“Look, there’s Spike,” Jimmy pointed out to us.

“What is that girl doing? Is she on rollerblades? Oh my God,” Susie snickered in disbelief.

We were on our way to the Silver Cloud for afternoon drinks, and there she was heading up Lombard Street. It was the first time I’d seen her, platinum blond hair nearly to her waist, skin pasty white as glue, decked out in spandex shorts and a dinky sports bra.

She strode east from Octavia, arms swinging, legs gliding, carefree but with direction. She stopped before the next block, swinging her hips around to the iron gate of an apartment building, and disappeared inside.

“We just saw your girlfriend, Sammy,” Susie teased to the little Vietnamese man behind the bar at Silver Cloud.

“What you mean?” Sammy asked, pouring beer into a glass.

“Spike, your little honey.”

“No. No. She not my girlfriend. I only go out with her a few times,” Sammy laughed. “She too expensive.”

“Ugh, you better watch it Sammy,” said Susie, turning serious. “I know that really, you like that girl, but you better be careful. Who knows what diseases she has. I hope you’re using protection.”

Sammy looked embarrassed. “No, she nice girl.” And that was all we talked of Spike before turning our attention to our beers and speculating on that evening’s business.

It was about a month later I got to see Spike close up when I moved into her building. Kitty, a Vietnamese friend of Sammy’s was the apartment manager and had told me one night about a vacant studio upstairs from his unit. It was the break I needed to get away from Jimmy, Susie’s brother and the guy I shared an apartment with near Haight-Ashbury. I had started to get nervous with all his cocaine-snorting buddies around.

I was caught off guard by my first exchange with Spike. I was going up the steps; she was coming down, singing very loudly some song I didn’t recognize.

“Hi. Are you Spike?” I asked, immediately regretting I’d called her that. Maybe it wasn’t her real name. I never bothered to ask.

“Oh yes. It is I, the one-and-only Spike,” she said dramatically, flicking her fingers to toss her hair off her shoulders.

“Hi. I’m Jackie. Jimmy and Susie’s friend. Sammy just hired me down at the Silver Cloud.”

“Jimmy and Susie? You’ve got to be kidding, right? Oh, I bet they’re loads of fun,” she said, not even hiding the sarcasm.

“Um, they’re O.K.,” I said, shrinking beneath her scowl.

“Yeah … well, see you around,” she brushed me off, starting back down the steps and picking up the singing again. I went to my apartment and spent a half an hour wondering about her. Who was she? And where was she going with all that makeup on and long gypsy skirt?

I soon learned that Jimmy and Susie weren’t making up what Spike did as a profession. Her unit was adjacent to mine, one floor lower. From my kitchen I could see her bathroom window, and one day, when I was being nosy, I spied down to her place to see if I could see anything. Much to my surprise, her bathroom was aglow with red light. And I witnessed the light on numerous times thereafter when I looked down to see what she was up to.

I really didn’t care what the girl was into. Rather, I laughed to myself inside at the oddity of the experience of living next to a prostitute, if she should be called that. Maybe working girl is a better term.

I found myself feeling sorry for her. She was so young – she couldn’t have been more than 25, yet she was so pale and worn looking. And how could she be so bold? Did she know she was ridiculed by the Silver Cloud circle?

I decided I’d try to befriend her. I just walked downstairs and knocked on her door one day.

“Yes?” she answered, flinging the door open. Again, I became fixated on her over-the-top regalia: long, painted-on ribbed knit dress, red, with slits to the hips and layer upon layers of makeup.

“I was just heading to work,” I said, intimidated, partly disappointed that she’d even opened the door.

She asked me in. “I was wondering if you knew about the karaoke contest tonight. It’s one-hundred dollars for the winner. You should come and try,” I told her.

“No, I don’t think so,” she grimaced. I offered myself a seat on the corner of her bed. There was no other seating. It was weird seeing her studio, which was just like mine, but reversed. Hers faced Lombard Street, mine the back garage.

“I’ll be out tonight spreading around some naughtiness,” she went on.

Oh God, I thought, not asking her to elaborate. I prayed she wouldn’t start talking about the business. My mind raced, looking around the room, trying to find a focus, something to say.

“I like your light,” I blurted out, pointing to a lava lamp on the bedside table.

“Creates a nice mood, doesn’t it?” she said and just kept going about her business picking clothes up off the floor and folding them, not even really looking at me.

“Yeah. Well, I better get going to work now,” I said and hurried out of there.

