"Buckle Up" by Paula Rawlings

Tutor fears are here. Once a year, brave English tutors confess their fears to me, and the result is a rediculous story. Enjoy, and be unafraid. Be very unafraid.

Carl secured the last restraint on the kiddy roller coaster, walked over to the control panel, and dispatched The Sloth on an empty test-run before the park’s gates opened. The animal clicked and crawled along the tracks, conserving energy before the guests arrived. Such a moody beast, Carl thought.

Remembering that his father and mother would be among the noisome crowd, Carl took a moment to relax on the smooth, fiberglass Sponge Bob bench and watch Chess, the merry-go-round operator, struggle with the purple porta potty polyurethane door. Carl chuckled as Chess maneuvered his architecturally sound frame through the opening and stepped inside. The clap of the door brought Carl’s feeble body back to its feet. The gates were open, and an hour later Sam and Carla, Carl’s parents, found him pressing a thumb to his temple, and waved at him from the end of the line. The hum of guests talking, breathing, stepping, and shuffling chafed at the ride operator and filled his head with a fuzzy ache. The Sloth waited patiently with its sides open, inviting visitors to enter. One at a time, multiple times, in a timely fashion, Carl secured each guest in their seat. He paused when he reached his father and mother, assured them of the ride’s safety, saying, “It’s okay, The Sloth is safe during the day,” and walked to the control panel, sending the passengers on their way with the press of a button, giving the only ride at the zoo permission to follow the tracks. The Sloth took the passengers over, under, around, and through the animal enclosures, and Carl was relieved when The Sloth returned the passengers in proper form.

It wasn’t until the gloaming that Carl felt a shift in The Sloth, when most of the guests were gone. He felt it in the rebellious launch and the reluctant stop. He heard it in the bleating cry emitted from its underside as he engaged the breaks. Two guests—the last two passengers of the day—exited. Their soulless anchovy-faces, unblinking, stared at him.

“Son,” their mouths popped open in unison.

“Excuse me?” Carl noticed a badge and an ID suspending from it—both obviously fake—and what looked like his dad’s thick, plaid, winter shirt reserved for working on cars. The woman nibbled, like a goat, at the collar of her dress. It looked like the dress his mother wore when she worked as a social worker ten years ago, and she was wearing house slippers.

“You are not my parents,” Carl said, looking them up and down.

“You’ve been very naughty, son. You didn’t wear your seatbelt when you drove to work this morning.” The couple drew closer. “We have to take you to the police station.”

“What?” Carl stepped back, aware of the last park visitors exiting through the front gate and. The man pinched one of Carl’s ears, the woman grabbed the other, and together they drew Carl away from The Sloth.

“Ouch,” Carl barked, “You are not my parents,” and The Sloth blinked twice. Sponge Bob’s bulbus eyes, brown pants, and yellow flesh flashed in the waning light as the trio passed.

The animal keepers were preparing for the next day, the hospitality workers were saying goodbye to the visitors, and Chess was nowhere to be seen. Carl didn’t remember seeing him after he went into the porta potty; and with a quick glance, he noticed the porta potty was knocked over and The Sloth was not on the tracks.

The wind shifted. A rheumatic movement in the trees brought clicks and snaps to Carl’s burning ears. A figure—massive and dense—systematically swallowed each shaft of light falling along bamboo-lined path. The lions stopped their quibbling over meat. The monkeys curbed their laughter. The doves, caged and free, stopped their cooing and wooing.

Carl wasn’t beyond begging. “Please, let me go—” but his plea was interrupted.

Banging came from inside the prostrate porta potty. “Hey, Carl, is that you?”

“Chess,” Carl cried.

“Man, I’ve been trying to get someone’s attention all day. I’m pretty nasty, and I’m so thirsty. It’s almost dark, isn’t it?”

The Sloth’s smooth, wooden, and metallic shadow grew tensile and hairy and eclipsed the porta potty. There was a muffled click—the bending of sound around a body absent of light. Carl could smell the earthy, partially chewed leaves and tepid animal hair.

“Get out, now. He’s off the tracks. Ow.”

Carl’s ears burned. As the clack, clack, clack of The Sloth’s nails accelerated on cement, Carl decided to let the parent impersonators drag him toward the impossibly long flight of stairs leading to the back gate. At the top, one, two, three more soleless, anchovy-faced figures approached them.

“Son,” they said along with the plaid clad impersonator dad and mom.

“I told you, I’m not your son.”

Carl shook himself free. It was a little too easy. A stench so foul it made Carl dry heave plowed into the couple, and Carl didn’t hesitate in tippy tapping down the stairs toward the back gate.

“Sheesh,” Carl panted, “Why are these stairs so eternally long?”

Carl could see, fixed to the iron gate, a mirror the size of the setting sun, absorbing the stairs, like an infinity mirror, reflecting his image. Behind him The Sloth, the weird imposters, and Chess. The real sun was crawling under its earthen blanket, and Carl was sucked through the mirror. There were no breaks to stop this ride.

The clang of the cell door woke Carl, and the smell of anchovies and Chess the poop monster invited him to cover his nose with his shirt. Outside the cell stood a number of unblinking accusers and a real officer.

“Your punishment for not buckling up is a night in jail and eyelid flipping. The Sloth and cloned parents always know.”