Thieving Thelma. Where’s the handle, latch, or thin flush line that indicated this wasn’t a poorly measured, unfinished die? Sharp edges and corners left me looking at it like an oversized Rubric’s Cube lacking the where with all of a first move. Amid contemplating whether a box cutter blade would be thin enough to probe for a hidden prompt built within, it snapped open so hard the twenty-pounder leaped against gravity’s direct order, landing in a thud that left scratched on the lazily done wood finish. “I’m calling Chelsey.”

Aggressively shouted swear words aside, I kneeled to put a squinted eye on the mechanism that caused it, using my camera zoom. I began to believe its leap of faith was merely step one. I hit the record as soon as the color-inverted dry ice slowly plumed out from all sides with blackened soot full of tiny particles fading when it made contact with the varnish. I had no reason to stay close, but I backed away abruptly when my ringing phone startled me to another SHIT! before answering to a yelling Chelsey, “Don’t touch it again until I arrive!” Its continuous smokey ooze inspired me to crack a window, refusing to assume that its evaporation into nothingness made it benign. A gust of outside fall air disrupted the blinds into a silent clatter, moving me to do a little prying with a pocketknife.

She arrived a few hours later to beat down my door, happily skipping the drive home to see my new gift from my secret admirer. Her words made little sense, nor did why the lone calligraphy on the cardboard box didn’t surprise her. It brought a smell Chelsey found comfort in as she examined while I left for the kitchen, repulsed, getting us water so I could be behind a wall when her meddling went nuclear. Yet as I returned, she opened it, beckoning me to lift my ‘gift,’ now free of living soot. How was there no indication of its source under the vile of red liquid that, at first glance, reminded me of a thick, peppery hot sauce? She looked at me, disturbed, backing away. I didn’t know what her look meant, and her back and forth between me and the fun-sized insinuated a hurry-up and drink mentality kin to the final shot in our drawn-out drinking contest.

“You’re the one with the excited look on your face,” I said, absolutely content with my bottled water.

“It’s for you. Open it,” she said, pointing at it from three steps to my left.

“I called you, Chels. What is it?”

“My grandfather received one of these and 1997. I can still remember the look my mother gave him before he drank it, ignoring her protest.”

“What happened to him?”

“We’ll both try it, but you have to finish it.”

Her determination was not a new form of convincing me to take risks and had been the bane of our teenage years. It’s nice to have a friend that would go to war with you, but it’s another if she’s prone to starting them. The lid popped off on its own, and the gust of its contents wafted into her nostrils. The intense sting began the waterworks instantly, and the copout on why she considered that her sip suddenly made me less curious to ingest the pulsating liquid. “It’s for you; I bet it won’t smell the same.” Attractive sweet habanero couldn’t have been planned to lull my reasonable paranoia. It also didn’t help that she appeared to unravel into delusions almost immediately, speaking of her most recent hobby of studying rogue religions to put her journalism degree to better use. The types that take the devout and remove organs that they perceive to be optional, whether medically sound or not. Spouting a language in fragments I had never heard, the surprise in her wide eyes proved the lack of control the whiff had caused. Yet, between the gobbledygook, she still urged further that I do the right thing. Fine.

Taking it back with my nose pinched, finding the swill unbearable until the flavor changed between gulps into strawberry cream wafers blended into a smoothie. I couldn’t stop myself but whether it was Chelsey egging me on or the liquid’s grip on me is still unknown. Emptied, she asked with shocking clarity, “what do you feel?”

“Oh, is this drugs? Did you trick me into taking drugs again?”

“No, but if it is drugs, you should thank them,” she uttered, looking into the cold iron box. It—it was a business card.

The box was empty before, but now the red velvet lining shimmered like slow-motion breezes flowing underneath the fabric, rippling the card in place. I had to look around my apartment, the perpetually running television playing nothing in particular, the thick, stained carpet that forfeited my deposit years ago, to examine how far this hallucination spread. The comfort I gave myself led me to reach for the card, but abruptly, Chelse grabbed my arm, “Okay, now see.”