I was so relieved walking to work. I decided I was scared of Spike. I wanted so badly to know her story, but I was too much of a coward to even talk to the girl.

A few days later I was heading upstairs to my place and saw the Indian clerk from the corner market trotting down the steps. I knew him well enough from my frequent visits to the store and was surprised to see him there. He was whistling, tucking in his shirt, and his face glistened with sweat. I was repulsed.

I don’t know what ever became of Spike. I can’t even remember if she lived in the building when I moved out. She came into the Silver Cloud a couple of times to see Sammy since the day I went to her studio. When she did, she always had to suffer the wrath of Jimmy and Susie – spewing insulting comments under their breath, ignoring her presence, and even one time I remember, Susie screaming in Spike’s face about her tired skin. The poor girl always took it, too. She never even flinched.

The post Spike – The Girl Next Door appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

Driving past the expansive property, one might dismiss the establishment as just another honky-tonk, its history buried within its dilapidated walls, dismissed or forgotten by previous generations, so that those who currently frequent it have no clue of the events that transpired in its glory days.

Joan, a widow in her fifties and determined to make a fresh start in life, operates the propriety, which consists of a full-scale bar and restaurant that serves everything from chicken wings to Saturday-night prime rib.

Joan’s daughters, Jo and Ann, both divorcees, help with the operations, and Jo, the younger of the two, resides in the living quarters in the east wing of the building with her son Jack.

Jack struggles with embarrassment over where he lives and does his best to keep it a secret at his high school, which is the one in town where the kids from affluent families attend. It just so happens that the inn sits on the school district’s borderline.

Jack is lucky enough one day to get a ride home from school from a fellow sophomore, Danny, which he’s reluctant to accept but does anyway simply for the pleasure of not having to ride the bus.

“You can just drop me off at my mom’s work,” Jack tells Danny, pointing to the inn on the horizon.

“Ugh, what the hell is this place? Your mom works here?” Danny asks, disgusted and in disbelief as he pulls his Toyota Celica into the gravel parking lot.

“It’s not that bad,” argues Jack. “She works in the restaurant. I get free food, anything I want, whenever I want.”

“Yeah, but look at the place,” Danny laughs. “Are there even bathrooms in there?”

“Very funny,” Jack says as he climbs out of the car, sick to his stomach at the thought of Danny knowing the truth – that he actually lives there. He feels ashamed that his mom works inside and will never have the means to help him get a car like so many of his classmates have.

He walks in the door to the bar, dark, smoky, and sour smelling even at this mid-afternoon hour. Jo sits on a stool on the corner of the bar, cigarette in hand and engrossed in conversation with a hunkered-over old man named Paul, a regular.

“Hi Mom. Hi Paul.” There are a few others scattered down the long bar, all clasping beer bottles with their attention focused on the T.V. in an overhead corner. There are no women at this hour, only sad and thirsty, blue-collar workers, or so it seems to Jack.

“Can I have a Nestle Crunch and Mountain Dew, Mom?”

“Yes, but then you need to get over home and get the house cleaned up,” Jo instructs. “I’ll be home late.”

Jack cuts through the inn’s kitchen to a door that opens to a long hallway leading to the apartment where they live. Another door beyond that opens to a screened porch, an addition built on to the inn, and is accessible from the front of the property.

Above the door inside the apartment the name Gant is inlaid in glass. No one knows about Gant, a slave from the Civil-War era, who had been freed and moved to Ohio to set up his homestead here in this very spot.

No one knows that the rusted old chandelier in the apartment’s living room, missing many of its crystals and not even in working order, once gleamed with brilliance, lighting the prosperous landowner’s great room.

Jack races through his chores, grabs a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon out of the fridge, and heads out the door and around to the back of the property to its basement, where he’s certain he’ll find his uncle, Tony, Joan’s son, tinkering on some project in a forgotten room.

Aside from the inn’s location in a depressed part of town, its natural surroundings provide some solace for Jack. Oak trees surround the sides of the inn, and a few hundred yards from the back of the property lays a broad, wooded area full of creeks. Beyond that, the interstate. Jack and Tony spend lots of time in those woods talking about bands, World War III, and flipping over rocks looking for crawdads.

Immediately inside the basement door are stale beer smells from a room on the left where the bar’s cans and bottles sit in trash bags waiting for Tony to take them to the Dumpster. Jack sometimes helps and when he does, Joan usually gives him five dollars.

