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The time mocks you, numbers glaring down bright in the darkness. Seventy-Five minutes. Over an hour of your time. In a queue.
Another day, it'd be funny. Another day, you'd have the time to spare, no friends waiting in the parking lot for you to ride the one thing they all refused to. You suppose that's what you get for coming here with a bunch of thrill seekers.
You didn't really understand their objection. The thing had thrills and excitement, just not the kind that would flip you upside down and launch you into the air at a million miles an hour. It wasn't old and decrepit like some other rides.
Okay, so it wasn't exactly new, either. Or good. You knew that.
But you liked it. You liked the jaunty music and the silly little shooting game - pelting eggs at anything and everything that popped up as you slowly trundled through scene after scene. It was charming. Nostalgic, somehow, despite only being something you ever experienced as an adult. It was exactly what you needed after an entire evening of listening to your nearest and dearest scream themselves hoarse on rollercoasters.
But seventy-five fucking minutes? Was it worth seventy-five minutes?
The people still joining the queue seem to think so. The bored looking attendant waving them through seems less thrilled, staring into the middle distance as they absentmindedly wave group after group into the line.
That was just the thing. Even on a regular day, the queue was something to behold. It was cheesy and tacky and glorious, everything you wanted just about every day of the year. But, every year, they did something special for the holidays. A festive overlay like you've never seen. Gaudy and horrendous in all the right ways, and part of you just needed to see it.
"Single-riders can queue over there."
It takes you a moment to realize the monotone drone of the ride attendant is directed at you, standing frowning up at the sign that now reads eighty minutes.
The attendant speaks again, waving one hand to guide yet more people into the rapidly growing queue, while thrusting a thumb over to another sign - arrow pointed away from the main queue - that says single rider.
"But does it -" you start, before that same monotonous drawl cuts you off.
"Still got the decorations."
Naturally, you don't even think before you're moving. Even when the single-rider line looks supiciously like an emergency exit.
It's not. It's everything you hoped. You track alongside the queues and groups, music blaring and people laughing and chattering over it all. Outdated animatronics from all over the park sit in here, draped in holiday outfits, santa hats flopping around on their stuttering heads.
And then, once you've breezed past all eighty minutes of queue in no time at all, you make it to the front of an empty line, feeling like you've cheated the system and screwed over all the people infinitely more patient than you.
"Six to a car! Split up your groups! Six to a car! Three each side!"
You know the drill, even if the other people do not. Groups of four trying to scramble to fit into sides with only three launchers and not nearly enough ass space. Others getting split awkwardly between multiple cars. All while you stand, and wait, for whatever space you might be slotted into.
It takes all of two minutes. You missed who loaded into the front side of your car - too busy grinning to yourself at a particularly shitty animatronic and the absolutely not PG way it's moving in it's old age - but you're being called over and loaded into the car and whisked away to the training room in no time, the little jerking goblin soon forgotten.
And fuck is it just as delightful as you'd hoped.
Baubles and ornaments replace the eggbasket - each one smashing against targets as they hit home, no bursting yolk in sight. The car spins and turns with each new room, and you're poised and ready to begin firing each time, jingling bells and twinkling lights guiding you through scene after scene.
Even if you waited eighty minutes, it would've been worth it, you think as the car flips again, sliding you to one side as you begin shooting again, the sounds of giggles and shouts from other cars drowned out by your own laughter.
The score on your screen rapidly increases. You miss the hot air balloon, but you knock back the snowman with an ornament straight to the head. The big 1000 pointer just escapes you, but you nail three 750s in quick succession. You don't hear the swearing from your car mate, back to back and shielded from each other as you both are.
You're so lost in it, racking up points and taking in the music and carnage in front of you, that you're still shooting when the lights dim and the swaying car grinds to a halt. The launcher in your hand becomes unresponsive, the music going around and around in a loop as other cars start to look around with the same question in their eyes as you.
What the fuck is going on?
"Sit tight, the ride will begin moving again shortly!"