I read it aloud: “you’re now checked in to The Abhorred. Meet your contact where the green lake meets the RED. What the hell does that--” but I couldn’t speak anymore and considered never speaking again. No longer standing in my overpriced apartment was the least powerful sucker punch to send me to my knees and panic to no end. Chelsey was dead. Wherever I was, she followed but according to the back of the card, ‘Admit One,’ had an apology in small parentheses underneath. I couldn’t care less for this loud, gawking, attraction-filled carnival screams under a blackened orange sky as I checked her pulse repeatedly until the panic subsided enough for me to remember I knew CPR. I would’ve done it forever, given I was in a new place against my will with the taste of my closest friend’s last piece of spearmint lingering on my lips, but the card I discarded now held a new message, different from either side I had seen. ‘Don’t make me wait.’

Congratulations; my fucking unbridled vigor has been restored through sheer furious vexation to no end. I hope they’re happy with my hands around their throat for the rest of their life. I was about a quarter of a mile from the carnival. There was nothing in the opposite direction, but a tree that the explorer in me thought should be checked regardless. After seeing nothing but a sturdy branch ripe to become my new weapon, I laid her body in a dignified pose before stomping toward the park.

I bypassed the admission kiosk as I would at any other carnival because why waste the price of entry before getting swindled, and the look I gave the cashier as I ignored the line and turnstile covered my admission. My focus while power walking past ride after ride I wouldn’t trust on a good day. There had to be a help tent to store the lost-and-found crate, although given the lack of safety regulations being followed, particularly involving alcohol use while operating rollercoasters, I scoured for the soberest of them all. All sporting themes of intellectual properties, they in no way had the rights. These adults and few kids were limping on to their next attraction like something in them dragged them across the wet lush Kentucky Bluegrass that never faltered under anyone’s feet. However, the state of the riders, fresh from their standard one-minute-forty-two-second adventure, reeked of unmitigated violence like the tunnel of love was full of firing squads and shark attacks. That’s what distracted me from the administrator type walking with me step for step. “You’re going the wrong way?”

“What the fuck!”

“You don’t follow directions well, do you?”

I had to stop clutching my chest before I grabbed her by her soft red leather jacket collar and forced them to the ground taking a few overflowing trashcans with him. “If you brought me here, prick, you know all my questions. If you didn’t, the next words from you before my stick decides to do some rage-induced percussional maintenance better save your life.”

“Fair enough. I needed your help and couldn’t take no for an answer.”

“And Chelsey?”

“Who?”

“The dead woman who was very much alive when I started reading that fucking card.”

“Shit,” she started. “Not enough space on the card to put all the rules on it. I’ll make it up to you if you enjoy my Feast-i-VAL.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, you’re insulting my hospitality.”

“You goddamn—”

“I know. I’m sorry. But you’re here now. Especially after you blew through the gate with that fake ticket.”

“What?!”

She dragged me onto a ride I never got a good look at under the park’s dim lighting. I wish I had, not that it would’ve helped that much. As the walking, talking set of dilated pupils strapped me down in the Scrambler, my unfortunate escort tried a safety briefing. “I’m a purveyor of good times. You’ll see in a minute. Stay vigilant of your surroundings, don’t stop moving. The ride will let you know it’s over, and don’t miss your exit.”

“Anything else, Ma’am?” That seemed to undo her sultry demeanor.

There was no clear indication the ride was about to start with hallucinating Harry still standing in the center with a cigarette as our black and yellow car picked up speed. Each car was color themed for a character of a Death Race adventure I knew nothing about outside a commercial Chelsey made me watch as it was the third in a series. She assumed I was putting them off for one massive marathon. It was a lie before, but as the darkened sky turned a bright, over-saturated blue and not a single cloud wasn’t vaguely shaped like an animal, a lot of the ones in the pet store I passed on my walk home from work. The bars holding my lap shrunk for me to hold. As the handlebars grew a speedometer, my posture adjusted for the motorcycle seat speeding down a colorful track of strips and blurred fans as their cheers went by. A couple other riders zipped by, thoroughly overloading my eardrums with loud engines of different genres of vehicles. Coming up to the checkered line, there he was, the ride operator waving the green flag. “Does it matter how we win?”