Jack finds Tony right where he expects, in the second room on the right, buried in his Guitar magazine with a Pepsi and Marlboro in his hands. What neither of them know is the basement where they hang out, eleven rooms in all, used to hide slaves running for their lives – for their freedom.

Together, Jack and Todd explore many areas of the basement with its dirt-stone floor and walls so old and fibrous that one could punch a hole through them.

They only share a passing wonder of the peculiarities the basement contains: a sunken room with a fireplace, a deep pit in a centralized spot from which many of the rooms surround. The purpose of the pit is unknown to them; now it holds the bar’s kegs.

Once, in one of the rooms in the back right, Jack and Tony found a small niche, not quite large enough to hold a body, not that they even thought of it, but they found a dusty, decaying baby shoe.

Both the basement and the woods are refuges for Jack and Tony, and they congregate in both spots daily. They each share unspoken dreams of finding glory in their adult lives, of doing something great, being productive, rich, and maybe famous even. They both are filled with hope in what their futures will hold, and it’s for this reason they get along so well.

“Wanna go to the woods?” Jack asks Tony.

“Yeah. Let me grab my cigs here,” Tony replies, tucking them into the pocket of his Oxford shirt, sleeves rolled up to his biceps. He brings along the Pepsi, too.

“I’m thinking I might move to L.A.,” Tony says as he bolts the basement door. “They’ve got this guitar school out there called MI. You know Nancy Wilson of Heart? I guess she went there. I figure if I keep working and save some money, I could just drive out there once school’s done.”

“Oh, man, that would be so cool Tony. And I could come out to visit you.”

They climb a small hill at the inn’s borders and find the path leading to the creek. They aren’t yet in the thick of the woods; before the creek’s edge is a dusty field with only a few scraggly shrubs and meandering paths.

Their favorite spot is where the creek waters collect into a huge pool, deep enough to swim in if they wanted to, though they never do. They have to climb down an embankment to get to it, dodging poison oak and bush limbs.

Today they sit near the creek’s edge on a soft mound of pebbles, the kind perfect for skimming across the water. They hang out until dusk talking about what it would be like to live in L.A. Jack’s enthusiasm only fuels Tony’s ambition to take the leap and actually go there.

“Just go,” Jack urges. “I’m sure you’ll find a job when you get there. I mean, it’s L.A. There’s gotta be all kinds of jobs in a place like that.” Tony nods and looks thoughtful thinking of the truth in Jack’s words.

Jack feels envious about the prospect of Tony leaving, but thinks his own destiny holds something just as exciting, if not more.

It’s nearly dark when they get back to the inn, and Tony goes into the bar to see if Joan’s ready to call it a day. Jack’s relieved to see his mom hasn’t made it home yet. He quickly eats a mayonnaise sandwich before heading to his room, anxious to retreat there so hopefully he won’t have to talk to her.

Later, Jack’s jolted awake by the thud of Jo’s pocketbook and clang of keys hitting the kitchen counter. He lies still in anticipation of her entering his room. It’s almost midnight and he’s certain she started drinking after her shift.

Luckily, Jo just goes through her nightly bedtime process and goes straight to bed, much to Jack’s relief.

As he’s on the verge of sleep, he feels a soft blowing on his right cheek. He slowly opens his eyes to witness the foggy shape of a body beside his bed. There’s the shape of a head, but with no eyes, and he only sees the torso, with stubs as arms.

The figure doesn’t move. Jack’s chest seems to seize up and he can’t breathe. Just as he’s coming to grips in his mind about what he’s seeing, he blinks and the body is gone.

He quickly bolts out of bed and springs into the living room to the couch, where he sits frozen in the dark, looking around only with his eyes and trying to make sense of what he saw. Maybe it was a dream, he thinks. He stretches out and eventually his nervous, rigid body relaxes into sleep.

Jack dreams of the woods. He’s in the shallows of the creek, in the very center, barefoot, and desperately running upstream, splashing, legs heavy as lead, screaming in the black night, but no words coming out, from something chasing him, though he can’t see anything. But he knows something’s there, behind him, over him, descending its weight on his back and pushing him forward.

The presence is on him now, pounding, pounding from behind, but he feels nothing. His entire body twitches, as if electrified, and he realizes someone’s pounding on the front door. He lies still, but it continues, more aggressively now.

He runs to Jo’s room and stops dead in his tracks at her door. He sees on his mom’s cedar chest another foggy figure, this time an entire body, that of a man, who’s sitting on the top with his legs crossed, back bent over and head in hands. As quickly as Jack makes it out, the fogginess dissipates.

