Winner papercutsunset

I couldn't believe we had done it. My best friend and I had fooled the guards and hid inside the theme park after it closed.

"Are you ready?" Millie asked, giving me a wild look from under the counter of a milk can toss booth. I was crouching next to her, totally freaking out.

This whole thing was Millie's idea. We bought tickets thirty minutes before closing and kept switching hiding spots. We were supposed to meet our friend Sidory Marek, who had recently gotten a job as a character actor.

I shook my head, whispering, "No, I'm not. I'm not ready at all."

"Yeah, you are. Come on. Let's get out of here."

We slid out from under the counter. From here, among the stacked, weighted milk bottles, I could see all the rides on this side of the park.

The Mushroom Supreme towered tall above everything, with large fake spiders and cobwebs hanging underneath the rollercoaster tracks. The Ferris wheel lorded over us like a rickety bike frame crown.

"Ernest, do you know what this means?" Millie asked, staring incredulously at everything. She was always more into the horror thing than I was.

"No, I don't. God, Millie, this was a bad--"

"It means that the three of us have this whole park to ourselves." She tucked her shirt into her jeans, then re-did her belt while staring out at the world around us.

"Tonight is the night, Ernie." She was grinning like a live wire. "Tonight, we kill our fears."

I didn't know what to say about that. I just nodded and smiled while my heart climbed in my throat.

*****

Millie reached for the doorknob to the dressing room; I made her pause when I saw the blood on the bottom of her shoes, leaking out from the gap under the door.

She yanked it open, and there he was. The body of Sidory, headless, still halfway in costume, fell out onto her as though it had been propped up against the door. The stench was awful; blood matted the fur of Sidory's faux bear fur suit. Millie toppled backward with what used to be Sidory. I couldn't contain my scream as I hopped backward, away from the vicious spray of his still-settling blood.

It was fresh, then. It hadn't congealed yet.

This tragedy, this death-- it was too immense to contemplate. My mind didn't want to let me think that Sidory-- sweet Sidory, who was going to change the world, who was going to fix everything wrong with all of us-- was... He was gone.

Millie threw What Used To Be Sidory off of her, left it in a puddle of stagnant water and petals from last night's rain and the tree closest to the building. Still covered in blood, one of her hot, slick hands took mine, and she dragged me away.

*****

Someone was following us. I could hear their footsteps, far faster than us, but far more deliberate. I could hear their breathing far behind us, slower than Millie's panting or my near-hyperventilating. It was measured and calculated.

When I turned around, though, there was no shadow on the wall, swollen and distended by the light of the moon. There was no shrouded killer lurking in the dark behind us.

When I looked over my shoulder, I saw no one.

Someone was there. Someone snapped photos with the flash on. Someone grabbed my shoulder; someone breathed in my ear. Someone knew Millie was covered in blood.

*****

I have always hated heights.

Hate is the wrong word. Fear is closer.

When I was fifteen, I went to a pond out in the country with Millie and Sidory. I told myself I could do it. I told myself I could conquer this fear. Up the side of the tree I went, to a rope swing. I got stuck and shook there, above the glass surface of the water, trying not to fall into what I assumed were rocks below, trying not to cry.

I am afraid of the height of my body. I am afraid of the vision of my body lying in a mangled heap on bloody concrete. I am afraid of the swinging of the Ferris wheel seats, back and forth, back and forth while Millie giggles and Sidory rocks us. He sings a song to the stars with his arms outstretched. Who am I to stop him?

*****

The path to the top of the Ferris wheel was small and rusted. I was running with the girl of my dreams from the person who killed one of my best friends and my mind was shutting itself off from the spikes of terror coursing through my veins.

Rung after rung after rung, hand over hand, I climbed after Millie to the top. The killer was just below us. I wished I were stronger. I wished I could kick them in the face right in the eye gap of their brown ski mask.

*****

The view from the top of the Ferris wheel was horribly breathtaking. I could see the whole city from here: the skyscraper, the strip malls, the beginning of a suburb where I used to live before I graduated and everything went to shit and the Whataburger where Sidory shoved seven fries into each nostril with a hundred-thousand glaring light. I was in awe and I was about to piss my pants.

The killer was approaching, closer, closer, knife in hand, he was here--

Millie laughed, breaking the spell.

He pulled up the edge of his mask, and there was Sidory.

At my sense of shock, terror, and betrayal, Millie laughed again and began to lick the blood from between her fingers. "We told you, hon. We're here to kill our fears."

She put a hand at the top of my back. If I weren't standing on a Ferris wheel, this would be comforting, this would make my heart soar. Now, it feels as though she is ready to push me off.