My heart throbbed as the barrel of a leaking flame thrower took out another driver setting them a flame behind the wheel. They flipped after bouncing off a guard rail and flew far higher than a scrambler should go, could go. In the turns, I could feel the Gs gluing me to the 1930s padding and my legs burning from the engine going wild beneath. Hitting a bump, something next to my hip grabbed my attention. It was a pump-action shotgun. A SHOTGUN!? I wasn’t shooting a person without provocation; however, the more enthused riders were more than happy to provide me with enough to shoot out a tire after three tries. I braked just in time to miss their loss of control left turn, avoiding their crash into another contestant, shattering the concrete through the guard wall, crashing into the stands. “Should I worry about the spectators?”

One lap left; the flag signaled. There were a lot of turns but nothing like the final hairpin bastard we had gotten lucky with; thanks to crashes, everyone had to slow down to get through. Their corpses remained. The driver, sick of second place, used their superior size to blow through the wreckage soon to munch down on my back wheel. Feeling the instability of my piss poor handling skills as vividly as it did, learning how to ride a bike with no experience, my strategies appeared limited to a horrid degree. The long straight was getting shorter by the second, and trying to get a shot worth a damn brought me to my last shell. They hung back to downshift for a run-up that would flip me over their hood if I was lucky. I slammed on the brakes a second for the checkered line, throwing myself over the handlebars. I slid across the finish, and the runner-up plowed into the bike, blowing up in their windshield.

I ended up crashing into the wall heading for another wreck brightened with flames, enduring the road rash before I joined the dead. The hot tarmac I slid and bounced on finally became a winner’s circle, but I couldn’t say the same for the loser who faded into another lap. I was approached by a woman in a red jumpsuit running onto the track, hugging like we hadn’t seen each other in years. “I like’em clever,” she exclaimed, guiding me away, to my dismay. I couldn’t explain it, but she fascinated me to no end. Elegantly fiery beauty aside, she had an air of intrigue written in her eyes, both horrifying and potentially enlightening.

“Are you my lucky duckling?”

“Definitely wasn’t that guy.”

“If you weren’t for the six, seven, or, I guess, eight ways you’ve helped me, I’d remove the malcontent from my park.”

“You’re stuck with me, Cassandra. What did you do to Chelsey?”

“We’ll see. You’re going to love the Works.”

The white light introduction was sharply reoriented to meshing gears so massive one tooth could have demolished my entire eight-floor apartment complex. What had to be regular operation sounded like clanging, smashing, and grinding leading me to wonder how all these ghostly-eyed humans could hear when one inevitably got caught in the gears. The heat of the place mixed with nowhere near enough grease added an essence that there was very little time before a cataclysmic event would take us and the planet.

“They don’t need to hear each other, only me,” she said.

I hesitated before speaking because, despite hearing her beautifully salacious voice, I didn’t remember wearing noise-canceling earbuds. “Morale is more important than you think. Even—even Genghis had to pamper now and again.”

“I’m currently recovering, and when I’m happy, they’ll find some peace.”

“Have I been doomed to slave with these—” that’s when I saw her. Pulling some fucking lever over and over. Her emotionless gaze at her task—her only task based on Cassandra’s methods, stopped me in place. I approached her, failing not to show the hate in my heart at seeing Chels doing hard labor. It was the only reason she went to college.

“I see you’ve picked a favorite. The crazy ones always do.”

“I’m losing the plot, Miss.”

“You didn’t volunteer, didn’t receive my gracious introduction, and yet here you stand like only one other. One ride, sure, but every station needs to be filled for my love to thrive where it’s supposed to.”

“I know you don’t expect me to work down here. I only went to college to not be in places like this.”

“And I went a long time without a co-pilot. It’s time I expand.”

“What—what a lovely opportunity. Benefits?”

“Don’t let the Works deter the potential. Soul power beats horsepower any day, with the right state of mind.”

The right state of mind rang through my head as she guided me to the interior of another ride, one of a man struggling to cope with losing his first love and left arm. The trauma played out from the haunting rumbles he shrugged to the harrowing leap to grab him before their home slid down the mountain. He spent all his life fighting impossible odds handed down by God or the universe, or as Cassandra alluded to, an odder option unfathomable to comprehend, only to waste fifteen years of his life in pain. Immortal pain, and that brought me back to Chels. A child who watched his grandfather and mother dash into the night only to be found weeks later in a confusing state of unconsciousness, unresponsive to her and medical staff but showing brain scans of a stage four coma. After her grandfather was finally taken off life support, she fought for three years to keep her mother alive as professionals remained stumped by her erratic brain activity. They didn’t care Chels noticed the point of view in her pupils of a great time on fairgrounds she could never find until I received a box with no return address. Her mother never came back and was buried on Chels’ seventeenth birthday.

