Patreon Exclusive Fiction: Coming Down by Thomas Mavroudis

By Thomas C Mavroudis   Pete liked to tease Lizzy. No, Pete loved to tease Lizzy. You could say it bordered on addiction. Always in good fun...

Coming Down Fast

By Thomas C Mavroudis

Pete liked to tease Lizzy. No, Pete loved to tease Lizzy. You could say it bordered on addiction. Always in good fun, Lizzy didn’t mind most of the time. What she didn’t like, not really, probably indeed loathed, was being scared.

She liked scary things: books, movies, haunted houses and so on. But the things Pete did, in their surprising, spontaneous way, scared Lizzy how you can only be scared in real life.

For instance, doing dishes one time, Pete just began licking a large kitchen knife. Pretending to lick it.

“Stop it, Pete,” Lizzy said.

And Pete kept on pretending to lick the shiny blade.

“I mean it, stop it.” Lizzy backed away. Which was a mistake, because that invited Pete to lunge, causing Lizzy to scream and run, catching the sharp corner of the counter with her hip.

“That’s your fault,” she said, showing him the bruise and tiny gash later.

Another time, it was as simple as crouching down behind her as they walked out of the newly darkened living room to the bedroom. “Hey, Lizzy.” And she turned around and screamed at the dwarfish figure reaching for her with its abnormal flippers for arms. If Pete could have chased her, down on his knees like that, he would have.

The best was at night in bed, waiting for sleep to come. “Hey, are you are still awake?”

Lizzy would sleepily answer yes, nuzzle into his underarm.

And then he would just say something plain, something not even the slightest unnerving because sometimes he scared her without trying, like, “Remember how my niece had all those nails pounded into her closet wall?”

“Turn on the light,” Lizzy said.

After the baby was born—the baby, now a four-year-old—Pete promised he would curb his scaring. He did, mostly. Sometimes he just couldn’t stop himself. At most, he would give a warning, something like, “I don’t want to scare you, but…”

“You promised,” Lizzy would say.

“Okay, okay. I just thought of this freaky thing though.”

“Peter.”

He kissed her instead, laughing. She would pinch him, kiss him back.

They drove down the highway, the baby nodding in and out with the motion of the car. Enchantment Hill was a charmingly worn down theme park ninety minutes from the city. The way he remembered Enchantment Hill, it would be the perfect first experience for the baby.

“Stop saying that, Pete,” Lizzy said. “It’s so ugly.”

“What? That’s what it’s called.” Pete’s smile in profile against the sun glowing canyon wall was big and mischievous.

“I know that. But, you know what I mean.”

“I just want to take the baby on the helter skelter, what’s wrong with that?”

Lizzy didn’t think she had actually heard the Beatles song before, only knew the two words from her grandmother who was gripped by the Manson Family, who obsessively fortified her world against Sharron Tate’s fate, somehow, befalling her. 

From the back, drowsily and with a froggy voice, the baby echoed her daddy, “Helter skelter.”

Lizzy huffed, rolled her eyes.

“See? Even she knows.” Pete laughed.

Giggling with her daddy, “Helter skelter!” the baby said again, her legs striking her mother’s seat so that Lizzy jumped.

The Starlight Twist, by definition a helter skelter, used to be the centerpiece of Enchantment Hill. But over the last quarter of the 20th Century, as the park expanded southeastward with a handful of new exciting rides, the giant slide watched over only the older, quieter corner of the grounds; a reminder of progress and its eternal struggle with tradition.

At three stories high, diamonds of faded forest green and amethyst spiraled down the tower, with the slide itself pale like teeth. Standing sentinel on top was this impish/elfish being with large pointy ears wearing a robe that matched the tower and a conical black cap, its obscured left hand in a wave or other gesture.

Welcoming families to Enchantment Hill was a faded aluminum arch decorated with the good wizard Crestor and his apprentice Binga, the huntsman Ralph, and The Lady of the Millpond. Gleeful trolls, centaurs and giant eagles joined the “heroes of the hill”. Tight in the apex of the arch, almost hidden by shrubs and rocks, was the unnamed master of the Starlight Twist.

“We’re here, family!” Pete proclaimed.

“Yay!” the baby cheered.

