"The Time of Our Lives"

“The Time of Our Lives”

The crew followed him into the park. We couldn’t find it on our GPS, so we needed a local guide to help us find it. The place was crowded; it was a combination of a nature reserve and an amusement park. There were rides crossing between trees. There were treehouses. There were merry go rounds. Long lines formed for each and every one of them. The best part was the trees providing cover for the burning sun. It was cool here, although the season was summer. “Shall we start with the roller coaster?” the man said. Our crew of tourists all nodded, so he took us to the biggest coaster in the park. While we were walking, I saw a strange sight. A kid was climbing over the fences to go outside of the park, and the only thing outside the park was more and more trees. 

I didn’t think much of it, however, since it had nothing to do with me. As we boarded the ride, the operators gave us the normal talk: no food, no drinks, seatbelts on, no reaching out too much. All the things we had to do to avoid injury. I noticed an odd thing once again though -- our guide did not board the ride himself. He was standing next to the operator, and they seemed like they knew each other. A few minutes later, the ride had started, “Good luck!” the operator said. Him and the guide both laughed a bit, as if the “Good luck!” was a joke. We were being sent to the top of the ride. As we approached, I suited myself for the fall that would follow. Once we reached the top, the ride stopped for a few seconds to build suspense, and we started falling. Everyone was screaming, and everyone was excited for the rest of the ride. We reached the bottom, and we went back up again, we reached the bottom, and we went back up again. We had the time of our lives.

It had been around a minute since the ride had started, and I was preparing for it to end. However, one high peak led us to somewhere unexpected. We were at the top of the trees, and this time, there was a more gradual slope down. As I looked over the trees, I realized something unusual. All of us were shocked as we had found out that the ride had brought us a ways away from the amusement park. Suddenly, a scream broke our thoughts. “NEXT GROUP IS COMING.” The voice echoed as if it was a common thing. The ride stopped on top of the huge forest, and right before a steep slope. We all looked down and processed what was happening, and to our unbelievable devastation, the tracks stopped abruptly at the bottom of the forest. There were no safety measures, no continuous loop back to the beginning of the ride. Terror swept through all of us. The first person to speak was me. “What is going on?” I said. Other people were beginning to stand up, in a fight or flight mode. “I think the ride is malfunctioning,” one person said in a terrified voice. “HEY!” someone else screamed, directed towards the person at the bottom who had screamed earlier. No response. “What is going on!” he said in a voice mixed with fear and dissatisfaction. There was no response. A couple seconds later, a person broke the prolonged silence, “I think this was intentional, if you look at the bottom, there were no tracks, meaning we were meant to be driven up here.” The person sounded as if he was speaking the last words he would ever speak. Other people accepted reality silently. Nobody spoke, not even the children. We were in a special time frame where speaking would only cause more panic.

A couple minutes later, the cart was showing signs of movement. As soon as it happened, everyone started screaming. It was the loudest sound I had ever heard in my life. The harmonious terror in all of our voices, our rushing blood, our eyes popping out of their sockets. A man jumped off the cart in hopes of a chance of survival. As it turns out, we were having the last “time of our lives”.