“Mom, wake up.” There’s no response. “Mom there’s someone at the door.” He only hears her heavy breathing. He clasps on to her shoulders and shakes her, but her body is floppy and unresponsive.

The knocks grow more urgent. Jack can’t stand the noise, so he angrily goes to the door.

“What do you want?” Jack yells, cheek and nose lightly pressed to the door to see what he can hear.

“I need to talk to your mother,” a man’s voice calmly, but sternly requests.

“She’s not here. Get out of here or I’m going to call the police.”

“You’re not going to do that. Open the door so I can talk to your mother.”

Jack looks out the window onto the screened porch to see if the door to the hallway is open. It is. The man must be giving up because he steps out onto the porch, and Jack, not expecting this, crouches onto the floor, quickly closing the curtain except for a small sliver to peek through.

Jack can’t see the man, only a black shape of a body, and it stops as if it senses movement. “Why can’t I see this guy?” Jack wonders. There are lampposts outside streaming light onto the porch, yet Jack can’t make out any detail of the man. He’s just a solid black form. There’s no color of hair, no facial profile, no texture of clothing.

The figure backs up into the hallway, but not with steps; it floats back in a swift, swoosh of movement and Jack sits paralyzed.

There are soft knocks at the door.

“Let me in,” says the voice. Jack just sits there.

“Let me in … or I’ll have to come in myself,” says the voice, this time oozing deep, metallic tones.

Jack’s heart is racing realizing the figure has no intention of leaving. Until now, he thought merely holding his ground would make the man give up and leave.

He tries a new strategy of mocking the evil voice, “I’ll come in myself … oh, I’m really scared now.”

Jack’s face is against the door, which suddenly vibrates from the force of the figure’s fists pounding against it. He steps back, looks, and finds the door has cracked. He shudders and steps back further when the pounding comes again, and again, until the wood starts splintering away.

Black smoky streams work their way through the cracks and Jack witnesses them form into arms that are now reaching for him. He tries to run, but the streams extend to his neck and clasp on to it, squeezing, choking, until he’s blinded with brilliant white light. Then he sees nothing.

When Jo doesn’t find Jack in his room the next morning, she figures he’s snuck out of the house, something he’s been known to do. As midafternoon rolls around she begins to worry, and by dusk she’s calling friends and family to see if they’ve heard from him.

It’s Tony who goes into the woods to see if he can find Jack there. He heads to their favorite spot first, and that’s where he finds him, face down, swollen in the water, floating, brushing softly against the bank.

The post The Elmhurst Inn appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

They weren’t disappointed with New York City, which had a gritty, dark allure they both found intoxicating. It was quite a departure from the small, conservative Ohio town they lived in.

The husband spent considerable time figuring where they’d stay, which had to be a spot in the thick of it all. No Holiday Inn would do. They knew the time had come to start a family and that the trip might be the last they’d have alone for quite a while, so they were determined to find a hotel with a flavor all its own, just to add to the experience.

The Gershwin, near the Flatiron Building, provided the edgy ambience they sought. Their cab driver hastily made a right turn onto 27th Avenue that Friday morning, and before they were even able to orient themselves, the taxi came to a halt before the hotel’s blood-red façade.

The couple had no knowledge of art or whose work was showcased all over the lobby walls, only that the pieces were avant-garde in style, which made the hotel seem that much more hip to them.

They stayed on the fifth of the six floors in a room at the front of the hotel, toward the street. There was only one window in the room, which faced an apartment building to the left of the hotel.

Their weekend flew by. The couple was successful in making it to all of spots on their must-see list. And they devoured as much food and drink as was in their budget to do.

The husband wasn’t dreaming on the morning of their flight home. The low whimpers he thought he heard were real, and they came from the hotel’s hallway. The alarm clock on the nightstand read 5:13 a.m., and there wasn’t even a hint yet of daylight.

He lied there listening. The wife didn’t stir. He heard the sounds again. They were soft crying sounds, a man’s voice, but no words, and the sounds seemed like they were coming from right outside their door, perhaps from across the hall.

He felt his wife’s body twitch, and then lie still, as if she was trying to focus on whether she really did hear a sound.

The husband gently touched her shoulder. “Hey,” he whispered. “Someone’s out there. Listen.”

There was a thump in the hall, though it was difficult to tell what caused it, then the crying sounds grew louder, almost mournful. The husband and wife didn’t move in their bed; they only listened.