You don't believe the automated voice coming through the loud speaker the first time, and you certainly don't believe it the fifth. After eight minutes, you're starting to understand just why the queue was so long in the first place.
Then, just as you tap out a frantic message to your waiting friends, your car starts to rock and shuffle, your unseen car-mate moving around behind you.
"Hello?" comes a man's voice, just about audible over the repeated cycle of music.
"Anyone there?" he asks, a knock to the back of his seat making your turn in yours.
"I'm here."
You expect to make small talk with the unseen stranger until the ride starts moving again. You expect to never see his face and just shout over the music, between the calls of the automated message, having a stilted conversation until you're both back to shooting again.
You don't expect the ride car to sway again, or to hear scrambling feet on plastic, and you certainly don't expect to first seen an arm, then a foot, then a scruffy head, clamber around the side of the car, feet not touching the ground as he switches sides to sit right next to you.
"Thank fuck," he says breathlessly when he plops himself next to you in the car, looking around with frantic, terrified eyes.
You gape at him. Usually you'd be scared of a strange man climbing into your ride car, but his own look of terror far eclipses yours and, beyond that, you're certain you know him from somewhere.
"Are you okay?" you ask tentatively when his eyes shoot from side to side at the start of another loop of that music, once jaunty and cheesy in a fun way, now infuriating and borderline creepy.
"No!" he says. "Have you seen this shit?"
He finally looks at you - you definitely know him from somewhere - and you're stunned. He's a mess of scruffy, curly hair and patchy beard. He might be tanned in other lighting, but right now he just looks a splotchy mess of technicolor wearing loungewear and, fuck, is he beautiful.
Another sudden burst of color - a light glitching and resetting, yet again - and he recoils in the seat next to you.
"Oh fuck no. This is some Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory shit," he shouts, gripping the bar in front of him with white knuckles. He's looking around frantically, as if terrorized by the idea of Santa on his sleigh, until a jaunty looking snowman pops up and has Dieter throwing himself back in his seat with a yelp.
"The one with Gene-"
"Yes the one with Gene Wilder, there is no other."
He's holding himself now. It's surprisingly endearing watching him restrain himself from gripping onto you, and instead clutching his hands tightly to his arms, while he shakes his head and mutters something about how he can't believe this.
"Scared?" you probe, and he shakes his head again.
"You cannot tell me this isn't nightmare fuel."
You shrug. "I like the ride."
"So do I, but this," he says, flapping around to the swirling lights, "is not what I signed up for. I queued an hour for this. I've had bad trips better than this. This would be better on a bad trip."
The announcement sounds again - shortly feeling like more and more of an infuriating lie each time you hear it - and the man takes a deep breath, slouching back into the seat, releasing his arms, and gripping the plastic edge of it.
You don't know what compells you. You never would do something like this usually - you are a strictly hands-off person where strangers or vague acquantances are concerned. Still, you reach for his hand where it sits near to you on the plastic bench seat, and grip it softly in your own.
"What - What're you doing?" he asks, letting his hand sit limp in yours.
You clear your throat and stare ahead at the repeating scene on the screen - hot air balloon, target, Santa's sleigh, snowman, fireworks, hot air balloon, target, Santa's sleigh...
"Holding your hand."
He nods, as if that's all he needed to know, and looks ahead too, shuffling a little in his seat. You both watch another full cycle, the lights dancing in the same exact pattern they have over, and over again, and you think this must be how you go insane, sat trapped here on a ride car with a beautiful, if slightly unhinged, strangers hand in yours.
"Why?"
You blink. You're stupid. You're weird. You're unhinged. He climbed around the side of the car and yet you've out-stranged him in one simple movement, and now you're stuck here, committed to the bit until -
"You're scared. It's nice to have someone when you're scared," you say quickly, uncertain as you possibly could be as the words tumble out of your mouth. In truth, you don't really know why you did it, or why you're still doing it, other than he seemed like he needed it. And maybe you did too.
