Ride The Cyclone

Chapter 2

Brynleigh Pasternack

Brynleigh clambered around the fair grounds as people shoved past her and her friends to get to where they wanted to go. She had a large hot dog in her hands that was covered completely with relish, mustard, and ketchup. She and all of her other teammates had just gotten them from a stand a couple of minutes before. She tried desperately not to drop on the ground, or worse, on her shirt.

Mr. Jonasson was trying desperately to keep all of them together, but it was a group of teenagers hyped up on caffeine and sugar in a place full of bright lights and attractions, it was a failing mission since before he even tried to take them there. Yeah, they probably wouldn’t be doing this ever again. But, hey, she thought ‘why not just enjoy it while it’s still happening, right?’

Eventually, after a very long while of work, they were all pulled into one cohesive group and sat at probably the only open table left in the whole park. Mr. Jonasson wiped at his forehead dramatically as he told them how much of a handful they were and why he wasn’t sure why he ever decided to work with children. They all just laughed along, though. They knew that he actually loved them.

“So, now that we’ve got the food and sugar to fuel you guys up, what do you want to do first?” He asked, also clapping his hands loudly with lots of great enthusiasm at the end of the phrase.

Immediately, there was a roar of ideas from the students about what they should spend the next two hours doing. There were so many rides and sights; they all knew that they would never get to see or ride them all, so prioritization was needed. Brynleigh laughed along at the others' antics.

Penn wanted to stop by some of the shows that were going on of people with ‘incredible talents’. Addy wanted to see if there were any quieter places to have a picnic or something. Cyrus wanted to just walk around for a bit. Casey wanted to go on rides. Brynleigh and the other girl who was with Cyrus didn’t add much to this discussion. Brynleigh just didn’t really care all that much.

They couldn’t do everything, of course. They had a time restraint of the next couple of hours so that they could be all done out there before it got dark, and they all had to head home. There was also way too much to do, plus they all had to stay together. Mr. Jonasson probably didn’t want to have the kid’s parents mad at him for letting them get kidnapped on an outing…again.

Brynleigh looked around in boredom as the argument got louder, but also more repetitive, not holding the same amount of entertainment that it had a couple of minutes before. She turned around and saw a large fortune telling machine. It was a bright yellow box with large purple letters spelling out ‘The Amazing Karnak’ in peeling old paint that looked to be extremely moldy.

Inside was a plastic old man in front of a glass ball; a turban sat on his head as he stared almost solemnly at the top of his counter. ‘Huh’, Brynleigh thought, ‘an off-brand Zoltar’. No matter, though, she supposed to herself that it could still be at least somewhat fun to mess around with.

She quickly fished a few coins out of her pocket, making sure she had enough for the fee of her ‘destiny’, before promptly standing up and walking over to it while Mr. Jonasson was too distracted with the other kids to notice and tell her to get back to the table they had been sitting together at.

She stood in front of the large worn box for a few moments before shaking herself out of her daze and moving to insert her money. She wasn’t one to believe in fortune telling or anything, especially not from an old hunk of junk like this. But for some unknown reason, there was a horrible feeling curling around her stomach as if to try to tell her that she was making a mistake.

Just as her coin went to the little slot, the entire machine woke up. Before, she had even fully inserted it, like it was just expecting her to put it there. The man in the box looked up from his worn old ball, which almost looked matte with the amount of dust on the glass, and looked at her. Genuinely looked at her, almost as if he was real and staring into her soul. ‘But he’s just a robot’, she thought, ‘he can’t actually look at me or have any sort of opinion about me in the slightest’. So with that, she shoved the creepy thoughts out of her head to focus on the experience she had paid for.

“The- the truth- truth in the fu- future is what you- what you- what you seek, and fortune- fortunately for- for you, that is all I ha- ha- have…” A rickety old voice escaped the machine. It sounded old, pre-recorded, and glitchy or broken down as it faded away into the air. A broken record player.

The movements of the man slowly came to a stop as he moved to look back down at his little ball. There was an odd ticking noise that came from the box, which only concerned Brynleigh for a second before she realized that it was just working on spitting out her fortune ticket.

The top of the letter K in Karnak began to violently spit out a small rectangular piece of yellow paper that had the corners cut out. There was a small illustration of the Karnak guy on the front of it that had horrible linework and no accuracy to the actual robot standing in front of Brynleigh.

She turned over the small slip to see whatever had been decided as her future.

Vanity is your true weakness.

Your lucky number is 7.

Be sure to ride The Cyclone!

‘Great, it didn’t even give me a real future’ she thought to herself. She had also noticed a large rollercoaster titled The Cyclone a small ways down the path her and her teammates had been walking on earlier. Of course, the whole thing was just some dumb marketing strategy that she had fallen for. She would’ve put money that every single ticket was the exact same thing as the one she had gotten. She couldn’t believe she had actually just spent her money on the piece of junk.

‘Ugh, this town sucks’.

(Hope you enjoyed! Bye!)