The man seemed to be moving down the hallway, away from their door, feet stomping, still crying, and the sounds seemed to be getting more desperate.

Suddenly, the man began to shriek, which were incoherent attempts to yell out someone’s name, and the piercing quality of the sounds greatly disturbed the couple.

There was silence for a brief moment, and then the stomping feet sounds and cries grew closer. The man was running down the hallway again in the direction of their room.

The husband and wife were frozen in fear and didn’t dare move, worrying that their rustling would be heard and only agitate the man further.

Suddenly, there was a violent bang against their door, as if a body was thrown against it. Then, as quickly as the cries intensified, they softened to the low whimpers that woke them. And then nothing. It was silent.

The couple held on tightly to each other, their imaginations running wild wondering what was wrong with the man. A lover’s quarrel? Sickness? They reasoned it must be bad drugs to make a person behave in such a way.

Minutes later, they heard the man’s cries again, only they had turned into blood-curdling screams, and they were coming from the street.

By this time, a light rain had started to fall and there was faint, gray light coming in through the window curtains.

In the husband’s mind he could see the man standing in the street – right in the middle of it – alone, arms outstretched, wailing like a wild animal up to the sky. There was no other sound.

Where was the city, he wondered, and why wasn’t anyone helping or stopping the man? There were millions of people in such a place, yet all he could hear was the man’s screams and the beating of their own hearts.

Finally, the man was silent, and the husband and wife drifted back to sleep.

The post Morning in NYC appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

The post Attack of the Fire Ants appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

Joy leaves the dark trenches of her restaurant job and hikes up Montgomery Street.

The fog failed to arrive this afternoon, which means the last of the day’s sunny sky spills onto the streets, instantly lifting Joy’s dulled spirit.

It seems to have the same effect on the rest of the city as well, because people are out in hordes. Joy ponders the possibilities for her free night.

She corners Broadway and turns to look down its slope toward the Embarcadero and sees a blue sliver of the San Francisco Bay sparkling between two high-rises.

The beauty of the city sometimes takes her breath away – the urban landscape clinging to the sharply steep hills, beautiful pastel architecture, and the people – from all walks of life and every corner of the world. Joy faces them now as she turns back toward Broadway to begin her journey to the bus. She herself adds a unique flavor to the masses.

Joy relishes the energy on the street and feels no hurry to get home. She knows though that her boyfriend is anxiously awaiting her arrival, at which time they’ll both go out to drink up the city together.

An open doorway to a four-story building on Joy’s left stands out as a few young punk boys rush out of it laughing. She slows to see what’s going on inside.

It’s dark inside the door. There are narrow steps going up to a second floor. As Joy starts to go up, two girls dressed in gothic-style clothing with pale skin and jet-black hair trot down. They’re about the same age as Joy and inspect her out of the corners of their eyes as she slides past them.

Hypnotic sounds echo down the stairwell – loud sounds. Looking to the top of the steps Joy sees smoke swirls dancing in black light gleams.

She enters some kind of alternative club. It’s so expansive, it seems as if there are no walls, and the ceiling is at least two stories high. One wouldn’t imagine looking at the building from Broadway that it could contain such a space. But here it is – full of mesmerizing sounds and darkness everywhere. Curiosity sated, she turns to leave. Not today, she thinks. The day’s too beautiful for brooding.

Across the street an outdoor café bustles with patrons. The ambience is such that it gives one the feeling of being in nature with its lush landscaping and rich earth-tone colors.

In one corner, under a forest-green awning, sits a middle-aged couple, both golden haired and severely suntanned. The man is buried in the afternoon newspaper while the woman fingers her wine glass and watches passersby with pleading eyes, as if she’s anxious for someone to give her some attention.

Joy has dined at the spot before and wishes now that her boyfriend was with her so they could stop in for an afternoon aperitif.

Broadway also sits speckled with a few strip clubs, and one of them stands as a stark contrast beside the uber-trendy eatery. Two young haggard girls flank the outside wall doing all they can to entice men on the street to come inside and spend some time.

Joy often wonders what stories go on behind the tightly drawn window curtains, and on numerous walks home has found herself trying to sneak peeks inside the doors when patrons go in and come out.

It amazes her that these girls’ tawdry work lives are being played out in same vicinity as her mundane one in the restaurant she’d just come from less than a block away.

Joy approaches the intersection at Columbus, where she begins the last leg of her walk to the bus stop.