He just grunts, and you sit in as much silence as you can among the repetitive chaos of the ride.
Then, with no warning, he starts moving his thumb, stroking the side of your hand in a gentle wave of movement. Your breath catches, and you watch from the corner of your eye as his nervous energy dissipates until he slouches against the seat of the car.
"Dieter. I'm D - fuck - Dieter," he says softly, a red and green light blasting him right in the face and making him wince.
But then it hits you. Not the light - that, thankfully, stays on the other side of the car, blinding a squinting Dieter beside you.
No. It's this man. Dieter. You know him. You've seen him on your TV about a million times this last month - that shitty movie always plays just before Christmas, and this year is no exception. The movie was terrible, for all you'd seen of it. It was some ensemble cast mostrosity with terrible CGI monsters and even worse acting, not at all festive in the slightest and made even more annoying by the ads littered throughout it.
From what you remember, he was terrible too. An Oscar winning actor, cast in some movie so shitty it didn't even gain a cult following. The only thing you heard was any good was the documentary that came out of it, but if your friends were to be believed, that was only good because of copious amounts of explosions and illicit substances.
He sighs, easily spotting whatever baffled look just slapped you in the face the moment you realised his identity, and looks away from you.
"Yeah, that Dieter."
"Cool," you choke out.
Because it kind of is. It's not every day you get stuck on a ride with a famous actor. It's not every day you get to hold his hand and have him stroke soothing circles across your knuckles. It's not every day you get to see just how much more beautiful he is up close compared to his slick-haired, eyelinered counterpart in that god damned movie.
"Sit tight, the ride will begin moving again shortly!"
"Bullshit," he grumbles from beside you, shifting closer to your side so he can rest your arm against the seat.
"Favorite food?" you ask suddenly.
"What?"
"Favorite food? Time's gonna pass anyway, may as well fill it with something that isn't hot air balloon, target, sleigh, snowman -"
"I hate that fuckin' snowman. Tacos. Yours?"
"Who doesn't love tacos."
The ride never does get started again.
Instead, minutes pass, and you throw question after question back and forth with Dieter. The lights go out. He grips your hand a little tighter, and you pull to scoot him a little closer. The lights come up. The spell is broken. The nightmare is over. You're fairly sure you'll have that song ringing in your ears for weeks.
You still hold his hand.
One by one the ride cars are evacuated. Yours is last. Dieter helps you down from the car, his hand finding yours again, still warm from being in his for so long.
Then, you're walking beside an illuminated track and blank screens, abandoned ride car after abandoned ride car, and you're free, with Dieter by your side.
You escape via the gift shop - the novelty toys and candy ignored, Dieter's hand guiding you toward the exit so he can throw his head back in glee at the sight of the wide open sky above him.
In your pocket, your phone buzzes frantically, messages bombarding you now that you weren't trapped in the depths of a metal building. 6 new messages. 2 missed calls. Your friends, still waiting in the parking lot, trying to reach you while the lights blared and the music played.
>>did the ride eat you?
>>if she doesn't hurry up i'm gonna eat her
>>sorry I get grouchy when I'm hungry
>>have you got locked in the bathroom again?
>>THE QUEUE IS OVER AN HOUR?!>!?!?!
>>this egg game owes us dinner
"You want tacos?" Dieter asks from beside you as you hastily tap out a reply, and before you can answer you look up to see him striding away into the crowd, parting the stream of foot traffic with his broad frame until it engulfs him.
You can't help the feeble whimper that escapes you when you watch him walk away. Or the way your arms fall limply to your side when he's out of your view and gone.
You can't help the smile, either, that pulls at your cheeks when he bobs and weaves back through the crowd, stopping a few steps away and jabbing the thumb on one hand over his shoulder and holding the other out to you.
"You coming?" he shouts, with an expectant look on his face, and with a swipe of your thumb, the message is deleted, quickly replaced by another as you make your way toward him, hand reaching for his.
>you guys go ahead, I'm gonna be a while longer