Chapter Text
“Connie! We should ride that one!” A little boy with tousled brown hair and two gaps where his front teeth should’ve been said tugging on a shorter girl’s arm, “It looks so cool!”
“Noel we aren’t old enough, that’s what my mama said!” The girl, Constance, said shaking her head causing her puffy pigtails to sway.
“You are no fun,” Another, taller, boy, Mischa, said looking at them both, “Ride looks rad,”
“But-” Constance started before she was cut off by a shorter girl with curly ginger hair crashed into her, giggling and holding a stuffed animal.
"Connie! Look what I won!" The girl, Ocean, squealed, brandishing a green stuffed dinosaur high above her head.
"Whoa, how did ya get that?" Noel asked, momentarily distracted from the enticing roller coaster towering in the distance. His little eyes squinted up at the fluffy dino, curiosity betraying his feigned indifference.
"Oh," Ocean started in a nonchalant drawl, flinging an arm over Constance's shoulder and leaning into her side. "I whacked the heck out of some moles."
Mischa snorted, reaching out to take the stuffed dinosaur from Ocean, but she clutched it closer glaring.
“You did not, your are too small,” Mischa taunted trying to grab it from her still, but managing to succeed this time.
“I did to! You can ask Ricky he saw me do it!” Ocean said stomping her foot and pointing at another boy who was adjusting his crutches looking really focused.
“I will give stuffed animal back, if you Ride that coaster with us,” Mischa said pointing at the large rollercoaster behind them.
“Fine! Let’s go then!”
Soon they were all moving towards the Cyclone Rollercoaster, something they technically were too short and young for, only being in 3rd grade, but Ocean wanted her stuffed dinosaur back and Mischa wanted to ride the coaster.
Constance trailed behind them nervously fiddling with her fingers and the bottom of her skirt, but she didn’t protest knowing it wouldn’t matter and she didn’t want to look like a baby. Another girl that they didn’t know the name of followed along, they knew she was in their class but she didn’t know her name.
They made it through the line and the Carnie running the coaster was drunk and didn’t bother checking their heights before getting them strapped into the seats.
The ride started.
Constance couldn't help but feel her heart pound as they ascended towards the peak, each tick of the rising cart only amplifying her nervous anticipation. She glanced at Mischa behind her who was clapping his hands with unabashed excitement, his eyes wide in fascination. Ocean gripped her stuffed dinosaur tight in one hand and Constance’s hand in the other, her face lit up, fearless and ready. Noel was giggling while also clutching his lap bar and Mischa’s arm, nervous.
Ricky was clutching onto his lap bar shaking as he glanced down at the high drop below them, the girl next to him looked just as scared and whimpered as the ride hit the top of the peak. And for a second they felt like the kings of the world as they looked down at all of the people below them, all of them looking like ants.
Then the coaster dropped down the drop and a screaming sound erupted from the front of the cart as sparks flew up, Ocean broke into screams and she clung tighter to Constance as the cart shook violently and something snapped as they started to enter the loop.
All six kids screamed terrified and regretting their choice to get on this ride. The cart shook even harder as it ascended the loop, then at the apex it derailed.
The world became a chaotic whirlwind of screams and velocity. The sky and the ground flipped erratically, their young minds barely managing to register the horror. Time slowed, as though in mockery of their fear - each catastrophically slow second filled with dizzying tumbling and ear-piercing shrieks.
"Connie!" Ocean's voice was a piercing yelp amidst the cacophony, her hand instinctively tightened on Constance's in a vice-like grip.
Time slowed as they felt the loss of contact with the tracks. Fear was etched in each and every face, their screams echoing amidst the chaotic whir of the contraption. Mischa’s hands held onto the lap bar with white-knuckled strength and Ricky had his eyes squinted shut, his knuckles pale on his lap bar. Constance and Ocean clung onto each other as tightly as they could, Ocean's green dinosaur lost to the wind along with their laughter. Suddenly all there was were shrieks of terror drowning the carnival fanfare outside.
The coaster slipped into mid-air for a heart-stopping moment, then scraped against the steel as it crashed towards the ground. The cart crunched and crumpled as it hit the tracks, at one point the unnamed girl slipped out of the lap bar and went flying screaming as she did.
But soon the cart hit the ground crunching violently and rolling onto it’s side, people were screaming around the ride as they saw the bloody and smoking wreck.
The kids were dead, their small bodies unable to handle the trauma.
The unnamed girl just laid limply on the grass a few feet away, her head gone. Her hands limply clutching a headless lamb plush.
Amidst the screams and unfolding chaos, the old ride operator jolted awake, a whiskey bottle falling out of his stubby fingers and breaking onto the pavement. His eyes widened as he took in the horrific scene, soaked in blood and littered with shards of steel. He raced towards the wreckage, a pulsating sob escaping from his chest.
From the distance came shrill sirens, weaving through the hysterical chorus of the fair. Parents cradled their children close, hundreds of faces frozen in terror as they beheld the mangled wreckage.
The first responders arrived in waves. Paramedics, police officers, firemen filtering through the gruesome catastrophe, but it soon became clear that all they’d be saving were dead bodies.
And so, in the red fall dust, rolled the silent screams of six children too young for heaven and too bold for earth. The carnival music swelled over the grotesque tableau, the mournful wails of the accordion fading into an apocalyptic chuckle of a trumpet as if blissfully unaware of the end play that had unfolded.
Amongst the cackling chaos, two figures remained notably aloof - a sneery old drunk, Carnie, his glassy eyes reflecting nothing but dull submission to fate; and Ocean’s stuffed green dinosaur, left behind on the coaster’s track, its plastic eyes staring as empty as the deserted track.
The school teachers screaming as they huddled the other students away but ran forward to see what happened, one of them falling faint on the ground, the stress too much for his heart to bear.
The fairground was left in shambles, a grotesque scene of once innocent fun now stained with the echoes of traumatic cries. The acrid scent of overheated metal and burnt cotton candy filled the once jubilant air. All of the rides came to a screeching halt as people ran helter-skelter, their faces hidden behind hands and horror-stricken expressions.
As firefighters began spraying water onto the twisted heap of metal, a collective sob rippled through the crowd. Parents clung to their children tighter, pulling them away from the sight.
The cries of the uninjured blended into the sirens, forming a dissonant symphony of pain and shock. One by one, stunned parents extricated their sobbing children from the chaos, gripping their little hands with an intensity that was equal parts fear and desperation. By the carousel, a group of shaken teenagers clung to each other in silence, their fairground mirth replaced by wide-eyed terror they were not yet old enough to comprehend.
The once festive lights now illuminated the disaster ground in a gory spotlight, etching cruel shadows over mangled wreckage and doll-like bodies. The sweet aroma of cotton candy mingling nauseatingly with the coppery scent of blood and the acrid scent of smoke.
Across the grass from the accident an old fortune telling machine watched the accident before glitching wildly for a second before breaking down.