We’re going to die.
“I think…” Rob swallows, coughs. “I think we’re going to fall.”
He grabs her then, and she can’t stand the heat of him. The hot flesh that will soon be nothing but ash. She pushes him away, but he is so crazed, so deeply in shock, he only looks at her wild-eyed. “I love you!”
She nods, too afraid to speak. The smoke chokes them both. Every breath is hot air that burns her mouth, her throat. Flames lick the air next to their gondola. The rubber mat of the floor is melting. Sticking to their skin and clothes like hot paste. They are being cooked.
CRACK!
The gondola lurches, drops, then steadies. Rob and Mary scream, thinking death has come. Rob pushes Mary roughly to the side, then kicks the gondola door open. The latch snaps and the door splays outward. Mary puts a hand out to steady herself, but the metal is too hot. She pulls it back, cries out more from desperation than pain. She slumps onto the bench, skin hot, hair matted with sweat, dazed.
On hands and knees, Rob looks down through the opening where the door had been. Mary looks at his body, hands splayed on the sticky, liquefying floor. His black sneakers, his blue jeans that hug him perfectly. The nice blue dress shirt he’d worn just for her.
My God, she thinks suddenly, the thought rushing into her like cool water. That’s my fiancée. I’m fucking engaged.
Mary can’t help it. She smiles. The saddest smile she will ever wear. Tears stream from her red-rimmed eyes, evaporate in the heat. That is her future husband, staring into hell itself. Searching for a way out, a way to save them. She reaches out, touches the back of his leg. She’s filled with so much love at that moment, an internal surge of core heat. Somehow hotter than the flames which surround them. Hotter than the sun. “Rob?” She wants to kiss him one last time.
He springs from his knees. His face is streaks of gray, bright reds. Soot and heat. He clutches her shoulders.
“Mary!” he says. “You’re not going to die! I won’t let you die!”
She nods at the lie. Sweat and dried tears cover their faces. He puts his hands to her cheeks, looks into her eyes. So much love.
He helps her to her feet. Mary looks around, sees more flames licking upward. The people in the gondola adjacent to theirs are looking back at her, hopeless. She ignores them. Below, people are screaming as flames coat their shelter, frying them. Something dark falls through the smoke like a fleeting shadow. Another body, she thinks, and wonders if they’ll jump next.
Mary looks down, past the open door, into the flames.
She sees them down there.
Black writhing figures, like the one who had attacked Rob. Untouched by the flames.
All the devils have come to feast on the dead, she thinks, watching the clawed black demons tear at charred flesh, climb the wheel itself, scale burning beams toward them. We’re still too high for you. Her mind is jarringly dislodged from sanity by her terror. Too high for you, she sings to herself, wanting to laugh. Too high for you-hoo!
Mary smiles, her eyes flutter, and she tries to step through the open door, drop herself into the flames. Rob catches her, wraps his arms around her tightly. Screams something. She stares at him, numb. He is yelling, crying her name, touching her face. But she feels nothing. Is not able to feel any further. She wants to burn. To have it over with. To feed those demons with her flesh.
“Mary!” he screams. “Please hold on!”
There is another loud SNAP, loud as a boulder splitting, and the great wheel lurches and groans. Even in her shocked state, Mary realizes something very important is happening. Something very vital.
“Oh god,” Rob murmurs.
Suddenly the air is clear. The smoke blown away by a surge of ocean breeze. Mary sees clearly through the open door of the gondola. Sees the blanket of fire below, on the pier, in the ocean beyond. She tilts her head skyward. The stars in the night sky are still there. Still watching. The lazy moon sits above the horizon, glib.
Are you enjoying the show? she thinks, not knowing to whom she is addressing the question, nor why it has come to her.
At the shore, where the pier meets land, Mary can see what looks like a thousand flashing lights. Fire trucks, police cars. Lined up for miles. Announcements through bullhorns, or speakers, carry through the air. She can’t make out the words. So many people. Running. Running. No one can get in, because all the people are trying so very hard to get out.
The wheel staggers. A snapped cable sings past, whips against the side of their metal coffin it’s a goddamn coffin gondola with a sharp smack.
Rob has torn the shirt off his body, is wrapping it around a hand. His feet are on the lip of the open door, his half-naked body leaning back, into the open air, one shirt-wrapped fist clutching the vertical metal rod that connects the bottom and top of the gondola.
The sight breaks Mary from her shock.
“Rob!” she screams, and reaches for him.
He shoves her away. “Stay back, Mary!”
She sees the ocean behind him. The floor is tilting downward. Following his example, she snatches up her own jacket, lassoes it around a post on the opposite side – the pier side – of the gondola, and holds on.
8
FAR BELOW WHERE Rob and Mary are perched, awaiting sure death, the pier has burned through the base of the ride. The giant metal triangles supporting the wheel’s core crunch through the burning wood of the pier. The platform slants, sinks slowly through charred timbers toward eager water.
The great wheel is defeated.
Half-burned, free of its moorings, it begins, ever so slowly, to lean.
Then, when it can hold itself upright no longer, and with the dying groan of a great god, it falls.
9
