Ducky Park
The Rides
The ride area isn’t far away. There’s a little plaza area with a big water fountain in the middle and surrounded by classic rides like the carousel, the spinny chairs, and the bumper cars. Families wave, take pictures of you, take pictures with you. Some of them ask you questions and you nod or shake your big fish head no.
A child tosses you a big fuzzy multicolored basketball. It bounces off your head and lands on the ground a couple feet away. You grab the ball and toss it back and the kid catches it in her arms. She smiles and you wave to her.
She tosses the ball again. This time it goes over your head and bounces between a pair of shacks. You jog after the ball, the sound of gears and belts coming from inside the shacks growing louder as you draw nearer. Must be what powers some of the rides, you think. The ball is maybe four feet into the space between the shacks.
You try to reach your fish arm inside the space but you can’t quite get the ball. You can probably squeeze back there though, you figure. You start moving sideways between the buildings, your costume scraping against the walls as you move. You roll your ankle on a rock or something and you start to fall forward before becoming wedged into the space just a foot from the ground.
The ball is there, just below you, but you can’t really move or do anything about that.
“Help!” You scream. You can barely hear your words over the roar of the machinery. “Help!” You scream again. “I’m stuck!”
Nobody hears you.
You yell and wiggle and try to work your way out from between the sheds but it seems like everything you do only makes things worse. Your throat is raw from yelling and you are wedged in tighter now than you were before.
It’s hard to say how much time passes with you like that but the sun goes down and lights turn off. Eventually the machinery turns off, though it still echoes in your ears. The park is closing down. Surely they can hear you now. You try to cry for help but it comes out in a hoarse whisper.
It gets cold at night. You are hungry. You’ve already pissed in the costume. You fade in and out of consciousness. When morning comes you are startled awake by the sound of the rides starting up, the whir and rumble of the shacks dominating your world. You try to call out a few times, but it’s pointless. Nothing is as loud as the machinery in the shacks.
No one hears you. No one notices you are gone.
Three and a half weeks pass before anyone finds you. The smell is what brings them. There were complaints.
You died on the third day. Another victim of the cursed costume.
The ride area isn’t far away. There’s a little plaza area with a big water fountain in the middle and surrounded by classic rides like the carousel, the spinny chairs, and the bumper cars. Families wave, take pictures of you, take pictures with you. Some of them ask you questions and you nod or shake your big fish head no.
A child tosses you a big fuzzy multicolored basketball. It bounces off your head and lands on the ground a couple feet away. You grab the ball and toss it back and the kid catches it in her arms. She smiles and you wave to her.
She tosses the ball again. This time it goes over your head and bounces between a pair of shacks. You jog after the ball, the sound of gears and belts coming from inside the shacks growing louder as you draw nearer. Must be what powers some of the rides, you think. The ball is maybe four feet into the space between the shacks.
You try to reach your fish arm inside the space but you can’t quite get the ball. You can probably squeeze back there though, you figure. You start moving sideways between the buildings, your costume scraping against the walls as you move. You roll your ankle on a rock or something and you start to fall forward before becoming wedged into the space just a foot from the ground.
The ball is there, just below you, but you can’t really move or do anything about that.
“Help!” You scream. You can barely hear your words over the roar of the machinery. “Help!” You scream again. “I’m stuck!”
Nobody hears you.
You yell and wiggle and try to work your way out from between the sheds but it seems like everything you do only makes things worse. Your throat is raw from yelling and you are wedged in tighter now than you were before.
It’s hard to say how much time passes with you like that but the sun goes down and lights turn off. Eventually the machinery turns off, though it still echoes in your ears. The park is closing down. Surely they can hear you now. You try to cry for help but it comes out in a hoarse whisper.
It gets cold at night. You are hungry. You’ve already pissed in the costume. You fade in and out of consciousness. When morning comes you are startled awake by the sound of the rides starting up, the whir and rumble of the shacks dominating your world. You try to call out a few times, but it’s pointless. Nothing is as loud as the machinery in the shacks.
No one hears you. No one notices you are gone.
Three and a half weeks pass before anyone finds you. The smell is what brings them. There were complaints.
You died on the third day. Another victim of the cursed costume.
