Please Don’t Leave Me To Remain

here’s another story I wrote for my Fiction class…this time, the focus was on time moving fast and slow…

The friendly sign at the entrance declares a thirty minute wait from that point. With our dinner reservation hours away, we join the swarm of like-minded thrill seekers. The Super Collider is the crown jewel of Beaufort’s Canyon. Though not a particularly elaborate theme park, it boasts a fair amount of entertainment at a better value than some of the pricier excursion options. Situated in the vaguely futuristic Launch Zone area of the park, the Super Collider maintains some notoriety for being the third fastest indoor roller coaster in the state. Snaking out of the space station-shaped structure is a maze of brushed aluminum posts connected with thin chain links. Rarely did the length of the queue necessitate the extra space to be opened up, but weekends and holidays still draw slightly larger crowds.

Carrie and I aren’t exactly average park visitors. Our season passes command some authority, though when waiting in line to go on rides we’re as bound by the limitations of time as anyone else. Thirty minutes didn’t seem like that long of a wait, really. After all, I had read about people waiting several hours to ride the Super Collider when it opened. We would be feeling the supersonic rush of being tossed about in the dark in no time.

It’s funny what tourists do to pass the time when they’re waiting to get on a ride. Behind us, a family of four is jabbering at each other in some Central American tongue. Mom is furiously scribbling on a guide map of the park, marking off which attractions they have seen and have yet to see. Dad is taunting the twin, elementary school age sons, who stomp the ground beneath them as if performing a ritual dance. I’m sure that there will be some problem with those boys once we get closer to the loading dock. One of them will be too short, and Dad will taunt him even more. Their commotion nearly drowns out the pleasant ambient music that is piped in through a series of speakers coyly disguised as oversized moon rocks. Every so often, an announcement interrupts the bouncy electronica, warning “space cadets” with pre-exiting back and heart conditions that the Super Collider is a high turbulence ride with sharp turns and steep drops. The announcement is repeated in Spanish, which the twins behind us have partly memorized by the third time it’s played. The boys’ broken recitation of the safety announcement is indeed amusing, and Carrie looks up at me and giggles. I only partly hear her laughing, as I’m concentrating on the stagnant masses in front of us.

Why isn’t the line moving? Why isn’t anyone else concerned that the line isn’t moving? I look around, scanning the faces before me. A father and son play a flinching contest by slapping each other’s hands. A young girl with too much eye shadow gnaws a piece of gum while manically typing out a text message. Everyone’s doing something, but no one’s moving. The pleasant electronica deadens. The twinkling lights on the attraction’s marquee start flashing out of sync. That safety announcement comes on again, but it’s a garbled mess of moans and grunts. What else isn’t moving? I look down at Carrie, but her gaze is distant, fixed on the unused portion of the queue. Is she picturing the two of us hurrying around the posts to the front of the line, with our own ride vehicle waiting for us at the loading platform? Were we exiting the ride, out of breath, and rushing back to the start to take it on all over again?

Carrie nudges my shoulder and beckons for me to move forward. Could it be? The line is actually moving. The people in front of us shuffle forward, filling in the gap left by the people in front of them. Finally. The overhang-covered loading dock is at last in my sights. Drawn to its promising glow, I trip over Carrie’s heels, which have conspicuously stopped moving ahead. Puzzled, I regain my footing and apologize for my clumsiness. I can hear those twins snickering at my misstep, but I resist lashing out at them. They quickly lose interest in me and begin reciting the safety announcement again. Is it even playing over the speakers anymore? This is how it’s going to be for a while, isn’t it? Every so often, a burst of movement will propel Carrie and me forward, only to have us once again tethered to a piece of ground far from the loading area.

I’m seriously considering turning around and getting out of this futile scheme. I crane my neck to see the back of the line, where a park employee is changing the numbers on the “Wait Time” sign. Is he making the number bigger or smaller? If he makes the sign say the wait is longer, will that in turn make the wait longer? Is he the one who’s toying with us? Before I turn back around, my eyes catch a glimpse of the park map that the mother behind me has been annotating. At this rate, they’ll only be able to take in this ride before having to head home. We may be running late for our dinner reservation, I don’t really know. I could swear that the shadow I’m casting across the man-made Martian terrain has been growing taller and taller. In space, you can cast a shadow that’s miles long, because there aren’t any buildings to get in the way. There aren’t any roller coasters, either. No safety announcements, no pleasant electronica, no season passes. You just float freely. That’s all I’m really doing here; drifting along in a temporal vacuum, waiting for either my patience or oxygen tank to expend. Carrie shoves me again as the line lurches forward.

This entry was posted on February 18th 2009 at 11:22 am and is filed under gimme fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.