As she turns up the avenue, she’s immediately drawn to a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the wall of the corner establishment. He doesn’t appear to be soliciting for anything; he’s only focused on his cat, which is lying stretched out across his thighs.

He’s petting the cat as he moves his face nearer to it as if he were planning to kiss it. Joy lingers to the furthest stretches of the sidewalk to go around him, for as she gets closer, she realizes the cat is dead – and stiff. Its mouth is locked open, and the man is spitting his saliva into it.

Joy has never seen anything so strange and loses herself wondering what the man was trying to achieve with the spit. Reincarnation, she considers.

Her thoughts are intruded upon by the boisterous bellows of the Italian machismos working at an open-air coffee house. She receives daily greetings from these buff beauties, clad in brilliant white Oxfords against creamy dark skin. She smiles and says hello as she passes.

Once at the bus stop, Joy looks up a tilted narrow street into the thick of Chinatown and catches only a glimmer of the Stockton cresting the hill. She’s got a few minutes to kill so she sits on the curb and lights a cigarette.

Out of nowhere appears a craggy old woman, shrunken with age and seemingly shaking.

“What on earth are you doing sitting down there?” she asks Joy. “Don’t you know people vomit and urinate all over the curb?”

Joy shrugs, amused, and bites her lip to keep from smiling.

“It’s okay. I don’t see anything down here. I’ll make sure I wash my hands.”

This doesn’t seem to satisfy the woman. She shakes her head and scornfully says “Such a young girl – and look at you – sitting there in the gutter.” She then turns and walks away in disgust.

Joy’s relieved getting on the bus that it’s not too crowded, which at this time of day could very likely be. She grabs a seat; the one next to her is empty. She feels at great peace today. She sits thinking about the city – her beautiful city, her love, and this moment of time in her young life. There’s nowhere in the world she’d rather be.

The post Broadway Belt appeared first on Headliners Mission Group.

They joyfully stepped off the porch of their house to begin the trek a half mile down the boulevard.

Already at 10:00 in the morning it was scorching hot – and humid – the heavy, wash-cloth kind of humidity that clings to the skin the moment you step into it.

Billy and Tabby scurried down the sidewalk eager for a first glimpse of activity until finally, they saw the glimmering movements of the Ferris wheel through the trees that towered over them.

“Hurry up Tabby,” Billy said, nearly running now. “Get your money out,” he instructed, digging deep into his shorts to get his own.

They paid at the ticket counter and entered the fairgrounds, already bustling with fanfare, and made a mad dash toward the cotton candy man who sat in a trailer collecting the sugary confection in swirls of pink and sky blue from a windy cauldron.

Billy and Tabby spent their day like this – gobbling down sweets and racing to the rides:

The Zipper,

      Snowball,

          Tilt-A-Whirl

… to name a few, always trying to gauge which had the shortest line. Then they had sweets again, washing them down with syrupy sodas and lemon shake-ups, completely unfazed by the sweltering sun.

Sadly, the day flew by. The sun started to set and Billy and Tabby knew they’d soon have to head for home, but not without one more ride.

They had the Round-Up in their sights and only had to wait in line a few minutes before it was their turn. A perfect ending to a perfect day, they thought as the whirling steel bowl slowly started to spin, then quicker until it lurched skyward. The evening breeze was tinged with smells of hot dogs and popcorn as it blew their hair in their grimy, salty faces.

The gravitational pull of the ride had them sucked in their places, but the ride eventually came to an end. Slowly the bowl inched downward, spewing hisses and screeching at its joints.

Once the ride leveled with the ground, Billy and Tabby looked for the exit. The disappearance of the sun over the horizon reminded them that they’d better get started for home.

Billy eyed the exit as the ride crept to a crawl. He grabbed onto the exit step railing as he drifted by, thinking he could stop it once and for all. But instead of stopping it, he was yanked from his spot and flung through the air. Before he even had time to realize what happened, he was face down on the ground, sore and stunned with blades of grass stuffed in his mouth.

Fairgoers swarmed to his side. He wasn’t hurt, it seemed; at least he wasn’t killed, though the way his body violently sailed through the air he very likely could have been.

“Are you crazy? What happened?” wailed Tabby, forcing her way through the gawkers to get to him. Billy looked at her and started crying, bawling in disbelief. He stood up and looked himself over, took hold of Tabby’s hand and led her away from there and out of the fairgrounds to head home.

It was a fantastic day, they decided on the walk home, except for bellyaches, icky skin, and Billy’s few scratches. It was a day they’d definitely never forget.

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