A typically disenchanted teenager collected the nominal park fee for unlimited rides and mildly wished them an enchanting stay. It was warm for mid-fall, yet unexpectedly sparse of visitors. In another weekend or two, the park would be buried in snow.

The baby was in awe of all the cheerful characters, pointing and saying lookatthat at everything, but when her parents asked should they try this ride or that, she answered, “No thank you, not yet.”

Then the baby glimpsed the creature at the top of the Starlight Twist. “Lookatthat!” she said.

“That’s a slide,” Lizzy said. “You want to go down the slide?”

“Helter skelter,” the baby said.

“See what you did, Pete? You’re in trouble, now.”

Pete squeezed his wife and their baby wriggled herself in between.

“Okay,” Lizzy said, lifting the baby, “Let’s go do the helter skelter.”

The slide appeared much taller because it was on a slight hill. Perhaps the titular enchantment hill. The spiral staircase up the tower seemed narrower than it should have been, and if one of them stepped wrong, it would vibrate spitefully.

“Don’t you dare make it shake, Peter,” Lizzy warned.

“I promise I won’t.” He knew from one single experience, a stunt like that would ruin an entire weekend.

When they finally made it to the top, a friendly child’s voice recorded on loop instructed riders to tuck their legs into the magic bag and enjoy their adventure. Pete looked deep into the shadows of the tower, but couldn’t find the burlap sacks he remembered from his childhood. He tried to think if they were at the bottom of the stairs.

“What’s wrong,” Lizzy asked, holding firmly to the baby’s shoulders.

“Oh, nothing. I just don’t see the magic bags. It’s fine. I think they are only to keep your legs from sizzling on the slide in the summer anyway.”

“So you think it’s okay to go down without the bag?”

Pete flipped into stasis, as though someone pushed a cosmic pause button. It was so easy to just blurt out something menacing. Then again, it was becoming easier to just be nice.

“It’s perfectly fine. You want me to go first? I’ll go first and if I get jacked up, I’ll help you and the baby get back down the stairs.”

Lizzy smiled. “I love you.”

“I love you,” Pete said. “and I love you.” He kissed the baby, sitting down on the edge of the platform. “You go with mommy and then you’ll go with me. Okay?”

“Helter skelter!” the baby cried.

“That-a-girl.”

Pete pushed himself off, sliding slowly a few yards to a complete stop at what he imagined was one rotation down the slide. That’s what the burlap sacks are for, he remembered. He scooted, slid a few more yards, kept scooting whenever he felt himself getting stuck until he was able to climb off at the bottom.

“Well, that’s a bust,” he said to no one. He looked at the top for Lizzy. She must have been sitting, waiting for his vocal signal.

“Hold up,” he called. “Let me find the magic bags, it will be better.”

Sure enough, in the murk at the bottom of the spiral staircase, was a pile of dusty burlap. He plucked out two and made his way carefully back up.

But Lizzy and the baby weren’t there.

He didn’t think it took him that long to get down.

“You guys get stuck?” he yelled down the chute, to no reply.

“Hey, Liz!” He knocked on the slide. He sat down, put his legs in the bag. He didn’t want to slam into his family, rushing down the chute. He also didn’t want to make Lizzy mad, pretending to vanish. He had to get down.

This time, he flew down the slide. It was so fast, he hoped it wouldn’t scare the baby when they went down again.

But Lizzy and the baby weren’t at the bottom either. Was Lizzy giving him a scare? He scanned the immediate area. Enchantment Hill could have been completely empty. He rushed to the tower stairs and called their names. Not even an echo responded. He circled the tower one direction and then the other, straining for a glimpse of his wife. He climbed back up the tower like an ape, and taking the sack he left for Lizzy, zipped down the slide again to find himself alone.

He went up and down the Starlight Twist again and again until the sun set, and continued, even as the sky flashed with green and purple star light.

* * *

Member of the Denver Horror Collective, as well as the Horror Writers Association, Thomas C Mavroudis has an MFA from the University of CA, Riverside – Palm Desert under the direction of Stephen Graham Jones. His debut novella, Bergdorf & Associates, was released in May of 2021 and his short stories have appeared on Creepy, A Horror Podcast and The NoSleep Podcast, and in Weirdbook, Mooncalves, and elsewhere and forthcoming in December Tales II.