“What would my ride be, Cassandra? How would you milk my pain?” I really hoped the forced cheeky smile kept her suspicions at bay.

“Your think you can handle it, my love?”

“I—I did before.”

She immediately took me to a rollercoaster themed of a buddy cop movie from the eighties or, more accurately, a remake knock-off, but I knew I was the old grizzled straight man to an unhinged loose cannon with nothing to lose. Matter of fact, Cassandra was forced to the rear car while Chels was placed next to me, stunned to see where she was. “Hang on; we’re not too old for this shit yet,” I said as we took off.

“What the—”

After the first drop leading into a tunnel, we came out of the other end, taking cover in a warehouse gunfight full of goons disguised as doctors and nay-sayers telling us to give up. “One round of six left, Briggs! You?”

She didn’t understand as she cowered behind a barrel several feet to my left. The spirit of rage from seeing a familiar face in a dingy white lab coat, cigar, and slick back haircut firing at her demanding her to let go and give in, caused her to check her person for the pistol uncomfortably shoved in her waistband. “I’m looking at five shots and twelve smugglers, Motown. I keep telling you to update your armory?”

“When you shot as good as me, you gotta give them a chance.”

“Well, they got it; now what?”

I moved for cover as our enemies did. These sorts of films tend to have a villainous mastermind in an office, either watching their plan unfold or packing up for the grand escape, and there’s no way Cassandra wasn’t hamming it up. I saw a nurse who wore the name tag of the first nurse to comfort Chels with soft words flush with a devasting kick to her teenage psyche. Before I could take the easy shot, that fucking business card burned my thigh through my pocket. It read, ‘they were all alive if not still…’ in glowing violet calligraphy. “You know, Briggs, if we save these people without the explosions you’re always finding, we might get that promotion.”

“You playing mind games?”

“No, but the big cheese is.”

I signaled to the stairs leading to what was obviously the chopper on the roof. In the same direction were some conveniently placed barrels marked highly toxic with a pulley system with a fat red level easy to hit with the final bullet. Two shots removing pistols from hands before melee takedowns gave Briggs time to run-n-gun to the back of the warehouse, taking a round to the leg like a champ as she shot the lever and took the express route to the second floor of walkways. Cassandra left her office with her briefcase of money leaking out the sides, hectically fleeing for the hidden passages up. One luck shot later; I was heading outside to get around the building, where I just so happened to be right in front of the fire escape open for business by the hostages we freed earlier. I ran up the stairs bringing with me the six reformed goons I convinced to earn a lesser charge, to see Briggs swinging a chain above her head, launching it for the copter skirts. I sprinted to the end of the chain, currently losing contact with the roof, to attach it through a window. Cassandra’s overzealous acceleration forced the hook on the chain to catch a support beam sending her in exuberant circles, trying to balance back to a hoover.

“How many bullets left Motown?”

“One left, Briggs. I don’t think this one will stay out of trouble with just a pair of cuffs.”

“You’re a better shot. Here’s your chance to prove it.” A payoff line for an earlier point in the story that the rollercoaster would never cover. One of the goons, whose mind had returned to some semblance of bearings, handed me the rocket launcher meant for us. I shrugged. “Cheater.”

The blast ripped the copter to pieces until the fireball froze in place. A section of the sky landed between us, breaking through the roof, but that was only the start. We began running for the fire escape when a piece with a cluster of stars landed before us, and we fell through, falling to toxic waste filling the floor and melting metals of the rusted machinery. The green slosh was my last sight before waking up, out of breath on the floor, doused in sweat, next to my dining room table. I crawled to Chesley’s side, startling her awake, frantically checking for a pulse. “Get the hell off me; what the—” she looked around my apartment and collapsed in relief, seeing the harsh sunset peeking through the blinds, stinging to the eyes. “Was I dead!?”

The card in my pocket stung one last time. I pulled it from my pocket and threw it on the floor. I didn’t care what it said; We had wounds to tend to somehow. Chelsey picked it up and read it aloud. “Thanks for one last ride.”